Chapter 147: Experimentation
Medusa spat corrosive fluid from its mouth, but William had planned for this as well. When its mouth opened to spit, a single earth pillar raised from the ground at a diagonal, shoving itself down the snake’s throat while poison corroded the top of the pillar.
William controlled the corroded part to detach from the rest, then continued forcing the earth pillar down the snake’s throat until it was unable to even spit corrosive fluid.
“Alright you danger noodle, stay still while I test a few things out.” William said as he called Mana of the Fire Element to his fingertips.
Instead of forming the usual fireball or giant fireball, William elongated the Fire Mana until it had created a long flaming javelin. He threw the flame javelin with great speed at the scaly hide of Medusa, the System Message notifying him of the creation of another new spell.
The flame javelin crashed against the scales of Medusa, bursting into flames that spread across its body as it impacted.
The snake howled in pain as the fire spread, but it went out on its own after just a few seconds since it couldn’t pierce the scales.
Hmm…I need to use another Element when forming the javelin. The fire can add as support.
William tried again, this time creating a javelin with the Earth Element and coating it with fire. He threw the spear, which pierced Medusa’s scales but still didn’t have a long-lasting effect. It seemed the fire still didn’t have any combustible material to devour in order to spread and grow stronger.
Since the Earth Javelin was embedded in Medusa, the fire couldn’t spread past it and enter the snake’s body.
One more time. William thought as he conjured a third javelin much to Medusa’s horror, this time of the Plant Element. He ignored the snake’s tearful gaze as he used the Life Element to absorb most of the vitality from the Plant Javelin, only leaving a small amount so that the fire didn’t instantly consume the javelin.
He finished it off by coating the very tip of the javelin with the Earth Element for sharpness. The third javelin was thrown, embedding itself into Medusa’s side while the fire raged on, seemingly with a mind of its own.
The fire eventually climbed its way into the wound of the snake, but the effects of the fire instantly cauterized the wound, increasing the snake’s pain, but reducing the amount of overall damage it took.
Hmm… William entered deep thought as he tried to find a solution to the problem.
“That’s it!” an idea suddenly entered his brain.
He created the exact same javelin as before, but loaded the tip of the weapon with a pointy shell of the Earth Element that was filled with gunpowder. Instead of setting the entire javelin ablaze, William just lit the back end, then threw the javelin at the snake’s side.
The javelin still pierced the scales with ease, even though the tip had slightly less penetration power than before. The fire rushed down the javelin until it connected with the Earth Element tip, igniting the gunpowder. William shielded his eyes with his hand, already knowing what would come next.
BOOM!
An explosion rang out, and chunks of Medusa’s flesh were scattered around the room.
William looked up to see Medusa was still alive, but a large portion of its body was missing and she was bleeding profusely. William decided to call Medusa “she” to pay homage to mythology from his old world, but he wasn’t truly sure what the gender of the snake was.
Either way, he felt a little bad for putting Medusa through such torture, but it was necessary to test these things out. What was he going to do, wait for some bandits to conveniently try to rob him every time he wanted to test out something new? Training dummies were only so useful, they couldn’t provide him this kind of information.
-Developed a complex new Spell: +5 PP
-New Spell: Explosive Javelin
William wasn’t yet done testing, much to Medusa’s dismay. He used the Earth Element to create many different metals, trying to figure out which was more Mana efficient compared to salt.
If he could help it, William wanted to avoid using the same choreographed attacks. One of those such attacks was his habit of using saltwater to conduct the Lightning Element through the bodies of his enemies.
He noted down the Mana cost of each metal, deciding to use tin in the future since he knew it was highly conductive while still being somewhat easy to create. Next, William used the Earth Element to raise two pillars of tin from the ground on opposite sides of the snake, then controlled the Lightning Element to target one pillar, then jump to the next.
Unfortunately, his plan completely failed. He thought the Lightning would pass through Medusa on the way from one to the other, but it didn’t seem to work out that way. Instead, the Lightning curved around the body of the snake, choosing the path of least resistance to reach the tin pillar.
William didn’t spend too much time trying to make this spell work, so he moved on after a few attempts. Clearly his understanding of the Lightning Element wasn’t as good as he believed. After all, it was only a C-Rank Element at the moment, and he didn’t have enough Potential Points to raise it to S-Rank yet.
He didn’t even consider raising it to A-Rank, since that would just be a waste of Potential Points when there were plenty of better things to spend them on.
Hmm, what else do I need to test? William looked through his Magic Affinities, bummed out that he couldn’t perform any tests with the Space, Time, Chaos, or other Affinities that were Rare or greater. Any use of these Elements would be too high-profile and might garner unwanted attention from the trial creator.
It was better to continue playing it safe and limit his enemies to those that were of his same generation.
William did a few other tests with the Wind and Ice Elements, creating a few other custom Spells that would definitely be a huge help in the future, then proceeded to test more of his Weapon and Physical Talents.
By the time he was done, two hours had passed, and Medusa had almost died of blood loss. William scrolled back to the top of his Status Panel before closing it, mostly out of habit, but something small and seemingly insignificant caught his eye while he scrolled past it.
He scrolled back down, his eyes narrowing as he read a specific line of text that he hadn’t noticed before.
———
INFO: ( – )
-Name: William
-Race: Human
-Age: 37
-Lifespan: 240 Years (Excellent physical health)
———
37 years old? Is that a typo? William wondered.
He scrolled back in the System Messages, looking for anything that might have happened while he was asleep. It wasn’t hard to find a specific series of messages that repeated itself sixteen times.
-Your Regeneration Talent has triggered a side effect: +1 Age
William touched his face to find a fully grown beard that extended a few inches below his jawline.
“I’m old now?!?”
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