William knew this fire must have been stopped by monsters lurking in the forest. Or else the fire would simply keep moving outwards and expand in time to cover a vast stretch of the forest.
Yet his goal was reached. As he finally could freely move, he stepped outside the protective shield and started to examine the world around.
Utter silence! There wasn't a single sign of life in this zone anymore. William wasn't a lover of destruction, but he had no other choice but to do so.
"Time to reap the loot," as his goal was reached, he wandered around and gathered the monster materials.
His left hand was still paining him. He stopped the bleeding temporarily by using part of his white clothes as a tight bandage. Yet he missed his abnormal healing abilities, a privilege of being a strong spirit master.
Such a wound would take days to recover, if not an entire week. Yet that didn't prevent him from claiming his rewards. After all, he put this point in mind when causing such a wound, making it on his left and not right hand.
However, he never expected something else to happen when he started collecting the monster materials.
The first monkey he met was burnt and covered with a layer of blackness, hard like a tree bark. From the look of it, the monkey didn't have any time to react when the fire came.
It was the same case for many dead monsters here, and William didn't care for any of that. He simply used his sword to hit this shell-like layer to expose the fur underneath.
The fur wasn't affected with such heat, or else it would be considered nothing worthy in this world.
Just with a few hits, the black layer was broken apart and the bright scarlet thick fur appeared in front of his eyes. He used the tip of the sword to cut at certain places before he skinned the monster and stored the fur in his bag.
He was thinking about how his bag would fit for all this loot. After all, he was sure he had more than three hundred monsters here. Even if he had to drag all this with extreme effort, he wouldn't hesitate to do so.
He would never leave behind what was originally his.
After claiming the fur, he worked for the tail needle and then he opened the body and got out the monster core.
The core was like the spirit crystal, yet it was filled with red and black colours. William knew the red belonged to the spirit power of the monkey and the black was the residual spirit inside the core.
Just as he held it in his hand, he felt a strange resonance, like something buried deep inside his soul got stirred up at this moment.
"What's wrong?" he frowned. He never experienced such a thing before. He held the sword in his right hand, the bag on his back, and the monster core in his left bloodied hand.
Then without any warning, he felt a surge of heat inside his body, like his blood was boiling for unknown reason. Then the wound he tried to control before was opened again, making his blood gush out and cover the core in a large splash of redness.
But that wasn't the end of it.
*Sizzle!* *Sizzle!* *Crumble!*
Just in a span of a few breaths, the core issued a series of audible sizzling sounds before it started to get crushed. Under the shocked gazes of William, the core he just salvaged turned into dust, mixing with his blood before another bizarre phenomenon appeared.
The blood once got in touch with the red powder moved back like it was drawn by a hidden force. The wound started to strangely heal, while his body kept burning hot without an explanation.
"This…" William was more astonished when he examined his body. "My spirit power… It increased slightly… How come…?!!" At this moment, he felt himself like a frog lying down in the bottom of the well.
All the knowledge he had from his past life didn't help at this moment. He knew something was happening inside his body. It wasn't only limited to the spirit power's slight increase, but his body got a slight boost in strength as well.
"I need to test it again," this time he jumped towards the next monkey. He didn't care about the fur as he simply opened the corpse using his sword in a hurry to experience that amazing feeling once again.
He knew of many ways to use the monster cores for increasing one's spirit power. Yet they all required many preparations and more resources. Not to mention they all paled in comparison to what he just experienced.
This wasn't a simple way of using the monster core and turning it into strength. It was like his body devoured the entire core, using the entire spirit power stored inside to strengthen his spirit power and body.
This time he was more attentive to what was going on, even closing up his eyes and trying to feel every tiny detail. The same thing happened again and this time he managed to see it clearer than before.
"This… Isn't it like the legendary devouring ability of that damned fox?" As he noticed everything happening in his body, his mind started to link the missing dots fast. He felt a strange familiarity with this technique.
Being his sworn and greatest enemy, William studied the unique abilities of that nine tailed fox. To defeat an enemy, one must be fully aware of its characteristics and abilities; that was what his master kept telling him before.
And one of these unique abilities, and the main reason behind the nine tailed fox being this great even amidst the monsters, was his unbelievable devouring ability.
He could devour monsters and use their spirit power to his advantage. That was like a cheat way in the spirit world, even among monsters. That was also one of the reasons that made that fox the not only the enemy to humans, but also being feared by monsters as well.
"Damn! I accidentally got his ability… Damn!" This time William was really thrilled and excited. If he had such ability under his control, then forget about his earlier plans. All he needed to do was to consume monster cores and his strength would soar in leaps and bounds.
But that also meant he would face a big loss in his gains. The initial one hundred crystal price for each monkey here would dwindle to around twenty crystals.