"What? Can you stop me?" William smirked, before getting close to that dead headless body, and examined it thoroughly. He even removed everything from it, and examined every inch, trying to find anything interesting and special out there. But he didn't find anything at all.
"It's in the ring then," there was one single ring that the man wore. It looked the same as any ring in the world, and yet there was something in the inner circle of it.
William found a golden small gem, installed deeply in the interior of the ring. When he wore it, he didn't feel anything at all, as if that piece wasn't even there.
But when he tried to check the content of the ring, he was met with something that stopped him. "A sealed ring? With a sealing multi-layers? Interesting..."
"How come... How do you know about this?!! Your world can't have such a piece of knowledge yet!!!" the moment William said his piece and that spirit kept screaming again.
"Shut up! You are damn noisy! Are you going to keep doing this all the time or what?" William rolled his eyes, before taking out a blade.
This ring was sealed in a way that was only known to masters in the outer world. It was impossible for anyone in this world to know about the right way to do or undo it as the spirit said. And that meant the previous owner of the ring learned how to do it from the spirit.
William knew this ring was sealed by multiple layers, not layered one on top of another, but interlinking together and forming a tight net. It was a bit complicated, but there was a simple way to undo it.
Luckily this didn't require high or pure spirit power to unseal, it required attention and focus. The right way to do it was to link one's blood to the seal, control it using spirit power, and start to slowly unseal it.
One had to deal with every seal as if it were some sort of a puzzle, and as all the layers were connected together, it was important to first study everything before starting to unlock it.
To unseal this ring, he just needed to change little things about the layers inside the ring. The heart of it was that gem, and it was like trying to open a lock without using the right key to fit it.
"You do know how to do it indeed, where did you learn it? And who taught you? That silly black fox? He can't be that attentive to you!" The spirit was something annoying, always speaking, always talking without pause.
At first, that spirit was distracting William, but soon enough he grew used to it. As he did, he started to speed up the process of unlocking that seal.
"Where is that damn thing? Is it gone?" As William stood in place looking at the ring he claimed for half an hour, Sloth felt like there was no danger here. So he approached, and shouted while drawing closer, not lowering his guard, staying cautious of his surroundings.
"It's still here," William just said, before returning to focus on breaking the seal.
"Where?" Sloth turned around, and if William was free at the moment, he'd have laughed at that old man.
"It's hiding in the shadow surrounding me, can't you see it there?"
"Shadow? No, there isn't anything around you!" Sloth said something that made William halt for a brief second, before resuming what he was doing.
"Are you telling me that the shadow is gone now?" William linked this to the attachment of that spirit to him.
"Shadow? What shadow? What are you talking about? Are you alright?" Yet when Sloth spoke in such doubt and worry, William froze again. His mind ran fast, and this time, he couldn't help but think of something.
"You can erase people's memories, what an ability!" This was the only explanation for what Sloth said.
The shadow that surrounded William was clear to all, and everyone noticed it. And yet Sloth spoke as if there wasn't any shadow around William before, as if he didn't know something like this even existed.
The only explanation for such a thing was the ability of that spirit to manipulate memory. It was something that William never heard of before, but it was the only thing he could think of. Sloth wasn't your normal day master after all. And nothing normal would be able to affect that man.
"Good guess, but it's not that bad, right? I can even erase your existence from their memories, as if you did never exist at all, hahaha!"
"I doubt that," William didn't fall for such a trap, "If you have such power, then you could have done it already!"
"But I have it!"ηoVelusb.COm
"My bet is that you can only temper with people's memory about you, not about anyone else," William paused, keeping in his mind lots of things as he made such a guess.
If that spirit had such power, then he'd better make the pawns he used before forgotten from people's minds. This would serve the best in covering up his tracks. And yet it explained why he never found any clue before about such a scary spirit, or any other spirit like him.
"I won't show mercy to you if you don't stop what you are doing..."
The spirit kept threatening William, but the latter didn't stop what he was doing. From the side, Sloth felt like something was amiss. William was speaking to the air, and it felt like he was really speaking with someone. He turned around and double-checked, but he couldn't detect any with his eyes or spirit sense.
"Weird... Did he hit his head or something?" Sloth couldn't think of any other explanation but that. Yet he felt like something was off, something he couldn't fully grasp or understand.
"... No one is going to remember you! Do you want this to happen? Stop what you are doing, leave that ring right away!"