Chapter 336: 336

After stepping into the healer’s facility, the teacher led Michelle to the body-tempering facility, to a teacher there.

“Lukas!” the healer greeted the teacher. They were clearly familiar.

The body-tempering teacher, Lukas Deeber, lifted his gaze from what he was doing.

“What brings you here, John?”

As he asked that, his gaze wandered to Michelle.

He could guess who she was, but he didn’t know why the healer, John Anatoly, would bring her to him.

Still, his eyes narrowed when he observed the girl.

Her stance was unnatural.

John looked over at Michelle and explained what he had found out while examining her, finally voicing his thoughts that physical training could greatly help her.

After listening to that, Lukas locked his gaze on Michelle, studying her closely.

“She can stay!” he finally said.

He was quite curious about a body like that.

“Thank you, Teacher!” Michelle quickly bowed her head.

With every move she made, she could feel Lukas’ gaze on her, studying her.

Were her movements really all that unnatural?

“Well then, I’ll leave her in your care!” John had his own students to teach, so he quickly left.

Lucas kept his gaze on Michelle, studying her.

“He said your joints can bend backwards. Show me!”

Michelle nodded and lifted her right hand, twisting it at the elbow.

“Is that the limit?” Lucas asked. “Or can you push it further?”

“I never really tried to reach the limit,” Michelle admitted before bending her arm even further back.

In the end, she ended up unable to bend her hand more not because the joint wouldn’t let her, but because there was no longer enough space to move her forearm.

Seeing that, Lucas got an idea.

“Can you rotate your arm?”

Michelle, having never tried to defy human limits in that way, didn’t know, so she just decided to try.

Stretching her hand out, she tried to twist and rotate her arm, but she could only achieve the same as a normal person.

So was it impossible?

Or did she just not know how to do it since it was a new motion?

Michelle didn’t have the answer.

But Lucas, watching her, had a guess.

He closely observed how her muscles tightened and relaxed under her skin and reached a conclusion.

The thing blocking Michelle wasn’t the mobility of her joints, but her muscles.

When Michelle tried to rotate her hand, they strangely tightened under her skin.

If that could be seen from the outside, on the inside, the effect had to be bigger.

Most probably, when rotating, the muscles tightened around the bones and joints, preventing further movement.

That meant rotation would be difficult but not impossible.

As long as Michelle could keep some of her muscles relaxed while rotating the hand, the blockage would be basically gone.

But to do that, Michelle would need to figure out which muscles were needed for the motion and which could be left motionless.

And since muscles were a big system, leaving one or two relaxed while the others were tightened seemed impossible.

Lucas himself was one of the very few in the upper realm who had such control over his muscles.

But who knew? Since Michelle’s joints were clearly different, maybe there was also some alteration in her muscles.

To see the full extent of Michelle’s flexibility coupled with her reflexes, Lucas suggested a sparring match.

He could see that, whether consciously or not, Michelle was keeping her posture straight to conceal the unnatural way she stood.

In a spar, under the rush of adrenaline, that control would be let down at least partially, and Lucas could see much more.

Lucas naturally didn’t have bad intentions when suggesting the spar, but Michelle, also understanding what it would cause, didn’t want to do it.

She knew that the full extent of her flexibility was inhuman, and she definitely didn’t want to show it to anyone.

Still, refusing a spar for no valid reason would be strange.

Luckily, Michelle had a valid reason: as Ana Ostrich, she was cultivation trash. Someone like that couldn’t really spar.

Before Michelle could even voice that thought, Lucas realized it on his own and frowned.

“You can’t spar with me…” he muttered. “You’ve never been trained properly…”

For a moment, Lucas went silent, deep in thought, before an idea struck him.

An activity that anyone could do and was forced to use their body: “Climbing!”

When he considered the factor that anyone could do it, he didn’t mean they would succeed.

He was considering whether they would get hurt even if they were untrained.

