William didn't intend to make full use of his Array Puppets, even though it was a skill common to Array Masters and wouldn't necessarily expose his true identity.
An Advanced Array Master could control a single Perfect Array Puppet or maybe even two at once, but any more than that would allude to the existence of a Perfect Array Master, which were few and far between across the entire Azures Continent.
In all of Blue Moon City, there was only one Array Master capable of creating Perfect Runes. Other than him, William had met only a few others that could reach the same level. If he had to guess, he would say that there were probably only a few dozen Perfect Array Masters in every Region.
Much like Tribulation Transcendence Cultivators, S-Ranked Mages, and other top-tier tradesmen, reaching such a level was incredibly difficult. Those who did were probably talented enough to Ascend, keeping the number consistently low.
The World would enter an endless cycle of Master teaching Disciple, Master Ascending, and Disciple becoming Master. William was following the same path, as Riyald was also preparing to Ascend after spending thousands of years in the lower Realm.
By the way, System. What do people call this World? William decided to ask while his Array Puppets attracted the attention of the thieves.
-There's no specific name as of today. Some call it the World, others just refer to the Continent they live on. Though the Cultivators of Ancient times once called it Efretta.
Efretta? What an interesting name, why did they call it Efretta? William asked.
-Request requires 35 Potential Points. Yes/No?
You're charging me to learn the history of a name? It's not much, though. Confirm.
William had learned by now that the System didn't just choose the costs randomly. It was probably using some sort of internal function to appropriately price the responses, much like how it valued treasures and Magical Beasts.
-The World was named after the most powerful Cultivator that ever existed in this World. To this day, none have surpassed the peak of Efretta's strength before Ascending.
Looks like I have a new goal. William thought, his competitive spirit rising. Seeing that his Array Puppets had just attracted the thieves' attention and were currently escaping in the opposite direction, he was emboldened to ask the System more questions.
What about this Efretta? What kind of abilities did they have?
Once again, the Illusion Affinity saves me from extra trouble... I need to think about upgrading this some more, but it's so expensive!
As a Legendary Element, the Illusion Affinity was just as difficult to upgrade as the Space, Time, Chaos, or Gravity Affinities. Just to reach A-Rank would cost 2500 Potential Points, while the upgrade to S-Rank was another ten thousand!
Even with the Potential Farms, it would take nine days to earn enough Points to cover the first upgrade, the second would take over a month!
After S-Rank, the upgrades became so ridiculous that William didn't know how he would fully upgrade everything. Worse yet, William hadn't spun the Talent Shop in a while, but he knew there were plenty more Talents out there waiting to be unlocked!
If I can get something like the Attack Reflection or Forcefield Talents again, that would be nice. Other than my Magic, I haven't seen a Legendary Talent yet...
The area outside the cave quieted down after about ten minutes, but the thieves were much more perceptive than before. He could see with the Navigation Talent that various barriers were being raised, likely the thieves fortifying themselves into defensive positions.
No one wanted to be that one guy assassinated by an unknown enemy.
William and Carl snuck around the cave for a while, but their investigation slowed down significantly following a few close calls. There were two thieves in the cave that probably had the Darkness Affinity, since they turned their heads every time William entered or exited a shadow.
Thankfully, they were both in the Core Formation Realm, which was weak enough for William to completely stop their movements with the Time Element. It was only two people, and not an entire room like at the previous hideout, so William had no trouble with this.
When they were unfrozen and called the alarm for others to investigate, William and Carl had already moved to another spot. The thieves launched massive area of effect Spells at William and Carl's old spot, but they were already tens of meters away and didn't take any damage.
After ten minutes of continuous searching, the thieves were forced to return to their original posts.
The second time the thieves sensed Darkness Magic and called the alarm, the other thieves came running as usual, but after finding nothing again they began to think the other two were going crazy and stopped rushing to assist every time they called for help.
William took advantage of this and repeated the process two more times, until the other thieves no longer trusted their comrades. The next time he moved, the two thieves called out only for no one to respond to their call.
William smiled upon seeing this.