Chapter 410: 410

After Philip Grace asked, Michelle explained how she extracted Life Stones from monsters.

She did it in a rather straightforward way.

Once a monster died, she would use a sharp object to cut the skin and flesh surrounding the Life Stone to expose the bone.

Once the white of it could be seen, Michelle would crash her spirit energy or soul energy into the bone to shatter it.

Once that was done, she would dig either with her hand or something else into the hole created, pushing through the brain matter until she could be sure her hand was under the Life Stone.

Like that, she would finally pull it out along with the gore around it.

That also let her discover that not only were the Life Stones lodged into the monsters’ skulls, but they also went through and were connected to the brain.

Quite the interesting find, actually.

So, with the Life Stone extracted like that, Michelle would just need to rid it of the brain matter and bones stuck to it.

That part would bring the most damage to the Life Stone compared to the rest of the extraction.

Actually, Life Stones were much bigger within monsters’ heads than what was outside; the visible part was about a third of the whole thing.

After finishing speaking and looking at Philip’s face, Michelle was greeted with her father’s face painted over with a complex mix of astonishment and disgust.

Philip had not been expecting to hear something like that.

“When your friends extract Life Stones, do they do it the same way?” he asked with a frown.

“Mostly,” Michelle gave a slight nod.

“They make sure not to get into direct contact with the brain matter.”

Philip raised a brow.

“And how do they achieve that?” he was a bit curious.

If the brain matter could be avoided, then the method would no longer be as disgusting; though it would still be highly disturbing.

So, Michelle explained.

When Ivana and the rest needed to get to the brain through the skull, they didn’t break it with their spirit energy; that would require direct contact with the skull.

Instead, they would bash at the sides of the head from both sides at the same time with something blunt and hard until it cracked.

Then, depending on whether cracks appeared in the wound around the Life Stone, they would bash a different spot.

The force of the hits would resonate through the bone and finally cause it to crack somewhere around the Life Stone.

Like that, along with the bone still clinging to the Life Stone and the brain matter, they would use a sharp object to lodge everything out.

After that, the Life Stone would be roughly cleaned of the brain matter first before removing the bone.

Done with the explaining, Michelle watched Philip’s expression to gauge his reaction.

It didn’t really change much compared to when she spoke about her own method.

That aroused a question within her:

“Father, how do people normally extract the Life Stones?” she was getting curious.

Philip explained that the hunters basically just lodged something sharp between the bone and the Life Stone and then pushed to the side to force the Life Stone out.

Because the part of the Life Stone connected to the bone had the bone basically ingrown into it, that part was much harder and stayed behind while the visible part of the Life Stone broke off easily.

Usually, the Life Stone would still break into smaller pieces.

Those who were able to get the visible part out whole were considered experts.

Listening to that, Michelle frowned in contempt.

That method was highly wasteful and unsophisticated.

Her own method wasn’t sophisticated either, but at least it was as efficient as it could get.

Seeing his daughter’s expression, Philip genuinely didn’t know what to think about it.

Considering that she had learned to extract Life Stones on her own, it was to be expected that she would do it in a method very specific to herself, but for it to be so gruesome was hard to understand.

Philip understood that when extracting her first Life Stone, Michelle must have tried to dig as deep as possible to get under it.

Even he himself had done it when extracting his first Life Stone.

But most people who did it stopped their knife once they hit the bone, thinking the Life Stone stopped there; no normal person had the thought to check under the skull and in the brain just to make sure they had the whole thing.

Of course, people who came into contact with monsters regularly were aware that the Life Stones went deep into the heads of the monsters, but there was this kind of tacit understanding between people not to go that deep.

It was mostly because there weren’t many weapons that could stab through bone to get under the whole Life Stone and pop it out, but it was still something like a norm everyone followed.

Michelle didn’t agree with the norm.

The part of the Life Stones that was within the head contained spirit energy much denser, and leaving it behind would be a waste.

Philip agreed with Michelle that it was indeed a waste to leave behind most of the Life Stone within the corpse of the killed monster.

But he was very much against her extraction method.

And he honestly didn’t want to hear or talk more about it.

It wasn’t that Philip wasn’t used to hearing about gore.

With the power he held in the upper realm, it was natural that he had even seen his fair share of cruelties along with gore.

That wasn’t why he didn’t want to talk about Michelle’s extraction method any longer.

The only reason he didn’t want to talk more about the extraction method, even though it could prove to be very useful as long as it was altered to no longer be as disgusting, was because when Michelle talked about it, Philip had the feeling that every time she mentioned Life Stones, something flickered in her gaze.

From that, Philip could guess she had something more to say.

And, not really being the kind of person who liked to beat around the bush, and knowing Michelle wouldn’t get offended if he was straightforward, Philip just directly asked:

“You have something more to say about the Life Stones aside from their extraction method?”

Michelle didn’t really expect that question so out of the blue.

She knew that when speaking about the extraction of Life Stones, her mind sometimes drifted back to the fact that she had absorbed Life Stones and needed to tell Philip.

But it wasn’t too much.

But then again, it wasn’t all that surprising that Philip noticed.

He was observant; very much so.

He was quite the contradictory figure.

He completely ignored little details around him, but when talking with someone, he made sure to notice even the subtlest movement patterns.

So, since Philip had already asked about it, Michelle decided to be upfront about it.

And the best way to break the information to someone like Philip was by starting with the most shocking part.

For example: “Well, father, I might have lost my humanity in the past few months.”

Hearing that, Philip let his brow lift up, staring at Michelle with a questioning gaze.

“You lost your what?” he asked just for confirmation.

“How does one even manage to lose their humanity? What are you if not a human?”

Instead of starting to explain, Michelle summoned her spirit energy to her forehead (specifically the poison element spirit energy), which in turn made a slit appear on her forehead before a purple stone started pushing out from that spot.

The Life Stone that had originally belonged to the Orange Widow that Michelle had killed.

“Oh, great…” Philip had to put his hand down on the table to support himself even though he was already sitting down.

“So my daughter is now a monster?” he asked.

“Do I understand things correctly?” he added.

Michelle shook her head at that.

“Well, not exactly. The Heavenly Law doesn’t exactly view me like that. And I also don’t have the abilities of monsters.”

“Then, what are you?” Philip questioned.

He was quite curious about what had become of his daughter.

Along with the fact of how she had even come to become what she said was not a monster.

“I don’t know what I am,” Michelle admitted.

“Even the Heavenly Law refuses to classify me.”

After saying that, Michelle started explaining how she ended up absorbing the Life Stone of the Orange Widow and how, from it, she gained the ability to absorb the Life Stones of monsters that carried one of the elements she had.

Then, she spoke about the dark-element Life Stone and the ice-element Life Stone, one from the little rabbit monster and the other from the Frostbound Leviathan.

Michelle also explained what she knew about her new abilities and about the fact that the Heavenly Law was completely ignoring her.

To demonstrate that, Michelle also completely retracted the shadow essence she was keeping in her shadow, which in turn made her completely disappear from Philip’s gaze.

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