Chapter 295: 295

After a while, Michelle stopped spinning the spirit energy and closed her eyes to check the pattern within it.

She didn’t achieve a three-layered spiral, but she could still see some changes.

The spirals were bigger and packed more densely. And there also sometimes appeared stray orbs of spirit energy that just left the spirals.

But they didn’t return to their spirals.

Instead, some more spirit energy left the spirals around it and went to it to create a completely new spiral.

That way, the mist of spirit energy was slowly stretching by itself. But it was also getting thinner.

Michelle quite liked that. She could use it to complete the sphere. She could create the last third of it.

Opening her eyes, Michelle added more spirit energy to the mist on her hand and let it spiral for a few seconds. That way, the newly summoned spirit energy would gain the chaotic spiral pattern too.

When that was done, she started pushing her spirit energy to a place about a meter away from her.

There she let the spirit energy spread to the sides while bending it slightly towards her each time it got bigger.

After a while, she had two thirds of the sphere completed and stopped spreading it further. She just kept adding more spirit energy to it so the sphere could close on its own.

It took a while, but the spirit energy acted as she had expected. After about ten minutes, the sphere was complete around her.

Michelle smiled and closed her eyes.

The next time she would create the sphere, she didn’t want it to take such a long time, so she wanted to observe everything about the sphere.

She wasn’t going to change the pattern in any way. She just wanted to find a way to recreate it faster. She would have been happy if she could do it instantaneously.

While she was training, the time it took to create the sphere didn’t really mean much, but if she really ended up wanting to use it in combat, her opponents wouldn’t give her ten minutes just to create it.

Considering how packed the sphere was with spirit energy, Michelle had a risky idea.

If she filled half of the space where she wanted to create the sphere with spirit energy, if she was in the gem form, it shouldn’t trigger her transformation into human form. And that spirit energy could be used to stretch out much faster to create the sphere.

Because she wouldn’t have to push it there in a small stream, but in a single flooding moment.

She could put even more than half the sphere around her. But to do that, she would have to make sure that when spreading the spirit energy around her, it wouldn’t exceed the limit when the transformation would be triggered.

But that was for later. First things first.

She had to succeed in her human form in making the sphere with that method before she could go on to testing things in the gem form.

So she summoned her spirit energy and sent it out in front of her, creating half a sphere in front of her, filled with spirit energy.

Then, she started forcing it to stretch to the sides without thinning out.

The spirit energy moved to the sides and finally closed around Michelle. It was a success.

When she closed her eyes to check the pattern in the sphere, she was quite satisfied. It was nearly the same as when she did it last time.

That also let her find something out.

To get certain patterns in the flow of spirit energy, she didn’t necessarily have to force them into it. If she formed a shape with the spirit energy that was held up by it flowing in that pattern, the spirit energy would get the pattern.

Then, she would just have to force it to stay in that pattern while using it for different things.

Michelle retracted and recreated the sphere quite a few times, doing it faster every time. She wanted to be able to do it instantaneously.

That way, when she tried in her gem form, she would have an easier time creating it. Because the more proficiency she had with it, the more she could ignore the restrictions of the gem form.

When Michelle decided she was proficient enough with the sphere, it was time to try the gem form.

Cloaking herself in dark element spirit energy, she soon found herself as a small gem on the ground. Her control over her spirit energy was instantly restrained by something stiff.

It made her frown a bit. She was about to face a challenge.

For the next hour, Michelle kept trying to find the limit of spirit energy she could spread around herself before she was forced back into her human form. She kept switching between the forms so much it was annoying her, but she didn’t let it stop her.

When she finally had a conclusion, she was pleasantly surprised. She could go over more than half the sphere and she still wouldn’t transform.

The spirit energy would need to spread around two thirds of the gem before the transformation would happen.

At least one thing was making things easier for her.

Knowing that, Michelle dived into creating the sphere.

It was difficult. Her control over her spirit energy kept slipping, and she could barely even stretch it out.

But she already had the foundation.

In the gem form, she could create a Sensing Net. And that could easily be broken down into a random mist of energy.

Stretching the net out, Michelle pushed more and more spirit energy into it, making the lines pulse black around them.

She needed to push in so much spirit energy the net would burst. And then, she would need to quickly grasp it before it enveloped her whole.

For hours, she tried and failed repetitively, ending up back in her human form.

But with each transformation, the sphere around her had a bigger hole, covering less and less of the gem she was in the shape of. Soon, she would not transform anymore.

Michelle kept repeating the process again and again until she no longer transformed. Then, she took a hold of the spirit energy around her, forced it away from her and started spreading it to the sides.

It was much harder than when she was in human form, but she didn’t let that discourage her. She would finish creating the sphere so she could move in the gem form. She wouldn’t end up as a random rock lying on the ground if she ever had to get into the form of the gem.

Alexander watched from the side for a long while, sinking into thoughts.

When he first saw Michelle eat the purple Life Stone that belonged to the Orange Widow spider, he thought she was setting herself on the ultimate road of destruction. That she was so reckless, that if sometimes she ended up in a nasty situation, she wouldn’t mind casting her life away just to achieve what she wanted.

But as he was watching Michelle test the boundaries of the gem form, he started realizing that wasn’t the case. He still wasn’t entirely sure about it, but something was telling him his initial thoughts were wrong. She wouldn’t cast her life away no matter what happened.

Even though Michelle’s carelessness was clear evidence that she was capable of doing it, something was telling Alexander it wouldn’t happen.

Maybe instincts?

He couldn’t be sure.

For a long while, Alexander just stared at Michelle. He no longer knew what to think, but for some reason, that drew him to her even more.

Logically speaking, she was just a strange girl with useful ideas and an interestingly drastic past.

He decided not to think about it too much. He already knew how he felt about her. Just because he didn’t know why he felt like that wouldn’t change his feelings.

When Michelle finally formed the sphere around herself, she was exhausted. She never knew that control over her spirit energy could be such a big setback. That used to be one of her biggest advantages. She was extremely proficient with spirit energy.

Still, she succeeded. That was good. She just needed to move the spirit energy outside the sphere to move the shadow it was casting. If her theory was correct, that should make her, in the state of the gem, move too. Because the gem was bound to the shadow.

She was basically in front of the last door blocking her way to complete success.

But she couldn’t push it open just yet. First, she needed to train herself until she was able to quickly make the sphere. When she did it, it took her a good half an hour and she was completely exhausted.

In a state like that, there was no way she could manipulate her spirit energy to move the shadow. For that, she would need peak control, but she didn’t have that in her exhausted state.

So, first, she needed to completely master creating the sphere without exhausting herself so much. Only then could she move on to moving the shadow.

And when she was done with that, she would perfect it. To the point when she would be able to move stealthily and fast so no one could notice her in that state.

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