And as long as he made sure Michelle didn’t fall down hard, she should generally be safe.

He wasn’t expecting her to climb up high mountains.

Michelle didn’t have a problem with climbing.

Since Lucas was expecting her to have no experience in it, she could just pretend to be clumsy while keeping her joints fixed.

She just had to make sure Lucas didn’t notice she was faking.

So Lucas led Michelle through the training grounds to a place where she could climb.

It was an empty wall with a few hooks at the top.

And nearby was a bunch of thick ropes.

Taking one of the ropes, Lucas jumped up and grabbed onto one of the hooks.

Then, in a practiced manner, he tied the rope to the next hook and threw the other end down towards Michelle.

Looking around for a moment, Michelle finally turned her gaze towards Lucas.

“Teacher, what is this place for?” she asked.

Lucas jumped down and landed next to Michelle. “This is for bet losers. They are hung down by their feet depending on how much they lose.”

Michelle raised a brow.

“Would anyone even agree to a bet where the loser would hang from a wall? It gives nothing to the winner!”

“Those aren’t from normal bets,” Lucas shook his head.

“Every three years, the academy hosts a competition, where every fight is basically a bet. And after each fight, the loser is hung up here depending on how much time is drawn for them in lots before the fight. The longest is three days, and the shortest five minutes.”

Hearing that, Michelle was fairly surprised.

A competition like that would surely be interesting.

If she ever got the chance, she would definitely join it.

But as Ana Ostrich… was that even possible?

Michelle decided not to think about it much since she had different things to do at the moment.

Like being tested by Lucas.

So, putting her hands on the rope, Michelle tightened her muscles and tried to lift herself up.

She somehow knew she should be able to climb it easily, but at the same time, Michelle hadn’t tried to climb anything since absorbing the Life Stones, so she didn’t know whether her muscles worked the same.

So, she was curious.

At first, everything was normal. Michelle was able to lift herself a bit.

But the moment she lifted her legs to go higher, something strange happened.

Before Michelle could control it, the muscles in her legs flexed and her legs wrapped around the thick rope.

At the same time, her arms reacted similarly, pulling her higher.

So, though Michelle wasn’t planning to do it, just a few moments later, she was up on the rope, just beneath the hooks.

Looking at her from below, Lucas could see her flabbergasted expression and frowned.

“This has never happened to you before?” he asked.

Moving her hands to not hang from the rope but from the hook, Michelle nodded absent-mindedly, wondering what just happened.

She was even more confused than Lucas was.

Seeing how Michelle was acting, especially after what she just did, Lucas reached two conclusions.

First: she had extreme potential when it came to body-tempering and physical-based abilities.

Second: considering what just happened, Michelle couldn’t have ended up like that from a poison.

It was like Michelle’s limbs got possessed by something. Poisons didn’t act like that. And it definitely didn’t activate so suddenly.

Seeing Lucas’ gaze, Michelle knew he was onto something, but she didn’t comment on it.

She was much more concerned about what had just happened.

Most probably, it was caused by the Life Stone of the Orange Widow.

Did that mean Orange Widows had the ability to climb things subconsciously, without controlling it themselves?

That would give them free brain capacity to focus on other things.

But Michelle wasn’t sure she wanted an ability like that…

Especially since she couldn’t control it.

If she ever learned to control it, it would be overpowered, but before that, she would need to study it for a long time.

Because all abilities could have their downsides, and Michelle didn’t want it to be something fatal.

Thinking about all that, she let go of the hook she was hanging from and landed on the ground.

She didn’t even realize that when she landed, her legs bent a bit, in a way that no human could move their legs.

But while she didn’t notice, Lucas noticed, and it caused him to furrow his brows ever so slightly.

“Were you really poisoned?” he finally asked.

Hearing that question, Michelle’s stomach dropped, but she kept up the calm facade.

“I nearly dropped into a liquid. The changes appeared after that, so I assumed it was a poison.”

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