Chapter 244: 244

A deafening explosion coming from the forest shook the sect. Feeling the vibrations in the ground, Mavreth smiled a bit in his office. His disciple was close to succeeding in concocting her first poison bypassing ranks.

The disciples in the sect panicked upon hearing the explosion. In the forests, there weren’t supposed to be beasts capable of creating explosions like that.

So they quickly rushed to their teachers to ask what was going on.

But the teachers didn’t know either. No one had warned them of something like that beforehand.

If there really was a powerful beast in the forest, most disciples would need to be forbidden from going there until the stronger ones eliminated it.

That wouldn’t be a problem as there were all the disciples who had already gone to the upper realm, and their cultivation far surpassed the Monarch rank.

The problem would be convincing them to go there. They were quite the eccentric group along with their teacher from the upper realm.

Aside from the sect lord, Mavreth, no one could convince them to do anything.

Of course, the teachers themselves could go to the forest, but they had other urgent things to do, so the forest would have to be closed off until then.

When the teachers couldn’t come to a conclusion, the door to the office opened and a black figure walked in.

All the teachers respectfully bowed their heads. “Sect leader!”

Mavreth stopped in the hallway. “The forest is safe. The explosion wasn’t caused by a beast.” Then, he turned to leave.

Originally, he was only planning to send a letter, but considering that the one who caused the commotion was his disciple, he decided it would be better to at least appear for a moment. And he didn’t really have much to do, so it didn’t bother him.

Back in the forest, Michelle was lying in a twisted position. The explosion had blown her away from the cauldron, and she landed on her back. But the momentum of the explosion kept pushing her, so even though her back stopped, her legs still flew and she nearly rolled backward.

“I hope I didn’t sprain anything…” she mumbled as she got back up. Overall, she was fine, but her neck hurt from the position she ended up in. Another thing clearly wrong with her was that she was covered in charcoal from head to toe.

At least the cauldron didn’t explode.

Michelle had expected to fail, so she got herself enough herbs for a few tries. But she was hoping she would succeed within ten tries.

But that was just a wish. The herbs she was using mostly contained elements, and quite a few of them were of opposing types, so explosions and failures were to be expected.

Also, Michelle was trying to make a pill that would bypass ranks, so she was using the method Mavreth taught her. But she could only keep it up for an hour, and that wasn’t enough to keep the herbs of contradictory elements contained until she made the poison.

That meant, the moment she could no longer sustain the method and had to switch to normally sending in her soul energy, the herbs would have a moment to clash with each other, resulting in failure.

But that wouldn’t stop Michelle. No matter how big the explosion, as long as it didn’t kill her, she would try again.

So for the next few days, explosions from the forest would send shockwaves throughout the sect. At first, they were more frequent and bigger, but the time between them grew longer and the explosions got smaller, until they were so small the shockwave wouldn’t even leave the forest.

Though to Michelle, who was right next to the cauldron, that was still enough to send her flying.

It took her a few more days until the explosions got so small they would barely shake the cauldron. Like a soft sneeze.

And when she finally succeeded, she just lay on the ground, not even taking the pills out of the cauldron.

“Finally…” she sighed.

The last try took her five hours and she was completely spent. Even though it was in a small amount, having to constantly and steadily pour out her soul energy for five hours was hard.

Especially since she had been exhausted from doing the same thing for days before.

Not even caring if someone came, Michelle closed her eyes. She needed to rest.

Sitting on trees nearby, Noctis and Unlucien looked at each other. “That could be used as an attack,” Unlucien commented. He was the head executive of the Dark Palace, the chief of the shadow guards, so he was quite the maniac when it came to combat.

Noctis shook his head. “But there’s no way to control it. It will kill her before she can harm someone with it.”

But Unlucien didn’t listen. He was convinced that with enough training, one could control the explosion to not affect them.

In her sleep, Michelle was unaware that Unlucien was already plotting how he could train her. But if she had known, she probably wouldn’t mind. Getting training from a top fighter and a monster like Unlucien could only be beneficial to her.

The one who would have been unhappy about Unlucien’s plan would be Mavreth. Michelle was his disciple, and he wouldn’t let anyone else take the title of her master. If he wanted to, he could teach her combat too.

When Michelle woke up, darkness was setting. Considering that she had drained quite a lot of her soul energy, she was worried that she had slept for a long time, so she looked around a bit, sensing for the two in the shadows. “How long was I asleep?” she asked when she pinpointed their locations.

Noctis was the one to answer. “Half a day.”

Hearing that, Michelle was quite satisfied. It wasn’t as bad as she thought. So she calmly returned to the cauldron.

After looking inside, she smiled a bit. She was planning to make a batch of ten pills, but she messed up her control in the process, so she was expecting the number to go down to five. But there were eight pills in the cauldron.

Though they were crooked and didn’t really look presentable, Michelle was pleasantly surprised. Poison was never meant to be pretty.

Taking out an empty pill bottle, she stored seven pills there and took one. Then, she tried to cultivate her shadow essence.

And once again, just like when she took the poison from Mavreth, she didn’t feel anything at first. But after a moment, her cultivation abruptly stopped and symptoms appeared.

Standing up and stretching her body, Michelle put the cauldron away. Then she activated her Shadow Spirit Steps and disappeared from the forest. Just a minute later, she appeared in front of Mavreth’s office, knocking on the door.

When Mavreth saw her, he nearly laughed. “Why do you look like that?” he asked, clearly meaning the charcoal and ashes all over her.

Michelle shrugged. “I’ll go wash up later. I brought the poison.” She took the bottle with poison from her spatial ring and placed it on Mavreth’s table.

The bottle was originally white, made out of porcelain, but it ended up smeared by the charcoal on Michelle’s hands, turning it grayish.

“You could have at least washed your hands…” Mavreth sighed as he took the bottle. Letting a pill roll out, he turned it over in his hand. “It’s excellent. You should try it on a Shadow Master.”

After putting the pill back, he threw the bottle back to Michelle. “You can keep the bottle I gave you before,” he added as he reached into his spatial ring to take out another bottle.

“This is the new poison.” He placed it on the table. “It should enter blood through wounds.”

Michelle picked up the bottle and opened it. It had a refreshing scent, clearing her mind a bit. “Was it originally a medicine?” she asked.

Mavreth nodded casually. “That’s what’s best about it. You can trick anyone into thinking you are treating them, when, in reality, you are harming them.”

“I’ll use it wisely!” Michelle bowed her head a bit and turned to leave. “Take care, master!”

Outside the office, Michelle stared down at the bottle. Since she still had the former poison in her system, she decided not to use the new one right away. She would do that the next day. Until then, she had time to go back into the forest and examine the strange old tree. Her curiosity about it was growing.

But before that, she had to wash up. So she went back to her room.

Already quite tired from making the poison, Michelle didn’t put soul energy into her Shadow Spirit Steps, so the journey was a bit longer than usual. And an unwanted person saw her as she entered the dorms.

Before Michelle could even go wash up, she heard a knock on her door.

“Yes?” she opened the door, her expression a bit cold. Along with the black and gray all over her face, it looked a bit scary.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep