Chapter 239: 239

“Since the spirit energy here is too thin, you can’t use the cauldron I gave you, so put it away for now,” Mavreth spoke as he led Michelle out of the office. It wasn’t a good place to train pill making.

Michelle put the cauldron into her spatial ring and went after Mavreth. She knew he probably wouldn’t show her the full extent of his power yet, but she was still extremely curious about it.

After taking Michelle to the brewing room, Mavreth gave her a brief explanation about the method used to bypass the ranks in Poison Maker Mastery.

And it was actually quite simple. To achieve that, the Poison Maker Master just couldn’t directly pour his energy into the cauldron. He either had to alter it so the cauldron wouldn’t realize it was coming from a human, or push it in through something else.

Mavreth used the first method because he wasn’t human in the first place. He concluded that method would be suitable for Michelle too. He could also teach her the second way if she wanted, but it would be pointlessly troublesome.

As for why Mavreth thought like that, it was related to Michelle’s Spirit Soul Blood.

With the high affinity with monsters and beasts it gave her, she would be able to trick anything into thinking she was a non-human creature. In the end, even the barrier of Heavenly Law had mistaken her for a monster before. And it would do it again.

But tricking the cauldron could be trickier. It couldn’t be compared to the barrier of the Heavenly Law, but it worked on a different principle, so it was better at some things—for example, discerning what species a creature was.

For Michelle to trick the cauldron, she needed to show that her spirit energy, or whatever energy she decided to use, didn’t move like that of a human. Spirit energy in the bodies of beasts moved around slower and calmer. It was less explosive. Even when condensed, it wouldn’t blow up right away.

Soul energy worked similarly. If a beast possessed soul energy, the flow of the soul energy would be drowsily slow.

And with monsters, the story was completely opposite. Their spirit energy moved around erratically, exploding in chain reactions after just a small speck of the spirit energy got condensed.

And the flow of their soul energy was naturally different too.

Even when the monster’s soul energy wasn’t that dark shade of gray, there was a small chance the soul energy would still inflict the target with very light Void Plague. One so weak that it would quickly disappear before the victim could even notice it.

But it was still Void Plague, a dangerous disease able to take the lives of many.

As for humans, the explosiveness of the spirit energy was around the middle. It exploded nearly instantly after being condensed, but didn’t cause any kind of chain reaction.

And the soul energy was similar. The flow would be erratic, but it could never cause Void Plague if the user didn’t possess pure black soul energy.

For Michelle to fool the cauldron, the best thing she could do was forcefully slow down the flow of the soul energy and make it thinner when inserting it into the cauldron. That way it would think she was a beast.

After listening to Mavreth’s explanation, Michelle tried summoning soul energy on her hand and changing its flow. But all she achieved was that it dispersed into the air like mist. That wasn’t what she needed to do.

Mavreth watched Michelle try and fail repeatedly. As her master, he had only told her the theory, so it was natural she was failing. “That’s enough…” he finally decided to step in.

He stretched his hand out, putting it over the mist swirling around Michelle’s palm. “You won’t achieve anything this way.” With that, he let some of his spirit energy pulse out, forcing the mist to shrink into a thicker black cloud.

Seeing that, Michelle was puzzled. The black cloud was made of her soul energy. And Mavreth was using his spirit energy. Spirit energy should in no way be able to affect soul energy. So how was he doing it?

She couldn’t understand it until she felt a prick on her wrist.

Looking down, she saw two sharp black needles piercing into her skin. But that wasn’t where she felt the prick. She couldn’t even feel the needles.

The piercing she felt was in the bones in her wrist. It felt like something was nibbling at them.

“To make your soul energy thinner, you have to change how it comes out of your body,” Mavreth started explaining. “The best way to do that is to put some kind of obstruction into the flow. But soul energy can flow through nearly anything, and can come out of any part of your body, so you have to guide it into a narrow path yourself.”

Michelle frowned a bit. With the two needles made out of Mavreth’s spirit energy piercing her wrists, she could feel the flow of her soul energy narrowing there. “How are you doing this?” she asked with a frown. She couldn’t understand it.

“Though spirit and soul energy can usually flow through one another, when in someone’s body, they evade each other. So if you create a tunnel out of your spirit energy in your wrist, your soul energy will be forced to go through it.” Mavreth’s explanation was simple, but it didn’t clear all Michelle’s doubts.

And it raised another question. “My spirit energy only flows through my veins. How can I make it into a tunnel in my wrist?”

“Wrong!” Mavreth smiled, retracting his spirit energy. “You have your poison element. That one doesn’t flow through your veins. It’s all around your body. Just use it.”

Michelle’s eyes gleamed upon hearing that. She had completely forgotten about that since she didn’t have much of the poison element. But even that sparse amount was probably enough to control the flow of the soul energy.

“Also,” Mavreth spoke again, “if you fail to use the poison element, try the shadow essence.”

Michelle nodded a bit. But she was sure she wouldn’t use the shadow essence. Because though she was clumsy with the poison element, at least she could use it. As for the shadow essence, she couldn’t even grasp it yet.

For some time, Michelle tried moving her poison element spirit energy through her body, concentrating it all in her wrist. It took quite long even though there wasn’t that much of it.

When she was done, it was time for the next thing—shaping the poison element into the walls of a tunnel.

A frown formed on Michelle’s brows as her concentration went to its peak. Shaping the poison element spirit energy was surprisingly difficult.

It wanted to stay together at all cost, so forming a hole in the middle required extreme control. And Michelle didn’t have that yet.

Mavreth sat back and watched Michelle struggle. Every now and then, something purple would appear on her wrist. Sometimes it was a wet spot, and sometimes a small cloud of gas or dust.

That showed her control over the poison element was still slipping.

But it was clearly improving.

Each time the purple showed, it was smaller and disappeared quicker than before.

After a few hours, Michelle finally succeeded in making the tunnel. But when she tried to move her soul energy towards it, her control over the tunnel slipped and it fell apart.

But she didn’t mind it. Failure was her journey to success. The more she failed, the more things she would know to avoid in the future when using her soul and spirit energy.

So Michelle kept trying, improving the sturdiness of the tunnel. The purple no longer leaked out of her skin. Her control was getting stronger with each try.

After about ten more tries, Michelle was able to push some soul energy out, and it formed a small black cloud on her palm. Usually, the clouds formed by her soul energy would be swirling around themselves, bubbling from within. But this one was calm and peaceful, barely moving.

Unfortunately, it fell apart quickly. Michelle couldn’t keep the tunnel open for too long and it collapsed.

Still, it was a big step toward success.

Michelle wanted to try again, but she felt a movement from her soul energy. Serith had something to say. “If you want, I could control the soul energy for you.”

Michelle read the message and shook her head. At some point, Serith would come out of her body and no longer help her with her soul energy. If, by then, she couldn’t make the soul energy thinner on her own, she would be in trouble when she would want to make a poison bypassing the ranks.

Serith understood Michelle’s intentions, so no more questions came. Michelle could return to trying. She wanted to be able to hold the soul energy for at least an hour. That was barely enough time to make a simple poison.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep