Chapter 107: 107

Deep in the dungeon, Michelle leaned against the wall silently, her cold gaze locked on Ferdinand, who was holding onto the cell bars, shouting in despair, begging to be set free. But Michelle’s eyes didn’t show any sympathy. She was there just to make sure he didn’t kill himself. Also, she had a suspicious feeling in her chest, like something was about to happen.

The whole day, nothing happened, but once night fell, Michelle’s irises turned bright red in some parts from excitement as she felt a foreign presence enter the Archduchy. She could feel it because she covered the whole mansion in a net of her dark element spirit energy.

Making sure she was completely concealed by the black mist, Michelle closed her eyes, listening to the sound of quiet, steady, approaching footsteps. They clearly belonged to someone not only with a high cultivation level, but also to someone who had gone through intense physical training to be able to move around silently, so they could take care of a target without anyone unwanted noticing.

When the footsteps came closer, Michelle smiled coldly as she counted the number of intruders. In the end, she stopped at number seven. As far as Michelle knew, that was a regular number in the upper realm, when scouting for information or when infiltrating a place to get rid of those with too much knowledge.Seven was a good number because it could be divided into two threes and a one, forming two inconspicuous squads and leaving one person separated from them for an ambush if needed. Or, the separate person could infiltrate deep into an enemy base while the two groups acted as a distraction.

Soon, by the footsteps, Michelle could tell that four of the seven uninvited guests had stopped, and only three continued going towards her. And the moment she opened her eyes and saw the group of three, she heard one of the four left behind move forward, too. A sneaky assassin, in the shadows, as a safety measure.

Even when the group of three entered the dungeon hallway where Ferdinand was locked up in despair, they didn’t notice Michelle, as she was hidden in her black mist. They were completely oblivious to the danger looming over their heads as they stopped in front of the cell, with Ferdinand going crazy when he saw them. He knew that the Ostrich family wouldn’t send a squad to save him. If they wanted, they would have sent them earlier and in a larger number. The time and number just showed that the family gave up on him and decided to silence him.

He started begging and shouting, wanting to live, but all three squad members started condensing their spirit energy. They were suicide soldiers, prepared to die along with Ferdinand if something went wrong.

Seeing the three start to condense their spirit energy, Ferdinand panicked and retreated to the back of the cell, wanting to hide from the upcoming explosion; but before anything could happen, a large sickle appeared behind the three and, without them ever knowing how, they were knocked out with the blunt side of the blade.

When the assassin in the shadows saw it, he instantly wanted to retreat as he couldn’t even feel the wielder’s presence, but without even giving him a chance to react, Michelle let the sickle fall and rushed at him, knocking him out by hitting him at one of his temples with her hand, which was coated with her spirit energy to make sure he fainted.

Unable to see who knocked out the four, Ferdinand remembered when he was beaten by a pair of bodiless hands the night before, making him shudder in fear. “Don’t beat me…” he started mumbling as he hugged his knees.

Not even glancing at Ferdinand, Michelle kept herself concealed and picked up the sickle on the ground. In Ferdinand’s eyes, it looked like the sickle started floating as Michelle walked toward the dungeon entrance, where the second group of three was.

When the three saw a floating sickle approaching them slowly, they frowned and all took fighting stances, thinking it was some kind of defense mechanism. They thought it was natural for the Archduke to have one, as they knew that Archduke Philip Grace was from the upper realm. It was quite a well-known fact in the upper realm.

Seeing the fighting stances of the three, Michelle grinned and coated the blade of her sickle in both ice and dark element spirit energy to give it more power when she swung it.

The moment the sickle glimmered with spirit energy, the three realized that, in reality, they were up against a person, not a mechanism, which was highly problematic for them. But they refused to just give in. As suicide soldiers, they would fight until they brought their enemies down, even if it meant losing their lives along the way. That was how they were trained.

Lastly, Michelle was feeling quite loud as she hadn’t had a good fight in a while, so when she saw the fighting stance of the three, the purple in her irises completely disappeared, replaced by bright blood-red.

After knocking them out, Michelle put her sickle back into her spirit domain and retracted the black mist around her, letting herself be seen. Then, one by one, she dragged them to Ferdinand’s cell and dropped them next to him, her gaze calm and cold, not even once moving it toward him. Her eyes were already back to purple, and if they weren’t, Ferdinand would have fainted in horror.

Even though Michelle left the cell gate open, Ferdinand didn’t dare try to escape, knowing that Michelle was somewhere around.

When she finally dragged all the intruders into the cell, she crippled the cultivation of the first four, and then left, locking the cell.

Earlier that day, long before Michelle found herself facing intruders in the dungeon, Kieran and Anastasia sat under a big tree in one of the gardens, lost in conversation.

Kieran’s gaze flickered to Anastasia’s arms, where gray raven feathers nestled as the wind blew by, softly ruffling them. “You got these after you went to training with Michelle. Does it mean you now can control your soul energy?” he asked, with a tilt of his head as he leaned against the tree.

“No…” Anastasia shook her head. “I can’t control it yet, I can just sense it. Michelle told me I should rest today, and that she would teach me to control it tomorrow.”

“So, are these feathers a manifestation of your soul energy or something like that?” Kieran asked, as he didn’t really understand much about soul energy.

With a shake of her head, again, Anastasia rubbed her palm over the gray feathers. “They are my Soul Leash. Soul Leash is something everyone has, but it only appears after they sense their soul energy for the first time. It’s used to control soul energy and keep it in check, so it doesn’t get out of control.” She explained.

“And, why is your Soul Leash in the shape of feathers?” Kieran continued asking curiously. Most of the time, he wasn’t the kind of person who would ask many questions, but when it came to soul energy, a power with which Michelle easily overpowered him, and Anastasia, a girl he felt naturally drawn to, his mind was suddenly flooded with questions.

“I don’t know that, but I plan to ask Michelle about it tomorrow. I’m curious about it too. But maybe even she won’t know. In the end, she’s not all-knowing or almighty.” Anastasia answered, relaxed. But then, she remembered her own questions, and her eyes narrowed a bit. “Kieran, since I answered you, I have some questions now, too!” she said slowly, deliberately dragging out her tone.

“What are you curious about?” Kieran asked, leaning his head against the tree trunk behind him.

Anastasia sighed a bit, her brows creasing into a frown. “What do you and the rest really want from me?” she started. “From the start, the black market wasn’t targeting me. It was also a lie when I was told that I had been found unconscious. Or that you don’t know my identity. The whole time, you and the rest have been led by the nose. What do you know about me and my past? Why did you make me investigate the Ostrich family with you? Why did you bother to cook up a transparent lie, which I could easily see through?” She rained her questions on Kieran.

When Anastasia’s question fell, Kieran wasn’t really surprised. From the moment Michelle decided to cook up a lie, easy to see through, both he and Ivona were expecting the moment she would question them about it. But everyone agreed that they wouldn’t tell her, just lead her to the answer, so she would discover it herself. And then, he was guessing, Michelle would give her back her memories, to bring out her full potential. But that also had the risk that Anastasia would hate them and leave, or even turn on them. And someone like Anastasia wasn’t a wanted enemy.

“Since you were able to guess everything up to here, you should also be able to guess that we don’t really have plans to tell you ourselves. You will discover it yourself with your brains.” Kieran decided not to evade answering and to straight up say that he would not answer.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep