Peter's words landed, and everyone shifted their eyes over William again. They just had to drop seeking out and kill one gold grade monster. And now they got another loot they couldn't miss, and could easily collect, if they had a way to solve the problem of these bottles.
"Neither do I," William sighed. He knew that blood was worth its weight in gold for alchemists and artisans. It was widely used material for forging and concocting, making him feel little regret in not having more vials to collect it.
"I got few here," Ibra suddenly spoke up, touched his ring, and took out lots of empty bottles.
"Dammit old man! Don't tell me you have a thing for alchemy!" even William got surprised by the grand amount of these bottles.
"I dare you to say old man again!" Ibra got stirred up, glared back at William, while the latter didn't even put any of this dude's threats in his eyes.
"Hurry up then, take them and collect all the blood that you can get," William hurried the team. And under Berry's lead, most left after her towards the hole to fill these bottles with the brown blood.
Only Ibra, Sara, Peter, Lang, and the silver grade spirit masters got left behind. William moved his eyes among them, knowing why they got left behind and waited with him.
"Come on, spill out all the beans about this scary dude," Ibra crossed his arms, leant over his glaive, while giving William a deep glance.
"This is something you all have to evade no matter what," William didn't keep his knowledge about this scary monster off them, "this dude can use the darkness element quite efficiently, perhaps even one of the best monsters in our world to use such an element to such a degree."
"How so?" Sara paused, "even more than the Boogymonster? The Silent Reaper?"
She got to learn a few things about the scariest monsters in their world from her grandfather and his library.
"These are considered cute compared with this dude," William didn't find it surprising for her to learn about these two scary names. And as this one they got to face here, these two were considered on the most dangerous ten scary list of the darkness element-based monsters in this tiny world and the outer world as well.
"For real!" The silver dude she brought seemed to know these two as well. In addition to these two, Ibra also knew about these two crazily strong monsters.
"I never heard of any other darkness-based monster stronger than these two," Ibra commented, and the other two nodded in agreement.
"Then listen up to something that will open your eyes on the broad world that many don't know," William paused, took a deep breath, before adding, "this scary monster can use the darkness element to the realm of creating illusions."
"Illusions? Do you mean it can separate parts of its body like that damn rock?"
"First, it wasn't a rock, it was a Bulgatoras monster. And no, this dude won't separate its body into parts like the one we fought together. This one can create illusions, like copies of itself, scatter them all over a wide stretch of land."
"Then dealing with it is quite simple," Peter said, "we can just evade those copies. As they are illusions, they won't be that strong, right?"
"Wrong," William slowly shook his head, "this dude can fight anyone, anything, and use his illusions to copy others' skills and abilities once he killed them. In other words, we may be facing a single monster, but in fact we are fighting against a huge army of strong spirit masters and scary monsters, with a myriad of abilities that will make us feel desperate and powerless."
"This…"
"Don't panic, we still got a chance here," William looked around, "the sun is about to set off. Unlike other monsters, darkness-based ones in particular, this dude will grow lazy and weak at night. Besides, it needs a huge amount of time to spread all of its illusions over the area. And it won't let other monsters stand inside its area."
"A territorial monster then… What a hellish nightmare it truly is!" Lang sucked in a cold air of breath. And William couldn't help but nod in agreement.
"So… Where is the silver lining in all that?" Unlike others, Ibra was more adept and experienced at fighting strong monsters. So, he realised despite what William mentioned before that there was hope, he knew there was none!
"These…" William got what Ibra was thinking about, and simply pointed with the tip of his sword towards the other nine monsters.
"I don't get it…"
"As long as these are still alive, it means that scary monster hasn't used up all of its strength yet… It has to deal with these monsters before dealing with us."
"That means…"
"Yes, we need to use the chance and escape during this night," William seriously said, "it's quite risky to travel in the forest at night. But in our case, this is our only hope. By tomorrow, that monster will start cleaning other monsters around, taking this entire place for itself."
"I got it," Sara and others finally realised why the first thing William said was to run away from here, "is there anything you need from us to do?"
"That array," William knew that trying to escape during nighttime was going to be quite hard. Besides, aside from that scary Nightmare monster, the other nine weren't easy to deal with, "the one the five scout members used… I want all of us to use it while travelling out."
"Are you this scared of it? Don't you just say it will be weak and lazy?!" Peter asked in doubt and puzzlement.
"I said it's going to be lazy and weak but didn't say it will sleep all night or not move around and chase us like hunting dogs," William paused, "we got these nine monsters to worry about as well. If we found one and dragged the battle against it for long enough, then that scary dude would arrive and take advantage of the situation. And none of us wants to see something like this happening, right?"