The end result was quite satisfying. He finally spread his sense over the entire region, connected it with the blue ores lining three sides.
"Time to establish the connection," William then did something simple. He linked the far away blue ores with the formation here, before regulating things over. He made sure not a single spirit power would pass through, and then he was about to withdraw his spirit sense when he noticed something.
"I can scan the entire region and look for that damn place first," he was too focused on the task to notice anything else. But as he got freed from this, he finally got the time to check over the entire region.
It was a simple task actually, as his spirit sense was covering up everything. But soon enough, he couldn't help but freeze in his spot.
"What the hell is that?!!!"
He expected to see that academy, and yet what he found was something different. "Isn't it… What the hell is it doing here?!!!" William had to recheck this weird thing over and over until he made sure it wasn't a hallucination or something.
William checked that thing for over an hour, and in the end, he couldn't help but link it to something he met before.
"I can't believe we are fated to meet here again… This time I'm in the gold grade and I can make use of you… But…" William was hesitant about his desire. He knew it was a good chance, if used at the right time.
"I better leave you alone for now," he finally shifted his attention away, turning to look for the academy. And he found it!
"Hmm… Surrounding it with a diamond shaped array, not only one, but twelve in total… That's a complicated pattern, enough to be equal to a grand formation… But what's its use then?"
William saw the academy. It wasn't that hard to spot actually. It was surrounded with a big dome of some sort of material, shielding anything lying within.
This was quite different from all the reports that came about the academy. And William knew that monster must have activated this defensive thing once it met up with him.
But that wasn't the issue, the complicated pattern of formations surrounding it was. They were diamond shaped, surrounding the academy, and interacting with each other.
Twelve diamond shaped huge arrays, formed of different ores and materials, were there waiting for Wiliam to come closer or step into it.
He knew these must be some sort of offensive and deadly arrays, working together to form a grand formation or something.
William was sure that the Nightmare monster wouldn't lean towards defence. It didn't care at all about any of the buildings or anything here. So, losing them wouldn't matter.
"If I guessed it right, then this academy is worth nothing. Even tearing it down and destroying it down to the last brick won't help at all. This grand formation is a different story…"
William then took a wide gaze around, confirming everyone's location of the leaders of the grand army and his friends. Once he did all this, he stopped using his spirit sense and looked around.
He was gone for hours, and during which the masters finally finished fighting among each other. Many stood around William's formations, seemingly curious about what he was doing here. Others stood with each other, chatting among themselves, speaking about what just happened.
The latter looked more puzzled about what they just experienced, while the former seemed to go over their shock. And that was expected, after all the ones who were curious about William's formations were high grade masters.
Once William broke free from what he was doing, and he spotted the four leaders he came here with, alongside many of their trusted and capable subordinates.
Seeing this scene made William's hope rise to a new level. Each one of these four got grenades in his rings enough to power up a single grand array. With their collection, adding more spirit power generating formations was feasible.
William spoke with these leaders for half an hour, explaining everything they didn't get. After explaining everything for them, they handed over their grenades, with lots of materials and ores as well to be used in the formations.
Not only that, but they also asked to join him in the upcoming crusade. But William refused. He told them about the tight dangerous looking grand formation waiting for them around the academy. Not to mention he believed this wasn't everything related to this place.
He urged them to withdraw, but then it came down to the problem of which path was safe. William didn't explain how he knew about all this, didn't even respond to any question regarding the presence of just one safe path out of here.
The leaders suggested sending masters in different directions, following them using their spirit senses. William didn't object on that, and as they started doing this plan, William tried to contact everyone else.
"It seemed the toxin hadn't reached them yet," he got no answer from them. The last time he checked using his spirit sense, they were standing like living statues, frozen in place. He then turned over making up more formations, while the four masters did their task.
William waited patiently for four more hours, while checking over everything and everyone using Bullets and his expanded spirit sense using that formation.
Things were looking good, all except for the fact that no one else got freed yet from this curse. At the same time, more news started to come from the four leaders.
They sent hundreds of masters to test the paths to the outside. And weirdly enough, these masters kept running normally until they reached the edge of this region. Then out of the blue they stopped moving, fell to the ground with twitching bodies like having seizures, ending up dead.
It was scary indeed, especially when what took the lives of these masters wasn't known or noticed by these four masters or others. William listened to what they said, and didn't say a thing.