"Sara, come here for a second," William knew the moment he'd get his hands over this scroll, and he had to leave.
Opening a gate towards the place that man was at meant he'd also release tons of monsters into this world. He didn't want to do it here and planned to travel away first, taking a few days before daring to use the scroll.
He explained everything to Sara, asked her to do his task, and led the guild masters in this battle. They were doing just fine so far, but they still needed a leader to be present. He also stressed keeping in touch with high-end masters, coordinating with them, and not missing any grave news or big plans or something.
Sara wanted to ask about the reason for his sudden leave, but she got it without asking anything. She recalled the talk about that crystal and gate, the enemy he was about to go and face.
When she recalled Sloth's presence with him, she was much relieved. In her eyes, having a high-end master by his side was the best guarantee he'd end up safe. Yet she'd never expect there was another fierce enemy out there, and without William, no one else would be able to go away, including Sloth or any high-end master.
She listened to everything he said and took note of the points he highlighted. He told her that this battle could end at any moment, and they'd have to retreat if the masters couldn't hold a strategic position here.
It was the walls, not the mountains as she thought. He asked her to try and put it towards the sides, get control over the walls, to control almost half of the entire grand fort space here.
Using the semi-circular walls to their advantage, they could sustain more, spread the masters over the long walls, and shift the battle to something close to what it should have been if they were in the city.
She agreed on his vision, despite knowing how hard it was to execute this. Most battles happened in the midsection of the fort, and the only part of the walls they controlled was a small stretch at the rear, at the point they came through. On top of that, that part of the walls was partially destroyed.
"Don't forget, you promised me..."
"I know," William interrupted Sloth when the latter appeared next to him in an hour or so, "let's go out. We can't do it here."
"Oh, got it," Sloth realised what William referred to. And the two of them left the fort, heading away while evading the grand number of monsters.
They took more than what William expected and monsters were the reason for it. The two feared to fight and attract the attention of the dark masters in the fort, and that would end up quite badly for them.
So they made sure to avoid making any contact with the monsters for two days before they finally got out of the longest spirit sense range any master could have. Then they started fighting monsters directly.
William regained his former strength and started to fight like normal. As for Sloth, he was an unstoppable killing machine.
"Tsk! These monsters are endless..." At some point, Sloth even sighed, "They'll need weeks to get rid of them... That place can't sustain such a long battle."
"They'll retreat back to the city in the end," William said as if it was a given fact, "let's trust them, and focus on the task we have."
"Are we going to use it now?" They have been running for five days now. They crossed a huge distance and were very far from the city. Even if they released a fifth monster tide, it'd take days to arrive at the place of the current fight, or perhaps even a week.
"Let's do it here," William looked around. The place was in the middle of the forest, but it had a few elevated places there, which gave William an idea.
"What are you doing?!!" Even after running for all this time, the monster tide still existed nearby. He watched William take lots of grenades out, prepared to throw them around.
"What else? I'm going to make it hard for these monsters to come out from here," William said as if this was something easy to guess, "Just watch, I'm going to leave a present for these bastards."
He didn't use his grenades while walking toward a place that was slightly deeper than the rest. And Sloth followed silently from behind.
"Let's do it here," William looked around and felt like this place was ideal for his plan, "take it out, but don't activate it yet, I need little time to prepare the present for them."
"As if we do know how to activate it," Sloth took the crystal out, and it was exactly the same as the one William saw in the world of fate and destiny before.
"Why are you saying that?" William started to carefully place his grenades around. He arranged them like he was arranging dominoes or something while scattering tons of vibrant ores in between.
"Because the folks who had it seemed to struggle to activate it..." Sloth narrated what he saw before at the underground city, while William kept spreading grenades and vibrant ores around.
When he got done, the entire place that stretched out for a few kilometres got covered literally by ores, with grenades in the middle of all this like gold particles in the middle of the dirt.
ραndαsΝοvεl ƈοm Sloth watched him from the side and didn't say anything more. Weirdly enough, William didn't feel any stress or worry after hearing what he just said.
In fact, William knew the reason. The underground city had of a kind interworld portal, and that meant the space there wasn't stable. To activate the crystal, they had to gather up enough spirit power to fuel it, enough to overcome the crazy power coming from the interworld portal.