Rigel killed the mantises and disappeared as easy as always. This time William was to busy focusing on the three leftover mantises to focus on Rigel.

William had learnt that there were many different advantages one could have in combat, and numbers was definitely a good advantage to have. This didn't mean that William believed that it would be too difficult dealing with the three mantises, but he wasn't a barbarian who rushed in without any plan.

Not that the now three furious mantises would give William the time he needed.

William felt his heart start beating faster as he saw the mantises rush him. There was small distance difference between the mantises which could be exploited, this combined with the information from the previous combat encounter was enough to make him come up with a rudimentary plan.

William rushed towards the closest mantis to quickly deal with it before the two others arrived.

He let out a stab making the mantis dodge backwards instead of shifting it's position like the previous mantis liked doing. This backstep that the mantis did, not only made Williams strike miss but also shrank the distance between it and the second mantis. Worst of all was that after that, instead of moving forward the first mantis stopped moving, giving the other two other mantises time to approach.

William had to remake his plan after seeing how the mantises seemed to be somewhat aware of how to use their greater number to their advantage. This wasn't something he had thought them able to do. Rigel had said that they were dumb and that their basic strategy was to swarm their enemy, something William had confirmed with the first soldier mantis that he had fought.

Williams quickly made a new plan after learning that they were aware of basic group combat tatics. The new plan wasn't that different from his first plan but it did take into account the mantises more defensive nature while waiting for their allies.

William used his movement technique to enter combat with the unmoving mantis. William let out a horizontal slash with enough strength to force the mantis to block with both of its arms. With both of the mantis's arms in a deadlock with Williams sword this gave William the opportunity to kick the mantis.

William held nothing back, using Qi to strengthen his kick. The kick was strong enough to flung the mantis backwards. William didn't kick the mantis in a random direction. He had kicked the mantis in the direction of the closest mantis with enough force that they crashed into each other.

William used this opportunity to dash towards the third mantis while the two other were entangled.

William let out a feint stab to make the mantis dodge, which it immediately do. William had correctly guessed that the mantises would fight more defensively to try and buy time to let the other mantises group up with them.

William followed the dodge with his real attack. A horizontal slash directed toward the legs of the mantis. Because of the body structure and movement of the mantises they would expose the lower parts of their legs while backing up quickly. The Qi infused sword artifact was powerful enough to cut of both of the front limbs as it struck true.

The loss of the lower part of the mantis front legs made it lean forward. This movement and the sudden loss of balance made it lower it's arms just enough to show a weakness, it's big black eyes were exposed. William wouldn't have enough time to bring up his sword before the mantis raised it's arms to block this newly exposed weakness so he decided to attack with his knife.

Williams knife was not a powerful weapon, it's only good quality being durable, he doubted it would even be enough to pierce the weak exoskeleton of the mantis but it would be enough for this.

The mantis let out a very short shriek as Williams knife and even hand plunged into the big eye, splashing a syrupy fluid and blood over Williams left arm and part of his body.

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The other mantises were now free and were rushing towards William. William was forced to let go of his knife as it had gotten stuck inside the skull of the mantis and he doubted he would like fighting two now very furious mantises while being worn down from carrying their friend, even if it could have been used as a good shield.

William moved backwards waiting for a moment as the mantis were forced to split slightly to dodge the recently deceased mantis. William used his movement technique to instantly move to the side of the mantis that had moved to the left of the dead mantis. This gave him the largest distance possible from one of the living mantis while still being able to attack the other mantis.

William let out a slash similar to the one that had killed the first soldier mantis that he had fought with. This time the mantis was quick enough to raise it's arm to block the blow, even if it came with the cost of losing its right arm as the angle of attack made it unable to properly defend against the strike with the scythe part of its arm.

Following up with a stab through its head ended this mantis without any difficulty. The last remaining mantis let out a hiss as it quickly closed the distance and started attacking fervently. William had assumed it before but this also confirmed his theory that when alone the mantis would forgo any real defense to focus on attacking. Whether this was because of grief from losing all of its group or if it was something more instinctual as a last resort to kill or hurt the target William didn't know.

William easily blocked the strikes even if they came as quickly as the mantis could attack. William wanted to continue fighting but combat with a single mantis wasn't as exciting now after fighting three of them at the same time. William quickly ended the fight with a slash that hacked off the mantis's head when a gap in its attack showed itself.

Neither Victor nor Rigel made their appearance even after the last mantis had fallen. William tried to find them before giving up and taking Rigels advice he searched the environment for any track of them.

William quickly gave up. Not because he didn't have the patience for it but rather because the blood and especially the eye fluid from the first mantis he killed started bothering him as it stuck in him in a way he quickly started finding disgusting. As much as he liked fighting, he was still the young master of a clan, this was the first time he was so covered in blood and other fluids.

"Alright you can come out, I want to wash myself as soon as possible."

Both Victor and Rigel appeared on each side of him before Rigel went to deal with the bodies and Victor made a movement with his hand as if he tried to blow some air in Williams face.

"I will deal with it this time but you should learn some techniques to clean yourself after the journey. It's not really a problem in a outright fight but if you are wandering inside a some Qi beasts territory or a danger zone then your own smell will attract more sensitive creatures. If you are covered in blood then you might as well scream that you are there and ready to be lunch for some hungry creature."

Rigel quickly moved to them before asking William if he didn't want to retrieve his knife. William quickly remembered what had happened, he was not really a dual wielding so he never really used his knife in combat and had kind of forgotten about his knife after abandoning it in the heat of combat.

William realized that the mantis he had left his knife in was one of the ones Rigel had decided to not do anything with. Victor similarly retrieved the two mantis corpses that William had killed last while ignoring the mantis with the knife inside its eye.

William hadn't really thought of it while being in the middle of combat but now that he was calmer he wasn't very eager to retrieve the knife. There was something distasteful about reaching inside the eye and head of the mantis. Looking at Rigel and Victor, William saw that they were patiently waiting for him.

He quickly steeled himself, thinking about it he had already had part of his arm inside the mantis when he punched it before, and besides this wasn't that different from dismantling the corpse, was it.

As it turned out, it was very different.

William knelt on the ground to be able to reach inside the eye. The smell wasn't different from what he had smelt while Rigel was teaching him how to dismantle yesterday. The difference began as he reached into the eye. There was a constant squishing sound as he started searching for his knife. Even through his gloves he felt the slight heat and the eye fluid, it quickly started to feel like it had penetrated the glove to cover his hand in meat that had half rotted into liquid. It didn't help that he wasn't able to move freely as the hole had seemingly collapsed after he had extracted his arm previously, forcing him to dig a bit before finding the handle of his knife.

He was forced to tug on the knife to try and free it which made the squelching sound worse but was eventually successful in extracting the knife.

William hadn't really felt anything when he had punctured the eye in the heat of battle, even after the battle was over he still didn't think that the eye fluid was disgusting but was more annoyed at it. But now after having to forced to plunge most of his arm into the eye to retrieve his knife there was an deep feeling of disgust. William swore that he would think about the consequences more before attacking in the future.