William kept training like crazy during the past five years. The black fox spirit he met before wasn't lying, the technique he learnt from it was indeed great and marvellous.
It didn't just change the colour of his spirit body into black instead of silver, but it also gave him more control over his spirit form. Right now, William didn't need to change all the way to the scary form of his fox spirit and could easily control his spirit form and develop any number of tails he wanted.
After five years, and through lots of adventures, he added two more tails to his spirit. Not to mention gaining five more spirit elements. He now had ten spirit elements, with four special ones and six normal elements.
William wasn't lying before; he didn't need to use his full strength to take down Lawrence. In fact, he didn't intend to kill this young spirit master in the beginning, planned to just give this rogue spirit master a little discipline. But when Lawrence started insulting and cursing him, he decided to kill him.
William controlled his spirit form, taking just one tail out. In such a form, he developed little features of a real fox, including his ears and eyes. He looked at Lawrence, and the latter got what others here realised.
But it was a bit too late for him to realise that.
"You…"
"I'm the one who you kept mocking since coming here," William waved his glaive in the air twice, a bad habit that he got from his long stay with Ibra, "don't try to apologise, I won't accept that."
"Sir William, please be merciful," the master jolted awake from his shock and shouted at once, "he is just a reckless kid."
"I'm not a kid!" Before William would say anything back to the master, Lawrence shouted in a fierce way, "if he is William, then he is just at silver grade as rumours tell. He isn't that strong, not someone a dark gold spirit master like me should fear!"
"What can I say?" William shook his head in a hopeless way, "five years ago, I could easily kill any dark gold spirit master like yourself. Do you think it'll be troublesome for me to do it again after all this time?"
William's tone was calm, but his eyes and demeanour were quite savage. But he wasn't lying, he was just stating the truth. Five years ago, William could deal with any dark spirit masters at early and even mid grades.
The thing that changed all this time, and thanks to his hard work and training, was that he could do it now without the need to overexert himself.
He didn't need to swallow any elixir bottles or use his full powered technique to take Lawrence down. He could now do it by just using one tail, and even without the need to activate his spirit body in full form, or even use the full power of his technique.
William right now was different than William five years ago. He was strong, and he had different ways to take down this young man easily without breaking a sweat.
"Don't try to bluff your way out of this," but Lawrence didn't recall any of his reckless attitude back, "I heard the stories about that old battle. You have to use your spirit full form and full power; you have to struggle to fight someone like me. I bet if you keep that one tail wiggling behind you, you'll die!"
"Cool," William tilted his head, giving the old man who was Lawrence's master a cold look, "don't intervene. Or I swear I'll deal with you, all of you, seriously if you did that."
William's words held a terrifying level of threat in them. And everyone here was sure William was able to see such a threat through if he wanted to. The master couldn't help but inwardly sigh, looking in a bitter way towards Lawrence.
"Why always stirring the hornet nest? What a troublesome kid you are!"
"Listen up," William then turned towards the fool in front of him, "I won't use any more tails than this one, and you'll still die in the end."
"Empty wor…" *Fwoosh!* *Boom!*
Before Lawrence would continue his arrogant words, William moved. The two were less than fifty metres away at this point, and William just dashed directly towards him.
He didn't even charge up his old technique, and yet the glaive he held by one arm shone in a dangerous fire light.
The moment the glaive landed, a fierce explosion occurred, releasing tons of dust in the air.
"Trying to use a fire element against me? I've the ice element, idiot!" Lawrence's voice came from the middle of the thick dust cloud, seemingly not affected by such a hit. William was close from Lawrence and could see a shimmering white shield that surrounded his target fully.
"Say my greetings to all the enemies I killed before," but against what Lawrence or anyone here expected, William didn't follow his technique with another. Instead, he lowered his glaive, turned around, and started walking towards a single direction.
Lawrence was about to curse out loud, shout at William's back, and was ready to start attacking again using his spears. But before he'd move a muscle, he felt something igniting inside his body.
William didn't just evolve his spirit form, spirit purity level, or even his spirit power. William made lots of modifications to his self-invented technique of his, developing more variations to it.
The one tail form of his spirit allowed him to select a single spirit element to use. And for each element he got, he developed a variation of his initial technique. Right now, William chose his fire element to use, and that was for a good reason.
He simply used the fire spirit element in his attack. The trick wasn't in launching a deadly brutal attack like he used to do before. Instead, and by using the new black form of his spirit, he could let his fire element seep deeply into the body of any target once got hit by his technique.
Lawrence didn't know it, but the moment that attack landed, his life already ended. And that was one of the scariest things about William's newly devised techniques.
He didn't know how to toy with any enemy. As long as he or she or it was at the early grade of dark gold grade or lower, their fate would be sealed by just one hit!
"Agh!" Even before the dust would settle, Lawrence screamed in an agonising tone. Before his master moved, Lawrence's body fell heavily on the ground, before breaking apart like it was made out of glass.
Instead of shattering into little pieces, his body turned into red ash that withered in the air quite fast. There was no wind, yet to those watching this battle, it felt like a breeze of air was flowing right now, carrying away Lawrence's ash. Not even a single drop of blood remained. The only things that were left behind were his rings, gears, and outfit, nothing more!
"This…"
"Quite scary!!"
Members of Lawrence's team got scared by seeing this. No one imagined a dark gold spirit master would fall by just a single hit, and from someone who was at silver grade on top of that.