"Damn! I need to move now then," she was about to move, before suddenly recalling something, "how about you? What are you going to do?"
"Me?" William pointed at himself as if she said something weird and quite surprising, "Nothing, I'll wait for you to bring the crystal over, and then head towards that man and kill him."
"Alone?!!" everyone said in the same breath, "not again!" they all added in the same breath, making William unable to respond for a few seconds except by wryly smiling and scratching the back of his head.
"I want to take you all with me, I truly do," the more he tried to sound truthful and honest, the more they didn't buy any of what he said.
"Then take us, I want to explore the world outside," Karoline was the first to speak before many chimed in.
"Come on, you know me… I can't drag you all with me toward dangerous zones…"
"Just confess it, you are an introvert," Sara rolled her eyes, "such an attitude of yours is really annoying. What's dangerous out there? It's just a single man, and he is terribly wounded as you can tell."
"It's not just him," William knew he always used to move solo when facing great danger out of habit, but this time he lacked concrete reasons to share with them.
All he got was simply his feeling, and he had a terrible feeling about that man, or the spirit that stood behind him.
If not for him to have the black fox spirit on his side, even if it didn't show up when he got promoted, he was sure he'd end up safe. But this wasn't guaranteed to any of them.
"Habit or not, Is it my fault for being overly caring about you?" he sincerely said, and his honesty touched their hearts and made them look at him in silence.
"Just go, you have a hard task to do," he waved his arm, and when they looked in doubt towards them, he elaborated further, "You forgot? Monsters can appear in the middle of the city! The strong masters will be focused on dealing with those five traitors. But just in case things went wrong at some point, you have to help Lara protect the city…"
He paused, and then stressed over his real goal of doing all this, "most importantly, protect the underground city! These five have access to that place. And I have my own reasons to believe that man came here just for this."
"My great grandfather's city? Are you sure?" Lara went on red alert the moment she heard his words. To William, this was all benefit-based actions, and to her, it was all sentimental thanks to her family.
"I can't say for sure, but is there anything else that has a high value and importance to a god?" he pointed to the entity standing behind that old man. And when he did, they all got his point.
They didn't just get his point about giving their task to them but also got why he prohibited them from following towards that man's place.
"I'll deliver one crystal to you once we acquire any," Lara promised, "but…"
"I'm not that crazy to use it here," he interrupted her, "just be quick and discrete, hopefully not a single one will be unleashed here or in any area nearby."
"Fingers crossed," she even crossed her fingers out for luck. He watched his friends move away and then started his digging task.
"I never thought I'll face one of you so soon," he took out the scrolls he copied once more, digging deeper into these, trying to find a way to handle that spirit.
He could deal with that man. According to Lara, he was in the gold grade. Even if he was hiding his power quite well and was at dark gold grade, it wasn't an issue for him. That Chaos faction spirit was the real problem he had to face and solve.
He got a bad premonition if he just walked towards there and faced that spirit with what he had. Something told him spirits were different. Even if everything lived by spirit power, he felt like his techniques and weapons wouldn't do single damage against that spirit.
As he flipped through the scrolls, he ended up gaining more confirmation of his earlier doubts. "I read it here then, that's why I felt it was something solid…" he mutters to himself, holding a few scrolls that spoke about a rough comparison between masters and spirits.
Spirits had a unique way of using spirit power, so any attack launched on them would end up getting absorbed, turned into pure power that could be absorbed. Using this, they wouldn't get hurt, but also would heal themselves, increasing their overall power slightly.
"That's cheating…" The more he read, the more he got convinced of the uselessness of masters' ways to fight these spirits, "much information is listed here, but why can't I get anything about how to wound, or even kill them?!"
He read through ten scrolls without finding what he wanted. He already went through these two times so far, and yet he didn't get how valuable this was until he was faced with this situation.
He read the scrolls for hours, while Lara led his friends to meet with the city leaders.
She selected the only ones she trusted, but when she exposed the traitors, she faced disbelief and slight resistance among them.
Those five were here since the start of the evolution stage of the city. They poured their sweat and effort, and did everything honestly and sincerely to make the city reach the stage it was in today.
They had tons of connections with others, and many asked for proof of their involvement in this.
"How about this then? Let's get them away from the city and confront them with what I told you," After long hours of debating, Lara got extremely tired of this situation, "and like this, if they were honest and clean, they wouldn't show or do anything wrong, right? But if they are guilty, and they are, then they'll end up revealing their true colours."
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