That wisp of smoke was silver in colour, expressing the grade of this monster. William didn't hurry to absorb it as he first waited for his blood to entirely cover the monster's body before making his move.
His blood, now a crimson web stretched across the translucent carcass, acted as a spiritual conduit, stabilising the volatile energies of the three elements before they could tear through his underdeveloped channels.
All he did was to think about sucking this wisp, and the wisp moved. Like being attracted by a hidden force, that smoke moved inside William's body. The moment the silver vapor touched his skin, it didn't just enter; it flooded him, surging through his pores like liquid mercury.
Then everything went blank in his eyes while William entered a state of trance. The world of the cave, the smell of the damp earth, and the sound of the wind outside all vanished. He was no longer a boy in a cave; he was a consciousness adrift in a sea of silver lightning and dark shadows.
That wisp of silver smoke started to melt slowly and merge with his spirit. William stayed in such a state for a longer time than he predicted. He had underestimated the sheer complexity of a hybrid monster's soul.
Most spirits were a single thread; this was a braided cord of light, dark, and lightning, and each strand had to be painstakingly woven into his own "muddy" foundation.
He imagined it would take roughly half a day, a day at most. But it took far longer than that. For four consecutive days, William remained in his position while his spirit kept absorbing the spirit of the monster.
His heartbeat slowed to a crawl, and his breathing became so shallow that he appeared like a statue carved from the very rock of the cave. Outside, the forest lived and breathed; inside, a metamorphosis was occurring.
Crack!
Just staying like this for a long time left a stiffening effect on his weak body. The joints of his knees and elbows had locked in place, and his muscles had begun to atrophy from the prolonged stillness. The moment he moved, his body issued cracking sounds like breaking dry wood before he finally managed to open his eyes.
A flash of silver light passed there, a sharp spark of divinity that flickered in his pupils, before it instantly vanished.
William looked around, his vision slowly adjusting to the dim cave, and he couldn't help but feel strange when he noticed the faint layer of dust on his body and the way his clothes felt stiff and dry.
"Did I take a whole day here or what?" He wasn't aware of the time he spent here. He had been so focused solely on the merging process that his internal clock had stopped. But from the sliver of the bright world outside that managed to peek through the plant-covered opening, he could tell it was already daytime.
"Let's see what changed," he muttered.
As he finished this merge, his stomach growled with a ferocity that reminded him of his humanity, yet he didn't even try to eat or drink anything.
The hunger for power outweighed the hunger for food. He took out a spirit crystal and one of the candles from his bag before he started assessing his power. He needed to know if the gamble had paid off.
The moment he injected his spirit power inside the crystal, the entire crystal didn't just glow; it erupted, shining in a bright, blinding silver light that filled every corner of the small cave.
"I passed the spirit formation stage and entered the spirit foundation one… That's great!"
His voice was filled with a mixture of shock and triumph. He had expected this fox's spirit to just bring his own outside the mud phase and into the spirit formation stage—the typical progression for someone of his age.
But now, that stable, intense silver light was a trademark for the spirit foundation stage. He had skipped an entire level of spiritual evolution in a single session.
For a spirit to be in the mud phase, it wouldn't show any shape at all; it was just a chaotic, formless mist. At the spirit formation stage, the spirit would show a faint, spectral shape of the monster it belonged to, a ghost inhabiting the master's soul.
Just like Berry's case, her spirit power took the form of a phoenix and a dragon in their early developmental stages. So, she was firmly in the spirit formation stage.
In the spirit foundation stage, however, the spirit would start to show small circular movements around the core, taking what could be said as pillar bases in the spirit.
These pillars were the anchors for future growth, the structural support for the legendary phases to come. And even before his spirit could take a full, solid form, he noticed the presence of these distinct pillar bases in his spirit.
As the light stabilised, William started to inspect the crystal more closely, peering into the heart of the silver glow. What he saw made his jaw drop without him knowing if he should laugh or cry.
"This… I didn't imagine I even took that bastard's spirit away!"
