"Ha-ha! Foolish, so foolish! Thought you were clever, didn’t you? But oh no, no, no! You made the wrong move! Took the wrong step! Now look at you! Tripped over your own feet, caught in your own trap! Ha-ha! I saw it coming, yes I did, but did you? Nooo!" Parroting the Wise.

Shadow Manipulation has already gone up a level. It is easier to open the door and manipulate the Shadow with my new understanding, so it went up a level.

My goal is to sense what is in shadow. Normally, I would say that both light and shadow don’t go through solid objects, but my Shadow Phase and Spectral Vision (Seethru) both give the lie to that.

I … I might have stumped myself with sensing in shadows. I mean, there are some ideas. If I open the shadow door, can I sense what is not shadow there? Possibly, but I have no idea how especially when the door is not next to me.

I could use Eclipse and send out a shadow pulse that is barely visible … no Shadows absorb. They don’t project. Eclipse is absorbing everything in a certain space… actually, Eclipse is only absorbing light. Could I adjust it to perhaps absorb heat and maybe matter as well? That is an interesting idea. I am definitely going to work on that.

I have a Death Strike and a Holy Strike, but I don’t have a Light Strike, or a Shadow Strike. Why not?

The other thing this new understanding affects is my Helping Hand. It can take Shadow Form. I use the Death form a lot but not so much the Shadow or Light. I create my Shadow Hand and examine it with all my senses. I can feel it with Shadow Manipulation; there is much Synergy there. Shadow Absorbs: This is how I can move a small, enclosed object through a wall. It takes it into the shadow realm. The more interesting thing is that it also brings it back.

What if I didn’t bring something back but left it there? I try with a small piece of bark, but when I stop enclosing it with my hand, it is still here in this realm. That is because it belongs here. It is corporeal.

What if I move it through another object and open my hand to make it corporeal while it is still inside another object? I grab the bark again, move it through a twig, and then release it.

SNAP!

Everybody jumped. It wasn’t that loud, but I forgot everybody was tense.

“Sorry,” I whispered, “Experimenting.”

I got a lot of dirty looks. It is getting lighter, so we will be moving soon.

What I had was a mess of mangled wood in front of me. That was just a small piece of bark and a twig, and it mangled both. The damage was large in proportion to the items, and the items were similar in strength. What would a stone in the flesh do? Or an arrowhead with Death Poison? This was a powerful weaponising of a utility tool.

Can I use my Shadow Hand to open the door to the Shadow Realm and, say, absorb all the heat? The answer is … maybe, eventually. That will need work. It looks like it is absorbing some light, so we should work on increasing that first. Making a skill function too far outside its intention will not work. If I am lucky, I will be offered a new skill for that function. This is what happened with my Create Traps Skill.

I look through my Storage. I don’t have any arrowheads or stones. What I do have plenty of is claws and teeth. I am sure the trial will give me a beast to experiment with soon.

Alistern soon gave the command to move out.

I might have been a little distracted. I was playing with my Hand and Eclipse. Eclipse absorbs all light suddenly and for a short period. Can it also absorb the heat and flash freeze? It is a sudden skill. I am trying to add Umbral Cold to Eclipse.

This was a bad idea in a Trial. In a Trial, you have to be aware of your surroundings. This is a mistake I was constantly pulling the Students up on, and now I am making the same mistake. I hear Alistern’s warning too late.

A wooden shaft slammed through my rib cage and destroyed a lung on the way. I spun and went down on my knees, coughing up blood and finding it very hard to breathe.

With my perception, I saw the others duck similar shafts and hacking at vines. Joe had his massive steel shield out, and several guards had smaller shields.

I just sat and sprayed blood on the branch I was kneeling on. Joe moved in front of me with his Shield to give me some protection. Everybody was too busy to help me, and we had no dedicated healer whose job was to keep us alive.

Rob was confused and sticking near me. He used his Tail to smash a shaft away and his Crushing Bite on a vine.

I eventually remembered to Shadow Phase and remove the shaft. I poured a healing potion directly into the wound, spilling most of it. I drank a second for good measure.

The forest lit up. This was serious if Norm, our fire mage, was going all out regardless of the consequenses. It's probably a plant-type creature.

Stolen story; please report.

Shit. I was a sitting target, and I couldn’t really move. And it was my own fault.

Remember, Trials are out to kill you. Always remember that! I forgot about it, and now I am paying the price. The trial doesn’t want to reward you. They want you dead. Head in the game. You have to fight for every reward you can squeeze out of the trial.

I pulled out a Shield for my good side, so I had some defence. I was not going to be of any use in this fight, so my job was just to stay alive.

