William made his arrows to deal perfectly well with silver grade monsters. Even if this was a mix between two species of monsters, and also a hybrid, William doubted it would emerge unscathed from his arrows.
The explosion of the scarlet vibrant ore was designed to bypass external hides and rattle the internal organs of any silver-grade beast.
But the next moment, William had to jump again to evade another light attack combined with a mighty roar from the monster. The white bolt scorched the earth where he had stood a millisecond prior, turning the soil into glass.
"Still not enough to take you down then," William muttered, his eyes narrowing. He felt the pain in the roaring of the monster, a jagged edge to the sound that indicated a hit, yet he didn't feel any sign of weakness.
It was apparent that his arrow didn't inflict the expected damage for reasons he couldn't guess. Most likely, the monster had used its lightning spirit to create a localised magnetic repulsion, dampening the impact of the arrow just before it made contact.
Without waiting for the cloud of fire, smoke, and dust to be cleared, he instantly took out three arrows and released them in three different directions. He didn't fire them directly at the beast; he fired them in a wide arc, forcing the monster to split its attention.
"Roar!"
The monster attacked again. This time it didn't ignore any of William's arrows. It had learnt its lesson from a painful past experience and made sure to attack the three arrows at the same time with rapid-fire bolts of light.
With each attack, it kept roaring in a loud and annoying way that got on William's nerves. The sound was like thunderclaps occurring right inside his skull.
"Shut the hell up! You are going to wake the entire forest, goddammit!"
The roars were so loud, even louder than the explosions of his arrows. There was a lightning effect in these roars, a sonic vibration that sent ripples through the air, but that didn't affect William greatly.
Lightning would add a numbing and even paralysing effect to any attack even if it was a sound-based one.
As the monster used a sound-based attack like this, it wanted to meddle with his mind and will, hoping to freeze him in place for a killing blow. Yet this didn't put William under much pressure.
After all, William's own will wasn't that of an eleven-year-old kid. He had the soul of a veteran who had faced world-ending catastrophes. Trying to affect his mind and movement using such useless, weak lightning wasn't enough.
If the monster had used a direct hit combined with lightning—like those light bolt attacks—then William would be in real danger. But sound alone was a parlour trick to him.
Woosh! Woosh! Woosh!
Like last time, William released three arrows before he threw something afterwards. The monster attacked the arrows like before, its milky-white bolts snapping out with predatory precision. But this time, there was another thing hidden behind the flurry of arrows.
"Roar!"
It was a much more painful roar this time, and it told William that the monster had been severely wounded by his knife. What William had thrown after his arrows was one of his flying knives.
Even if the monster could smash his arrows with its light bolts, it couldn't easily affect the knife that was totally under William's control.
The silver-red blade had snaked through the air, ducking beneath a lightning discharge to bury itself deep into the fox's shoulder.
And William was sure his knives were much stronger than the arrows. The refined silver alloy and the concentrated candle-wax soul link made them far more piercing.
"Roar!"
But this was only the beginning of hell for this monster. William didn't only send four more knives to attack it, he also controlled the knives once they got into that monster's body.
Using his blood link and the ten spirit points he invested into each blade, he made them move deeper in its flesh, carving through muscle and scraping against bone.
The more they moved, the weaker the roars of the monster became. The beast tried to shake them out, its body sparking with chaotic electricity, but the knives were anchored by William's will.
"Die in peace and silence," William said coldly.
As the monster became much weaker, William didn't depend on such a slow way to kill it. He wasn't a sadist to begin with, and he knew the noise was still a risk.
So he sent three arrows in succession, targeting the wounds already opened by the knives. They struck home, killing that monster in the middle of three mighty explosions that finally silenced the forest.
The monster issued its last, gurgling roar before it fell, its big body hitting the forest floor with a heavy thud. During this flashing battle that didn't last more than half a minute, William couldn't clearly see its body through the smoke and light.
But once the monster died and the dust settled, he made sure of his earlier guesses. Once he started to examine the fox's body, he was sure this wasn't a simple nightfall lightning fox.
There was a strange, protruding long bone stretching all the way from its neck to its thick-furred long tail. That bone was bright silver in colour, glowing with a soft, ethereal radiance. It was a Spirit Bone—one of the best places in a monster's body, brimming with spirit power.
One had to know that silver-grade monsters could give more materials than white or bronze-grade ones. William placed his hand on that bone and felt its smooth and slightly soft contour. It hummed against his palm, vibrating with three distinct energies.
"So, you are a hybrid with an interesting light element," he muttered in a low tone, his eyes reflecting the silver glow. This was the first time ever for him to see such a monster in this life.
"I guess it's my lucky day! I didn't only get one of the elements like I hoped for, but three at once. Thanks, buddy, I appreciate your help."
It had the dark element from its fox lineage, lightning from its bird variation, and a rare light element from its unique mutation. It was just awesome and perfect for William's foundation. It was the "Trinity" foundation he needed to eventually counter the Nine-Tailed Fox.
Unlike before, he didn't hurry to dissect this monster at the spot to claim his loot. The smell of the explosions and the loud roars would undoubtedly bring scavengers or larger predators soon.
Instead, he started to grab its huge body, hauling it with all his might toward a safer place; a slight cave covered by thick bushes he had spotted a mile away during his earlier scouting.
William was sure this battle must have attracted the attention of many monsters around.
Even if he tried his best to finish it fast, just the sounds of explosions from his arrows and the noisy roars of that monster were enough to attract many eyes here. The forest was a giant ear, always listening for the sounds of death, and he had just rung the dinner bell with a hammer.
Not to mention the smell of blood would attract more in the next few hours. In the deep zones, a single drop of blood could draw predators from miles away, their noses tuned to the copper scent of a fresh kill.
But he got a solution already for the problem of blood smell. William knew evading battles here was nearly impossible; he was a realist who understood that blood was the inevitable tax of progress.
Therefore, he had made preparations to solve the most important problem of any battle—the lingering scent of gore.
As he knew he had to fight eventually, he kept looking for perfect hide spots everywhere he went to. He had spent the last half a day cataloguing every hollow log, every shadowed crevice, and every hidden grotto.
And that just came in handy at this moment; or else he'd have to look for a suitable place to hide and absorb the monster's spirit, wasting precious time in the process and putting himself into extreme danger.
The body of this monster was really heavy. It spanned for five metres in length and almost one and a half metre in width.
The variation it got by that light element bone made it a little heavier than William initially thought; the bone was dense, packed with concentrated spirit energy that added significant weight to the cheetah-like frame.
But that didn't stop William from moving the carcass. He hauled the beast with a grim determination, his muscles straining under the load.
If William waited for a few more minutes there, he was sure he'd end up fighting more monsters—scavengers first, and then the apex predators who would come to reclaim the territory.
William moved towards that cave which he just met before meeting the fox monster. It was the safest place he could think of around this region, the only safe place he met close to the battlefield that offered both concealment and a defensible position.
Once he moved there, he didn't immediately begin the ritual. He started first to scatter a fine, pungent powder he got from crushing the roots of certain plants he had picked along the way. These were "Ghost-Nettle" roots, known for their ability to neutralise organic scents.
"This will help mask that heavy blood smell," he muttered, shaking his hand off the powder after finishing covering the entire cave area and the closest part of the path he took to come here. He was meticulous, creating a chemical barrier that would confuse the olfactory senses of any tracking wolves or hounds.
Then he went inside and placed the heavy body of that fox in the end of this cave. The interior was cool and damp, the air still.
The process of absorbing a monster spirit wasn't short or simple. It was an alchemical marriage between the soul of the hunter and the essence of the prey.
Besides, any interruption in the middle of it would end with a failure and a big backlash—the spirit energy could recoil, shattering the master's meridians or leaving them in a permanent catatonic state.
So, William took his time to close the opening of that cave with more plants and roots he gathered from the immediate vicinity.
He even used some dirt to pack the gaps between the foliage. He didn't want anything—not a stray breeze, not a curious insect, and certainly not a prowling beast—to interrupt him during the process.
This cave was situated underneath the massive, gnarled roots of a big, towering tree. The tree itself was an ancient giant, needing a group of ten people together to fully surround its trunk.
It was a natural fortress. But it was situated on the edge of a steep slope, and the cave lay just in that spot with a narrow, unassuming hole appearing from the outside.
The small opening led into a slightly spacious cave. It wasn't that wide, but compared to his cramped cabinet back at the academy, it certainly was big enough for him to sit comfortably beside his prize.
"Time to get myself a good spirit," he said, his voice a low rasp. He eyed the monster he killed with eyes filled with greed and much anticipation. This was the moment he would finally step out of the "Mud Phase" and become a true Spirit Master of the higher orders.
He sat beside the dead body of the monster and didn't even light a single candle. It was still pitch black outside, and any artificial light could be noticed easily by monsters through the gaps in the brush.
He had closed the opening, but he doubted what he did was enough to block the intense glow of a light candle. If monsters from outside noticed a light source beneath the tree roots, then he'd get interrupted while absorbing the spirit of that fox monster.
Lying in such darkness, he felt the cool, feathered body of that monster before reopening the old wound on his left hand with a small flick of his knife.
He felt weird, a bit of grim humour surfacing in his mind, as he started to feel his left hand turning into his primary blood donor in this life. It seemed every major advancement required a sacrifice of his own life force.
Doom! Doom! Doom!
Like a heart beating, once his bloody hand touched the monster's silver-toned hide, the entire body of that dead fox started to emit a faint, shimmering myriad of different lights.
The cave was suddenly bathed in a pulsing glow—violent purples of lightning, deep shadows of darkness, and the milky white of the light element. William wasn't startled by this. After all, this was an expected result of the soul-resonance.
The way to absorb any monster spirit depended entirely on using a spirit master's blood as a medium for the transfer, provided that the spirit master used the right technique to do it. And William already got the unbelievable devouring ability of the Nine-Tailed Fox.
He didn't need any complex technique at all to do it! He was the technique. And he expected a much fiercer reaction and even a few changes to the process compared to what he'd get if he used one of the standard academy techniques. The devouring ability didn't just merge; it consumed.
He didn't remove his hand or even stop the bleeding. Instead, he pressed with his hand further, burying his fingers into the fox's fur while making sure there was no gap between the two. He wanted total contact.
The more the "heartbeat" of the energy transfer pulsed, the more changes happened to his blood and to the monster's body.
The blood started to move of its own accord, drawn out by the monster's latent spirit power, coalescing together and forming a unified, glowing blanket of white material over the wound site.
It was a manifestation of his current spirit. It wasn't pure white, but a white that was mixed with many grey and brown impurities—the "mud" that currently defined his soul—turning it slightly darker and less appealing to the eye.
As for the monster's body, it started to turn translucent under his bloody touch. It was as if the physical matter was being converted into pure energy.
All the places covered by his blood showed the internal organs, the glowing silver bones, and the pulsating veins, until a thin, concentrated wisp of fog appeared deep in the centre of that body.
This was the monster's spirit—the Nightfall Lightning Fox's essence. This was the one William aimed to absorb and merge with at the moment. The wisp began to spiral, drawn toward William's hand like a moth to a flame.