Chapter 329: 329

Michelle watched things go wrong and stopped pulsing her shadow essence.

Then, she did the whole process once again, exactly the same, without any alterations.

To see the failure again.

She already knew when the failure would come, so she could focus on it more and see what exactly caused it.

So, the process went the same way as before.

Her shadow essence put into motion the shadow essence around her. That activated the shadow essence further, which hit against the shadow essence even farther.

Finally, the first wave hit the wall and turned back.

Once it crashed into the second wave coming after it, a strange chain reaction occurred.

The two waves, after crashing into one another, stilled and disappeared.

They nullified each other.

After they nullified each other, one would expect the next wave to continue moving forward until it hit the wall and the whole reaction happened again.

But something completely different occurred.

After the two waves nullified each other, the third wave couldn’t move past the place where they crashed and turned there as if it hit the wall.

Just a moment later, it hit the fourth wave and they nullified each other.

And the fifth wave crashed into the space where they disappeared.

This chain reaction continued until the last two waves nullified each other right by Michelle.

And to that, her shadow essence reacted.

As she was still making her shadow essence pulsate, the pulsating hit into the blockage just outside her body.

And that affected the pulsating unnaturally, making it stop for a moment.

That, in turn, made her dizzy.

Stopping her shadow essence once more, Michelle closed her eyes to think about what just happened.

But with the dizziness, she couldn’t exactly think all that much.

So she sat down to wait until her head cleared up and she felt better.

Then, she got up again and recounted what happened in her head.

She understood the fact that when the two waves met, they disappeared. It made logical sense.

When two opposing forces of the same strength met, naturally, they would nullify each other.

But what was that blockage it created?

Was that a rule of only shadow essence?

Most likely not. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have felt dizzy after her first try.

That one was with spirit energy, not shadow essence.

So what was going on?

Thinking about the whole skill, Michelle felt that it was somehow not really logical.

In the whole world, spirit energy was naturally moving around.

Not much.

Each particle, or orb, or whatever it was called, moved just around a single spot horizontally.

The orbs next to each other moved back and forth at the same time in the same directions.

They had the same movement patterns activated at the same time.

Also, those patterns, though affectable by the spirit energy under the control of someone or something (monster, beast, artifact), were impossible to dismantle.

In other words, it was impossible to affect just a single orb.

Only batches were affectable altogether.

So what were those waves?

Those waves weren’t batches.

They were indeed a bunch of orbs, but as they were in a circle around Michelle, every single one of them was affected to move in a slightly different direction.

In other words, their pattern was affected differently with each.

And around that first layer around Michelle was a second layer that, too, was in a circle.

Or a semi-circle if she made the spirit energy, or shadow essence, pulsate only under one side of her skin.

So, if she understood it right, the skill was defying nature and its patterns.

It was breaking the unbreakable.

Or was there some kind of loophole or another rule she didn’t know about?

It was logically possible for two rules which don’t support, and maybe even contradict, each other to coexist because each was applied to a different situation, under different conditions.

But what rule was it?

And was there even that kind of rule?

Maybe Michelle just wrongly understood what the skill did, so she was under the wrong impression about it.

That, as well, was a believable possibility.

Opening her eyes with a sigh, Michelle decided to observe her failure of the skill a few more times.

So, again and again, she activated the skill and watched as the waves disappeared amongst each other.

With each try, Michelle felt a wave of dizziness.

But she didn’t let it stop her and tried again and again until the dizziness was so bad she couldn’t concentrate on using her shadow essence.

Still, that didn’t mean Michelle would stop.

While using shadow essence required quite some concentration from her, she was much more proficient in using spirit energy, so she didn’t need as much concentration and control.

So, she tested the skill again and again until the dizziness was so bad she couldn’t even summon her spirit energy and it returned to her dantian.

To reach that state, the dizziness was so bad that Michelle was breathing slowly through her mouth, feeling like she would soon puke.

Hearing the slowed breathing, Eleanor opened her eyes and looked at Michelle.

“Any progress?” she wasn’t worried about Michelle.

She herself had gone through the dizziness Michelle was going through.

And back then, she was so stubborn she kept on going until she fainted and Marcus had to nurse her back to health.

Michelle supported herself on the wall.

“Those waves… Do they move as groups, or as layers?” she asked.

Eleanor knew exactly why Michelle was asking that.

It was one of the things anyone who tried to master the skill came across.

It wasn’t exactly knowledge needed to master the skill, but everyone was curious about it.

Because anyone would be curious about how a skill worked when it looked like it was defying the very rules of nature.

So, Eleanor explained: “When you move energy under your skin, making it put the pattern of the outside energy into disarray, it indeed moves in layers. But it’s a bit more complicated than how simple you would think it is.”

“Instead of the layers affecting one another by touching one another, just before they touch, the first layer returns to its normal pattern and the second layer takes the new pattern. They switch patterns.”

“And pattern switching isn’t against the rule of patterns being unchangeable in singular orbs. Singular orbs can exchange their patterns and everything stays stable.”

Listening to that, Michelle also had an answer to her second question, one she wanted to come up with on her own.

For some reason, she had the feeling that Eleanor wouldn’t answer that one.

Her second question was why, after two waves crashed into each other, no more waves could pass through them.

And the answer was simple.

When the waves disappeared, the spirit energy, or whatever energy was being used, gained the rare pattern of immobility.

When a new wave came close to it, they switched patterns.

The waving spirit energy completely stopped moving, and the immobile spirit energy started shaking in place like it normally would.

But the new immobile spirit energy wouldn’t stay like that for more than a moment, because it still held the momentum of previous movement.

So it turned and went that way, back towards Michelle.

And there, it crashed into a new wave, which made the whole process turn into a chain reaction.

Seeing Michelle’s expression, Eleanor understood that she must have figured something out.

In the end, Michelle wasn’t concealing her expression in the least bit.

Watching Michelle like that, Eleanor felt that her new Junior Sister was a bit scary.

How could someone figure out the core of the skill so quickly?

After figuring out the mechanism of the skill’s failing, Michelle smiled.

She ignored her dizziness and started thinking about ways to make the waves ignore each other when they passed one another.

She started entertaining the idea of making one orb of spirit energy move in a mixture of two patterns.

That sounded impossible at first, but after thinking about it for a while, Michelle was sure it could be done.

After reaching that conclusion, she waited for her dizziness to die down before putting her new theory to the test.

She was determined to master the basics of the skill before Marcus would come down to the ravine.

She wanted to see his reaction after seeing her succeed.

The following process was actually quite smooth for Michelle.

She quickly figured out a way to put two patterns into one orb or group of orbs, and those double patterns got switched amongst orbs and groups of orbs.

After that, it was a walk in the park.

She just kept testing the boundaries of the double patterns until she reached something that seemed like a valid skill.

She still couldn’t effectively sense around with it.

It was too slow for that.

But at least, she could see the progress.

On the morning of the fourth day, when Michelle, Asher, and Eleanor were in the ravine, a rift through space opened above the ravine and Marcus stepped out.

Activating the detection skill, he was able to pinpoint Michelle and the rest’s location within a matter of seconds, even though the ravine was huge.

So, he instantly turned to go there.

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