Chapter 159: 159

After simply greeting the old tavern lady, Michelle walked into the basement once again, an idea growing in her mind. If she could find a way to lower the atmospheric pressure within the tavern, it could create wind from the basement, which would bring out the humid air.

And then it would be easy to get it out of the tavern. One would just need to close the basement so it wouldn’t fall back there, and then just open windows, creating small wind currents within the building.

But the method had one big loophole. Michelle didn’t have a clue as to how she could lower the pressure.

So she thought back to her old world, and what was known there about pressure. Particularly about the factors affecting it. Altitude, temperature, humidity, and gravitation would be the most important.

The relations between the factors and atmospheric pressure were the following: The higher the altitude or temperature, the lower the pressure. The higher the humidity or gravity, the higher the pressure.

Usually, winds went from places with high pressure to places with low pressure, but the basement was a bit special because it was lower than the ground floor of the tavern. The humidity did make the pressure higher in the basement, but the gravity was too strong to let winds rise upwards with enough force to get rid of the vapor. The small gusts were so weak that a human could never hope to feel them.

So, to make strong enough wind, Michelle needed to widen the difference in temperature between the two places. And there were a few potential ways to do it.

The first, and seemingly the easiest way, was to raise the temperature within the tavern. That way, the warm air there would go higher, creating a space of low pressure there.

But for the pressure differences to be big enough for wind to rise upwards, the temperature would need to be raised to humanly unbearable heights, so Michelle cast the thought aside. She knew no way of raising the temperature at the moment, and even if she did know something, as an ice-element Spirit Master, she detested warmth, so the hotness would kill her.

The second way was to simply cause high winds in the tavern, especially around the entrance to the basement. And the winds would need to be rushing out of the tavern, not in. That way, it could pull the air from the basement along with it and drag it out of the tavern.

But Michelle wasn’t a wind-element Spirit Master, so she didn’t really know of a way to cause such winds.

The only idea she had was to quickly swing a door open, but that would at most create a small gust, far from enough to drag out the humidity.

“What’s troubling you so much?” Alexander asked with his signature smile as he pressed his thumb between Michelle’s eyebrows, forcing her to stop frowning.

Michelle lifted her head to stare at Alexander for a while, her purple eyes deep as she was still in thought. “I need to create wind in the tavern…” she muttered the answer, not paying much attention to anything other than her thoughts.

“And do you have completely no idea, or the wind you can cause is too small?” Alexander continued asking.

His question made Michelle raise a brow. How was he able to guess her thoughts so well? It made her a bit uncomfortable. She didn’t like it when others could see through her. And Alexander was able to do so without much effort.

“Is there a way to use soul energy to strengthen the force of wind?” Michelle suddenly asked. Her question was also an answer to Alexander’s question. Because her question meant his second guess was true.

“Not that I know of, but there might be…” Alexander said with a shake of his head.

From his expression, Michelle couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth, but she wasn’t planning to think about it. Because if he was lying to her, there was no way he would tell her the truth if she pressed him, so she decided to believe him.

Well, not exactly believe. She just didn’t bother to even consider whether he was lying or not.

With a slight groan, Michelle walked over to the basement door and opened it with a swing. She felt a light breeze pass by her, but it wasn’t able to cause any disturbance in the underground.

So Michelle closed the door again. At the same time, she summoned her black, void-like soul energy and let it surge into her hands.

Very quickly, the void spread from her hands over the door and into the surroundings.

When that was done, Michelle swung the door open again, using the void all around to sense the small gust of wind that arose.

She wasn’t the least bit surprised when her soul energy didn’t pick up on anything. There was no record of soul energy being able to affect winds. People only knew that wind-element spirit energy was present in wind, and thus wind-element Spirit Masters could wield it.

But that didn’t discourage Michelle. For a long time, the sound of banging doors resonated through the basement and the tavern, making the old tavern lady and the guests wonder what was going on.

Still, just knowing the fact that Alexander Terce, the Dark Lord, was down there made it so no one dared to go down to check it.

Also, the guests and the old tavern lady were all aware that though the young lady, Michelle, seemed harmless and sweet, when she spoke with Alexander, she carried herself with a danger none of them could ignore, no matter how much they tried. And they were criminal veterans.

Not being bothered by anyone, Michelle kept swinging the door back and forth, sensing with her soul energy for anything in the wind she could grasp onto. Just a small speck was needed so she would be able to force the small gust to become a big blow that could pull out the humidity.

But all that Michelle could sense were the small specks of dust carried by the wind. And that was of no help to her.

When Michelle started to feel like giving up, she let go of the door and stared at it for a long while. Then, she pushed it hard, slamming it shut with a bang. She was planning to open it for the last time. If she still didn’t find anything, she would give it some rest for a while.

She wasn’t going to give up just yet. But she did need to rest. To let her observations lay in her mind for a while.

Though she didn’t gain any instantaneous information, she was nearly certain that if she let even the smallest details rest in her mind for a while, she could come up with something. That she would notice something she had overlooked the whole time.

So Michelle swung the door open for the last time, the concentration of her soul energy in the surroundings at its highest, so she could feel every single molecule that was moved by the wind.

Just as she had anticipated, she didn’t discover anything new, but she had a sense of satisfaction. So she returned into the darkness of the basement and lay on the cold, damp ground, closing her eyes. She remembered all that she had felt with her soul energy as she swung and closed the door.

It made her wonder if wind had something like its essence. It was a random thought, a shot in the dark, but it weighed on her mind. It was like a bug that kept crawling around, asking to be killed. And the only way to kill it was by satisfying the curiosity—to figure out how soul energy was usable on wind, and maybe even the other elements.

Watching Michelle from a distance, Alexander wasn’t sure if she was asleep. He could easily check, but he didn’t bother. He held no curiosity about whether Michelle was sleeping or not. He was just watching her. Observing her steady breathing, slow and rhythmical.

For a normal person, it would have been impossible to discern what state Michelle was in, because she was controlling her breathing by her own will. She had been trained in the past to have perfect acting, deceiving, seducing, and lying skills. It was very much needed in her assassination and spying missions. In the end, to kill an excited and distracted man was much easier than to kill a composed and calm one.

Alexander knew barely anything about Michelle’s past, but that just made him more curious. Especially when he saw her lying like that on the ground. At first he wasn’t the least bit curious about the state Michelle was in, but then, he started wondering if she was letting her guard down around him, or if she was just pretending to be asleep.

He was secretly hoping it was the first case, but that was impossible with how Michelle viewed him. He could feel that she didn’t like him. One would have to be stupid not to notice that she held negative feelings for him.

But that didn’t bother Alexander the least bit. Feelings could change.

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