Shortly into the fight, I ran into a problem.

Whilst dodging the battle puppet’s attacks, I took an opportunity to stab into the closest puppet and the battle puppet grabbed ahold the spear attempting to prevent me from removing it.

The cooperating puppets launched immediate attacks and I jumped backward abandoning the weapon in the puppet’s body.

The puppet pierced by the spear died shortly afterward, but the remaining puppets blocked my access to the weapon.

Without the opportunity to retrieve my spear, I was forced to utilize God-hunter once again despite having only handled a dozen or so puppets.

Although I had been hoping to last longer with the spear, the strategy was going to fail soon or later. The puppet’s physical defenses had been condensing and recently had been requiring more strength to pierce through and deal damage.

Soon or later, I would’ve been forced to swap over to God-hunter regardless. The amount of hits required to destroy their soul had been increasing significantly. I had only been hoping to last a little longer with the spear.

Sadly, it would be too time consuming to retrieve the weapon in battle.

Reacting quickly, I charged toward the remaining puppets.

My previous strategy was mainly dodging and whittling down the puppets with quick strikes. At this point, my main goal was to kill them as quickly as possible. I directly used my physical strength to overwhelm their cooperation and slash through their bodies with God-hunter.

I could easily force my way through their defenses while they were weak. As long as I could finish one before the others had chance to react, cooperation was meaningless. The problem begins to occur when their physical strength is only slightly weaker than mine.

When the puppets can hold against my attacks for a second, their comrades can launch their own attacks and the situation becomes tricky.

The speed of puppet slaughter increased dramatically in comparison to before. I only need a single attack to deal with them and could directly ignore their retaliatory attacks. With my experience fighting against the puppets with equal strength and powerful cooperation, these little guys were easily dealt with.

Since their evolution seems to reset after leaving the arena, I don’t need to worry about holding back my trump cards. When I’m unable to fight the puppets any longer, I’ll see how far I can go while petrifying them.

I had the feeling that the answer would be not far enough. My earlier thoughts about the end condition being serious injuries should be wrong.

How could someone continue to undergo the next two trials if they were seriously injured?

In that case, the end condition should naturally be dealing with a sufficient number of puppets. Although I had no clue what a sufficient number would be.

Judging by my own experiences and complicated nature of this mountain, I doubted the reward would be low. I was hoping to pick up a low hanging fruit, but it appears I’ve run into a treasure trove.

After all, I’m having trouble clearing this place with my current strength and combat experience. In most situations, the higher the difficulty of a temple or heritage, the more likelihood it is to have powerful rewards.

Even the condition of having a weapon that attack the soul is difficult to meet. Even if the puppets have another weakness, it certainly wouldn’t be easy to find.

These various thoughts flashed through my head as I slaughtered the puppets before they had chance to react. I tried to defeat the puppets as they formed to prevent cooperation and other nonsensically movements from slow down my speed.

I stopped counting the number of puppets that had appeared and merely immersed myself in swiftly defeating them.

Time continued to pass by, and the speed at which the puppets were able to be defeated reduced dramatically.

Until, eventually, I found myself unable to defeat a single puppet.

Their strength had risen above my own. They moved faster and more agile than I could keep up with. I was simply unable to overwhelm them.

My early momentum had always managed to prevent them from cooperating by defeating them as they formed, but that disappeared when their strength had risen above my own. They had grown to the point that I couldn’t even beat a single puppet alone. Trying to fight four at the same time was simply impossible.

While the puppets avoided God-hunter like the plague, they cared little about avoiding any of my other attacks. When I tried to attack, the targeted puppet would skillfully avoid God-hunter.

If I left a single opening whilst I attacked, the puppet would charge forward to target the rest of my body. Otherwise it would simply retreat.

Attempt to trick them with fake moves did nothing, they completely ignore them. The puppets didn’t bother to avoid my attacks if I attacked with my fists or feet.

In had reached the point that I couldn’t even leave a nick on their bodies with God-hunter.

Additionally, the puppets stopped bothering to launch useless attacks. They had realized I regenerated from non-severe injuries almost instantly and only bothered to launch attacks that would cause severe injuries or interrupt my movements.

While severe injuries also recovered in a short time, it was considerable longer than minor injuries. A severe injury would last thirty seconds or so, and that was enough time to throw me out of the arena.

I also had to conscious of the arena’s boundaries.

Their recent attacks and movements were made with the goal of forcing me out of the arena. I only realized that fact when a previous puppet sacrificed himself in an attempt to push me out of the arena.

