He wasn't aware that the core moved with the monster spirit and was digested with it. As he didn't have the core, he started to dissect the monster's body.
And again, he got disappointed.
"What's going on here?" he stood in front of the monster's body, "the parts are all ruined like they got decayed. This won't happen until more than a day has passed!"
At this point, he realised he stayed longer than one day in his absorption process.
"Time to test the spirit I gained," he threw all this behind his back and anticipated using his spirit for the first time.
For spirit masters, using their spirits was one of the ways to fight. The process usually required spirit power and the spirit master would transform into a version of the monster his spirit had.
The duration of such transformation depended entirely over one's total spirit power. The stronger one became, the longer his transformation would be.
That was why having spirits with different elements and unique traits was something crucial to any spirit master. The more elements one had, the stronger he'd become in battles.
"Cough! Cough!" Yet the moment he tried to activate his fox spirit; he felt a strong backlash that made him cough up blood. His body felt like it got slammed against a fast moving train, ending up shaking all over and getting suddenly weakened.
"Damn! It seems my spirit power isn't even enough to activate this spirit…" he fell on the ground while coughing blood again, feeling a little weak.
He tried to activate his spirit and failed, which was something heavily taxing on his body. He never imagined his newly evolved spirit would bring him such bad news.
"My spirit power didn't even scratch the bronze ranking of spirit masters… And my spirit is considered in the second phase of spirit evolution… Does that mean I have to wait until I become a bronze spirit master before trying it again?"
He felt a little doubtful about this. The backlash was indeed painful, and if he repeatedly failed in such an attempt, his body might get permanent damage.
He took a couple of hours to rest, not daring to move abruptly or do anything at all. He took part of the food he had and ate to restore his wasted energy while lost in deep thoughts.
William thought deeply about this, taking such a matter quite seriously. It was like someone having a grand sword, but he couldn't even wield or use it!
It was quite frustrating to him. Yet he tried to remain calm and thought rationally about this.
"I have to get over one thousand and half to get to be a silver ranked spirit master. If my guesses are correct, then I should wait until my spirit power count is closer to this number or even wait until I cross it… Tsk! How unlucky!"
This came as terrible news for him. Raising up his spirit power to such a number was a task that'd take a long time even for someone like him.
But he also was aware of how risky it'd be to try out summoning his spirit and he wasn't ready yet. Against his unwillingness, he decided to not give it another attempt until he reached silver grade first.
This left him in quite a bad mood.
"I shall test my new spirit power, hopefully nothing bad will happen this time."
Before he could distract himself and try examining his increased spirit power, he heard a loud bang coming from outside, followed by a massive explosion.
The explosion was strong enough to shake the entire cave, making thick lines of soil to fall over.
"What's going on?" William threw behind all his disappointment and disturbed thoughts and moved towards the block of bushes and soil he placed at the entrance. And there he tried to see through the small gaps and check what was going on outside.
"You don't have any place to run to, hahaha!"
"Come on, stop running already! We have been chasing you for an entire week!"
"You should succumb to your fate. Your family is destroyed, and all your relatives are killed by our clan. You are lucky to last all this time on your own, but your luck runs out here."
Many mean and sinister shouts came for William to hear perfectly fine even inside his sealed cave. From the gaps in the entrance blockade, William could see a group of nine youths surrounding one whose face couldn't be seen, covered by a mask.
That dude wasn't short, at least twenty centimetres taller than William. He had tall black hair, held two swords in his hands, standing tall and mighty in front of all those people while protecting a smaller body behind.
She was a little girl, not exceeding six years old. The panicked expression on her face was obvious, with traces of mud, blood, and dried up tears spoiling her childish angelic face.
Just from seeing her face, William felt a gush of sadness inside his heart. It was like there was no other person much sadder than this little girl at this moment in the world.
And that face was evidence of how brutal the fight she and the person shielding her faced during the past week. It seemed that the proclaimed chase didn't happen smoothly as anyone would expect.
"You bunch of barbarians! You used our people, and in the end, you decided to bind us with such an enslaving marriage contract! When we said no, you killed all of us! I won't let this grudge down even in hell. If you have the courage then come, I'll make sure to take a few of you to visit hell with me!"
Just as William was trying to get the head and tail of this weird encounter, that masked dude spoke in a loud tone. It didn't carry any speck of fear, only rage and regret.
That voice also carried another surprise for William. It was loud and clear in his ears, and he could tell it was a girl's voice.
William was surprised to realise that this brave youth was a girl, a girl with such courage and determination to fight such an unfair fight to protect that little girl's life and hers in front of nine strong looking enemies.