Chapter 112: 112

After fruitlessly attacking Michelle a few more times, Anastasia stopped for a while and took off her clawed gloves and let the feathers disappear, before putting back the original blades. She realized that if she wanted to use her soul energy to strengthen and speed herself up, she couldn’t be putting her focus into the feathers used as claws on her gloves, because to learn to do something new she had to put her full focus into it, and with some of her focus used to fight or defend against Michelle, she didn’t have the privilege to use her soul energy for anything else.

Michelle waited until Anastasia was prepared to fight again, and once she put her gloves back on, Michelle struck with another chain, used like a whip.

In an instant, Anastasia blocked with the blades on the back of the gloves and then jumped backwards. At the same time, she moved her soul energy like when she was conjuring up the dark gray raven feathers, but she didn’t summon anything and instead kept moving the soul energy within her body.

Seeing what Anastasia was trying to do, Michelle smiled in satisfaction and whipped at her with two long chains at once, to nip at Anastasia’s focus.

When Anastasia felt the chains flying at her, she blocked again, but that, just as Michelle guessed, took her concentration away from the soul energy, and she lost control of her soul energy, which made it explode within her. Though it didn’t harm her, as it was the power of her own soul, it still made her stumble and fall down.

Just before Michelle’s chains could hit Anastasia, Michelle let them disperse into specks of void soul energy, which then returned to her.

Knowing that she still didn’t have enough skill to use her soul energy as an enhancer, Anastasia sighed and stood back up. “Let’s start again!” she said, her eyes flashing with determination, as she started moving her soul energy again, much more rapidly than before.

Repeatedly, Michelle whipped her chains at Anastasia, destroying her control over her soul energy, but Anastasia never gave up, and each time she failed, she stood up and tried again.

Just like that, hours passed, and even Michelle was starting to feel a bit tired from constantly using her soul energy, and Anastasia was already pale from exhaustion, but she refused to give in to her weakness. When Michelle pressed on her, telling her to go rest, she said that she wanted to try one more time. Over the hours, she had seen some progress in herself, and she could already create a thin cloak of soul energy around her hands, but she wasn’t able to keep it around for more than five Michelle’s strikes.

Agreeing to let Anastasia try one more time, Michelle thought that maybe Anastasia felt she was at a breakthrough point in her training. Conjuring up her chains again, she relentlessly whipped them at Anastasia with greater speed and precision than before, and indeed, she saw Anastasia’s aura change a bit. Though she couldn’t coat herself with more soul energy, and it wasn’t even thicker, it carried more power. So even though Anastasia could only defend against strikes like before, she was satisfied.

After the training, Michelle called a maid to take Anastasia to her room and help her take a bath, while she went to her own room. The whole mansion was silent, with only the servants making some noise here and there as they cleaned the hallways and rooms.

When Michelle reached her room, she laid down on her bed and instantly fell into a deep slumber. The last thought she had before falling asleep was cursing that she would most probably sleep for a long time again from depleting her soul energy. But in her exhaustion, she couldn’t stop her eyes from closing and her head tilting to the side as her breathing evened out.

What she didn’t even know was that Anastasia was in a much worse state. As one of the maids supported her to her room, she was already half asleep, and when the maid helped her into the bathtub, she instantly fell asleep like a log, so the maid had to call another maid to help her pull Anastasia onto the bed and dress her. Then, they wanted to go tell Michelle that the work was done, but they found her asleep already.

When they saw that, they started feeling a bit suspicious and remembered the time when Michelle slept for around a month, so, just in case, they went to tell the Archduke.

Hearing the news, he went to check on Michelle first, and when he found out that her soul energy was completely spent, he went to look at Anastasia and found the same result, so he just told the maids to look after the two and to come tell him if they woke up. He also said that they might sleep for quite a while, and that it was nothing to worry about.

The news quickly spread all over the mansion, but not a word got out of the Archduchy. People were quite used to the Grace family not appearing in social circles, so no one suspected a thing at first.

But then, one of the Young Ladies who came to like Michelle at the Harvest Festival banquet realized that even Michelle didn’t respond to letters and things like that, so after about a week of Michelle and Anastasia being asleep, a rumor started that Michelle Grace had run away from home to seek adventure. Still, even when the Archduke came to know about it, he didn’t bother to clarify anything as both he and his daughter were planning to leave the Land of Exile soon.

Michelle was the first to wake up and stretched her body, feeling groggy and hungry. She sat up and rang the bell by her bed. Quickly, a maid with a tray of food entered. “My Lady, His Excellency said you would be hungry. Do you want to eat something mild?” she asked with a smile.

Nodding lazily, Michelle took the bowl of porridge from the tray and ate it silently. Without even needing to speak, she felt some soreness in her neck from not speaking for a while, so she wanted to eat and drink something first before opening her mouth to speak.

After partly filling her empty stomach, Michelle drank a cup of water before coughing a bit, awakening her vocal cords. “How long was I asleep?” she asked as she stood up and walked into the bathroom. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a disheveled face with red prints from lying on her side.

“Like last time, around a month… Exactly a month and three days,” the maid quickly answered as she started preparing a bath for Michelle.

First, Michelle washed her face with cold water before stripping and getting into the bathtub.

As her body submerged into the water, she noticed another thing. “Did someone change the tub?” she asked. “It feels smaller.

” No…” the maid shook her head.

Suddenly, Michelle slapped her forehead. “How could I forget that…” she muttered as she remembered that, at the moment, she was in the body of a fifteen-year-old, a body that was still somehow growing. Though not rapidly, but still, after a month, her body grew a bit, so she felt that the tub was a tad smaller.

But she quickly got used to it and lay comfortably in the warm water. So, in the end, Michelle’s body was the kind of body that started growing a bit later and grew slower, so even at fifteen, she was still growing a bit. Still, it was normal. Some people grew up early, even between eleven and thirteen, so at fourteen, they already had the bodies of fully grown women, and some started growing at thirteen, or even between fifteen and seventeen, and they stopped growing sometime between eighteen and twenty.

After taking a bath, Michelle changed into something comfortable and went to have a proper meal with the Archduke. He was quite curious as to why she and Anastasia exhausted their soul energy sos suddenly, so she explained it to him.

Then, she asked him if he noticed some changes in the spirit energy in the mansion, but he straight up told her that Kierna was still a few months from reaching the border of the Spirit rank. He also told her that he went to check on Anastasia and that her soul energy had recovered barely to three-quarters, so it would still take her somewhere between a week and two to wake up.

After the meal, Michelle went to see Ivona, who was already bored of training with the knights, so she was thinking about going to the mountains on the border of the Land of Exile again to train with monsters.

Hearing that, Michelle told her to go ahead, but also said to take Cold Flame with her just in case something happened. And she added that once Anastasia woke up and had enough strength to go there, Michelle would take her to join Ivona, so all three of them could gain some more battle experience.

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