This was the only way to describe the chaos unfolding before him. After years of being stifled and starved, the Phoenix spirit had reacted to the legendary incantation like a dying ember catching a gale.
The dormant soul rejoiced, manifesting a level of vitality that was as terrifying as it was beautiful.
But the sheer power wasn't the immediate problem. The problem was their location.
William and Berry were standing at the very edge of the Blessing Forest, right on the primary artery connecting the wilderness to the Academy.
At this hour, it wasn't just the threat of prowling monsters that William feared; it was the inevitable traffic of Academy students. In an hour or two, groups of disciples would be returning from their hunts or heading out for late-night training.
"Why did it have to end up like this?!" William hissed under his breath.
He knew that if they were discovered together—a lowly porter standing over the glowing, transformed body of the Long Clan's heiress—he wouldn't just be expelled; he would likely be executed before he could utter a word of defence.
He had two choices: abandon Berry to her fate and save his own skin, or find a way to hide her and finish what he started.
He chose the latter. Without a second thought, William gritted his teeth, braced his legs, and hoisted Berry's stiff, unnaturally heavy body onto his shoulders.
As he adjusted her weight, he glanced at the yellow parchment gripped tightly in her fingers. He tried to gently pry the papers loose, but her grip was like a vice; the Phoenix energy had locked her muscles into a state of $Rigid \text{ } Stasis$.
Realising he couldn't take them without shredding the precious manuals, he let her keep them and began to move, veering off the main path and into the thick, tangled undergrowth.
However, he hadn't covered even five hundred meters before the reality of his situation crashed down on him.
"Hoof... hoof... my body... it can't take it," he wheezed, his lungs burning as if he were inhaling molten lead.
He had catastrophically overestimated his current physical condition. In his mind, he was still the master who could traverse mountain ranges without breaking a sweat, but his eleven-year-old body was malnourished and weak. His legs shook violently, and his vision began to blur with every step. Moving her any further was a death sentence for them both.
"Sorry about this," he gasped, carefully leaning her against a moss-covered tree in a small clearing bisected by a babbling stream. The water would help mask her scent, but she was still a beacon of light in the darkness. "If I try to keep carrying you, we'll both be doomed."
He reached into his bag and pulled out a standard Academy emergency flare. With a sharp tug, he sent the signal screaming into the night sky. The brilliant red light burst above the canopy, a silent cry for the Academy guards.
The Academy maintained constant patrols around the forest borders. Given their proximity to the main campus, a rescue team would arrive in minutes.
"Stay safe, Berry," he whispered.
He didn't worry about monsters. This sector of the forest was regularly purged of anything truly dangerous, and the oppressive, high-tier aura currently radiating from her Phoenix spirit would act as a natural deterrent to any low-level predator. Most beasts would mistake her for a high-ranking fire monster and flee.
William turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, pushing his legs to their absolute limit. Behind him, he soon heard the distant shouts of guards and the clatter of armour. She was safe.
Now, finally, his own work could begin.
He hadn't come to the Blessing Forest just to save a damsel in distress; he came to claw his way back to power. He needed monster cores, materials, and real-world combat experience to jumpstart his stagnant cultivation. Despite his meagre twelve spirit points, he wasn't going into this blind.
His target: the Scarlet Monkeys.
They were notorious in the Blessing Forest—not for their individual strength, which was pathetic, but for their overwhelming numbers and pack intelligence. For most lone spirit masters, stumbling into a troop of Scarlet Monkeys was a nightmare of a thousand tiny cuts.
Scarlet monkeys were infamous throughout the Blessing Forest, known for their vibrant scarlet fur, the potent monster cores nestled in their chests, and the venomous needles at the tips of their tails.
In the markets of the Novistic Kingdom, a single successful harvest from one of these beasts could net a porter at least one hundred spirit crystals.
To a boy in William's position, killing a hundred of them would be more than a successful hunt; it would be a life-changing fortune. However, the task was far from simple.
These monsters moved in aggressive troops of fifty or more. They were biologically tuned to the scent of blood, turning them into opportunistic predators that thrived on chaos.
In the academy, the term for them was "The Living Plague." Imagine a group of spirit masters who had just exhausted themselves taking down a formidable beast.
Instead of the rest they deserved, they would find themselves surrounded by dozens of agile, screeching primates launching sneak attacks from the canopy. Their agility and love for hit-and-run tactics made them the bane of every disciple's existence.
But William didn't share that dread. Even with his meagre twelve spirit points, he had a method to clear them out. He just needed to prepare.
As he moved deeper into the woods, his eyes scanned the forest floor with predatory focus.
He wasn't looking for monster tracks yet; he was looking for a plant called Allaptica Bellusa—the Red-Leafed Flower. In the modern spirit world, it was considered a useless, decorative weed, often picked by young disciples to gift to their sweethearts.
The flower was unmistakable: large, curvy petals that were snowy white at the edges and a faint, blushing red at the center. Its long, thin stem was adorned with the deep red leaves that gave it its name.
"It's good to have people ignorant about the value of things sometimes," William muttered as he spotted a cluster near the roots of a gnarled oak. He began to gather them, his hands moving with practised efficiency.
Once again, he felt a pang of envy toward Berry. If he had a storage bracelet like hers, he could have harvested every flower in the sector. Constrained by his small, tattered porter's bag, he had to stop once he had gathered fifty.
"It's enough for now," he said, rising and wiping the dirt from his knees. He turned his attention to the topography of the region. "I recall there were a few small hills scattered around here," he whispered, examining the silhouette of the trees against the dark sky.
The darkness in the Blessing Forest was oppressive, far denser than the night outside. Despite the gloom, William refused to light a candle.
It was a rookie mistake; while monsters could track a human's scent, a flame in the pitch black was like a beacon inviting every predator within a mile to dinner. He relied instead on his old, rusty memories.
In his past life, he had trekked through these outer woods hundreds of times as a porter for arrogant disciples.
While he didn't know the forest "like the back of his hand," he possessed an intimate understanding of the prime hunting spots in the peripheral zones. The deeper reaches remained a mystery, but for his current plan, the outer rim was perfect.
His strategy was elegant in its simplicity. It leveraged a bit of chemical knowledge that had been lost to the current era—a method that required zero spirit power and no physical strength.
"There it is," he breathed. After nearly an hour of cautious, silent trekking, he found his objective. Standing a few hundred meters ahead, a small, craggy hill rose from the forest floor like a dark behemoth slumbering in the moonlight.