Chapter 298: 298

Michelle’s soul energy stretched to the leader creature in front of her, restrained by the coils of her Liquid Shadow.

It didn’t take long, and the creature was enveloped in void so thick its body couldn’t even be seen.

Michelle left it like that. She wanted to see what it would do.

Was it really that terrified of her soul energy, or was it just tricking her?

If so, what did it want to achieve?

She quickly found out.

The creature was indeed fooling her.

With her sensing net still beneath the ice she was standing on, she was able to sense movement in the ground.

For some reason, though the creature wasn’t able to command its minions when only the ice was obscuring it, it was able to do so once Michelle’s void enveloped it.

The minions were on the move.

But Michelle found out too late to retract the void.

A crack appeared in the ice beneath her legs.

Quickly jumping to the side, she landed a short distance away.

But a crack appeared there too.

Activating her Shadow Spirit Steps, she started running across the ice. But the Soundless Beasts were faster. Wherever she stepped, a crack would appear.

But Michelle wasn’t trying to escape them. She was just momentarily buying herself time.

The whole time, she had her hand stretched out toward the void wrapped around the leader creature.

Then, when cracks surrounded nearly the whole ice field, she rushed toward the void.

She didn’t know whether the leader could or couldn’t see her, but she was nearly sure it could accurately sense her. Otherwise, its minions wouldn’t have been able to crack the ice so precisely where she was standing.

So how would it react when it felt her getting closer?

Within a split second, Michelle was just centimeters away from the void she had created.

And that was when the creature reacted with a command.

Just in front of Michelle, the ice cracked, but it didn’t stop there.

Something pushed through the ice and jumped out, landing in front of Michelle.

Michelle couldn’t even properly see it before it landed a strike on the side of her waist. It felt like a kick.

The kick was powerful, sending her flying to the side a good few meters. She ended up sprawled on her own ice.

The red in her eyes deepened. It wasn’t anger. If it was, maybe just a little. The rest was excitement.

The creature was trying to defeat her at her own game.

For someone like Michelle, that was a thrilling encounter.

The moment she landed on the ice, she could feel numerous cracks appearing beneath her.

Quickly, she rolled to the side and used the momentum to push herself up.

Just as she stood, she saw three more creatures on the ice.

They were disturbing.

Just like the leader creature, they had human-shaped bodies.

They were basically similar to the leader.

The only difference was the head.

The minions’ heads were lowered into their chests, so their shadows looked like those of humans whose heads had been severed at the base of the neck.

Those lowered heads had fanged mouths and holes for noses. But instead of one red eye in the middle, they had two miniature red eyes.

Michelle understood that the strike that hit her had indeed been a kick, just like it felt.

But she didn’t have time to dwell on it. In addition to the leader, she had four minions to deal with. And from that earlier kick, she knew they were physically much stronger than her.

Of course, that wouldn’t make Michelle give up. She just knew she would have to fight using everything she had. And that was quite an exciting idea.

That didn’t mean that in her previous fights she hadn’t given it her all. She had. But she just hadn’t had the chance to use all her techniques until she was completely spent.

Standing before the four creatures and the one still within the void, she knew she would completely exhaust herself. That thought was further reinforced by the fact that the leader creature could make another beast emerge from under the ice at any time.

Reaching into her spirit domain, Michelle took out her sickle. Using her shadow essence as Liquid Shadow to bind it to her hand, she made it so she no longer needed to use both hands to manipulate it.

In her other hand, she held her shifting weapon in the shape of a dagger. She had never used such a combination before, but she was sure she could wield it better than just the sickle alone.

Whenever she used a sickle, there were a few things that felt restraining. For example, if she let her enemy get too close, her offensive capabilities would be greatly limited. And her defense would be even worse.

Because of its long handle, the sickle was more of a mid-range weapon.

That could be countered by holding a dagger for when an enemy got too close for comfort.

The four Soundless Beasts launched at Michelle at once, their strikes perfectly coordinated. It seemed impossible to dodge or block all of them. At least one strike would definitely land on her.

But Michelle still found a way out.

Her soul energy gushed out, wrapping her in a cocoon of void. The cocoon was exactly the same as the one she had wrapped around the leader creature.

When the four strikes landed all at once against the void, they instantly recoiled in pain.

Nature doesn’t like emptiness. Whether vacuum or literal void, it always tries to fill it with whatever is available.

The void Michelle created was formed from her soul energy. She had it under control, so she could decide what it absorbed and what it didn’t.

She didn’t let it suck in air or ambient energy. She pushed those away.

But she allowed the void to absorb flesh. It didn’t matter whether the Soundless Beasts were truly beasts or monsters. They were made of flesh and blood.

The moment their strikes touched the void, it began sucking at their flesh to fill itself. It was greedy.

Strong as they were, the creatures managed to rip their limbs away. Michelle didn’t yet have the ability to make the void’s hunger strong enough to devour an entire creature, let alone four resisting ones far stronger than herself.

If she could, that would make her soul energy practically omnipotent.

Still, it was enough to tear at their flesh. When they pulled back, their limbs were bleeding.

The four fanged mouths screamed in chorus, the sound deafening.

But Michelle wasn’t truly affected. Just a short while ago, she had resisted a roar of infrasound. Ordinary screaming was nothing compared to that. It just sounded horrid.

Somehow, it sounded similar to a baby’s cry, but it was so high-pitched that no one could mistake it for one.

That made an idea swell in Michelle’s mind.

What if the four creatures in front of her weren’t just minions?

Retracting the void around herself, she formed a wall of ice between her and the screaming creatures, preventing them from striking her immediately.

Then her gaze locked onto the cocoon of void a few meters away.

A reckless plan formed in her head.

It was based solely on the sound of the creatures’ screeching. There was nothing else to ground it.

Gathering soul energy in her hand, she shot it toward the cocoon, forming another, thinner layer of void.

Then she pulled the soul energy back, all at once, along with the cocoon itself.

The next moment, the leader creature could be seen again.

And it was clearly tense, as if it sensed something dangerous.

That mostly confirmed Michelle’s guess. Still, she couldn’t be completely sure the creature wasn’t deceiving her again. It was clearly intelligent enough to do so. Its predictive ability was excellent.

When the leader emerged from the cocoon, the four minions stopped screeching. They calmed almost instantly, simply staring at their leader.

The next moment, they turned their gaze back to Michelle, ready to strike.

The ice wall still obscured them.

One of them, the first creature that had broken through the ice earlier, lunged at the wall and punched through it.

The ice shattered, and shards stabbed into its arm. It looked like a human arm.

Considering how the four creatures had reacted when striking the void, it was expected that the shards would affect it similarly. But it showed no reaction and continued its attack.

And in that strike, the other three creatures joined it. The ice wall was no longer shielding her.

Michelle frowned slightly and ducked.

With that, she dodged three strikes.

The last was a kick aimed at her legs.

She could use that. She needed just one creature to execute her plan.

It didn’t matter that it was reckless, or that so little was known about the Soundless Beasts. She wanted to carry it out.

She had rarely been more determined.

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