The trial would reset and considered a loss if I was thrown out of the arena, and I had a feeling the battle puppets understood that.

Moving around the edge of the arena, I dodged the attacks of the two puppets targeting me.

While I knew their goal was to push me out of the arena, if I tried to move closer to the center all four puppets would rush to attack at the same time. If I stuck to the edge, only one or two puppets attempted to push me out of the combat field.

While it was possible this was due to the limited room available at the edge of the arena, it might be an intentional strategy on their behalf to encourage me to stick to the arena’s edges. There was no way I would be able kill one of them in a fight against all four puppets. All my time would be spent on avoiding their attacks.

Even if I knowing they were digging a pit to trick me to the edge of the arena, I had to jump in otherwise I would simply be spending all my time dodging their attacks and be without a chance to win.

Only fighting against two of the puppets at the same time was there a possibility I might succeed in killing one of them.

How many more waves of puppets could there be? There shouldn’t be too many.

When I successfully kill one of these puppets, I’ll rely on my petrifying gaze and unnoticed ability to quickly slaughter the rest.

A puppet lunged toward me, launching another suicide attack to push me out of the arena. I nicked the suicidal puppet in the arm as I swiftly dodged.

The other puppet noticed an opportunity and attempted to take advantage of my overextended position to push me out of the arena.

I launched petrifying gaze and stopping him, before turning my gaze to the other battle puppets.

My counterattack immediately showed results.

All the remaining puppets had turned to stone.

Taking advantage of their petrified forms, I began to destroy them. Soon the puppets were reformed and promptly petrified.

Since I had utilized this secret weapon, I planned to go as far as I can with it.

…four, eight, sixteen, the number of puppets petrified then destroyed rose geometrically. I began to feel numb as I realized I had been nowhere close to completely dealing with the puppets and beating the first room.

When a hundred puppets had been killed by this method, it began to take longer and longer for the puppets to completely turn into stone.

When the hundred and fiftieth battle puppet had destroyed by this method, the puppets completely resisted the petrification and no longer turned into stone.

The situation had completely reverted back to where I was before. While the puppet’s strength and speed were the same as before I had begun to petrify them, their resistance to my petrification ability had grown to the point that it couldn’t influence them in the slightest.

I could basically confirm from this that the battle puppets evolved based on the opponent’s actions. As their strength and agility had not been improving in a fixed manner based on the number of waves cleared.

How could anyone beat this? This was simply impossible. Maybe Rin or someone else from Hell Difficulty could complete it, but the trial seemed to go on forever without an endpoint. The battle puppets simply and continuously got stronger. Evolving in a manner that targeted the weakness utilized to defeat the previous puppets.

While I had been excited about the difficulty of Mt Tai’s trial beforehand, now I only felt numb at the thought of completing the trial.

The puppet’s physical strength and agility hadn’t chance that much, but I had to go all out to kill a single puppet before releasing my petrifying gaze. The moral allowing me to go fight my hardest was based on the thought that the trial was almost over.

Knowing that the trial is probably nowhere close to being over, I didn’t manage to sustain myself for much longer and was quickly knocked out of the arena by the puppets.

After getting knocked out the arena, the puppets vanished and the weak initial puppet returned.

Thinking about how they had managed to evolve in a manner prevented my petrifying gaze, I realized the terrifying nature of battle puppets.

At the same time, I began to realize exactly how amazing God-hunter and how lucky I was to have her.

In the face of an evolving enemy that is constantly strengthening themselves, she could continuously and easily breaks through their soul defenses and devours their souls.

I seriously doubted the battle puppets stopped trying to improve their soul defenses.

In these circumstances, it was the biggest weakness that I was taking advantage of to beat them. Similar to their petrification resistance near the end, the battle puppet’s soul defense had definitely reached a terrifying level.

Yet, God-hunter could still easily devour their souls with a single nick into their bodies.

It was actually terrifying in a way.

Actually Dad, they’re just useless. Their defenses can be easily overwhelmed with slight force. They souls are too small and weak, not anywhere near enough soul power to defend themselves.

Is that so…?

I had a feeling God-hunter was being modest, but didn’t feel like arguing with her. Considering the spear also damaged the soul had nearly stopped working after killing approximately a dozen puppet, the idea that their soul defenses were terrible and worthless seemed implausible.

More likely, God-hunter was exceedingly efficient at attacking their souls.