William returned to his empty cabinet with running more than walking steps. His poor belongings were on one side outside the small cabinet. So, he had to lift them in, and that took him roughly half an hour.
Once finished, he couldn't wait any longer.
"Time to test things out," he didn't even spare a glance over the bag full of crystals. He took out one of the five cores he bought and used his weak sword to reopen the wound on his left hand.
The wound was already healed during the past hours, leaving behind a faint thin lined scar.
Once blood gushed out, he impatiently waited for the miracle to happen. But he was doomed to be disappointed.
"This… how come this doesn't work?!!"
What he feared the most happened!
After testing over the five different monster cores he bought, he finally realised something was wrong. He tested this method last night over hundreds of cores, none ever failed.
"Let me think calmly first…" he tried to control his emotions and thought rationally about this. And soon he found what went wrong here.
"These monsters weren't killed by me…" he said while looking at the blood staining the clothes he wore. "So, I need to kill any monster before doing this again…"
This was the crux of the problem he thought about, the first logical explanation he could find that made sense.
He developed such a theory which explained why this method failed. But he wasn't sure about it. He needed to put it to the test first before raising his hopes once more.
Or else he would have one more explanation as an answer… This method of devouring only worked over scarlet monkeys. But just thinking about this made him unwilling to accept such a theory.
As his clothes were ruined by his blood, the first thing he did was to change them. While eating the few pieces of bread he had, he started to think about his next move.
"If I was going to kill monsters, then I need more weapons and more preparations," he muttered while throwing the sword that had its blade rusted at some parts, irregular and dull at other parts aside.
Killing weak monsters like those monkeys wasn't his aim anymore. Last night he gained a lot of spirit power, but he knew the reason behind that.
He could keep killing monkeys, ending up with useless cores that would give him nothing worthy in return.
His spirit power was already low, very low from the start. He doubted the same result would reoccur if he repeated the same method.
Plus, he devoured hundreds of cores to get over thirty spirit points. His target was to get over a hundred points and shock the entire academy.
That meant sixty-five spirit points must be gained during the next week. Just depending over the white monster cores wouldn't help much and eventually they would lose their purpose.
Of course, these were only his speculations. But regarding his vast experience from past life, who would say his thoughts were wrong?
Considering everything, he knew he had to go back and buy a lot of things. After all, he prepared to go inside the forest and vanish during that week.
If he dared to come back, the academy would put him under investigation as a result of declining his tasks as a porter. His only way out would be through testing his spirit power again. But before reaching his desired benchmark, he didn't want that to happen.
So, putting aside the weapons and his tricks, he needed enough rations to keep him alive for all this time.
Monster meat wasn't that bad in taste, but he sucked at cooking. He knew if he depended only on himself, he would end up being poisoned or make food that wouldn't be suitable to be eaten.
"I have slightly over seven thousand crystals," he checked the bigger bag where he found one hundred small crystals and seven larger in size and more glistering ones.
Those slightly bigger ones were known as the basic crystals. Each was equal to one thousand spirit crystals. "I'm not that poor anymore. I can go and buy whatever I need," he muttered to himself before finally getting out.
However, just after walking for ten minutes, his path was blocked by a group of disciples.
At this hour, the lectures started, and the entire academy was bustling with studying and training. However, for his luck, he ran into a group of disciples he shouldn't meet at this point.
"Well, well, well… Look at who we have here…" just as he saw that familiar face from last night, William knew this wouldn't bode well in the end. "Hey Lang, wasn't your clan looking for any clue regarding your young miss?"
Unlike what William expected, Guanin didn't come directly at him. Instead, he called over a group of disciples standing not far from him. "Come, I have an interesting piece of news for you."
William didn't know what was happening, but he felt it wasn't good at all. A sly and dirty person like Guanin wouldn't do anything good, especially to him, especially after last night.
William tried to move aside and bypass the blocking group of disciples led by Guanin.
"Where do you think you're going?" but before he could take more than a few steps, one of the disciples moved and glared evilly at him.
When William saw this look, he knew something bad was going to happen.
Under the cautious gazes of William, he noticed the approach of the other group of kids. They didn't look any different from Guanine and their group, all were disciples of the second grade in the academy.
The uniforms on their bodies were the same.
"What do you want?" it seemed the one called Lang didn't have a good impression of Guanin. His tone and attitude told William the two must be rivals, if not enemies.
"C'mon, don't be like this when I'm trying to help," Guanin gave a sly smile before he pointed at William and added, "last night I met the young princess walking away with that porter. If anyone knows what happened to her, then he should be the one."
'Sh*t!' At this point, William who was oblivious to all this realised what was going on. He knew that Berry would take a long time to recover, probably a day.
He wasn't to be blamed to not link the dots early on. His mind was pretty occupied by what things he needed to purchase and prepare for his upcoming adventure.
If he was in his right mind, he'd instantly have linked everything together, at least linked the name of Lang to the Long clan, and thus back to Berry.
Hearing the words of Guanin made William realise what was that all about. He never expected things to become this complicated about what happened to her. Without the need to ask, he knew her clan and family must treat this as some sort of danger.
He totally forgot about what happened to Berry before, never gave it another thought since leaving her behind.
And Guanin was trying to throw him directly in the middle of such a hot spot. 'What a bastard!' William inwardly cursed.
He knew that what Guanin made up to frame him was real. No one was with the two when Berry ended up in such a weird state. It seemed Guanin wanted a payback for what happened last night, and so he decided to link William to such a mess.
Unluckily for William, Guanin's accusation was right on the spot. He was the only person who knew what was going on with Berry.
But would William let Guanin frame him this easily? Not a chance!
"What happened to young miss?" he put on his innocent face while facing the sceptical gazes from the two groups.
"You should be the one telling us about that!" Guanin harrumphed. He felt like it was time to make someone else take his revenge without dirtying his hands. That was the kind of person Guanin was.