"It seems you have lots of free time to let your imagination run wild like this," he shook his head, before adding in form of revenge, "next time, when we get back, I'll relieve your minds from such a burden of overthinking and give you more tasks."
"William!" "Boss!" "Bastard!" the three of them turned to him and shouted at the same time.
"What? Don't give me that look, I'm just trying to help you all with a clear conscience and kind heart…"
William even winked, making the hearts of the three of them tremble. And they weren't the only ones who would feel like that. The rest of the team would also feel the same when they'd hear about such grave news.
Of course, Ibra knew he'd take the toll of this, ending up getting blamed for speaking nonsense to William. Against his arrogance and high self-esteem, he decided to apologise to all of them for the miserable future they'd all face thanks to his slip of a tongue.
The walk inside the city made them hear lots of news about the upcoming spirit master contest. Many came here to reach the kingdom's capital, just to attend it, and news about this contest seemed to know no bottom at all.
"Tsk! I recall the spirit contest that happened before this one, it was ten years ago, just when I was a bronze grade master… I swear it didn't get such attention like this one!"
"Oh, you were a bronze spirit master before? That's refreshing to hear," William laughed, teasing his friend a little.
"What? Do you think I got born with a golden spoon and grade in my spirit? I started all the way up from having zero spirit power to now! I'm not like you, a crazy one who can evolve during a fight or something!"
"Come on, I'm not even close to your grade now, dark gold master," William even cupped his hands, making Ibra's scalp go numb.
He didn't know why, but seeing William do this greeting drove goosebumps in his body. Every single time he fought with William; he ended up losing in the hands of his terrifying spirit body.
"Did you hear? A team from that academy is here!"
"What? The one with the fox master in their roster? Is he here as well?"
Just as they arrived at the portal location, they overheard such excited talk between a group of spirit masters who just appeared out from these portals.
"No, I don't know that… But I heard they are crushing the teams out there in the Spar arena. I just ran here to witness their next match!"
"For real? Let me go as well!"
"..."
William and the other three turned to exchange look among each other. "What the hell is going on here?" Lina couldn't help but move, heading towards the same group who just said this news. But the next instant, William stopped her with his glaive, blocking her path towards this group.
"What? I was going to ask them nicely!" she said in defence, and little annoyance as well.
"No need, we got Smith to do this for us anyway," William moved his eyes to fall over Smith, and the latter got what William wanted him to do.
"I'll get to the bottom of this," Smith turned all serious and went after the group who just came out. William tracked them for a while with his eyes, the same like the other two did.
"Why didn't you let us go and get the intel directly from them? Tsk! You love troubling people with your stuff all the time!"
"Don't start it," William rolled his eyes, "these folks know nothing. It's just a member of them who claims such a thing, not actually attending any game of that team. We need to get more reliable intel, not just any intel or rumours… Let's go."
As that team vanished from his sight, William entrusted this task over to Smith and turned towards the direction of the portal zone.
The place was like an airport or something, a very vast open space with only a low levelled wooden wall that didn't help in hiding much of the inside.
There were many gates where tons of people came in and out every minute.
"Are you here to book a ticket to a place?" as the three reached the man responsible for handling stuff here, he simply asked in a dull tone.
"We want to reserve a ticket for two hundred people, one week from now, heading towards the Blue Hills," William said, mentioning all the needed information for that man without the need for the latter to ask anything.
"Hmm… Let me see… The price of a single ticket is one hundred thousand spirit crystals, no discussion allowed."
"Fine," William handed the worker the needed number of crystals in one ring of his, "keep it."
"Thanks mate," that fellow seemed ecstatic about having this ring. After all, even if he was dealing with tons of wealth every day, he was still working for someone and didn't take anything for himself.
William then received two hundred tickets and went to confirm the location of the portal they were going to board in one week.
The place inside was filled with lots of different sized portals in different shapes and colours. Each portal had a group of men standing around, organising things, preparing the needed spirit crystals to operate these, checking the tickets of the people around, and making sure nothing wrong would happen.
"What's the meaning of these colours?" Lina grew curious as Ibra, asking William about this. It was the first time for these two to see something like this actually. For a reason, they felt like William would know the answer like always, and surely, he did know.
"It's graded like spirit master grade system colours," William paused before adding, "based on the distance any portal could cover, the colour is correlated to that. And with higher colours and grades, the portals will consume more spirit crystals. There are even portals that can transport anyone from a continent to another in mere seconds. They are dark gold in colour, and they require billions of spirit crystals to get activated."
