The Prairie Bear wasn't going easy on William. It immediately began drawing in moonlight energy to create its armor. The shield formed even faster than before as the sun went down further.
So, it gets stronger the later it is at night. William awed at the powerful ability of this beast. He quickly weaved together a series of Intermediate Barrier Arrays, giving him some time to study his opponent better.
The students were surprised. "He can use Arrays! Maybe he isn't just talk." a girl looked at William with interest.
A nearby boy was jealous that William was taking the attention of the girl he liked. "Those are just Intermediate Arrays. My Ice Magic would break through them in an instant."
"Hmm, okay..." the girl wasn't convinced.
The Prairie Bear saw the Arrays, but didn't rush to break them. Instead, it used the opportunity to draw in even more moonlight energy.
Elder Wen noticed William's mistake the second the first Array was created. He decided to give the young man a helpful tip. "The Prairie Bear's defense will increase the longer you allow it to gain moonlight. It's best you end the fight quickly or find a way to disrupt it."
William also realized his mistake. He didn't want to look stupid on his first impression, so he spent a Potential Point and asked the System. How can I disrupt the Prairie Bear's ability?
-You have three simple options. Unleash an attack that instantly kills the beast, use the Light Element to blind the Prairie Bear and disrupt its concentration, or perform a targeted attack on the center of its underbelly where the moonlight energy is at its weakest.
William read the information quickly and made his decision. He created an Intermediate Array of Confinement to temporarily restrict the Prairie Bear's movement, then adjusted his speed to the early Foundation Establishment Realm and rushed at the beast.
As the Prairie Bear broke free from the Array, William pulled a knife out of his Space Ring and stabbed the location that the System described.
The moonlight dissipated instantly, and the Prairie Bear howled in pain despite not receiving any injuries. It seemed the moonlight ability took a great toll on its mind.
The spectators were completely dumbfounded by this development. "What did he do? The energy just disappeared, is the Prairie Bear a paid actor?"
Elder Wen was pleasantly surprised by William's extensive combat experience. William had even discovered at a glance a weakness of the Prairie Beast that Elder Wen didn't find out about until he was in his late thirties.
William created another Confinement Array to seal the Prairie Bear's movement a second, third, and fourth time while he delivered a quick strike to the back of each leg similar to Kori's method. The Prairie Bear was quickly disabled, and William didn't hesitate to commit another strike to the Prairie Bear's throat, killing the beast.
-Defeated Prairie Bear: +3 Potential Points
-Defeated a Magical Beast with an Innate Ability. [Moonlight Armor] has been added to the Passive Talent Pool.
William was pleasantly surprised by the second System message. So he could gain even more Talents by defeating beasts with Innate Abilities, nice! He earned 4 Potential Points from the Prairie Bear too, if he counted the bonus for discovering the beast, so it was a overall a good haul.
On the other end, the disciples were speechless. In the time it took Kori to get knocked around like a sandbag, William had already killed the Prairie Bear. He made it look like a piece of cake, as if he had done it thousands of times before. If the others knew this was William's first time fighting a Prairie Bear, they would probably curse their bad luck for not being born with such amazing talent.
"It wasn't even a fight..." Kori said in a daze. He didn't expect William to be so strong.
Even Glen was surprised. He could tell that William was special, but his performance was well above what he expected. William could almost compare to a ranker in the top 100, even though he was clearly just a new disciple.
Elder Wen clapped his hands. "Well done young man. I remember you said before that you're a new disciple, what is your name?"
The disciples that didn't know William was new to the Sect were amazed once again. "Wait...does that mean he isn't even a Cultivator?" the disciples whispered amongst themselves. If William wasn't a Cultivator, that meant his combat power was even more impressive than they first imagined.
"My name is William, Elder." he replied respectfully and in a calm manner.
"William...well you don't know this but I usually provide benefits for those who complete my challenges. As a reward for your stellar performance, I will gift you the 100 Contribution Points that I took away from disciple Kori." he gave an amiable smile while Kori passed out from anger and regret.
William thanked the Elder, then went back to his seat. Elder Wen brought out another Prairie Bear and gave a few other disciples a chance to gain experience. William watched as the disciples used many unique abilities he hadn't seen before to fight.
One boy used a bow and shot beams of condensed lightning at the Prairie Bear's eyes to prevent it from using the moonlight ability, while a girl used some sort of charming technique to lower the Prairie Bear's guard.
Besides these two, one more boy wearing a dark-red leather jacket and modern-style pants defeated the Prairie Bear, but he only used a single stroke of the sword to cut off its head in the blink of an eye, making the disciples forget all about William's past performance.
The unknown boy gave William a quick glance after killing the Prairie Bear as if he was issuing a silent challenge, then returned to his seat while the disciples looked at him in awe. Many girls even asked the boy where he was going after the lecture, making William roll his eyes.
This is just like high school. he complained but didn't actually mind the environment. Besides the unknown boy, these kids didn't look like a challenge for him, so William wasn't worried about any games they might play.
The lecture ended shortly after. William began to walk back to his residence, but was stopped when Glen called out to him.
"Hey William, what are you going to do now?" Glen asked.
"What do you mean? I'm going to sleep of course, it's almost midnight." William didn't expect the lecture to go on for almost four hours, and was exhausted.
Glen realized it was indeed quite late for a non-Cultivator to be awake. "Well alright, but I was going to ask if you wanted to go to the Night Market with me and some friends. We could really use a guy with good perception like you."
William almost laughed at the perception part. Even the System that was normally silent made an odd robotic noise that sounded somewhat like a snort.
"I'll have to decline for tonight, sorry." William didn't know what the Night Market was, but it sounded ominous and he was too tired to be dragged off into potential trouble when he just entered the Sect.
Glen showed a disappointed look, but understood.
"Maybe tomorrow then? It starts around nine o'clock, so you'll have plenty of time for rest."
"Yeah, maybe. I'll keep you posted." William said farewell to Glen then headed towards his residence.
He fiddled with the keys again as he wasn't used to the functions yet, then entered the room and laid flat on his stomach in the bed.
Ughh, what a pain in the ass. William had done nothing but run around the past few days. Outside of his brief unconsciousness this morning after his fight with the Rhio Family, William had not slept in almost twenty hours. For a normal human being, that was too long to be awake. Fınd the newest release on NoveI★Fire.net
Hopefully tomorrow isn't this messy. William thought to himself as his consciousness sank into a deep sleep.