William knew that going by logic, staying here was suicidal and detrimental. And yet, going by the same logic, this zone was still raw since ancient times. Without a single spirit master or monster daring to venture here, and given the nature of the shadow monsters dwelling in these regions, the resources were heavy and rich, with no resistance or competition of any sort. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

One of the biggest challenges for any newly ascended spirit master was the lack of resources. In the upper realm, training normally would take decades and wouldn’t bring the spirit master to his full true potential.

Any spirit master needed lots of resources to properly train. Be it the spirit stones, the herbs, the element gems, and many other naturally found resources, any spirit master would need lots of these. And yet in the world, there were tons of hostile groups working on hunting down the newly ascended spirit masters and selling them to different established forces.

If the spirit master was lucky to avoid them, then he would face another obstacle: the resource hunt and monopoly. All the forces in the upper realm suffered from the lack of proper resources to train and support their members. So a fierce and intense competition was well known to control the lives of all the spirit masters in the upper realm.

One of the main causes of death for newly ascended spirit masters was the brutal fights erupting around different resources. Yet all this wasn’t present here in this zone. The resources were abundant, and the competition never existed.

The only catch, though, was the shadow monsters themselves. Even if they were deadly, they had few glaring weaknesses that William knew about. On top of that, their bodies had something far more precious than any naturally formed resource; their cores.

Thanks to their nature and the extreme rarity of any spirit master or monster to venture into this deadly zone, the shadow monsters had to adapt to the rarity of spirit powers. Deeply within their bodies, their cores didn’t act normally, and weren’t the storing place for the monsters’ spirits and spirit powers. Instead, they worked to provide the shadow monsters with spirit power refined from the world.

Scarce and slow process it was, yet this ensured the shadow monsters wouldn’t die out of spirit power hunger. That also transformed their cores into a high-grade spirit power potion in William’s eyes.

"Ingesting these cores will at least take any spirit master to the doorsteps of the first spirit power grade of this world; the white grade."

The world was different, yet the rules were the same. Even if all spirit masters ascending here came with few spirit points in their bodies, they weren’t considered true spirit masters yet. They needed to cross the one-hundred-point mark, then they would be considered white grade spirit masters.

Crossing this gap might take a few weeks back at the lower realms for most spirit masters. Yet in the upper realm, it might take years, with many failing to take this step.

That made this zone a treasure trove in William’s eyes, a spot he would never try to run from, but to do his best to seize control over. He wasn’t insane to dream about claiming the entire zone to take down the shadow monster. It was an impossible task even if he had an army of dark gold masters on his side, even if he was armed with his past life’s rich knowledge.

And trying to exterminate the shadow monsters entirely would leave this zone exposed to the outer world, ending up shooting himself in the foot.

He planned to take control of enough region here and establish a proper base for his guild. Then he would expand his reach to the rich resource spots in the zone, while working to establish a permanent portal with his lower realm.

Doing so would ensure all of his guild masters ascending later would arrive here, in the most secure spot ever, with the richest place in the world prepared for their smooth training.

The first steps were the hardest and riskiest ones. That was why William decided to make them on his own first. He needed to test what he had learned from his past life, then gain real experience he could share with others. On top of that, he wanted to gather many shadow cores and ingest a few to rise above one thousand spirit points, hitting the green spirit grade.

It wasn’t just a desire to establish himself above others. The path he selected to walk upon wasn’t as smooth as others, and would take him a longer time to climb one grade than most of the masters. The earlier he reached the most troublesome silver grade, the better. This was his first bottleneck and the longest period of stagnation for him.

But first, he needed to deal with the shadow monsters here. And the perfect and safest way to do so was to find something.

William’s plan was simple, yet effective. He intended to let the shadow monsters do the bidding for him, clear the area he wanted by themselves, without the need for him or any of his guild masters to raise a finger.

To do so, he needed to find a certain ore mine, one that was usually heavily fought over by large forces in the upper realm. If he were in another area, he would have never considered doing it. But considering how isolated this zone was, he was confident he would find it.

The first challenge he met wasn’t in the monsters around, but in his weakened body. He was struggling to run fast in the first place. And after running for half an hour, he started to pant heavily. It was a very weak state; he never felt even back in the lower realm.

He didn’t need to test his spirit power to know he didn’t have much, way lower than what he had when he came back to this life.

Out of breath, he stopped and rested for another half an hour. During which, he started to look for the ore he needed, while meeting tons of shadow monsters around.