Chapter 389: 389

Both Michelle and Serith stared at the barely awake little snake for a long time before Serith finally realized something.

“That’s not even a snake in the first place!”

When Michelle read that, she frowned a bit.

“What is it if not a snake?” She lifted the little creature from her leg and let it rest on her hand while she observed it closely, trying to find something that would give away its identity.

“You won’t be able to see the difference with your eyes,” Serith explained.

“It’s about their bone structure.”

Serith didn’t wait for Michelle to ask about it and proceeded to explain with the soul energy signing.

So apparently, there was a species similar to the Forgotten Kin Serith was from.

They, too, were nearly extinct and nothing much was known about them.

But as a kind similar to them, the Forgotten Kin knew a bit.

For example, the Forgotten Kin knew the name of the species before it was forgotten by the world: the Light Bone Doubles.

But, as they got reduced in number, that name slowly disappeared.

The only ones who remembered the name were the Forgotten Kin.

But after some time, the Light Bone Doubles started reappearing, and they ended up with a new name; a name the Forgotten Kin such as Serith found quite crude and unfitting: the Skinwalkers.

The reason for that name (and even the earlier name) was that the—let’s go by the new, though not that fitting, name—Skinwalkers didn’t have a set appearance.

They could look like anything.

They were considered the doubles of the creatures they had the appearance of.

And the difference (one of the differences) between the double and the original was the bone structure.

Serith explained that the skeleton of the Skinwalkers was like the shadow cast by a creature when it was standing between multiple light sources stationed above it.

And Michelle could easily imagine it, because she had met with situations like that quite a few times.

She remembered it the most distinctly in a gothic church she had visited in her past life.

After reconstruction according to the historical structure, lights were hung from the ceiling so the church could be used.

And those lights created some incredible shadows.

Because the light was coming basically from all directions, when standing in the church, Michelle’s body had more than one shadow, but they were much thinner than normal shadows.

But where those shadows overlapped, they got thicker.

And if all of them overlapped, they merged into a normal shadow in that part.

That way, if she let light shine on her hands and looked at the shadow of them while wiggling her fingers, it could look quite strange.

But also stunning.

Basically, the shadow would look like she didn’t have five fingers on each hand, but depending on how she turned her hand or twisted her fingers, it looked like she had between three to fifteen fingers, long and eerily thin with a thinner shadow around the full shadow.

And that was apparently what the Skinwalkers’ bones were like.

Instead of having a single bone where their doubles had them, they had tangles of thinner bones, sometimes parallel to each other, sometimes going around each other, and (naturally) sometimes intertwining and mending together in spots.

Due to the difference in their bones, compared to the originals, their bones could be broken much easier.

But at the same time, having a single bone broken didn’t have consequences as serious as if the originals had a single bone broken.

Because while for the originals, each bone had a specific reason why it was there, the Skinwalkers’ bone functions were tied to sets of bones.

So if a single bone in the system broke, it could be compensated by the rest of the bones around it.

Another difference between Skinwalker doubles and the original creatures was their natural life span and their growth speed.

Compared to the originals, the Skinwalkers grew much slower, taking longer to mature.

But that was only physically.

Mentally, they grew much faster than the originals.

So, that caused the phenomenon with the snake on Michelle’s hand.

Though it still had the body of a baby, it was already intelligent enough to cultivate with and comprehend the words of a human.

After reading all the information from Serith, Michelle looked down at the snake—or rather snake double—still barely awake on her hand.

“How can you be so sure this little one is a Skinwalker?” she asked.

“Just because he is intelligent?”

The rabbit in front of her shook its head and the soul energy within her body moved again:

“Forgotten Kin are sensitive to bones. We used to be called Nature’s Necromancers for that.”

“Then why didn’t you see right away that his bone structure was that of a Skinwalker?” Michelle raised a brow.

Naturally, there was an explanation for that too:

“Always looking at bone structure of others would be way too draining. So I only looked through the snake after realizing that it’s way too intelligent for its age.”

“Oh…” Michelle nodded.

She didn’t have the ability to see others’ bone structure, so she naturally didn’t know how it worked or when it activated.

But that wasn’t even something she was really curious about.

Her mind at the moment was fixated on the little creature she was holding, wondering what to do next.

Taking care of a snake… she could manage to do that, since Mare was also a snake and could help her.

But a Skinwalker?

That was a whole different situation.

She didn’t know any other Skinwalker who would tell her how to take care of a baby one.

And she was sure there must have been some differences in taking care of baby snakes and baby snake Skinwalker doubles.

“Serith, do you know what baby Skinwalkers need? Are there differences compared to the baby originals?” she finally asked.

As a Forgotten Kin (though just a soul part), Serith had the most knowledge about the Skinwalkers, so it was the only one Michelle could turn to.

And if even Serith didn’t know, it would mean Michelle had gotten herself in deep trouble.

Because she would have to find out how to take care of the little Skinwalker on her hand, otherwise it would backfire on her.

Luckily, Serith had some basic knowledge.

So it seemed that baby Skinwalkers needed care very similar to that of the creature they were the double of.

The only major difference was that they ate less (which probably was the cause of their slow growth) and tended to sense more things than the originals.

That was explained by the fact that the Skinwalkers had instincts much stronger than other creatures.

That also caused that when adults, though the Skinwalkers were one of the most intelligent creatures and their intelligence maybe even surpassed humans, very prone to act on their instincts, they fell into the basics of the beast world.

So, to take care of a baby Skinwalker, Michelle needed to take care of it like it was an ordinary snake, just watch out not to provoke its instincts into doing something dangerous.

Since it was clear that the little snake double was very fond of Michelle’s blood, Serith recommended that Michelle made sure the little creature never again got to taste it, otherwise it could very easily get addicted to it.

And that was highly unwanted.

Serith didn’t know what kind of snake the little Skinwalker was the double of, so there was no way of knowing how it would act if it got addicted to Michelle’s blood.

And it was a well‑known fact that when Skinwalkers got addicted to something, they were capable of doing extreme things to get their hands on it again and again.

When Serith was done with the explanation, it returned to moving around with its new body: the rabbit skeleton.

Missing one back leg was complicating things for it quite a bit, so getting used to it would take a while.

“Do you want to stay here? I have to go back to the Academy,” Michelle asked when she saw Serith getting accustomed to the body.

When the rabbit nodded, Michelle just picked up the snake, once again wrapped it around her neck and proceeded to sneak back into the Academy.

There, like nothing happened, she started up the training machine again and returned to training.

This time, the little snake didn’t wake up even as the hits on Michelle’s abdomen caused some tremors through her body.

While Michelle was figuring all the things about the Skinwalkers out before returning to her training, quite a few things concerning her were going on both in the Academy and in the Ostrich family residence.

Because of all that was going on, Vincent had already returned to the residence a few days ago, and was making sure the Elders wouldn’t summon Michelle, staging as Ana, back into the residence because of the scandal she had with Alexander.

The speed at which the information had spread to the family had surprised even him.

Well, but things would be boring if his enemies were incompetent.

And it would also anger him more.

His daughter, real daughter, had died at the hands of his enemies.

If she had died at the hands of someone stupid and incompetent, could he call himself her caretaker if he couldn’t protect her?

But even though he knew his enemies were hell of schemers, he still felt terrible.

Every day and every night, the dead face of his daughter appeared in front of his eyes, tormenting him all the time.

He failed her as her father and let her be dragged into the political games of the people that called themselves his family.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep