Chapter 23: 23

“What do you think, Lady Grace? Will you watch your maid die?” the leader of the assassins asked as he pressed the blade to Mare’s neck.

Seeing Mare being held at a knife’s point, Michelle’s eyes gleamed with scarlet as she summoned Spirit Clone behind the group of assassins. The clone remained silent and motionless, so it would go unnoticed.

“Go ahead! Try it!” Michelle said with a hint of cold amusement in her voice. She was satisfied with the flow of the events. Very much satisfied. “But let me remind you before you do anything, that if even a strand of her hair is harmed, I’ll raise hell! You don’t want to lose your hostage, do you?” her eyes gleamed madly as she pointed her bloodstained knife at the group of men.

Seeing Michelle’s mad smile, the assassins stiffened in instinctual fear, and even the slightest idea of harming Mare was thrown out of their minds. Michelle was right. If they lost the hostage, they would have nothing to hold over Michelle’s head, but if they just did nothing, Michelle could get Mare out of their hands. And if they actually harmed Mare, there was no doubt they would be killed on the spot.

The only way out the assassin leader could think of was disgracing Mare without harming her. So he put on a perverted expression.

“But Lady Grace, we never wanted to harm a beautiful girl like your maid!” The leader decided to play the card of a rapist as he placed his hand on the Mare’s chest. “Surely you won’t be angry at us if we let your maid enjoy herself with us!” He smiled perversely, hoping in his mind that it would be enough to stop Michelle for a while.

Unfortunately, that was something Michelle had expected him to do, so her smile just widened.

“You see…” the Spirit Clone spoke as it sneaked right behind the leader. “You should always watch your back!” she said as she pierced her knife into the leader’s neck and snapped his spine. Then, she picked up Mare and carried her over to Michelle.

Michelle took Mare into her arms and the Spirit Clone disappeared like it never existed.

With the clone gone, Michelle placed Mare on the group and covered her by her cloak which reshaped into a protective sphere, so the assassins could no longer touch Mare. The cloak was given to Michelle by Archduke Grace before she left the house in the morning, and it was quite useful.

When the protective sphere was around Mare, Michelle stood up and turned her attention back on the assassins who were about to flee. Their leader was killed without them even knowing how, they lost their hostage, and Michelle was still unharmed. They stood no chance against her.

“Want to run away?” Michelle asked with a tilt of her head, a gentle smile appearing on her lips. The smile was stunning and would take breaths away, but the assassins had already seen it once, so to them, it was like the smile of the devil.

Knowing that even if they turned to flee, Michelle would kill them, the second-in-command decided to sacrifice himself for his brothers.

After nodding at the others, he lunged at Michelle with his sword, which had hooks directed opposite to the blade, so if he stabbed it into something, while pilling the blade out, he would triple the damage by ripping out pieces of flesh.

Michelle had seen swords like that many times in the past, and it was a kind of weapon she hated the most, even though it was never before used against her, since in her past life, none of the assassins who used such swords dared to confront her.

Seeing that sword being used against her caused a cold smile to appear on Michelle’s lips. She understood what the second-in-command was trying to do, but she had no plans of letting him succeed. Her plan was to completely annihilate the assassins.

With her eyes fixed on the sword, Michelle planned to kill the second-in-command in one go, but an idea popped in her mind, turning her cold smile into one of devilish amusement. She decided to use the sweet scent of her blood.

And that was for two reasons. She wanted to see what effect her blood had on humans, and getting the beasts and monsters to kill the assassins was efficient.

So just as the sword was about to hit her chest, Michelle shifted a bit and the blade pierced into her left arm. The second-in-command wanted to pull the blade out to cause more damage, but before he could do so, he received a ruthless kick in his stomach, which sent him flying, forcing him to leave his sword stabbed in Michelle’s arm.

The moment the second-in-command landed on the ground, an earth splitting roar shook the forest, causing the assassins’ blood to run cold in terror. They didn’t know what caused such a roar, but they knew that it must have been a monstrous existence.

Michelle recognized that roar and smiled a bit. Snow was angry. Very angry. Probably enraged.

Before the assassins could even react to the roar, the ground shook and a huge white beast landed next to Michelle. A fox. A stunningly beautiful fox, but her size made her so terrifying the assassins forgot to breath for a moment. Snow’s scarlet eyes were highly distinct against her white fur, and scarlet eyes were eyes only high ranking beasts and monsters had, so the assassins were even more horrified.

