Chapter 146: 146

Once again leaning against the cave wall, Alexander observed Michelle, a sigh leaving his lips. He knew she wanted to get Mare back, but she looked terrible. If before her rest she looked deathly pale, then, at the moment, she looked like a ghost. And it was concerning.

But Alexander knew better than to disturb her. He could feel her progress. She was close to attaining her goal, so he just silently stayed back.

With the walls of the tunnel so thin, Michelle’s memory manipulation skill could seep through them into Mare’s soul to make some changes. That was because the tunnel was made of Michelle’s soul energy, and the memory manipulation skill had half of it made of the same soul energy.

And because the soul energy within the memory manipulation skill was at its densest concentration, in the state of void, the void within the tunnels clung to the memory manipulation skill and seeped out of the tunnel along with it. But unlike before, it didn’t cause any damage. It just flowed together with the skill along Mare’s soul.

Michelle didn’t insert any memories into the skill, so it didn’t really do anything. But as the skill worked by seeping into the soul to pass on or retrieve memories, along with the void, the skill entered the parts of the soul the void could never access by itself.

If the void got there by itself, it would have just caused more damage and most probably even killed the soul, but connected to the skill, it couldn’t do anything and just got absorbed by the soul.

It took quite a while, but as Mare’s soul slowly absorbed the memory manipulation skill, it pulled in the void too, and, with it being the cause of all the damage, the soul quickly sent it to the damaged areas and the void was forced to repair them.

So as not to interfere with the repairs, Michelle quickly pulled her soul energy back and retreated a few steps, only to realize that her body was so weak and exhausted that she couldn’t keep standing. She ended up falling on her butt.

Just as Michelle landed on the ground, she heard a chuckle coming from behind her, but she didn’t even glance back to look at Alexander and just kept her gaze on Mare. The Venom Jade Serpent still had its eyes open, staring at her warily, but slowly, something was stirring within the pair of slit pupils.

And after a while, the snake’s eyes closed. At the same time, Michelle felt her contract with Mare get repaired and strengthened.

“Finally…” Michelle’s lips arched into a small smile as she let her back fall behind, laying down on the ground.

Slowly, the snake opened its eyes, and they flickered with confusion when the snake’s gaze landed on Michelle.

Transforming into her human form, Mare came over to Michelle and squatted down next to her. “Michelle, when did you get here?” Mare asked.

Since she was completely unconscious the whole time, from her perspective, it looked like she touched the strange stone, for some reason took on her snake form, and coiled around the stone. Then her gaze blurred for a while, and when it cleared up, she saw Michelle lying on the ground.

“Quite a while ago…” Michelle said as she lifted her hand to touch Mare’s forehead with her index finger, feeling the place where the contract mark could appear in some cases.

For example, when either the contracted beast or master wished to see it.

So under Michelle’s finger, a snake coiled around a rose suddenly appeared, with the rose’s thorns stabbing the snake. The snake’s mouth was calmly closed, and no butterfly was present. Everything was back to normal.

“Something happened to me, right?” Mare asked with a frown. She couldn’t think of anything else to explain the situation.

“I don’t like this cave…” Michelle’s smile widened, and she sat up. The sudden movement made her head spin a bit, but she didn’t really mind it and got back to her feet.

Seeing that Michelle clearly wasn’t fine, Mare reached out her hand to support her with a sigh. Sometimes, her contracted master was too stubborn for her own good.

As Mare supported Michelle toward the exit of the cave, she noticed Alexander standing nearby and arched a brow. Why was that guy present?

And she also noticed two more things. One was that the powerful aura she followed into the cave was no longer present, like it had never been there, and the second was that she could see in the dark, making her frown.

“Michelle, what really happened?” Mare insisted on her question as she led Michelle out of the cave, followed by Alexander.

“I’ll explain to you once we come to the others. I don’t want to explain it twice.” Michelle answered lazily as they finally reached the exit. Luckily, it was early in the morning, so the sun wasn’t shining into the valley yet, and the light didn’t blind them.

Cold Flame, Nyxaroth, Snow, Anastasia, and Ivona were sleeping by a campfire, and Kieran was guarding them. It seemed that the four were taking turns keeping watch so that nothing bad happened and the fire didn’t burn out.

Quickly noticing someone approaching, Kieran put his guard up and used his fire-element spirit energy to make the fire flare out, but when Mare, Michelle, and Alexander were hit by the light, he was pleasantly surprised.

But the three were blinded by the light and all frowned. Michelle instantly formed a ball of black mist around her head to block out the light, a black cloth appeared around Alexander’s head, looking like a blindfold, and Mare just blocked her eyes with her hands.

Seeing what the fire was causing, Kieran quickly let it retract into a small flame and the three approached. “You’re finally out…” Kieran said with a smile as the three sat around, a bit further from the flame so it wouldn’t blind them again. “What happened in the cave?” he asked curiously.

In the darkness, he couldn’t see clearly, but when he lit up the big flame—though it was just for a moment—he caught a glimpse of Michelle’s face and saw that she looked like a ghost.

Being asked the same question for the second time already, Michelle remained silent. She was even more determined only to answer after everyone was present or she would go crazy from having to explain repeatedly.

Already knowing Michelle for quite a while and having already gotten a non-answer out of her, Mare knew what she was thinking. “Michelle will only explain when everyone is listening. She didn’t even tell me anything.”

When Mare’s words fell, Kieran felt a bit confused. “Weren’t you in the cave too? Why would Michelle need to explain things to you?”

“Because I was unconscious the whole time,” Mare said with a yawn. Even though she was unconscious the whole time, she was extremely tired. “Probably…” she added, some uncertainty in her voice. She clearly wasn’t sure herself.

Seeing that even Mare was confused and Michelle refused to say anything, Kieran just sighed and said, “You all should go rest. I’ll keep guard until morning.”

But Michelle shook her head. “I won’t sleep today. You can sleep.” Her tone of voice left no room for argument.

Though Kieran knew that she was probably exhausted, and maybe even hurt, he didn’t try to persuade Michelle to rest. He knew that if she had already decided on something, he wouldn’t be able to convince her otherwise no matter what he did.

But that didn’t mean he would go to sleep. “I’ll stay awake with you! It’s not that long until daybreak!” he said decisively.

Michelle just shrugged and turned her head to stare at the horizon. She could already see red, orange, and pink clouds in the distance, but because they were in a valley, she couldn’t see the sun yet.

Having remained silent since telling Michelle to use the memory manipulation skill to heal Mare, Alexander disappeared into the darkness. He wasn’t interested in Michelle’s friends, so he had no reason to stay.

With her friends around, he wouldn’t even be able to confirm his guess, so he decided to retreat for a while. He was going to wait for Michelle in the tavern. Because he was certain she would return there in three days at the latest.

Back in the tavern, the old tavern lady and the guests were shocked when Alexander returned, a twisted expression on his face. The usually cold Dark Lord they knew was suddenly smiling. It was terrifying.

If it was just his playful or carefree smile, they would have been able to keep calm. They had already seen that smile when he had taken Michelle to the basement.

But at the moment, Alexander had a very twisted smile, sending shivers down the spines of anyone who saw him.

No one dared to even greet him, even though he was the topmost boss of all the people in the tavern. Even the old lady remained silent behind the counter.

She had once seen that devilishly handsome face in a state of fury, and she hadn’t felt even a fragment of the dread she felt at the moment.

Even Alexander himself didn’t know why his smile was so strange. On one hand, he was still quite amused by the events that had just taken place, but on the other hand, something deep inside him was annoying him. And he couldn’t explain what it was, so his smile turned twisted and scary.

But his face was still sickeningly handsome.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep