This was a grand realisation for him. Monsters in this tiny world were unable to use spirit senses unless they were quite special. Spirit sense was something unique for any intelligent being, and that was why it was always common for masters to have it.
Even masters had to rise up their level of power to reach a stage enough to activate this ability. William knew if a monster got this spirit sense, then it'd be at the pinnacle stage, no lesser than this.
Without any moment of hesitation, he took out his weapons, held them with the three fox tails, leaving the fourth new tail free without depending on it.
He didn't get why the snake spirit appeared now, or why it merged with his fox spirit. He also had zero guarantee that this manifestation would last, or he'd be able to even control it.
He kept his vigilance, while hearing the roars coming from different directions. The world around him was still filled with wind, and it felt like nothing got affected by these roars.
"Weird… They kept roaring and didn't come… Why is that?" William was still standing on the ground without moving around. He didn't want to risk fighting in a terrain he didn't know. But the monsters didn't move, and that pinned him down.
William couldn't north from west, and so he selected a direction and went towards it.
The first thing he expected was for the monsters roaring the past few minutes to jump and cut him to pieces. Yet nothing of that happened, not in the first few steps, not in the first few minutes, and not in the next five hours.
"This world… It's not an illusion or a hallucination. I already tested and nothing looked like this. And this wind… It kept coming without showing any sign of weakening or getting rest…"
William wasn't just blindly walking around, he kept testing and seeing what was going on in this world. The first thing he excluded was for this to be an illusion or a hallucination. Then he tried to see if he could affect the surrounding wind using his spirit powers, or even his deadly attacks.
He tried to use different spirit elements, and yet he couldn't get any response at all. "I have to get out from the wind area first, try to see anything outside from here…"
William tried to dash forward to get away from the prison of wind he was in. yet he didn't manage to even sniff the outside world.
"The only explanation is that this wind isn't just surrounding a fixed area, but surrounding me," after many failed attempts, he reached such a conclusion. And then he started to search for the way this wind kept following him.
The first place he looked at was his body. He searched everything and took almost an hour to make sure there wasn't anything attached to his body without knowing it.
He then started to examine the ground around. All this time he was busy dealing with the wind and this weird situation, so he never touched the ground to feel how weird it was.
"This… This isn't a rock… It's soft as a jelly…" William muttered to himself, feeling a bit shocked by this.
He never felt anything abnormal when he landed, or when he ran all over the place for the past few hours. "What is it exactly?" William was puzzled. He kept thinking about how to get out from this wind entrapment but didn't notice anything abnormal about the ground except for now.
The moment he realised this, he started to inspect the ground closely. He tried to penetrate the ground layer using his weapons, his techniques, and yet nothing managed to pass through or even leave a scratch behind.
"It's not working… Maybe I shall use my cannonball attack," William thought about this and started to dash forward. Then he jumped high in the air, aimed his tails towards the ground and simply landed without stacking anything.
*Boom!*
Unlike what logic dictated, the attack that usually didn't leave much behind caused a storming explosion. It wasn't just the hole that gladly surprised William, but the shockwave that managed to finally push the thick layer of wind away.
"What caused this… Is it the way of doing this attack or the weapons? Or is it something else?"
William finally found a glimpse of hope in dealing with this. Yet he didn't hurry to test it again before thinking about his options.
The next attempt he tried to infuse his spirit power and use his dash technique while falling down. Yet it didn't even stir a single speck of dust.
"It's not the power of impact, is it the weapons then?" he held his weapons and kept dashing right and left, yet nothing happened.
"Shall I use my hands?" he thought that it might be his weird fox and snake mixed body that caused such weird phenomenon. Yet the moment he cancelled his spirit body, the wind all around got suddenly stirred up and howled towards him.
"Sh*t! What's wrong with this wind?!" William instantly reactivated his spirit body. And yet again the snake parts appeared like before, "don't tell me there is something in the wind that stirred up the snake spirit…"
He thought about this fierce spirit and its abilities, the ones he heard about. And yet he didn't find anything of value with the wind. He didn't know what this wind got within. Even the words of Anjie didn't help in letting him guess anything.
As his spirit power didn't help, and his weapons failed alongside his techniques, he didn't have any other way but to repeatedly use his opening move over and over again.
The more he used it, the more the hole in the ground deepened. At the same time, the wind kept getting pushed away, yet it wasn't enough to show any sign of the outer world.
"This won't do…"