William was itching to try out his fox spirit, but he knew he wouldn't have this chance right now. All he could dream of was for things to go south, and he'd separate from everyone, before fighting freely with all his might.
Without knowing it, fate decided to guarantee his wish soon enough.
"Let me take the lead!'' In less than five minutes, they finally spotted the large group of monsters. They were huge salamanders, with each reaching at least two metres in length. They got short limbs, long tails, and brown small scales and protrusions that made them look more like crocodiles than salamanders.
Unlike their weak appearance, they were quite agile, fast, and strong. They could spread toxins as well, not all of them but those special gold grade and higher ranks would do that. They also had the ability to use rock attacks, even form deadly thorns of rocks. So, in brief, they weren't that easy to handle.
But as Ibra was impatient and quite itchy to fight, William let him move forward. With a look of his eyes, Sara followed from behind, ready to support him.
The appearance of their team in front of all these salamanders was quite unique. The monsters noticed them already and seemed to not care that much about sending everything towards them. They just sent a little group out, to meet up these crazy humans.
Two teams moved out, each with eight in their roster, went out to meet with close to a hundred salamanders.
"Get ready," William didn't even wait till the two sides met, "things are going to get nasty at any moment."
*Rumble!*
Just when he said it, the entire ground shook and vibrated, trembling like an earthquake was happening here or something. The next moment, lots of sharp looking thorns of rocks appeared from many places, even attacking the teams away from Ibra's and Sara's.
William already knew how hard it was to handle the Earth element in these folks. But he didn't step in to warn the team about the incoming attacks in detail. He wanted to see how they'd react when they'd get attacked and hit hard. He also wanted them to struggle a bit, as a form of their punishment.
And what he saw made him quite satisfied.
"It's always great to work with people with a high level of power and rich experience in battles," William muttered as he kept flashing around, evading the deadly thorns while taking his sword and knives out.
Seeing his knives made him crave to craft better versions of these. When he'd reach silver grade, it'd be the time to start using flying swords instead of these small knives. Or perhaps he'd mix the two together, make lots of knives alongside twenty or so flying swords.
When he thought about this, he got excited! But that didn't prevent him from starting to work out, smash any rocky thorns that appeared in front of his face, while closely watching the battles that erupted at the forefront.
"Lang, move out," William saw that Sara and Ibra were struggling a little against the one hundred monsters. The initial attack of thorns disturbed their line up, and that made them unable to fight properly like they planned to.
So, William didn't hesitate and ordered Lang to step in. Saying this made Peter move his eyes towards him, asking in silence if it was time for him to join or not. But William just ignored him for now and watched how Lang and his team helped with their techniques to stabilise the situation.
They came in while getting used to the thorns appearing all over the place. The salamanders didn't just use these attacks and stopped to watch, they started to press hard over the suicidal spirit masters who came to attack them.
But the timely arrival of Lang and his team stopped their dangerous attempt to isolate Ibra, Sara, and their spirit masters. And at this moment, the value of having higher grade spirit masters in the team showed its value.
The techniques they used, coupled with the enhanced gold and silver grade weapons and gears, leaving behind a great devastation all over the place.
"Scatter in a half kilometre radius," William suddenly shouted, "Peter, move with Berry and draw deeper into these monsters."
"But…" the two turned towards him, seemingly thinking the same thing together. William knew without the need to hear more what they wanted to say.
They were struggling to handle the one hundred group of monsters. And now William was asking them to go deeper and attract more monsters.
"Don't worry, you got me," William smiled, before giving John a slight nod. John had to always stay behind, thinking of the right way to retreat if things went wrong.
William knew this battle was intense, but it was still doable. He wanted to keep pressuring his team to see what their true abilities were.
As the two moved with their teams, while Ibra, Lang, and Sara started to spread their formation over, the one hundred monsters started to spread thin over the entire place.
Once that happened, the entire tense situation turned magically to be smoother. Everyone didn't believe that by just adjusting their standing places, spreading themselves over a wider area, the scary and strong looking salamanders turned to be docile and weak.
Just as they started to kill the monsters at a fast pace, Berry and Peter finally arrived at the salamanders at the front, breaking through a few of the one hundred salamanders.
They started to attack, acting each as an edge of a sword. William kept himself away from them by fifty metres, enough distance for him to intercept if things went wrong. And they did!
Just the initial clash came out of the blue for the monsters. The spirit masters they were easily toying with suddenly spread out, and then two new groups of them appeared, fiercely hitting the main bulk of the monsters.