Chapter 346: 346

Engulfed by darkness, Michelle couldn’t see a thing.

It was strange considering the fact that as a dark element Spirit Master, she was supposed to see in the dark.

That could only mean that she wasn’t seeing darkness but that she was in a completely black environment.

Thinking about it like that, she looked down at herself.

To check her theory.

And she was right.

She could see her hands and the cube on her palms.

So, Michelle could only wait in the blackness, waiting for what would happen.

She had no clue that she was within a black cocoon that was shrinking along with her so it could pull her into the cube’s space.

Michelle only realized something was off when she felt the cube get bigger on her hands.

Why would it be growing?

Michelle had no time to think about it.

The cube grew so fast that she was forced to let go of it.

And the instant she did, the cube flew out of the enclosed blackness.

Just a second later, Michelle saw the black walls surrounding her starting to open up.

She was no longer on the training grounds.

She was in the cube’s space.

What in reality happened was that when the cocoon shrunk, the cube left it.

Quickly, the cocoon shrunk enough to enter the cube and sunk into it.

But Michelle didn’t know that.

She just knew she was in a body-tempering space.

Curious about it, Michelle looked out through the opening in the cocoon.

She was in something like a cavern, but the walls were pulsing with black, white, and purple, the colors of her spirit energy elements.

Also, even in the cocoon, Michelle could feel soul energy sweeping through the space in the form of void-like gusts of wind.

And the whole place was shrouded in darkness, most probably from shadow essence.

Another strange thing about the cavern was the ground.

It was a web made out of thin strands.

In plain sight, it looked quite sturdy. Like it would act like normal ground.

But Michelle didn’t exactly believe that.

She had two guesses.

Either the web only looked sturdy and would in reality be hard to balance on, or it was sturdy, but nearby was hidden a creature that could feel vibrations through it.

And would attack Michelle.

Well, because webs… that was usually the work of spiders.

But Michelle could accept the fact that a spider wasn’t present.

Maybe the space sensed she had absorbed the Life Stone of an Orange Widow and made the environment spider-like.

But then, there would also logically be traits resembling a Frostbound Leviathan and the unknown shadow rabbit since Michelle absorbed their Life Stones too.

So?

What was it?

Michelle knew putting things off was pointless, so she stepped forward.

At first, the thin threads under her were indeed sturdy and she could walk a few steps.

But Michelle stopped walking when she felt a shift behind her.

Turning around, she saw the cocoon that brought her to the space falling apart.

It happened quickly, and Michelle wasn’t able to react in any way.

But worse and more shocking was what happened after the cocoon was gone.

The threads under her nearly instantly moved, dipping a bit under Michelle’s weight.

Their properties had changed after the cocoon disappeared.

Michelle tried to shift her stance to a more stable one, but the moment she moved, she felt the threads wiggle under her.

The shift in footing made Michelle lose her balance and fall down at the web.

She thought it would be a soft landing, that the threads would catch her, but she couldn’t have been more wrong.

The threads were so thin, when Michelle fell on them, they cut through her clothes and dug into her flesh, drawing blood.

Feeling that, Michelle quickly wanted to get up, but the moment she shifted ever so slightly, she felt the threads under her shift too.

They were moving within her flesh, cutting at it from inside.

That meant that if Michelle got up, the threads that had shifted would cut her more, maybe even cutting parts of her flesh out.

Another problem Michelle realized was that she had no strong footing.

The web kept constantly shifting and dipping, giving her no spot to press against to get up without her cuts getting deeper.

Still, Michelle refused to give up.

Sometimes, she was just unbearably stubborn.

So, she decided to test her movement on the web.

With a thrust, she pulled her hand up, away from the web.

Pain tore through her whole arm as the threads bit and cut through her flesh, leaving bleeding rows behind.

Michelle let a hiss out, her body instinctively jerking.

That caused the web she was on to dip below her, cutting her in some places a bit more.

But that proved to be something Michelle needed.

When the web dipped, Michelle felt her knee hit something hard.

There was hard ground just beneath the web.

So there was some kind of support.

So, Michelle decided to get up.

Gritting her teeth, Michelle pressed her hands down low against the ground beneath the web to push herself up.

To not have to feel the tearing of her flesh for a prolonged period, Michelle practically whipped her body up, using movements not really possible with an ordinary human body.

Having been face down on the web before, after getting up, Michelle looked down on her body, feeling searing pain all over her front.

She looked like a beast had repeatedly clawed all over her front.

The tears were on her chest, on her stomach, and even all over her legs, blood dripping down her body.

Michelle could barely move because of the wounds.

Every tiny contraction of her muscles made the wounds sting more.

But luckily, Michelle was able to remain upright.

After standing up, she didn’t fall down.

At least right away.

Because the cavern had different plans with her.

A few seconds later, Michelle felt a gust of void in the distance.

Also, she saw the web dipping near her.

The space was constantly on the move.

Realizing that, Michelle understood she would fall much more.

Still, she wanted to at least look around and see what kind of cavern she was in.

So, she took a step forward.

A mistake.

Instantly, the web shifted under her and Michelle fell.

Additionally, because of the pain, she completely failed to keep her balance and ended up planting her face into the web.

The only lucky thing was that it was the left side of her face, so she didn’t lose her eye.

On the left side, she had the Eye of Nihil which was a glass ball.

It couldn’t be cut.

Feeling the pain all over her body and her face too, Michelle felt like cursing out loud.

But she couldn’t even move her mouth because that would worsen the cuts on her face.

With great pain, Michelle got up again, but the space wasn’t kind to her.

A gust of void hit her in the chest, making her fall back.

“Agh! I hate this!” Michelle let out an enraged shout, letting her emotions get the better of her.

It had been a while since something had made her so utterly helpless.

Truthfully, she didn’t feel like raising up again.

That would just lead to another fall.

But while lying on the web, Michelle could feel the threads sinking further into her flesh, making the cuts deeper.

She was sure that if she stayed like that, it would cut through her and kill her.

And Michelle didn’t want to find out how the body-tempering space dealt with death.

So, cursing through the pain, she rose to her feet again, feeling flesh getting torn out of her back.

When she looked around herself, there was blood and flesh caught on the threads everywhere.

“This space is determined to skin me alive…” Michelle muttered.

But she already understood something about the space.

Whenever the web beneath her dipped, it was in a way that made her joints dip too low and she lost her balance.

In other words, the space was forcing her to fix up her joints so the dips couldn’t make her fall.

Easier said than done.

Because when Michelle tried to stiffen her limbs, she went too rigid and the dips completely threw her off.

She had to find balance somewhere in between rigidity and flexibility.

And there could be two ways to approach them.

One would be to work towards human movements.

Somehow it seemed human movement patterns could withstand the dips.

Second was to do the exact opposite and sink into monster mobility; specifically that of spiders.

Since it was a web that Michelle was standing on, adapting the movement of something that created and lived on webs seemed rational.

So, Michelle was in front of a choice:

Would she try to regain complete human movement or go monster style?

Michelle truly wanted to consider both, but the space was ruthless.

It kept throwing her off balance and tearing at her flesh.

It got to the point when Michelle’s healing abilities couldn’t compensate for the blood loss and Michelle started feeling lightheaded.

When Michelle felt that she was about to faint, she saw something in the corner of her eye.

It wasn’t a part of the web moving.

That was an autonomous creature.

So it seemed the space really wanted to torture her.

That creature wasn’t friendly.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep