Chapter 170: 170

Leaning on the doorframe, Michelle touched her face lightly, feeling the bruises. They were already much better because of her extreme healing abilities, but that didn’t take away a bit of her pain.

But that wasn’t what she cared about. She didn’t even care about the city lord’s mumbling about the information guild. She was lost deep in her thoughts, thinking about the essence of her Shadow Spirit Steps.

She had been using the footwork for such a long time that she couldn’t even properly remember how she came up with it. And there wasn’t much to remember about it. It just naturally evolved as she used to sneak around on her assassination missions.

And the essence of the skill. All skills assassins used were for fast and silent movement, so they could quickly get rid of their target or scout the area. All unnoticed.

The Shadow Spirit Steps were a footwork technique that was basically engraved in Michelle’s bones, so even when she moved around relaxedly, some elements stayed behind.

So there was basically no way for Michelle to tell the difference between her normal movements and when she was using the technique. Because there was none. But when she was actively using the technique, not passively, her movements were even smoother and more fluid. Because she consciously put her mind to it.

Still, that didn’t let her understand the essence of the skill. To her, it was like breathing to children. They don’t understand how they breathe, but they know that not breathing is a problem. It’s uncomfortable, and they can’t bear it too long.

And Michelle’s way of using Shadow Spirit Steps was the same. When she tried to walk differently, it felt unnatural, uncomfortable, and she couldn’t do it for too long. But she didn’t understand the essence of her footwork. Like a child, no one explained it to her. She didn’t read about it in a biology book. She had to figure it out herself.

Of course, that was possible, but she had never bothered to think much about the skill, so she didn’t realize how it functioned. And to comprehend it, she would need some time.

While Michelle was deep in her thoughts, the city lord finished speaking, noticing that Michelle was paying him no mind.

He wanted to speak to her, but just then, she snapped out of it and turned to him.

“Old man, I can’t teach you my footwork technique,” she said lazily, still leaning against the doorframe.

Hearing that, the city lord was a bit surprised and also disappointed. He hadn’t even asked Michelle to teach him her footwork technique, and she had already guessed what he wanted and rejected him.

“Why?” he asked, feeling quite pitiful. He had even spoken about his dark past, but it didn’t seem to move Michelle the least bit.

Michelle glanced at him and smiled a bit.

“The members of the information guild you saw, could you see what the essence of their technique was?” she asked. It seemed like she asked the question so she could use it to explain something, but in reality, she was probing about the information guild.

The city lord went silent for a while, thinking about it with a frown. Finally, an answer surfaced in his mind.

“If I didn’t see them, and if they didn’t leave behind the massacred city, I would have thought they didn’t exist,” he started speaking.

“They didn’t move silently, nor were they invisible, but they moved just when something else moved, so they went unnoticed,” he came to a conclusion.

It had been many years since he had seen the group, but he could still perfectly remember how strange he felt when he saw them. They were clearly in front of him, but his instincts didn’t catch them. Even as he was staring straight at them.

Listening to the city lord, Michelle’s smile widened. His explanation about the intelligence guild’s footwork let her realize the essence of her own footwork.

The two techniques were mostly similar, but there were some small differences which made their nature completely different.

To best describe how Michelle’s Shadow Spirit Steps worked, it was best to explain those.

From the city lord’s words, Michelle could deduce quite a few things:

Both techniques prioritized stealth over raw speed, though they mainly relied on both. They weren’t flashy. They were meant for avoiding detection.

Both techniques worked by blending the user into the environment, which made them suitable for any terrain.

And for that, they naturally required the user to be extremely precise, with them being able to sense their environment all the time, even if in a small radius.

And then, there were naturally some differences. But Michelle couldn’t make them out. Though she partly understood the essence of the guild’s footwork, she didn’t know how exactly it worked. And as she still didn’t grasp the full essence of her Shadow Spirit Steps, she had no way of telling the differences.

If she just had the chance to see someone from the guild. That would be of huge help. Maybe she would even be able to improve her Shadow Spirit Steps. Improvements were always welcome.

“So why can’t you teach me the technique?” the city lord’s voice brought Michelle out of her thoughts.

“Old man, techniques like that require extreme precision and observation abilities. You don’t have that.” Michelle spoke coldly, her purple eyes sweeping over the city lord.

Her words weren’t just a random guess. From the start, she could see that the city lord was a reckless person, even oblivious to many things.

Because, from the start, the way he had her brought to him had many loopholes, and if she wanted to, she could escape.

His way of speaking made him seem like a powerful person who could oversee anything, but in reality, he couldn’t even see through Michelle’s numerous acts she put up while talking with him.

Hearing Michelle’s words, the city lord was quite shook. He could have never expected that a young brat, not even seventeen years old, would tell him he didn’t have good observation abilities and that he wasn’t precise in his work.

But it happened. A young girl with a gaze and demeanor not suitable for her age, straight out told him what he was lacking, not showing anything near respect for elders.

All the while Michelle was with the city lord, the bruises on her face got visibly better, rousing some suspicion in the city lord. He wasn’t a fool, so of course he noticed that the bruises were healing unnaturally fast.

Thinking about it, coupled with Michelle’s demeanor and presence, the city lord came to the conclusion that she probably belonged to one of the big family clans, or that she was maybe even a beast that could take on human form, so he didn’t ask anything more. He was afraid of the force that could stand behind Michelle.

Only a while later, Michelle was already sitting in the tavern, staring at a cup of hot tea in front of her. The old tavern lady had given it to her the moment she had returned from outside, telling her to rest a bit before doing anything more. She didn’t ask anything about the bruises, or about where Michelle had gone.

After drinking the tea, which was extremely bitter, Michelle went upstairs into her room, thinking about two things. One was the information guild and the other was about freeing the souls trapped in the six Soul Seeking Pendants.

Breaking them wasn’t an option, so Michelle’s thoughts kept circling around the time when she tried to insert her soul energy into the pendants. The smoothness and resistance of the insertions definitely had to do with whether the souls could be freed or not, but Michelle didn’t know how.

So, she decided to stay in the room until she figured it out. She took out the pendants from her spatial ring and once again divided them into those with higher and lower resistance when she inserted her soul energy.

Then, she picked up one with lower resistance and pushed her soul energy into it, closing her eyes so she could concentrate on how the space in the pendant felt.

And just like she had hoped, after some time, she found something.

Under the touch of her soul energy, the Soul Seeking Pendant felt like an empty spatial ring, but that didn’t stop Michelle from letting her soul energy swirl and rage around the space for a long time. Until she found one place where the space felt different. She felt that no matter how much she pushed her soul energy towards it, it got repelled and pushed back.

And her soul energy was also a bit harder to force to go there. Like it was instinctively evading the spot.

Feeling that, Michelle smiled and started gathering her soul energy a distance from the spot. After a short while, she had a huge vortex of swirling void-like soul energy spinning near the spot.

But that was far from enough. She kept pushing more and more soul energy into the vortex, until the whole space of the Soul Seeking Pendant was basically swallowed up by the vortex.

Only then did she do what she wanted since she found the strange spot. Using all her will, she commanded the soul energy, the void vortex, to crash against the spot. When that happened, her consciousness got thrown away from the pendant.

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