Snow ignored the assassins and glanced at the sword stabbed in Michelle’s arm. The blood was still dripping down Michelle’s arm, but she didn’t seem to mind it.

“Hello darling!” Michelle grabbed the hilt of the sword as she smiled at Snow. “Can you help me with the swift clean up?” she asked with a smile as she pulled the sword out of her arm, tearing off a chunk of her flesh. Then, she just started playing with the sword, not caring about her blood and the pieces of her flesh on it.

Snow stared at the gushing hole in Michelle’s arm for a short while and seeing that it was already starting to close up, she turned her head towards the assassins, who were already fleeting.

With a single jump, Snow landed behind an assassin and crushed him with her paw. With her head being above the trees, she could easily see all the fleeting assassins, so she quickly killed them before slowly walking back to Michelle.

Standing in front of Michelle, Snow transformed into her childish human form and stared at Michelle’s wound hungrily. Even though she was bound by a contract to Michelle, the sweet smell of Michelle’s blood was still enticing. “I’m hungry, Master!” she licked her lips unconsciously.

Michelle glanced at the gushing wound on her arm and smiled. Through the contract, she could feel how affected Snow was by the smell of her blood. “Come here!” she said as she sat on the ground, beckoning at Snow.

Snow jogged over and plastered her small mouth over the wound, letting the blood fill up her small mouth. When she was full, she pulled away and glared at Michelle.

“Master, you should really be more careful! What if I didn’t come in time! You know that your blood smells especially delicious to all monsters and beasts, so why do you keep wounding yourself? What if a monster came before I made it here? It would have torn you apart!” Snow started scolding Michelle, her small hands cutely flailing around her in anger.

Michelle looked at Snow and smiled. “Do I look so weak that I can’t defend against one or two monsters?” She chuckled.

“One or two monsters?!” Snow was enraged. “This forest is swarming with monsters! It wouldn’t be only one or two monsters that would come at you, but whole hordes of monsters that would swarm at you from all directions! Master! You should be really happy that I used my roar to chase them away and that I covered the smell of your blood with my aura, or, even now, monsters would be rushing at you!”

While Michelle was being “lectured” by Snow, a person was sitting up on a tree branch, observing with a smirk. “Spirit blood…” he mumbled to himself with narrowed eyes. “How long has it been since someone with Spirit Blood was born? And this one even survived this long…? And in a lower realm at that…”

The man smiled a bit as his eyes gleamed in amusement. “Seems that I’ll stay here a little longer…” he hummed as he disappeared from the branch. “But her way of dealing with things is very… interesting, should I say…?” his voice lingered in the air, but it was too quiet for Michelle or the Snow to notice.

But that didn’t mean that Michelle didn’t notice him. She felt a gaze on her, and she recognized it to be the same gaze as she felt on her during the royal banquet. She looked around but didn’t see anyone, but she wasn’t really concerned about seeing. She knew that with that person’s power, she would be unable to spot him if he decided to hide.

“Am I imagining things?” she mumbled as she stood up, deciding not to alert the person that she is aware of his presence, but to show him that she already noticed something. “Say, Snow,” she turned to Snow. “Did you notice someone observing us while you fought?” she asked, but Snow only shook her head and transformed into her huge fox form. “I’m going back to sleep in my liar.” Snow announced before walking away.

Michelle raised a brow. Since when did her little fox have a liar in the forest? But she could only shake her head a bit and walk over to Mare to try and wake her up. Gently shaking her, she tried to wake Mare up, but Mare remained in deep slumber, so Michelle just sat on a rock and looked at the wound on her arm.

“I really can’t get used to this…” Just as the wound she got when she first tested out her blood in the forest, the wound she had at the moment was closing up at a speed visible to naked eyes. But as both the wounds were huge, the wound from the testing closed within a day and a bit more, and the wound she had at the moment from the hooked sword would clearly take at least two days.

But in her past life, a wound like that would take a month to recover, so it was still shocking.

“Maybe I should experiment with it sometimes…” She nodded her head to herself as ideas started popping in her mind. But at the moment, she had to be careful so no one found out about her healing abilities as it could bring her unnecessary trouble. Not like she couldn’t take care of the trouble, but if she could avoid it easily, she would.

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