Alex noticed the birds coming down at a slower speed than before. They were more slowly gliding down toward him rather than at the teoric speed they had beforehand. Seeing that, he had a rather bad feeling about it all.
The eight different birds ca down toward him, and Alex dodged once again. But because the birds were slower than before, it did not matter that he had dodged. They managed to turn around at the last mont, making their way toward him at the sa constant speed. 'Shit!'
Realizing that he couldn't get out of it the way he wanted to now, Alex pulled out his sword and swung. In a single attack, he struck each of the eight birds at once, carving through them all together. The Spiritual Providence technique of his allowed his sword slash to carry with it a spiritual aspect to the attack, thus destroying the birds easily.
Once they were dead, Alex let his yang energy cover him again, retreating away from the mountain.
"Are you okay?" Shumi asked with a hint of worry and only cald down when she saw Alex unhurt. "What was that all about? The birds weren't as fast as before."
"The Master of the Trial, or whatever is controlling those birds, seems to have realized my plan and stopped," Alex said in a spiteful tone, unable to hide the anger from his voice. Had he been given the
chance to use those eight birds, he may have been able to gain a good result.
Alas...
"Master of the Trial?" Shumi asked, looking up at the sky. "I never imagined those birds would be controlled by soone. Is that why their numbers increased erratically?"
Alex nodded with a sigh. "I'm sorry. I thought I could do it too, but I
failed."
"Well..." Shumi said with a strange expression. "You did fail, but so did we all. You don't have to apologize."
Alex gave a small smile, saying nothing. He slumped down on the ground, leaning against a poison tree, as he looked toward the canopy up above.
"I'm out of ideas," he finally admitted.
Shumi slowly sat down on a patch of grass opposite him and looked away. "Sa here," she said. "I was already out of ideas before, and after all of that, I have no more ideas."
This was her second ti running out of ideas, since she had given up the first ti around when it was just her and Whisker.
Whisker said nothing, just staying atop Shumi's shoulders as he couldn't even begin to gain any ideas.
"Get to the center," Alex said. "That was the only thing the bird told . Was that the sa with you?"
Shumi nodded, recalling the exact phrase from her mories. "Congratulations on moving on to the final trial. The final trial is the sa as every trial before you. Find your way to the center." She repeated it all word for word.
Alex listened to it and compared it to the announcent he was given. It was exactly the sa. He couldn't help but wonder if there was a reason why it was so similar.
"From what I believed before, the bird was a pre-planned visage of sothing that ca to announce us moving into the next trial and deliver us the requirents of it. But if what I'm understanding right now is correct, then the bird is a living thing. At least it has sapience. In which case..."
His mind wandered faster than Alex could put his thoughts to words. Shumi grew curious, wondering what he had co to think of. "What
is it?" she asked.
"There are three sentences in its final announcent," Alex said. "The first one is a simple congratulation, which we can probably exclude. It's the other two sentences that we need to figure out."
Shumi repeated those sentences again. "The final trial is the sa as every trial before you," she said. "And find your way to the center."
Alex nodded. "Hmm, what if they are separate sentences?"
"What do you an?" Shumi asked.
He looked toward her, his body growing slightly energetic. "Just listen to it. At first, you think the bird is telling you sothing obvious. All this ti, the task for us has been to get to the center of the island, which is what is the sa. But what if that is a misdirection?"
Shumi straightened. "Do you an to say that the thing that is similar to the other trials is not that we need to get to the center?" she asked.
"Yes!" Alex said rather loudly. "The very first thing the bird told us when we took part in the trial was that every trial would have the sa objective, which was to get to the center. And it has. What if in the final trial, it wasn't reiterating itself, but rather giving us a hint?"
Shumi raised an eyebrow. "Then what does it an?" she asked. "What about the trial is so similar to the other trials?"
The simple answer to that question was the poison plants, the birds flying in the sky, and the suppressing aura that they had to walk through. The island was an amalgamation of the previous trials in a way that it could be said to be similar to the other trials.
But that couldn't be true. Just because the island had instances from previous trials didn't an that the trial was the sa. If that was what the bird had ant, it would've likely told them that the final island was the sa as the other ones, not the trial. The bird had to be emphasizing the trial, so Alex had to think about that.
"What was common about our trials besides the part that we had to get to the center?" he asked. "Did we even take the sa trials?" Shumi shrugged. "As far as I am aware, all trials are the sa. At least the three other routes sister Xin and I took had the exact sa trials for the first few ones."
Alex nodded. "Just to be absolutely sure, tell what trials you went
through."
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