"Semi-spirits? What are these?!" William blinked, hearing the term for the first time.

"It’s the spirits that are on the path of being true spirits, yet they lack something. Be it their powers aren’t strong enough, or there ain’t empty seats yet at the spirit world. For different reasons, they stay in between our two worlds, while acting fiercer inside the human realm rather than in the spirit world."

"Hmm, so all of these weaklings are semi-spirits?" William slowly asked, motioning towards the endless waves of spirits coming at them, yet getting slaughtered by his monsters, "winning this war... What’s in it for you?"

William could see through the Fox’s nature. He wasn’t the type to trouble himself for a greater cause without securing big benefits in return.

"It’ll be good for me indeed," yet the Fox spirit refused to say anything, vaguely adding, "and anything good for me is always good for you. Let’s just win this war and kill those bastards, before we speak about the spoils of war."

The Fox spirit vanished next through the portal, leaving William alone behind.

"Fine," William shrugged after a few moments, "if you refuse to tell, then I’ll find the truth myself." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

He turned his eyes around, towards the semi-spirits the Fox spirits mentioned. If the Fox spirit didn’t want to tell him everything, then William would grab a few of those and interrogate them properly until he’d figure out the whole truth.

From another point, this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get to know more about the reality and secrets of the spirit world. So far, he knew almost nothing about that hidden realm. And he finally got a chance to learn everything he wanted.

The moment he set his gaze upon this point, he started to work upon it. He divided his one hundred monsters into two groups, one that consisted of eighty, surrounding him and portals, keeping everything safe.

And the second group was formed of twenty monsters, sending ten into the heart of the densely packed semi-spirits, grabbing a few and dragging them back inside the circle.

Then five of them would start torturing these semi-spirits, while William handled the questions. At first, he didn’t get anything, so he leaned to more violence, and instantly killed a few of the newly grabbed semi-spirits before the eyes of others to intimidate them.

Doing this proved to be quite effective. The semi-spirits started to talk, and what he heard was all new to him, and gradually he started to grow a shock of his life when he learnt the deeply buried secrets of the spirit world.

The first shocking thing he learnt was the source of all spirits, a thing that William never thought about before. He took spirits’ existence as something natural, like spirit power, like humans, like monsters. And yet, the semi-spirits spoke about a surprising side of the story.

All the spirits were initially either humans or monsters, reached the pinnacle of power in the upper realm and ascended to become spirits. Hearing this made the current state of power and struggle inside the spirit world reasonable. After all, the spirits supporting monsters were initially monsters, and the spirits supporting humans were originally humans.

On top of that, he learnt that the spirit world was like a higher realm of the upper realm. It felt like he was inside one of the lower realms, and wanted to ascend to the upper realm to become a spirit.

Aside from all this, the second shocking piece of news was the reason for the current fight. It was partially, as the Fox spirit said, the spirits in the Chaos camp attacked a few of the Order camp.

Yet the reason differed greatly. That spirit essence wasn’t something trivial; it was the symbol of the presence of an empty seat in the spirit world.

According to what these semi-spirits said, to ascend and become a spirit, one needed to have no equal in the spirit world. If a fox tried to ascend, for example, he wouldn’t succeed as there was already a fox spirit in the spirit world. So they needed to wait, living a life that was in between the two realms, the human and spirit worlds.

They would turn into semi-spirits. They weren’t that strong, as they would be considered as a failed ascension. They would wait for their chance for a spirit essence to appear, like now, then they would be very lucky to grasp that essence and use it to level and ascend.

Yet doing it this way wouldn’t keep the original form of the spirit. That explained why there wasn’t a single human spirit in the spirit world; they were all monsters, they all originated from ancient beings that dwelled these worlds aeons ago.

William was shocked, yet something clicked in his mind when he thought about this situation. The Mystic Arts were a secretive form of power that was initially controlled by the monsters, but then the humans learned it. He couldn’t help but think of the spirits the same way.

"If every spirit master reaches the pinnacle and ascends, would he end up turning into a monster to be a spirit? That’s absurd!!"

William didn’t accept that, and yet after interrogating tons of the semi-spirits, they all said the same tale. He couldn’t help but see the gaps in their story.

First and foremost, they spoke as if ascending to the upper realm was something trivial. Just looking at the Fox monster and how he tried so hard to ascend, and yet failing was evident over how impossible such a huge number of semi-spirits and spirits to exist.

Not to mention, in the Spirit Masters’ realm, there wasn’t something mentioned like this in all the long histories he had read and stumbled across in his past life.

This was a very big gap. Then it came down to how the spirits’ ascension originally worked. If not for the spirit essence, there wasn’t another way to ascend. And yet he didn’t accept that.