Just inside the crystal, a small, exquisite version of a fox with two tails appeared. The fox was smaller in size than the beast he had slain, with faint silver fur covering its body that seemed to ripple with electric current.
But what caught his eye was the posture of the spirit—it was proud, fierce, and entirely synchronised with his own heartbeat.
William knew it wasn't like the fox he killed and absorbed its spirit. If so, then that monster only had one tail, not two! Not to mention the difference in the shape and colour of the fur.
The monster he had slain with his arrows and knives had feathers and not fur, a clear sign of its avian hybrid nature. No matter how William saw it, the spirit manifesting within the crystal was a miniature version of the nine-tailed fox he fought before dying and coming here.
"There is that backbone extending over its back, so it can be considered as a mixture between the two foxes or what?" William muttered to himself while closely inspecting that fox spirit he had.
The silver bone he had noticed earlier in the carcass seemed to have integrated into the spirit form, creating a unique skeletal structure that glowed with a soft, metallic light. It was a fusion of the hybrid's physical superiority and the legendary fox's ethereal essence.
But aside from that backbone, everything else was just similar to the old enemy of his. The sharp, intelligent eyes, the elegant curve of the snout, and the predatory grace of its posture were unmistakable.
"Two tails… Hmm… Never imagined that damned fox had to gain its tails by advancing his spirit grade," this was a new knowledge he didn't know about his enemy.
In his previous life, he had assumed the tails were simply a biological trait of a high-level monster species. But seeing his own spirit evolve a second tail the moment he stepped into the spirit foundation stage changed his perspective entirely.
Gaining two tails was linked to having achieved the spirit foundation stage, which was considered phase two in the spirit evolution path. Thinking like that matched the nine tails that fox had when William fought him.
That fox was in the ninth spirit stage—the Spirit Phantom phase—which was trying to ascend to the legendary tenth stage, the Spirit Ascension phase, and be a god. The tails were a visual representation of spiritual milestones.
When William thought about it, he couldn't help but feel a bit weird. It was a very simple conclusion, a logic hidden in plain sight, yet neither he nor anyone else in the higher realms managed to link things together before. They were too focused on the fox's power to study the mechanics of its growth.
"So, I got your devouring ability plus your spirit, hehehe! I can't imagine the look on your face if you ever heard about that!"
William was more than satisfied by this. He knew such a result had happened because he accidentally absorbed the spirit of a monster related to that damn fox.
The Nightfall Lightning Fox shared a common ancestor with the Nine-Tailed lineage. Or else his fox spirit wouldn't have grown into such a state so quickly. His "Mud Phase" hadn't just been purified; it had been overwritten by a superior genetic code.
He realised now he had ascended two stages directly thanks to such a coincidence. He had jumped from a formless spirit to a two-tailed spirit foundation in a single leap. And that made him grin evilly, his reflection in the crystal appearing cold and calculating.
Then he started to count the spirit power spots inside the crystals. "Eighty points? I gained almost thirty points in just one day! Wow!"
He still didn't know he was actually here for four days. But even if he had known, gaining such an increase in the span of four days was already something incredible. Most students at the Academy took years of meditation and resource consumption to gain thirty points of spirit power.
He gained such an increase thanks to the little modification to the method to raise one's spirit experienced in his body.
His devouring ability didn't just merge the soul; it acted like a high-pressure pump. It made sure to absorb every scrap of spirit power from that fox's core and its unique silver bone, adding thirty points to his tally.
In usual times, when a master merged with a spirit, only a few points would be added to one's spirit power count—no more than ten points at most, as much of the energy was lost during the volatile transfer.
But others didn't have his heaven-defying devouring ability, which enabled him to get more spirit power by preventing any energy leakage. He was a closed system, consuming everything the monster had to offer.
But the good news ended here. When he finally turned to the dead monster body to dissect it for its core—the most valuable part of any silver-grade beast—he was disappointed to find nothing there but ash and brittle bone.
"Did I consume it while absorbing its spirit? Was it the reason behind my spirit power increase?" he frowned, his hand searching the hollow chest cavity of the fox. But the facts were there in front of his eyes. The core, which should have been a solid marble of energy, was gone.