Chapter 118: 118

All the elders and cultivators watched in horror as the one elder, who shouted at Michelle and the rest, burned in Kieran’s fire. It seemed strange that in the Land of Exile, someone would possess power strong enough to engulf an elder from the lower realm in flames. It was true that the elder’s power was suppressed to the threshold of the Spirit rank, but Kieran was in the Land of Exile too, so his power could be at most the same or lower at the moment, and if that was the case, it was impossible for him to overpower someone of the same power without much effort.

Realizing that, the cultivators and elders were even more convinced that their opponent was a monstrous powerhouse who wasn’t even affected by the Heavenly Law, which kept everyone in one realm or place under a certain level.

What they didn’t know was that neither Kieran, Ivona, Anastasia, nor Michelle was over the threshold of Spirit rank, but as the poisonous ash Michelle spread around had already started working, the elder had lost some of his power, so he couldn’t defend himself against Kieran who was unaffected by the poison.

And in the same state were all the other elders and cultivators when Michelle and the others attacked them. Michelle summoned her sickle, Ivona pulled out a whip and a dagger from her spatial ring, and Anastasia had already put her clawed gloves on a while before the group showed themselves to the Ostrich family.

The group of four was confident they would not die with their skills even if the Ostrich family surrounded them, because all the cultivators and elders were already losing their power, but they didn’t notice it themselves, so they were acting rashly, as if they were at their full power.

For a good half an hour, the group stood back to back, defending against the barrage of attacks from the elders and cultivators, who were at first enraged, and thought that Michelle and the rest were just a group of young brats who overestimated their abilities, and thus dared to take them all at once, but while Michelle and the rest were fighting in a way to save as much energy as possible, the members of the Ostrich family slowly started to realize that their powers were starting to affect the group less and less, making them desperate.

In the eyes of the elders, it looked like Michelle and the rest were slowly revealing their full power. “You’re playing with us!” one of the elders shouted as he lunged at the group in rage.

Seeing that Michelle sneered and opened her mouth as she kicked the elder in the stomach, sending him flying. “Now!” she shouted as she, Kieran, and Ivona pushed their soul energy out and let it collide with each other, while Anastasia used her soul energy to create a black rod in her hand and threw it into the ball of frenzied spirit energy.

The spirit energy instantly clung to the rod and flew with it to the middle of the former garden where they were fighting. Then, Michelle coated everyone with her dark element spirit energy, and formed an ice sphere around them, using many layers as a protective shield.

Just a moment later, the rod alongside the spirit energies in a frenzy blew up in a deafening explosion, which made Michelle wince a bit as she felt her ears throb.

Alongside Michelle’s spirit energy that exploded in the ball, the blue fire all around the mansion reacted to it and started condensing and exploding, too. In the end, it was made of spirit energy, so it could explode.

A crack appeared on the sphere Michelle made, but she instantly added more layers of ice to block out the explosions. Also, when she added the new layers, it increased the soundproofing, so her ears no longer hurt when something exploded in the background.

The explosions raged for several minutes before gradually dying down. When the last of the blue flames blew up brilliantly, Michelle finally dispelled the protective ice sphere. The group of four stepped out, taking in the scene of absolute destruction.

The once-proud Ostrich mansion was nothing more than a charred ruin, reduced to blackened rubble and ash. The bodies of cultivators and elders alike lay strewn across the ground, some frozen solid, others burned beyond recognition, and some even corrupted by darkness and light, with their limbs missing. The poison Michelle had used had long since finished its work, leaving even the strongest elders helpless against the explosion. Of course, some did survive, but they were in such a miserable state that death seemed like a better option for them.

Casting some bodies aside, Michelle put a few rocks together and then mended them into one with her ice. She was going to leave a message for those who would come from the upper realm. When the rock was somehow smooth, she formed an ice spear and used it to carve into the rock, the message slowly forming beneath her hands.

“Don’t look for us! We will come to the upper realm ourselves!” It was a message the four had agreed upon.

After carving it down, Michelle, Ivona, Anastasia, and Kieran started searching the ruins of the mansion, knowing that though everything had fallen and was destroyed, things like spirit stones, Life Stones, monster gems, and artifacts wouldn’t be destroyed by a simple explosion of spirit energy, no matter how strong it was. For things like that to be destroyed, it required not only extreme force but also certain special conditions to be met.

The Ostrich mansion was huge, so it took the group, when they summoned Michelle’s beasts to help, a day and a half to search through everything.

Just when they were thinking that they had gone through the whole mansion, Nyxaroth found something. Maybe it was because he was an ancient being of darkness, but he easily sensed a pathway under the mansion; he only told Michelle about it when they had searched through everything else, so they wouldn’t be distracted by it and could search everything properly.

The entrance to the pathway was under a place where a pillar originally stood, supporting the main hall of the mansion, and it was very small. Barely one thin girl could fit through there, so even Nyxaroth couldn’t go there if he wanted to keep his human form. But since he much more liked his black mist form, he transformed and entered the dark pathway first. Followed by Michelle and Ivona. Anastasia remained up on the ground with Kieran, so if someone from the upper realm came, they could fight back together.

Also, even though Michelle could take all her beasts with her by temporarily pulling them into her contract space or spirit domain, she only let Mare and Snow jump down and left Cold Flame to stay with Kieran and Anastasia in case something happened.

The pathway was dark, so Ivona summoned a small ball of light so she could see. What was revealed next was quite breathtaking. The pathway was both tall and wide, and on all its walls were shelves on shelves full of glass bottles with various organs. And the one who collected them clearly wasn’t picky, because the organs were not only from ordinary animals, but also beasts, monsters, and humans.

Seeing that, Ivona wanted to hurl, never having seen something so disgusting. Nyxaroth was calm because he had encountered such things in his long life, and Michelle wasn’t the least bit affected because, as a doctor, she had seen dissections. She wasn’t a surgeon, but even as an internist, she sometimes needed to look at the dissections. Also, when she was still a student, it was obligatory for every student to be present at some dissections as a part of the anatomy class.

“If you’re sick of this, you should go up…” Michelle said as she turned to look at Ivona. “I’m guessing this will only get more drastic the further we go.”

“You want to explore it?!” Ivona was clearly surprised. She was already used to seeing blood and dead bodies, but dissected organs were something completely different. She couldn’t understand why Michelle wasn’t sick of it.

“Yes! These organs could mean two things…” Michelle nodded. “That this was a laboratory of the Ostrich family, or that the organs were placed here just as a distraction to hide something deeper in the pathway. Either way, I’ll investigate it. You don’t need to go with me if you don’t feel like you can handle it. It wouldn’t be good if you fainted on me in a pathway like this.”

“I’ll go up…” Ivona decided, so Michelle formed an ice ladder for her to leave. Originally, there was a wooden ladder, but it got destroyed by the explosions the group of four created.

With Ivona, the light she carried also left, but neither Michelle nor Nyxaroth minded, since they both had dark element spirit energy. Just Snow and Mare were a bit unhappy, but since they didn’t really care about the organs, they went into Michelle’s contract space after telling her to call them if she found something strange. Nyxaroth felt like going to rest, too, but he thought it was dangerous to leave Michelle alone if there were any traps along the way, so he stayed with her and led her deeper into the pathway.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep