"Coffee? What is that?" Carl asked as he looked at the strange liquid in William's cup.
Is that really something we should drink? The color looks suspicious...
William looked at his friend with a raised eyebrow, "You've never had coffee before?"
Carl shook his head.
William was silent for a moment. I guess Cultivators never really had a need for something to boost their wakefulness. Was coffee never invented in this World?
"Try it." William said as he held out the coffee mug.
Carl accepted it readily, trusting that his friend hadn't lied to him. Why would William do that anyway? It made no sense.
He gave the brown liquid that looked more black than brown now that it was in his hand, giving it a quick sniff.
"Man, that smells weird too!" he said as he wrinkled his nose in disgust.
"Just try it, I promise it's good." William urged, to which Carl looked at him suspiciously. Regardless, Carl lifted the mug to his lips and took a sip.
"Blegh!" Carl spat a mouthful of coffee on the ground while holding the mug away in disgust. "It's so bitter! Why would you make such a horrible drink?"
"You get used to it. It's an acquired taste." William replied simply while taking back the coffee from Carl. He took a sip, smacking his lips as he savored the residual flavor of the ground coffee beans.
Carl looked at William oddly. He couldn't understand how someone would like such a disgusting flavor.
William set down the coffee and brought out his map for Carl to see. He pointed at a small marking four hundred and fifty kilometers southwest of their current location. "Our next target is here."
Carl leaned forward and looked at William's finger. "We're going all the way to the Southern Plains Region? That's going to take weeks to cross!"
William looked at Carl, "I'm supposed to be the idiot, not you. Have you forgotten what kind of Mage I am?" he waved his hands in a circle as the reverse Domains of most his Elements were used and a portal appeared in front of Carl.
Even with S-Rank Space Magic, his Space Mana Control still wasn't enough to ignore the various Elements in his body. He hoped that this problem would be solved once he created the Space Elemental Sphere for his Artifact Belt.
The only reason he hadn't yet is because they weren't in a suitable enough environment, and William didn't know if the abundance of Space Mana would attract others. If he failed in the process and accidentally destroyed the Artifact Belt, William wouldn't be able to replace it in a short amount of time.
Otherwise, William probably would have just avoided the group of ten Qi Refinement Beasts. There was little value to the corpse of a Qi Refinement Magical Beast, and they weren't nearly strong enough to threaten anyone.
Now over half of my Titles are Epic or higher rarity, nice! William thought as he looked through his Titles.
Wait, when did my Coward Title go up? I thought it was only Common Rank?
-When you teleported to the Hillvire Empire it leveled up multiple times.
Damn, I must have scrolled right past the Notification. Oh well.
William performed a few short-range teleports with Carl, then transitioned to using the shadows to move in between boulders. As his experience with the Darkness Element grew, William found that he could extend the shadows of the boulders so that they touched one another, allowing him to freely move between the two.
Not only that, but he could shrink the size of his own body to match that of the shadow, meaning he could even fit into the tunnels constructed by ants with ease. The only downside was that Carl's body wouldn't properly adjust, so he would be kicked out of the shadow.
A few minutes passed before William and Carl arrived at the next Thieves' Guild location. This time, they were stationed outside of a large cave, and Thieves' Guild members were spotted right away. William and Carl watched them stack large cases on a large wooden pallet, their contents unknown as none of William's Elements allowed him to see through the Array-covered wood.
William backed up half a kilometer and drew a few shapes in the rock while Carl watched.
"They're very bold in this Region, it seems." William said as he continued to draw.
Carl nodded, "I heard that the Southern Plains is a fairly chaotic place, which almost became a lawless land a few decades ago. The Thieves' Guild holds a lot of influence here, and the difficulty of wiping them out is well above what the Adventurer's Guild is willing to pay."
"Makes sense, those cheapskates." William complained. The Adventurer's Guild appeared nice from an outside perspective, but their rewards were only tempting in the eyes of weak Cultivators.
At William's current strength, the Guild Hall's measly rewards of a few Gold Coins per slain Magical Beast was nothing.
"Here's what we're going to do," William started, "Do you have any Magical Beasts that you don't mind sacrificing?"
"Sacrifice my summons? No thanks, what kind of person do you think I am? That's inhumane!" Carl scolded William for his insensitive request. "You don't know this, but I temporarily lose strength every time one of my Magical Beasts dies."
"I'm sorry," William apologized. He blamed the Humanity statistic for his previous request, since he wouldn't normally recommend such an act. He himself had Magical Beasts, and he would have never considered sacrificing Atticus or Uri for a simple Thieves' Guild hideout.
"We can use this instead." William continued as he retrieved an old Perfect Array Puppet and quickly crafted it a wooden sword reinforced with Arrays so it wouldn't break.
He pulled out two more Puppets of the same level and also gave them makeshift weapons, then sent them forward into the group of thieves.