"Good job, I was doubting you a bit. Now, onto the next trial."

The orb that had been floating in front of Tai disappeared as the platform he was laying on turned black. Standing up, he looked in front of him as a pitch-black, humanoid being the same height as him came out of the ground.

Inspecting the being, Tai found that it had 4 pairs of eyes on its face, giving it a total of 8 eyes as it looked at Tai and inspected him.

"Interesting, you have ██████ Darkness," the being said. "I say that, but you most likely can't hear it. Is it that stupid snake's doing?"

The being chuckled as it introduced itself, "My name is Ohm. Those two by the side can't explain the trial since they signed a contract, but I was never offered a contract of secrecy, so I'll tell you what you have to do in this part of your trial. Don't let your darkness get taken. It's that simple."

Ohm said it was simple, but Tai had a good feeling that it wouldn't be so simple.

"Just saying, you've partially merged with the darkness meaning that if I were to take your darkness, you would die, and fail the trial. No worries though, you wouldn't actually die since we're in a trial."

Ohm said, chuckling a bit. "But you would still feel the pain. Now, get ready."

Tai took a deep breath as he readied himself, not really knowing what would happen except that his darkness would start to get taken.

Ohm sat down cross-legged as he began channeling Tai's darkness for himself as black energy started coming out of Tai's body and into himself.

As Ohm started to absorb Tai's energy, Tai felt himself getting weaker and weaker. "How the hell am I supposed to stop you from getting my darkness."

No matter what Tai did, his darkness that was getting taken from him didn't budge.

Wait, wait. Let's think of this from another angle. My darkness is mine, therefore it should only listen to my commands only, meaning that I can still control it, it's just that Ohm is forcefully taking it without permission.

Sitting down cross-legged, Tai started to re-absorb his own darkness, even taking some of Ohm's darkness, making him frown.

Tai heard notifications going off as his Darkness Manipulation leveled up, but he didn't care.

"Weird, how are you taking my darkness?"

Tai was too busy trying to regain his darkness to hear Ohm as he slowly but surely absorbed his darkness back, but it wasn't over. Even though Tai had regained his darkness, he was now absorbing Ohm's darkness.

You have absorbed the energy of a higher leveled being, your darkness becomes stronger

"Guess that snake isn't so stupid after all, but I must stop you there. It wouldn't be good for you to take all of my darkness. You would die..."

Standing up, Ohm cut his connection with Tai and called this part of the trial over.

"Ohm, that is not fair. You went easy on the kid, didn't you?"

"Nope, he just has an unnatural connection with the darkness. Didn't you see him absorb mine? Anyway, I'm off. I only took this for the rewards anyway."

The man standing by the side frowned as he scratched his head. Ohm disappeared shortly after as the trial platform returned to its original state.

"Next stage..."

"Russel, look at that," a man said, pointing at Tai's name on the leaderboard. "Level 342. What kinda trial is he doing?"

Russel smiled. "Heh, guess he's lucky. I'm curious about this Tai fellow."

"Stupid snake, are you trying to use that kid as a way for you to escape this prison?"

"HAHAHA. What do you think I am? I am a god that hassss been worssshiped by many. Do you think I need a mortal'ssss help to esssscape thissss prisssson? Begone, Ohm, before I take your darknessss for mysssself. Ssssurely you remember what the other godssss called me?"

"Ughh, why the hell did the system employ Ohm?"

"Who knows? No one except the creators of the system knows what it's thinking, and maybe some individuals."

"Whatever. Let's just start the next trial."

In front of Tai, a table of weapons appeared in front of him, but the weapons were all similar. They were all polearms. There was a spear, halberd, naginata, and other weapons that looked similar to the rest.

"I guess this is a polearm test?" Tai asked out loud as he approached the table and grabbed a naginata on the table.

Upon grabbing the naginata, around 30 mannequins appeared around Tai as the table of weapons disappeared. The mannequins were the same height as Tai and were all holding polearm weapons like spears, and naginata like the one Tai was holding.

Tai roughly guessed what this next part of the trial was going to be. A test of his polearm skills.

Gripping the handle of his naginata, Tai tried to channel his ki into the naginata, but was surprised when the naginata rejected his ki, and even his darkness. It seemed that he would have to finish this trial without anything but his skills, and a naginata.

Testing a bit more, Tai also found that he couldn't use his ki or darkness for anything, not even to strengthen his body.

After a few seconds, the mannequins started moving towards Tai, but since there were 30 of them, they couldn't attack all at once, so they came in at groups of 5.

The first group was predictable and tougher than Tai thought. In fact, they were so tough that every swing of his naginata proved no visible scratches. It was like he was striking at an invincible doll.