William knew no words could comfort them. It seemed this team got together for long enough to establish some sort of bond that wasn't any different than blood bonds.
William silently moved his eyes among everyone standing around. Out of the initial ten team members, only six were standing here right now.
Out of them, Sith was the only one who showed no emotion on his face. It felt like losing these four didn't affect him at all, but William knew this was just a fake strong front.
"It's a blessing that this many survived," Sith said in a heavy tone, taking a deep sigh and a long glance at the violent and bloody ending of the two of his team, "let's go."
"No, we shall stay here and fight!"
"Yes! We must avenge them!"
"Are you goddam stupid?!!" And when two of the surviving team members said these words, Sith's fake solid face changed at once. His sadness was there, even his eyes turned all red. But instead of crying, he shouted out, screamed in pure rage, "do you want to lose your lives? They sacrificed theirs for us to live on. If you got anything to say about this, then swear to God you are going to be stronger, work hellish hard every single day to get stronger, strong enough to come back here one day and kill that motherf*cker!"
William inwardly nodded at Sith's explosive and correct words, but he kept his silence, and watched all this from the side.
There was no risk anymore for the time being. The entire place was filled to the brim with explosive grenades. And even the path they walked over and stood on top of it was guarded by some sort of an isolation array.
Nothing except for humans would be able to pass through it, or else they would get fiercely stopped with a gale of fire and wind.
"I won't forget about this day," one of Sith's team members said such words, before others started to join him, declaring their vows to train and be stronger, come here one day and take their revenge from the Nightmare monster.
"Well said," Sith firmly nodded, while his face regained its solid and cold mask again, "let's go folks. We got a distance of seven kilometres to cross before getting the hell out of this monster's reach."
When he said those words, he looked up at William. And the latter slowly nodded.
William wanted to correct this little maths mistake, but he didn't. At least he'd wait until the devastated morale and spirit of these spirit masters would amend and chill out slightly before telling them the bad news.
They had to cross ten kilometres in total before being safe. The other three kilometres wouldn't be that hard actually, provided that the team would gather up their shattered will.
And with Sith's last words, the remaining members of the team started to move away, while taking healing potions and drank them.
William checked up on his body. He got hacked at many places and got lots of wounds. He sighed while taking a healing potion like others and drank its content while feeling the cold and refreshing feeling overwhelming his body.
Then he started to follow the team in silence in respect to their feelings.
The path was twenty metres in width, surrounded by a sea of fire on both sides. The fire seemed to get stopped by some invisible layer, a sort of a shield that isolated anything happening outside from reaching in.
[It's my loss this time. But I promise you that next time we meet, you won't be able to run away from me this easily, pretty little fox!]
And just before William would cross a hundred metres following others, a weird voice came and echoed in his ears.
The sound came all of sudden and without warning, greatly startling William and making his body freeze motionless in place. He slowly turned around, looked through the dense layers of fire and monsters that seemed to fill the entire world out of this path, trying to see where this voice came from, and who was its owner.
"Who are you?" But as he failed to see anything, William suddenly shouted. And his shout stopped everyone in their tracks.
"Dude, I know this is quite a blow, but you were handling yourself quite well so far!" Sith mistook William's actions to be losing his control on himself, seemingly getting shaken by the death of the few members in his team.
Everyone on Sith's side exchanged silent glances. They never expected for William to care this much about their lost friends.
They mistook everything happening right now. And even William never got what was going on.
[Who else? Come on! We were fighting and chasing all over this forest for more than two days so far! Don't you recognize me, pretty fox?]
"Nightmare…" William couldn't even believe himself when he said this single word. It felt like he was speaking to a ghost or experiencing a real nightmare at the moment.
[I hated this nickname! Why do folks like you end up having their true and awesome names stick to them while I always get such a lame name?]
"I… I don't follow you… What do you want?" William paused in his words, and that was a clear sign on how immensely shocked he truly was.
It wasn't like he never met a monster that could speak human tongue. The nine tailed fox he fought before managed to speak like humans, alongside other monsters who were quite overbearing and terrifying.
Yet the thought that he'd meet such a human talking monster here, in this tiny world, a gold grade monster on top of that, was something that never crossed his mind.
[I want to eat you!] and the deep and scary voice that echoed in his mind jolted him awake.
"Eat me? Why?!" William pointed towards himself, "you got the entire damn forest for god's sake! Go out there, pick any monster you'd like, and eat it! Why come for someone like me?"