Reincarnation Of The Strongest Spirit Master

"It's our goal to arrive at that place, where a big, fortified city lies," William knew from the map details and records he read in the library a little about that place.

It was one of the few cities belonging to the kingdom, and it was heavily fortified to rival any decent grade academy.

At the same time, there were lots of roads ending up from different locations towards there. And from there, only one road came out, leading towards the capital.

"This is the path we will take," William passed his scabbard to follow a line drawn by him on the map, "it's the shortest and safest path I could find through all this mess. We are going to travel inside the forest, directly through the deeper parts of it. So, remain vigilant, and follow my orders to the letter, or else I'm not responsible for your deaths."

The last bit of his words was said to the members of the scout team. The line they'd pass through extended for a short distance on the map, yet everyone knew how long it'd take to arrive there.

At least one week, if not more, was needed to cross all this distance and arrive at the Scorching lands.

"Why didn't you choose the formal route instead?" Ibra from the side couldn't help but point using his glaive towards an official route that wasn't that far away from here, "we can march fast and arrive there in less than two days."

"The official roads are more secure than going through the forest, right?" Lang asked, while looking directly at William's eyes.

And the latter couldn't help but sigh.

"Our news of going there has already spread," he paused, before slowly adding, "so trying to go through any expected path will end bad for us."

"Are you afraid of the dark spirit masters? Then why seek trouble with them?" Ibra folded his arms, leaning on his glaive, while giving William a doubtful glance.

"I don't mind clashing with dark spirit masters out there," William motioned his head towards the map, referring to the Scorching Lands region, "at least we will fight, struggle, and suffer for the generous rewards of the mission. But wasting our strength and time on useless fights before getting there isn't something I'd do."

William didn't need to attend the meetings of the many traitors in the clan to know about what they did. He already tasted how organised and strongly connected the traitors were with the dark spirit masters of other regions.

Just his incident back then with the Golden Sky disciples and the repercussions he suffered later after coming to the academy was proof of that.

He expected the enemy to already get notified by what he planned to do. And so he decided to avoid trouble, not taking the formal path, and use an alternative that he initially prepared as plan B.

William didn't know that, but his simple decision that he took on the spot saved him and his team tons of trouble.

The dark spirit masters around the region here and all the way towards the Scorching Lands were actively seeking him out. They filled the entire official routes linking the academy towards that place, and lied in wait for his arrival so they'd take him and his team down.

No one ever imagined that William was going to take the harder route, risking a lot by going through the deepest and most dangerous parts of the forest.

Doing so didn't make any sense at all!

The news about William and his friends got to the ears of all the dark spirit masters as William suspected.

They knew he was a bronze spirit master, and his friends were all bronze spirit masters as well. No one would suspect such a small and weak bunch of disciples to take a route that even gold grade spirit masters would fear to tread.

"Take these," William started to take piles of materials out, arranging them in smaller groups as he added, "each will take one pack. Spread the materials over your bodies as instructed in the scroll. Each group of materials will satisfy you for two days. Before this, you have to come over and resupply, got it?"

"Why don't you give them all the materials needed for the entire journey instead?" Peter asked in a casual way, and William simply smiled and said nothing back.

In fact, he could do that and give all of the five members the materials they needed for one week or more. But he wanted them to come back for different reasons.

First, they needed to rest. Staying put and vigilant for two days straight was quite stressful without doubt on anyone. Plus, William wanted to reassess their performance, replace those who acted poorly or rashly with others.

Not to mention they might get into trouble, getting wounded and might even get killed.

William didn't want to lose all of his materials if one fell down and got his belongings collected. And that was why after these five got the materials, he gave everyone half an hour to memorise the scrolls he distributed before, then asked back for them and stored all of the scrolls again inside his ring.

Even if they got killed, he safeguarded against the possibility of the enemy getting to know what they were doing. Besides, such a novel way of using arrays was something unique to his former master, and he didn't want any of his enemies to get such knowledge no matter what!

William knew his master took something that the normal and dark spirit masters at the outside world used and modified it to be stronger. And as he collected the scrolls, he didn't forget to warn the five members of the scout team about something.

"This array can shield off your presence, sight, and even spirit power... But it can't stop sound. So, no matter what, if you suspect anything, stand still and hide, don't make a single sound or else you'll get spotted."