Chapter 1568: The Terror of the Upper Realm!

"Don’t slack then," finally, William admitted it, "with your current level of power, you won’t be good to help at all. I’m a green grade spirit master already, so try to catch up first before demanding to join my fights."

"See? He really plans to stay behind," Berry funnily puffed her cheeks.

"It can’t be helped then," Anjie was the first to put an end to their futile attempts, "he has a point; we are too weak to do anything. Let’s go and train, fast, and climb higher."

"Or else he will always give us this excuse to do things on his own," Lara rolled her eyes, before she and the other girls went to their dedicated training spots, sat down, closed their eyes, and started training.

"They’ve grown way past what I was at this stage in my past life," as he walked back to where Fang was, planning to oversee things from a distance, William couldn’t help but inwardly chuckle.

At this point in his past life, he was a terrified youth, one who didn’t know how to survive on his own. He lacked strength, he lacked power, he lacked information. All he had was his master’s support, and he thought his girls and other masters in his guild had the same situation as him in the past. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

But it felt like he underestimated his effect on everyone.

As he got lost in his old memories, how he struggled to just take the first step, how his master kept protecting and shielding him from various dangers back then, a few hours passed.

Like how he expected it, the monsters came to attack his base.

The first to appear wasn’t the flying thunderous birds, but the worms.

The first sign was for the ground to shake. The shaking was subtle, weak, with a distant rhythm. Yet to William, it was very characteristic.

"To our luck, the first to appear is the base destroyers," he shook his head, before moving towards the direction where the shakings came stronger than any.

Without spirit sense in play, he had to be close enough to see by his own eyes what was going to happen. And weirdly enough, the worms picked the spot where Fang was, as if they wanted to challenge the human invaders starting from their strongest master.

By the time William made it to where Fang and his selected masters were, the shakings intensified and quickened. Now they came once per minute, a sign that the worms were digging the ground fast and heading faster towards the surface.

William had enough traps in position to handle the flying danger, but the subterranean threat was something he couldn’t stop with what he had right now.

The worms weren’t unkillable monsters, they weren’t unstoppable monsters, but they were quite a headache even to the strongest masters. Coming from under the ground, trying to defend against their attacks proved to be a futile endeavour.

To the current him, to the current masters he had, the only way to properly fight these worms was by letting them have the first blow. Then they would fight back according to how the situation implied.

The wait didn’t last any longer. Upfront, Fang was already prepared with his lightning array, ready to welcome the incoming threat. Around him, more than one hundred masters were ready as well, all raising their weapons, vigilant to any sign of the appearance of the worms.

Fang didn’t need to think twice about the nature of the incoming threat. From William’s rich explanation, he could easily tell the worms were coming.

Then the worms came.

The first worm appeared just a few dozen metres away from the defences. Luckily, the worm didn’t come closer to the defences, and didn’t appear in the middle of their base. Or else the damage would be immense.

The ground erupted as if it vomited a bad meal. Something huge cracked the ground open, appeared like a towering giant that kept rising up and higher, as a mountain getting bigger by every passing second.

"Attack!" Fang didn’t wait for the worm to rise enough from the ground and gave the order. He didn’t slack either; he instantly activated his lightning array, raining down lightning over the body of the worm.

And yet... the main problem wasn’t in the will or the execution, but the clear decline in Fang’s spirit grade that affected the might of his attacks.

The lightning that used to shower like it was the end of the world back in the lower realm became like tingling, pricking needles. The scale of his attack was minuscule, and the damage was almost negligible.

"Fang still relied too much on the trick I taught him back in the lower realm," William muttered to himself, while watching how Fang’s opening gambit was a total failure, "let’s see how he will do from here."

William knew terror was destined to befall his masters. And yet, he didn’t move fast to help. If any, he knew the upper realm wasn’t like the lower realm they came from.

Comparing the two, the lower realm looked like a kindergarten, and the upper realm was the high school, filled with bullies.

And the monsters were the main bullies in this realm.

William watched how his masters would adapt and respond to their constant failures. He developed a habit in the lower realm to always step up and intervene, always helping and saving others from dying.

Yet this all changed the moment they all ascended to the upper realm.

Here, they needed to learn to rely solely and mainly on themselves to survive. They were fortunate enough to have such a base, the protection he provided, knowledge, and resources. In his eyes, his masters already started way better than anyone else. It felt like they cheated the world, and that was the best he could offer to help them.

From now onwards, they had to learn how to adapt and rely on themselves, not on him.