Like an experienced hunter, he kept dashing forward into the weak places in the entire battle, gathering up all the rings and gears he could, before returning back again into the safe area at the back, before he'd get surrounded by his enraged enemies.
He used his straightforward lightning dash technique to make such sudden moves, aided by a few short dashes to change his trajectory, evading any incoming attack, or hitting an already dying target.
He didn't take any risk at all, kept doing things while putting his safety on top of anything else. He didn't know that by being overly cautious, he deprived his enemies from any chance to hit him hard.
And that drove many crazy, ending up with few trying their luck and following him deep into the strong spirit masters' formations.
These ended up quite bad, dying just a few moments after following him. Seeing what happened to them, other dark spirit masters learnt their lessons, never trying to do it again.
Even so, William never dropped his guard. Instead, he became more focused and alarmed. When he dashed forward next, he kept doing this randomly and without any prior warning. He didn't even move closer to the spot he'd jump at next and used his techniques to take him wherever he wanted.
He decided to spend a little more of his spirit power in return for securing his life more. And in the middle of all this, he kept absorbing a few silver cores to replenish his lost spirit power, keeping himself always in top shape, prepared for any sudden and unexpected ambush.
The battle that started with a small ambush by the dark spirit masters started to escalate and expand on an alarming rate. William could hear various shouts coming from distant parts of the forest, not knowing that the long-awaited patrols were already on the move.
The early arrows he launched already lost their effect by now. The monsters kept coming in large numbers, taking the most attention from the spirit masters fighting here.
And just in half an hour, and by the joining of the patrol teams and other spirit masters coming from different areas, the dark spirit masters knew they already lost this fight. Group by group started to withdraw, using monsters as the perfect cover for their organised retreat.
William knew he could follow them if he wanted to, try out his luck and hunt down more of them. But he didn't. He was alone, pretty exhausted physically and mentally after such a fervent battle. Not to mention he gained a lot from here already.
"Time to replenish my cores," by the retreat of the dark spirit masters from this battle, it turned into a regular and normal fight against monsters.
As there were lots of different types and grades of monsters here, and with the presence of a growing number of spirit masters, William felt all safe and carefree in hunting down cores.
He didn't want to just get bronze grade cores, but mostly the silver and far important gold cores.
But to find a dying gold grade monster and deal the last blow at it was a fantasy! The ones who were able to take down such monsters were gold grade spirit masters. And they were quite brutal and excessive in fighting and killing monsters.
They would never leave behind a single gold grade monster's corpse intact without looting its precious materials and cores after killing them. And that left William in front of a tough situation.
William tried, looked around for a few more hours, even moved through various regions of this big battle, yet failed to get a single gold core he could personally use.
But he did acquire a good harvest of silver cores, exceeding one hundred and fifty cores at the end of this battle.
As for the bronze cores, he got hundreds of them, close to five hundred. He didn't care about any white grade monsters at all, even didn't spare them any glance in case he ended up killing a bunch of them by mistake.
The battle formally ended when a team of dark gold spirit masters arrived. And when they did, they announced their presence by unleashing scary and terrifying waves of attacks that made everyone stop what they were doing for a few seconds... Then they all cheered in happiness.
"Is it over this fast? I shall leave and head back towards the main fort then," William didn't want to keep fighting aimlessly like others. He knew the morale of everyone here skyrocketed, and these dark gold spirit masters didn't come empty handed.
They brought lots of gold and silver spirit master teams, experienced and quite strong teams to help in this battle.
In the eyes of William, staying here anymore would be a waste. He got at least forty rings to check, and he was quite exhausted after fighting for so long.
So, he didn't stay here any longer, selected the direction the flying dark gold spirit masters came from, and started to run towards there.
William knew that from this day onward, what he did here would be known by many, going viral even. But he didn't care even in the slightest about what others would think about him.
He knew he was going to attract attention sooner or later, so why would he try to keep his identity and powers hidden? The sooner he'd make a name for himself the better.
He decided to leave to avoid any unneeded delay and disturbance from the curious strong spirit masters who arrived late. He still got to find his team, and to do that he had to go to the fort and visit a place there.
As he started to walk further away, he noticed more spirit masters running towards here from every corner of the world. It seemed the news already spread over the entire fort, and many spirit masters were coming here to take part in the battle.
