"Coffee? What is that?" Carl asked as he looked at the strange liquid in William's cup.
Is that really sothing we should drink? The color looks suspicious...
William looked at his friend with a raised eyebrow, "You've never had coffee before?"
Carl shook his head.
William was silent for a mont. I guess Cultivators never really had a need for sothing to boost their wakefulness. Was coffee never invented in this World?
"Try it." William said as he held out the coffee mug.
Carl accepted it readily, trusting that his friend hadn't lied to him. Why would William do that anyway? It made no sense.
He gave the brown liquid that looked more black than brown now that it was in his hand, giving it a quick sniff.
"Man, that slls weird too!" he said as he wrinkled his nose in disgust.
"Just try it, I promise it's good." William urged, to which Carl looked at him suspiciously. Regardless, Carl lifted the mug to his lips and took a sip.
"Blegh!" Carl spat a mouthful of coffee on the ground while holding the mug away in disgust. "It's so bitter! Why would you make such a horrible drink?"
"You get used to it. It's an acquired taste." William replied simply while taking back the coffee from Carl. He took a sip, smacking his lips as he savored the residual flavor of the ground coffee beans.
Carl looked at William oddly. He couldn't understand how soone would like such a disgusting flavor.
William set down the coffee and brought out his map for Carl to see. He pointed at a small marking four hundred and fifty kiloters southwest of their current location. "Our next target is here."
Carl leaned forward and looked at William's finger. "We're going all the way to the Southern Plains Region? That's going to take weeks to cross!"
William looked at Carl, "I'm supposed to be the idiot, not you. Have you forgotten what kind of Mage I am?" he waved his hands in a circle as the reverse Domains of most his Elents were used and a portal appeared in front of Carl.
Even with S-Rank Space Magic, his Space Mana Control still wasn't enough to ignore the various Elents in his body. He hoped that this problem would be solved once he created the Space Elental Sphere for his Artifact Belt.
The only reason he hadn't yet is because they weren't in a suitable enough environnt, and William didn't know if the abundance of Space Mana would attract others. If he failed in the process and accidentally destroyed the Artifact Belt, William wouldn't be able to replace it in a short amount of ti.
Carl nodded and passed through the portal. When he appeared on the other side, his body fell to the ground in weakness, unable to keep up with the incredible distance he had just traveled in one movent.
William saw this as soon as he passed through the portal and was a bit concerned, but a quick inspection with the Life Elent said that Carl had only sustained a few moderate internal injuries. Nothing that an S-Rank Life Elent couldn't fix.
"Why didn't you tell we were going so far? I would have reinforced my body beforehand!" Carl threw a random rock at William once his body was fully healed.
William scratched his head, "I didn't know this would happen. I've only teleported long-distance a few tis, but I've never been injured before..."
-Are you forgetting the ti you cut off your own head?
I probably shouldn't tell him about that...
"Whatever...it's fine." Carl said but he still sounded a bit hurt. He sat up and looked around to inspect the rugged environnt that one could hardly call a plains.
Rather than an expanse of grassland that stretched on for miles, William and Carl saw nothing but hard rock. The trees were replaced with large, misshapen boulders, and the ground was cracked in many places, turning the area into a danger zone for those who couldn't fly.
William's Life Sense picked up many Magical Beasts to the west, and further south was a small town with regular humans. He used the landmarks around him to check the map, finding that they were about six kiloters off of the original intended location.
Since he hadn't been to the Southern Plains before, William was only able to guess where his exit point should be. The amount of Mana put into the Spell, combined with his recent upgrade made William miss the mark just slightly.
-Slightly? You missed by six and a half kiloters.
That's still less than two percent error, considering we crossed 450 kiloters. Be quiet, System!
William didn't intend to be rude with the last sentence, but he sensed the Magical Beasts from the west approaching their position. He couldn't yet tell what their Cultivation was, but their speed suggested they were only in the Qi Refinent Realm.
"Hey Carl, we've got so Magical Beasts coming in." William said nonchalantly.
"What? Where?" Carl unfurled his scroll and prepared to fight with his Magical Beasts, but William stopped him before he could inject his Mana.
"I'll be right back." he said as he teleported away. Less than ten seconds later, William had returned with a satisfied smile on his face. To Carl, it might seem like his friend was just being special again, but William had a good reason this ti.
--Upgraded Title: 50 PP
-Beast Slayer (Epic --> Legendary): You've personally killed at least 5000 Magical Beasts. 50% damage to Magical Beasts.
With an additional twenty percent damage to Magical Beasts compared to the Epic Title, William felt his strength had greatly improved once again. This was the only reason why William had even bothered to deal with a group of whelps in the Qi Refinent Realm.
Otherwise, William probably would have just avoided the group of ten Qi Refinent Beasts. There was little value to the corpse of a Qi Refinent Magical Beast, and they weren't nearly strong enough to threaten anyone.
Now over half of my Titles are Epic or higher rarity, nice! William thought as he looked through his Titles.
Wait, when did my Coward Title go up? I thought it was only Common Rank?
-When you teleported to the Hillvire Empire it leveled up multiple tis.
Damn, I must have scrolled right past the Notification. Oh well.
William perford a few short-range teleports with Carl, then transitioned to using the shadows to move in between boulders. As his experience with the Darkness Elent grew, William found that he could extend the shadows of the boulders so that they touched one another, allowing him to freely move between the two.
Not only that, but he could shrink the size of his own body to match that of the shadow, aning he could even fit into the tunnels constructed by ants with ease. The only downside was that Carl's body wouldn't properly adjust, so he would be kicked out of the shadow.
A few minutes passed before William and Carl arrived at the next Thieves' Guild location. This ti, they were stationed outside of a large cave, and Thieves' Guild mbers were spotted right away. William and Carl watched them stack large cases on a large wooden pallet, their contents unknown as none of William's Elents allowed him to see through the Array-covered wood.
William backed up half a kiloter and drew a few shapes in the rock while Carl watched.
"They're very bold in this Region, it seems." William said as he continued to draw.
Carl nodded, "I heard that the Southern Plains is a fairly chaotic place, which almost beca a lawless land a few decades ago. The Thieves' Guild holds a lot of influence here, and the difficulty of wiping them out is well above what the Adventurer's Guild is willing to pay."
"Makes sense, those cheapskates." William complained. The Adventurer's Guild appeared nice from an outside perspective, but their rewards were only tempting in the eyes of weak Cultivators.
At William's current strength, the Guild Hall's asly rewards of a few Gold Coins per slain Magical Beast was nothing.
"Here's what we're going to do," William started, "Do you have any Magical Beasts that you don't mind sacrificing?"
"Sacrifice my summons? No thanks, what kind of person do you think I am? That's inhumane!" Carl scolded William for his insensitive request. "You don't know this, but I temporarily lose strength every ti one of my Magical Beasts dies."
"I'm sorry," William apologized. He blad the Humanity statistic for his previous request, since he wouldn't normally recomnd such an act. He himself had Magical Beasts, and he would have never considered sacrificing Atticus or Uri for a simple Thieves' Guild hideout.
"We can use this instead." William continued as he retrieved an old Perfect Array Puppet and quickly crafted it a wooden sword reinforced with Arrays so it wouldn't break.
He pulled out two more Puppets of the sa level and also gave them makeshift weapons, then sent them forward into the group of thieves.
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