The trial started, cracks forming on the statue as Medusa's body emerged from the stone. Its eyes lit up a bright red that was barely visible even through the fog, which made William's task of locating the creature much easier.
He activated the series of Arrays while controlling six improved Array Puppets to attack it head-on. William controlled the remaining four Array Puppets to form a line in front of him, linking their arms together as a Perfect Barrier Array was erected, acting as a shield for William.
This Barrier Array was one of William's additions to the improved Array Puppets that resulted from his years of experience in the Array simulation during his upgrade. The biggest bonus was that this Array was able to move with the Puppets, allowing William to remain both mobile and safe during a fight.
He stored the Mana Gathering Staff and Sword of Shifting Sands in his Space Ring, bringing out the Starmetal Bow and nocking a poison-tipped arrow.
His Life Sense was active the entire fight, allowing him to clearly see Medusa as it spat corrosive fluid, narrowly missing an Array Puppet. He aimed in the snake's general direction, his fingers releasing their grip on the arrow as it flew through the air at great speed and pierced Medusa's thick hide.
Medusa hissed in pain, turning its head to face William just as another arrow embedded itself in the snake's nose.
William was in the process of nocking a third arrow when he accidentally made eye contact with Medusa. He quickly averted his eyes, but his fingers and toes had already turned numb.
His Regeneration Talent was completely useless in this scenario, since he hadn't actually taken any damage. Instead, it was the Earth Element that helped him resist the effects of the petrification, the Earth Mana clashing with a special type of Earth Mana that Medusa had released from its eyes.
He kept his distance from Medusa as he reversed the petrification process, then fired off two more arrows in quick succession the moment his fingers were no longer restricted.
The snake looked at the arrows as they flew toward it, turning the arrowheads into a blunt stone that bounced off Medusa's scales. It tried to do the same to a third arrow that was shot in its direction, but it was interrupted by an Array Puppet that stabbed into its side with the Epic Glaive.
It swept its tail left and right, knocking the Array Puppet off its feet and dodging a second Puppet that was wielding the Twin Starmetal Shortswords. A staff extended from a few meters away and smacked the Array Puppet on the nose, forcing its head downward right before it spat more corrosive fluid at the Shortsword Puppet.
William controlled an Array Puppet that wasn't holding a weapon to accept the Starmetal Bow and some arrows from him, then retrieved the Mana Gathering Staff and the Sword of Shifting Sands, opting to stick to Magic attacks while his Array Puppets handled the rest.
The poison from his first couple of arrows seemed to have little effect, but William wasn't pressured too much by Medusa. Over the last week, William had gained a ton of combat experience from fighting with different artificial Magical Beasts of the Golden Core Realm or higher, allowing him to quickly adapt to any situation.
The trap floors assisted William's reaction time, allowing him to plan further ahead when dodging attacks. His S-Rank Reflexes was an incredible asset, but he had a shallow understanding of how to actually use the Talent.
It wasn't just about dodging an attack in the nick of time. It also depended highly on planning out how to dodge the second attack while he was still in the process of dodging the first. He struggled with this before, but now William was able to dodge successive attacks with ease.
To showcase this, William controlled both his own body and that of the four Puppets protecting him to dash to the left, dodging a stream of corrosive fluid. Previously, William would have been struck by the follow-up tail swipe, but he made sure to always keep his attention on Medusa and had plenty of time to jump with his Puppets over the attack.
Since William was in a comfortable situation and he knew there would be additional trials immediately following this one, he used the fight to gain better experience with his other Elements that he had already displayed before.
He controlled Mana of the Earth Element to form a tall pillar of earth that stretched from the ground until it hit the ceiling. Once it was fully formed, William controlled a branch to form on the pillar at the halfway mark, extending straight outward until it was twenty meters long.
William fed Mana of the Plant Element into the Earth Pillar and its branch, reinforcing the spell with wood until he believed it was solid enough to withstand two full strikes from the snake.
Medusa noticed that William was casting a spell it had never seen before, but it didn't seem threatening to it focused on the Array Puppets nearby. It swept its tail back and forth, catching the Glaive Puppet off guard and slamming it into the wall. The Puppet slumped downward, the knee joints heavily damaged and unable to move.
While the Glaive Puppet waited for an Array to heal its injuries, the Starmetal Bow Puppet released four arrows in succession at Medusa, aiming for the eyes while it avoided looking toward the snake.
Even though the Puppet wasn't living and it didn't have eyes, if the information shared by the Puppet reached William while it was looking at Medusa, he would still be affected.
He continued feeding Mana into the spell, the branches extending throughout the entire floor as it slowly reduced Medusa's freedom of movement. By the time the spell was completed, the floor was covered with hundreds of wood-covered earth pillars, trapping Medusa in a space of less than a hundred square meters while it still fought with the Array Puppets.
-Developed a complex new Spell: +5 PP
-New Spell: Nature's Exile Follow current novels on n͟o͟v͟e͟l͟f͟i͟r͟e͟.net
That cost me over two hundred Mana, but the effects are well worth it. William evaluated the effects thoroughly. Against a slightly weaker opponent that was large in size, William could probably trap them for hours in this manner.
Even when outside of a building, William could make use of this spell to surround a large Magical Beast to prevent it from running away.
Medusa hissed in anger at William's cowardly move, slamming its tail against the Nature's Exile with little impact. Since its movements were restricted, the amount of power it could put into swinging its tail was greatly reduced. This meant that it would take the snake four or five hits just to break a single pillar, and there were hundreds of them in close proximity.
As long as William continued feeding Mana into the spell, the snake would have no chance of escaping.
It tried to slither through a hole that was large enough to fit its head, but William had been planning this the entire time. The moment that Medusa entered the gap, William sealed off the exit with two pillars and the path in front of the snake with just a single pillar, perfectly trapping the snake.