William stayed at the top of the cliff for five full days. During these five days, he both trained himself and watched the following events. By now, close to a hundred human corpses and more than a hundred creature corpses had piled up in the clearing below. But each time a group of lucky creatures would come and eat the flesh of these corpses. William smiled now that a few apprentices had wised up and fled back after seeing such a sight. It was time for him to go down.

Sometimes he would shoot a few arrows from the top of the cliff and kill a few wounded creatures, but he could not take the ears of any of them. He was afraid that if he was a little late, he wouldn't be the first. According to what Alyna said, he had to hunt five creatures a day to get into the top ten. Calculating that in months, he had to collect one hundred and fifty creature ears in that thirty-day period. William thought he could acquire at least seventy creature ears already after going down. This was because of