Chapter 104: 104

Unable to find answers to her questions, Michelle could just give up and return to the Archduchy with Ivona, Kieran, and Anastasia after giving them the artifacts she chose for them. Before she left, David told her that if she or her friends waited, they could come over anytime to pick up more artifacts.

After returning to the Archduchy, Kieran went to cultivate for a few days, and Ivona was sent to spar with the knights by Michelle so she could find out which weapon she was best with. Of course, Ivona wasn’t allowed to use her spirit energy while sparring. Meanwhile, Anastasia was dragged to the private training grounds Michelle and the Archduke used, so Michelle could teach her to use and cultivate soul energy.

At first, Michelle explained a few things to Ivona before having her sit on the ground and close her eyes. Then, she walked behind her and placed her hands on her head. Slowly, she sent a thin and weak thread of her soul energy into her body and guided it around for Anastasia to feel it. Finally, she found the place where Anastasia’s soul energy was stored. It was in the place where Spirit Masters would have their dantians filled with spirit energy.

“Do you feel where my soul energy settled?” Michelle asked as she looked at Anastasia.

When Anastasia nodded, Michelle smiled and retracted her soul energy, letting her hands fall beside her. “Can you still feel it?” she asked.

“No…” Anastasia shook her head. “Does that mean I’m hopeless? I can’t cultivate?” she asked.

But Michelle shook her head as she spoke: “This is normal for Soul Masters who are learning to cultivate. Just try to remember the feeling when you felt your soul energy and try to find it.”

Closing her eyes, Anastasia put her full focus into searching for the soul energy in her body, but even after half an hour, she couldn’t find anything. She opened her eyes with a frown and looked at Michelle. “I couldn’t find anything…” she said with a sigh and stared down at her hands.

Michelle stared at her silently for a long while before finally speaking. “Where did you search for it?” she asked, but her question only confused Anastasia even more. When she was searching for the feeling of being able to sense her soul energy, she didn’t know where to focus. She just tried to make her mind and body more sensitive to soul energy.

“In my whole body… I don’t know where I should search for it,” Anastasta answered.

When her words fell, Michelle raised a brow. “Did you not feel where your soul energy was when I sent mine to it?” she asked in surprise. From what she knew about soul energy from Rivenaar’s memories and from what the Archduke and Alexander told her about it, being unable to feel where one’s soul energy was stored was rare and troublesome, but it wasn’t bad.

Seeing Michelle’s surprised expression, Anastasia got worried. “It’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked.

But Michelle shook her head. “It’s not necessarily wrong; just cultivation will be troublesome for you. But, at the same time, once you get used to cultivating, you will get much better results than others. You can call it a blessing in disguise.”

“What does that mean? Will my cultivation be different from other Soul Masters?” Anastasia asked in confusion.

“Yes!” Michelle nodded. “But only in some aspects,” she added. “As I’ve already told you, soul energy is something innate and can’t be improved like spirit energy, but you can increase your proficiency with it and the amount and force of the soul energy you can use at once. Usually, after a Soul Master can sense their soul energy for the first time, the only way for them to improve is to practice it until they perfect their proficiency, and even then, they still have to practice more if they want to be able to use more force or more soul energy in an attack, but your case is a bit different.”

“If my guess about your case is right, for you, sensing your soul energy will be much harder, but once you do it, your soul energy will start constantly moving within your blood, so your proficiency will, though slowly, constantly keep improving, letting you reach perfection much quicker than other Soul Masters. But it won’t be able to improve the force and amount of soul energy you will be able to use. For that, you will need to practice just like everyone else.”

After finishing her explanation, Michelle showed Anastasia that she should sense her soul energy in the area of her abdomen and chest, and then stepped back a bit to let Anastasia try again. But when she failed after another half an hour, Anastasia felt a bit discouraged, but she refused to give up.

Without her memories, she felt like she had no place in the world, and the only people she knew were Michelle, Ivona, and Kieran. But they wanted to leave. So she wanted to leave with them and explore the higher-ranked places together with them. But how could she do that if she were powerless? As far as she heard from them, if she wasn’t strong enough, she wouldn’t even be able to leave the Land of Exile, not to mention going to any higher-ranked places.

Trying again and again, Anastasia stayed in the same place for about three days, except for the times when Michelle reminded her to eat something or when she went to sleep.

Finally, at the end of the third day, she sensed something in her chest. Putting her full focus on it, she stayed like that until evening, and only opened her eyes when she felt something form on her left arm. When she looked there, she saw a bunch of dark gray raven feathers growing out of her forearm. “What’s this?” she asked and turned her head to stare at Michelle.

The whole time, Michelle remained at the training grounds, fiddling around with weapons or reading the skill books on annihilation and instance killing she got from the old man she met in one of the alleys belonging to the Dark Lord behind the city market. “That’s your Soul Leash. Don’t worry! It won’t always stay on your hand. You can make it disappear, but you need to practice with your soul energy a bit first, to be able to control it and make your soul leash disappear.”

“How do I practice?” Anastasia quickly asked as she stood up, prepared to fight if needed.

“For now, you should rest. You’ve strained your mind these past few days. Get a good night’s sleep and rest tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, come back here, and I’ll show you some basic practice skills.” Michelle said as she led Anastasia back to her room. “If someone asks you about the feathers on your hand, you can either tell them the truth or tell them that it’s a result of something I did. Or just stay resting in your room. The servants won’t question you even if they see the feathers. From the start, you are my guest, so they will be respectful to you.”

“Fine then…” Anastasia nodded and went to her room.

Then, Michelle left her and went to the dungeon, cloaking herself in a dark mist to hide from the eyes of the prisoners. Well… the only prisoner at the moment was Ferdinand Ostrich, as the Archduke made sure the prisoners who had to stay for a long time were in a different prison.

Sneaking to Ferdinand’s cell, Michelle silently observed him for a while. From being left alone in the cell for a few days after being tortured by Kieran and Ivona, his mind wasn’t in the best state. His wounds didn’t heal, and his whole body ached. Also, he felt like he was left in the cell to die, because though he was brought food to eat twice a day, it was disgusting and hard to swallow. What he didn’t know was that it was food filled with nutrients to make sure prisoners who needed to be tortured survived long enough.

For a long time, Michelle observed Ferdinand, to check his state of mind, and when she found out that he wasn’t yet where she wanted him to be, she narrowed her purple eyes in annoyance. When she was entering the dungeon, she wasn’t planning to do anything, but it seemed that in the end she needed to take some action. So she decided to scare him a bit.

Picking up the keys on the wall, she rattled them so Ferdinand would notice them, but she also made sure he wouldn’t notice her. So he just saw keys and a hand in the middle of the dungeon, jingling around. But that wasn’t enough to scare him, so she put one of the keys into the keyhole and twisted it, unlocking the cell door.

Seeing that, Ferdinand thought about escaping, but Michelle threw the bunch of keys at him before pinning him down on the ground, all the while making sure he could only see her hands. Also, she was careful so she only touched him with her hands and nothing else, so he thought she was really just a pair of hands.

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