Chapter 303: 303

For a while, Michelle continued testing her skills and finding out more about how absorbing the Life Stones changed her and how the Heavenly Law affected her. But she couldn’t exactly find anything out, since the Heavenly Law wasn’t really reacting to her in any specific way.

It was ignoring her, since she wasn’t crossing between realms.

But that meant that if Michelle came to one of the barriers of the Heavenly Law, she could observe the changes.

And since her Shadow Mastery control was basically equivalent to the Eclipse rank when she wasn’t suppressed by the Heavenly Law, she could cross the barrier into the upper realm.

If the environment changed, could she further observe how the Heavenly Law observed her?

After staying around for a while longer, Michelle decided to go look for her friends again.

Kieran was atop the volcanic mountain, cultivating, while Ivona and Anastasia were at the foot of the mountain. They were tempering their bodies according to a method they learned in the town near the mountain.

The city’s economy mostly relied on selling resources gathered on the mountain. So a big part of the residents were either gatherers or hunters. And then there were a few merchants who bought the resources from the residents and sold them in bigger cities.

Though most of the town’s residents regularly went up the mountain, only a small percentage of them were fire-element Spirit Masters. In other words, it was impossible for them to go high up the mountain without fainting from the heat and then dying.

That meant that only fire-element Spirit Masters could go to the top of the mountain, where the most valuable and hard-to-gather resources were located.

With such a problem, the most expensive resources stayed up on the mountain, the money the merchants got from selling the resources was sparse, so they paid the residents sparingly, and the town stayed backward.

To counter that, the residents slowly invented a body-tempering method that allowed even non-fire-element Spirit Masters to go to the top of the volcanic mountain.

Ivona and Anastasia learned that method from the residents.

Of course, the residents didn’t give it to them for free. They wanted Life Stones from monsters of elements other than fire.

In the town, there was still a big difference between fire-element Spirit Masters and other Spirit Masters. Because the fire-element ones could cultivate in the volcanic mountain, which sped up their cultivation. They were also mostly the ones who rose in levels and went to bigger cities.

But the other Spirit Masters stagnated quite a bit.

For a long time, the City Lord had been trying to decrease the difference by obtaining large Life Stones of elements other than fire and building them into the city, so the cultivation of others could also be sped up.

In exchange for letting Anastasia and Ivona learn the body-tempering method, the City Lord wanted bigger Life Stones from them, one of each element.

By “bigger Life Stones”, in reality he meant mid-sized ones. He had probably never seen a truly large Life Stone.

But Anastasia and Ivona had seen them. And they had quite a few of them. So it wasn’t any problem for them. Without any complaints or negotiations, they gave the Life Stones to the City Lord.

And they took out truly large Life Stones.

The City Lord was shocked when he saw the sheer size of the Life Stones, unable to process it for a while.

When he finally snapped back to reality, he called for a servant. “Take the two ladies to the leading hunter. Tell him to pick out someone to teach them the body-tempering method.”

Anastasia and Ivona understood the method quite fast and left the town.

But since they had been treated nicely during their stay, before leaving, they once again went to see the City Lord and gave him some Life Stones. They also gave a single Life Stone to the man who taught them the method as thanks.

He nearly fainted when he saw it. The City Lord had a similar reaction when he received the new Life Stones.

Considering how big of a reward they were, he wanted to reject them and give them back to Ivona and Anastasia. But when they said it was to thank him for the hospitality, he didn’t know what to say.

At first, he thought the two were naive little girls who didn’t know the value of the Life Stones. But seeing the way they spoke, he understood that wasn’t the case.

So did that mean the girls didn’t want to give them the Life Stones, but instead wanted to improve the lives of the people living in the town?

The City Lord no longer knew what to think.

He didn’t even get the chance to say anything more, because Ivona and Anastasia left. They went straight toward the volcanic mountain.

In reality, Anastasia and Ivona didn’t mean much by it.

They were aware of how much spirit energy large Life Stones contained. That was true.

But having been in the wild for so long, fighting monsters, and being under Michelle’s influence, they always had an abundance of Life Stones. So they might have carelessly forgotten how precious they could be to others.

When Michelle found Anastasia and Ivona, they were fighting an Elemental Giant Scorpion, so she left them to it. When they were done, she came over. “What are you doing?” she asked curiously.

The girls clearly weren’t done with the scorpion’s body.

“You’re back…” Anastasia glanced at Michelle, waving at her before turning her attention back to the scorpion. “We need its blood.”

The two girls were running around the corpse, making small cuts from which they collected the bluish liquid flowing out.

They had already killed quite a few Giant Scorpions, so they were used to the fact that they didn’t have exactly blood, but a blue-green liquid flowing through their veins. When they had seen it for the first time, when even Kieran was with them, they had all been quite surprised.

Michelle went over to help, collecting the blood along with the two of them. Every now and then, her eyes wandered to the scorpion’s Life Stone. It was of the fire element, so it couldn’t be of any help to her. But she was still tempted to see how the absorption ability of the Orange Widow would react to it.

Observing Michelle from the side while still working, Ivona noticed some changes in the way she moved.

It wasn’t strange compared to other people, but compared to how Michelle usually moved, something was different.

Ivona couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was, but it felt like Michelle had something bestial within her.

“You experimented with the Life Stones?” she finally asked.

When those words fell, Michelle wasn’t surprised. She had been expecting someone to ask.

But Anastasia had quite the opposite reaction.

Her hands stopped working on the scorpion, and her eyes snapped to Michelle. “You really did it?” Her voice was laced with anger. “I told you it’s dangerous!” She nearly threw her knife at Michelle in her anger.

Michelle knew there was no point in lying. Moving her spirit energy, she pushed it to her forehead.

Then, the skin there split open, and some blood started trailing down. The wound slowly got bigger until a purple gem pushed out, adorning Michelle’s face like an accessory.

Somehow, it looked like a third eye.

Seeing that, Anastasia flew into a fit of rage. “I told you not to do it!” Her grip on her knife tightened.

Then, without warning, she threw a punch at Michelle.

Michelle didn’t dodge, letting the strike land right between her eyes. As Anastasia was holding a knife, her fist was bigger, and the punch hurt more.

Under the force of the punch, Michelle felt like the bridge of her nose broke. And probably the bones under her eyebrows too.

When Anastasia retracted her hand, she was calmer, but clearly still angry. However, she wasn’t planning to beat Michelle any further.

It was obvious that Michelle wouldn’t resist the beating, and Anastasia didn’t want to kill her. So she decided to end things with a single punch. That was quite enough to quell most of her anger.

“How could you be so reckless… You could have died,” she muttered begrudgingly.

Michelle smiled sheepishly through the pain in her face. “Alexander was with me…”

The next moment, another punch landed on her face, exactly where the first one had landed.

“Do you think he would have been able to save you if your spirit energy went on a rampage?! You would have been torn apart from the inside.” Anastasia was once again enraged.

Michelle gently ran her finger over the bridge of her nose, feeling the extent of the damage.

But she didn’t need to do it. The fact that she felt blood running down over her mouth was enough to tell her what was going on.

Her nose wasn’t just broken.

Anastasia had made sure to properly shatter it.

Michelle decided not to say anything further. Another punch, and she felt like her skull would cave inward.

Seeing that Michelle was no longer protesting, Anastasia was satisfied and turned back to the scorpion.

So the trio continued with their work, looking quite funny.

Aside from the blue-green blood on their clothes and hands, Michelle had red blood on her face, and Anastasia had it on her knuckles.

The only one spared from the red of blood was Ivona, since she had kept her distance when Anastasia got angry.I

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