Chapter 396: 396

Throughout the night, Michelle explored her own body until she found out what was going on with the poison.

And it wasn’t actually Mavreth’s fault.

Actually, her simplest guess had been the closest to truth; it did have something to do with the poison element Life Stone.

That damn Life Stone gathered all the poison within her body around itself, not letting it properly spread through the system.

And since the Life Stone was full of spirit energy, which then circulated through Michelle’s blood, Michelle’s blood ended up being poisonous.

So, in the Life Stone, Michelle had a dose of poison that would be lethal to even someone like Alexander; or maybe even Mavreth himself.

It seemed like a completely impossible thing to achieve in a normal system; that much poison couldn’t accumulate within it.

But because of the Life Stone, things were different.

Michelle really wondered what would happen if she released all the poison into her system at once.

But she wasn’t planning to die at the moment, so she knew that curiosity of hers would never be satisfied.

A pity indeed.

So, Michelle knew that she had to start slowly releasing the poison from the Life Stone into her system.

But before that, she actually had to figure out how much was a single dose of the poison.

She wanted to keep that accurate to feel the full, not exaggerated, effects of the poison Mavreth gave her.

Thus, Michelle actually took one more dose and observed the changes around the Life Stone to see the difference in the amount.

That would be a single dose.

She knew roughly the number of doses that was gathered there, because she knew how many times she had taken the poison without any effect; once every day for quite a while.

After checking the difference a single dose made in the amount of poison around the Life Stone, Michelle decided to try out letting a dose loose in her body.

Slowly, she gathered poison element (or rather elementless) spirit energy around the Life Stone and had it pulse out, forcing out a small dose of the poison.

But that was far from a full dose, so Michelle had her spirit energy pulse there for quite a while.

Then, she retracted her spirit energy and laid back on the bed, waiting for the effects of the poison.

And she didn’t have to wait long.

It was quite the fast‑acting poison.

Alexander opened his eyes when he felt through the Shadow Pact the changes in Michelle.

He turned to look at her lying next to him, her skin taking on a grayish tint.

The poison made her look increasingly like a corpse.

The question was if it was just making her look like a corpse, or if it was really killing her.

Then, there was also the possibility of the poison causing some death‑like discomforts, basically being a non‑lethal, torturous kind of poison.

So, which one was the case?

Alexander couldn’t get the answer unless he either asked Michelle or examined her.

But he knew that at the moment, even if she looked like she was about to die, she was safe and sound.

So, he returned to what he was doing earlier.

Michelle was already feeling the effects of the poison.

She felt her muscles painfully tightening and going inhumanly hard.

It reminded her of what happened to people after death; after a while, the body hardened.

That was rigor mortis.

Also, Michelle could feel her heartbeat slow down significantly.

Along with the painful tightness in her muscles, it was really a horrid experience.

And the thing that bothered Michelle the most was that even the muscles in her neck were extremely tight, making her feel like her airways would close up under it.

Logically, she knew that wasn’t about to happen, but it was still greatly uncomfortable.

Especially since with the tightness in her muscles, she was basically paralyzed and couldn’t even touch her neck to check it.

And the worst of it all, she couldn’t even move her facial muscles, so she couldn’t even do as much as open her eyes to look around.

Luckily, that state didn’t last for long, and after something over half an hour, Michelle was sitting up, stretching her body.

“That is one nasty poison…” she muttered.

She could only imagine what would happen if she took a bigger dose; there would be a high probability of the poison not only affecting her skeletal muscles, but also the smooth muscle controlling organs, or the cardiac muscle; in other words her heart.

That would be a tragedy.

Feeling Michelle move beside him, Alexander opened his eyes.

“What’s so nasty about it?” he asked.

So, Michelle explained to Alexander how the poison acted and what could have happened if she had taken a bigger dose.

After hearing that, Alexander frowned.

“And you have multiple lethal doses gathered by the poison element Life Stone?” he didn’t like the thought of that.

It basically meant that if Michelle ever got into a fight so serious she had to use her supply of spirit energy from the Life Stone, it would push the poison into her system all at once.

Michelle nodded.

His assumption was correct.

She had to be careful about using her poison element spirit energy and at the same time, slowly release the poison into her body.

But it also gave her an idea:

If she constantly kept releasing the poison into her system, slowly and steadily, it wouldn’t probably paralyze her completely; she would just have to deal with slightly tightened muscles all the time.

And over time, her muscles could as well get used to being like that, meaning the poison would slowly lose its effect on her.

Also, if it managed to make her muscles constantly tighter, it could be tiring at first, but it could also let her lock her joints in place, countering the unnatural mobility she had from absorbing the three Life Stones.

Michelle explained her theory to Alexander, making him raise a brow.

It did sound interesting.

But then, there was still the risk of the poison paralyzing her even in small portions.

Though that wasn’t all that dangerous since Michelle would first try it probably when near him, and if it did paralyze her, she would just stop the pulsing of the spirit energy which caused the outlet of the poison into her system.

So, though dawn was coming and Michelle would soon go back to training, she closed her eyes to focus on her spirit energy for a moment.

After making it softly pulse around the poison element Life Stone (currently within her body and not visible from the outside), Michelle waited to feel the extent of the effects.

Very quickly, she felt her heartbeat slow down, but not as much as before.

So, it was just time to wait for the tightness to appear.

Or was the dose she let into her system too small to affect her muscles?

That was also possible.

Michelle stood up from the bed.

She would wait for the changes in her body like that.

So, with nothing else to do until morning, Michelle started preparing for her upcoming training with Lucas.

She changed her clothes into undamaged ones.

But since she already knew the training would cause the clothes around her waist to burn away, she just got herself something like a cropped shirt.

Since she knew she would be getting hurt, she didn’t want to also end up with burned pieces of clothes in the wounds.

After a while, Michelle also started feeling some slight tightness in her muscles, ever so slightly obscuring her movement.

In that state, Michelle really wondered what it would feel like to make a handstand.

It would definitely feel different compared to how she was doing it the day before.

And she was right.

Compared to how she was doing it the day before, it felt similar to how she did it in her past life, when her body was still human.

But there was also some kind of difference that made her have some problems with stability.

She would need a while to get used to doing handstands like that.

But she didn’t know if that was worth the try because once the poison wore off, she would have to go back to doing the handstands like before; she would have to once again get used to it.

Still then, there was also the possibility that her muscles would stay tight like that, and she would never have to get back to the previous handstand.

“So? Is the poison working even in small doses?” Alexander asked.

Michelle nodded.

“The effect’s weaker, but it is still there,” she explained.

“I could get used to that,” she added.

Alexander watched Michelle continue staying in the handstand position, clearly struggling a bit.

She was swaying slightly, meaning that thanks to the tightness in her muscles, she couldn’t keep her center of gravity stable.

So, she was constantly trying to stabilize herself and not fall down.

She kept shifting her hands and moving her legs above herself, trying not to fall.

It actually looked quite funny.

As always, Alexander enjoyed watching Michelle struggle.

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