Minor Regeneration was working hard and adding to the pain. I expanded Rejuvenating Aura. This is going to take a while to heal, even with the strong potions I took. This is where a good Combat Medic is useful. Patching people up to get back in the fight or at least get moving again.

I can’t bandage my ribs. I can’t move. I hide myself with Spectral Cloak and create a copy of myself two meters to my left. It is the only defence I have right now, besides Rob, who is Camouflaged next to me.

The fight has moved forward, and all hands are needed. I needed some defence as scavengers could be attracted to the fighting and/or opportunistic thieves. Plenty of people would slit my throat and take everything they could. I would. I wouldn’t bother with the slitting of the throat, but taking what was left lying around is certainly my thing.

It turns out it is not just my thing. My perception caught a flash of wings, but there was no sound. The wings were green with red feathers underneath. It landed on the other side of my copy and went into camouflage, and I could only track it with the slight disconnect between it and the background with my Observant Eye. My Spectral Vision (Heat) saw it fine.

It was a type of parrot. I was not an expert on parrots, but it was large, almost half a metre long. It was olive green, and the tail and outer wings were a dull blue. There were red, or maybe orange feathers under its wing.

I guess I am the bait for the trap. The question is, do I have the energy to spring the trap?

I decided to Identify the parrot. I was not getting any dangerous vibes from him. A Kea parrot. I had never heard of it. I need to upgrade my Identify skill so I get more information from it. The Kea definitely had Air Manipulation, as it was trying something on the copy and puzzled as to what was there or perhaps not there.

It spread its wings and hopped closer, but it used its wings rather than walk. I am getting a hint that it has some sort of noise-reduction ability for its wings.

I moved my hand slightly to get the whip handle ready. This was a long bullwhip, not a short multi-pronged whip. I needed the length. It was made from a sticky lizard tongue from Slyhill.

I waited for the parrot to try to grab something from a pocket. I was very surprised when I recognised the skill—it used the pickpocket skill. I would recognise that anywhere. That meant I was late flicking the whip. It hurt to do it anyway.

Fortunately, Rob was not so slow, and his tongue flicked out. It connected with the bird and started to drag it towards us. I figured it had Poison Resistance, so the saliva would not kill it immediately. The Kea tried to get away, and several feathers came out as it spread its wings. My whip connected then and wrapped around a wing, bringing it back down.

Something cut the whip, but Rob had pounced and trapped it under one of his suction paws. It twisted its head to peck the paw and that must have been a Skill or something as the paw was significantly damaged.

I rolled over there as I was not really up to standing, and it froze as Lightreaver stopped a millimetre from its eye.

It squawked, “Mine. Mine. Mine.”

“What’s yours?” I asked.

It twisted awkwardly and tried to grab Lightreaver in its beak.

I turned it and tapped its head with the side of the blade, “No, Lightreaver is mine,” I said.

“Mine, Mine. Mine!” it squawked.

“No, it is mine.” I repeated, “You stole from us.” I accused.

It looked at me like I was an idiot.

“I don’t mind that,” I said. “I have stolen from many others, but the thing is, you got caught and caught by an invalid.”

It looked up at Rob, and then looked at me and squawked, “Liar. Liar. Liar”

“Rob and I count as the same person. He is my Summons. The thing is, I think we could make a good team.”

“Liar. Liar. Liar.”

“I am going to get Rob to let you go shortly.” The parrot's head cocked to look at me. “If you steal from us again, I will catch you, and you will be killed. However, you could bond with me, and we could make a good team.”

There was a mocking, jeering squawking.

“I will catch you. Do you want to brave this Trial on your own? You led the Woodpeckers to us, didn’t you? You couldn’t even handle them. However, if you join me, then you join this team. They will protect us.”

The bird looked pointedly at my wounded side and chirped derisively. That told me it was probably more intelligent than it was letting on.

“Where are they now?” I asked. “They are killing the plant monster that is too much for you or me. There are more benefits.” I pulled Lightreaver back and stabbed it in the tree branch we were standing on. “Lightreaver here is soul-bound to me. If you want Lightreaver, then you have to bond with me. I also have Storage. Do you want somewhere to store your loot? We will be stealing, and we will be stealing a lot, but not from our team. I have the Pilferer Advanced Class and Light and Shadow affinities.”

The bird looked very interested now.

“There is a problem, though,” I said. “I bring all of this to the bond. What do you bring? I don’t want a junior partner. I want an equal partner.” I backed away. “Let him go, Rob.”

Rob removed his paw and backed away, then reactivated his adaptive camouflage. The bird got to its feet, shook itself, and stretched its wings. It didn’t fly away but just stood there looking at me. It cocked its head in thought.

It shook its feathers again and poked at some of the missing feathers with its beak.

It finally squawked, “I have some, I have some. Not equal. Not equal, but some. Wait here,” and it flew away.