If Lawrence won… It'd be much worse actually. Who knew how William would react to such an incident. They should curry favour with William and his guild, not to stir up trouble at the first moments of their interaction with them.
"We have arrived," the situation grew a bit tense from that moment onward. The youth from the Black Tails team of the Fox guild didn't respond to Lawrence rude words. He kept his silence until they passed through the tunnel. And after walking through, descending and going up for almost ten minutes, they finally saw a bright light coming from the end of it.
"Thanks for the trouble," the master said while moving his eyes around. The least word that could describe this place was outstanding!
The place was too vast, filled with lots of grand looking buildings. All over the place, many spirit masters stood there, either training, exchanging knowledge between each other, or inviting others to form a team, to do a mission for the guild.
In the eyes of this master, this guild was like a decent academy. It was on a much smaller scale, but it was still a good place without doubt.
"I can't leave you walking around, or else bad things will happen," the youth said, while giving Lawrence a light look, "our guild members don't tolerate any outsiders without proper badges on their chests."
"Then go and bring us these badges," Lawrence was still lost in his haughty attitude, not knowing that he was standing in the face of a true monster.
"Silence!'' The master grew tired from Lawrance's attitude. He glared again in warning towards that young man, before turning to the youth and cupped his hands in respect.
"I'm sorry to trouble you again," his respect wasn't thanks to this youth's power or status, but thanks to the big name of the guild he belonged to and William who stood behind it.
"No problem," the youth paused, turning to Lawrence before adding, "didn't you want a spar before? How about this, I just got out from a long and dull training. Why won't you help me stretch my muscles a little bit?"
"You… Great! Just great! Let's fight till death then!" Lawrence was fuming with rage. He came asking to challenge this youth, ending up getting ignored and heavily reprimanded by his master. And when he wanted to stay silent, mind his own business, that youth came for him.
So Lawrence got riled up again, and even brought this supposedly friendly spar to be a death match between the two.
"Sir… Why stirring up trouble?" The master feared the worst might happen and tried to meddle in between the two. But that move of his was late, too late actually as this youth already sat his eyes over Lawrence.
"Don't worry," the youth cracked a calm smile that looked a bit scary, "I guarantee my guild's leader won't hold it against you. Just make sure to deliver the news correctly when you return to the place you came from. Your man here asked for his own death on his own volition. I did nothing wrong, ok?"
"..." The master didn't know what to say at this moment. Actually, all of this did indeed start thanks to the foolishness of Lawrence. But for a reason, he felt like this youth's words held strange credibility and weight to them.
"Let's fight to death!" Lawrence took out two long spears, planted them in the ground before taking two more, "I won't go easy on you. Use your full strength, kiddo, or else don't blame anyone but yourself in the end."
"I don't need to," the youth smirked, "you don't deserve for me to go all out."
"F*ck you!" Lawrence screamed in anger, activating his spirit before his body released torrents of black gold bubbles that soon started to take a form.
"A horned horse with rudimentary feathers? What a nice spirit you got there," the youth didn't change the look on his face while examining Lawrence's spirit.
"Use your spirit, I won't hold back my hands until you are dead!" Lawrence shouted and his voice changed a little and became deeper. The next moment, the spears he held in his hands were shot out like bolts of lightning, heading towards nowhere else but this youth's head.
*Fwoosh!* *Fwoosh!* *Fwoosh!*
Unlike what Lawrence envisioned, unlike what many expected, that youth nimbly moved around, evading all the incoming spears. Lawrence felt like he got an endless supply of spears, kept throwing them as if he was throwing daggers.
But this youth knew this wasn't true. The thing was that Lawrence got metal element and affinity, enabling him to control the thrown-out spears, to make them return back to his hands in a flash like they were drawn to a magnet or something.
From the start Lawrence didn't use more than the four spears he took out.
"Is this all you got?" After a couple of minutes, that youth suddenly said, "I expected more than this. Anyway, let me finish this fast. I'm hungry."
"Shut the hell up and fight me!"
"Fine, you asked for your death anyway…"
The next minute, something truly terrifying happened here. The moment the youth said his words, he stopped moving. When everyone thought he gave up or something, as Lawrence imagined his spears penetrating through this arrogant youth's chest, and when the master was about to flash and save this youth at the last second, something came out from this youth's body.
It was black fog at first, not the kind of being pitch black or something. It was slightly pale, looking like a grey fog more than being black.
And then one tail appeared, while that youth started to develop two small fox ears.
"This…"
"No way!!!"
"It's… It's him!!!"
"It's William!!!"
Without the need to ask, and without even knowing his face image, they all guessed it right. It was William, and he just came back from a long training session over his techniques. It was easy to recognise him, after all he was the only spirit master with fox spirit in the entire world!