Chapter 330: 330

When Marcus found the cave where Michelle, Eleanor, and Asher were training, he was greatly surprised by what he saw.

As always, Eleanor and Asher were training their own alternatives of the skill. That wasn’t surprising.

But at their side was standing Michelle, lazily leaning against the wall with shadow essence pulsing around her and bending to her will.

Sensing the presence of their Master, the three snapped out of their training and looked at Marcus.

“Master!” they all bowed their heads.

Their Master could be reckless and they even argued with him sometimes, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t show him the respect any disciple was expected to show their Master.

Marcus nodded to acknowledge their greetings.

“You shall start proper training today!” he announced.

Eleanor and Asher lifted a brow.

The many times they had come down to the ravine, whether they were with Marcus or not, they were only told to perfect their detection skills. Nothing else.

So what was Marcus planning?

Quite curious, they let him continue speaking.

“Eleanor, your task is to find the Thousand Snake den and locate the Lord Snake,” Marcus started.

“Asher, you will go to the plant beast territory and find a Secret Devourer.”

Finally, he turned to Michelle: “Ana, you still don’t have the skill fully grasped, so your task will be different. You will stay by my side as I go check on those two. Until we leave, you have to grasp the skill and find out how far your Senior Sister and Brother got in their tasks.”

Hearing Marcus’ words, Eleanor and Asher knew that though with some difficulty, both would be able to finish the task.

But their eyes narrowed when they heard about Michelle’s task.

Somehow, they had no clue how that could be done.

It even seemed like their Master was giving Michelle the hardest task, even though she was just a beginner.

And in a way, they were right.

Michelle’s task was harder in one aspect.

But in everything else, it was easier.

The aspect involved the fact that when using the detection skill, as unowned spirit energy, and basically all unowned energies, could only move horizontally in space, the waves of the skill would all be on the same level.

And those levels were extremely thin, so it was basically impossible for two people’s detection skills to clash.

That was also the reason why Eleanor, Asher, and Michelle could all train in the same space.

They were creating the waves at different levels.

As for how they felt the objects, when a wave crashed against an object or something it couldn’t pass through, it would pop like a drop of water, and though the orbs of spirit energy wouldn’t move lower, the orbs lower would react to it.

That would be followed by a chain reaction.

The orbs beneath each other would react together.

And that chain reaction could be felt in the wave when it was sent back.

But that didn’t affect Michelle’s task.

To succeed, she just needed to find a way to create waves at the same levels as Asher and Eleanor without disrupting their own detection skills.

And when the wave got back to her, she could feel the same thing they were feeling, thus showing her how far they got in their tasks.

That was the part that was harder for Michelle to do.

But the difficulty of the task was balanced out compared to Eleanor and Asher with the easier parts she had.

Unlike Asher and Eleanor, she wouldn’t have to deal with other distractions.

Eleanor would have thousands of snakes blocking the skill for her, and if she angered them, they would even attack her to protect their Lord Snake.

Asher, too, wouldn’t be safe from such troubles while fulfilling his task.

He would be in a field full of flowers blocking his skill.

And he could never know whether a man-eating one wasn’t right next to him.

He, too, could be attacked.

After considering that along with the fact that Michelle grasped the rough basics of the skill within three days, both Eleanor and Asher agreed that maybe the task wasn’t all that more difficult for her than theirs were for them.

So, leaving Michelle in the cave to continue training, Marcus took Asher and Eleanor with him to take them to the parts of the ravine where they would fulfill their tasks.

The places were quite far from each other, but using the rifts, it only took Marcus less than half an hour to get back.

When Marcus got back, he watched Michelle train, a frown on his face.

“Your progress is way too fast!” he finally said, his tone grave.

Opening her eyes, Michelle looked at him.

“Is there something wrong about fast progress?” she asked.

Marcus nodded.

“If you aren’t careful with it, it will backlash at you.”

“Why?” Michelle didn’t quite understand that.

She knew that when things were pushed to go unnaturally fast, the consequences could be dire, but she was careful not to push herself over the limit.

Marcus sighed and sat down on the ground.

Summoning a spirit stone to his hand, he showed it to Michelle.

“What would happen if I pulled the spirit energy out of it at a speed just under the limit?” he asked.

Michelle shrugged. “Nothing much. It should keep pushing it out until it’s drained.”

“And what would happen if after filling the spirit stone up again, I repeated the process?” Marcus continued asking.

Michelle lifted a brow. “Once, it shouldn’t make much of a difference, but repetitively, it could damage the stone.”

“And that’s the problem!” Marcus shot his spirit energy into the spirit stone and it shattered into fine dust in his hand.

Michelle finally understood what Marcus meant.

She didn’t need to push herself over the limit for the consequences of her training to be dire. Just getting close to the limit repetitively was enough.

It reminded her of batteries in phones and electronic devices back in the 21st century.

When a phone was constantly and repetitively forced to run on less than some percentage, the battery didn’t take it well.

If this was done for a long period of time, the battery’s full capacity could lower.

And those phones weren’t pushed over their limits. Because once there was no battery in them, they couldn’t work anymore.

But it still ruined them.

Thinking about that, Michelle thought back to how she pushed herself to the limit while trying to grasp the basics of the detection skill.

First, she repeated it until she could no longer use her shadow essence, and then she continued with her spirit energy until her head was spinning so much she couldn’t stand straight.

Back then, she indeed pushed herself too much.

Also, she repeated the whole process quite a few times until she grasped the basics of the skill.

After that, she no longer got dizzy, but it still wasn’t something exactly beneficial to her.

At least the process.

Well, but she did grasp the basics, so it was one advantage.

And the basics were actually quite simple.

There was no reason for her to even try to understand why things went wrong when two waves crashed into one another.

She could just completely avoid it in a simple way.

The key to it was the moment when the wave splattered against the solid thing it crashed into.

If the next wave crashed into it before the first one could bounce back, the splatter would add up together and affect the orbs of spirit energy just a level beneath or above.

Then, instead of the returning wave going from the original level, it would go from the upper or lower level.

Of course, even after understanding that, it took Michelle a while to master these basics.

And she was still far from completely mastering the skill to be able to use it widely.

That was why she had to continue training even after Eleanor and Asher left.

Marcus watched Michelle deep in thought and knew she understood what he was concerned about.

So he left her to continue training for a while more.

Then, when it seemed that Michelle was close to being able to use the skill, though clumsily, Marcus took her near where Eleanor was.

From there, Michelle could barely see Eleanor in the distance.

Relaxing her posture, she closed her eyes and focused on her shadow essence.

Then, she had it pulsate under her skin.

Well, more than pulsating, it was shivering.

To make sure the waves went one after the other fast enough, the pulsating had to be so fast it couldn’t even be called pulsating anymore.

As Eleanor was quite far, Michelle had to wait for a long time before she got something back.

And all that was that she was able to locate Eleanor with her eyes closed.

Nothing more.

To find out what progress Eleanor had made, Michelle had to do much more.

Also, it would do her good if she could make the waves travel faster so she wouldn’t have to wait so long before they reached Eleanor.

It was clear Michelle still had a lot of training to do before she could complete the task.

Also, she only had four days left.

As agreed between Marcus and Antony, after a week of training under Marcus, she would go train under Antony.

She had already been training for three days, so only four days were remaining.

Thinking about that, Michelle remembered that she didn’t yet go check the dorm assigned to her amongst Antony’s students.

It seemed she wouldn’t be able to avoid meeting the new students.

Just the thought of that was annoying.

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