Chapter 48: 48

Walking out of the cave with Cold Flame flying above her and the scythe held by Nyxaroth, Michelle stared at the big silver stone in her hands. “Michelle, do you pity the Rivenaar?” Nyxaroth’s raspy voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Yes…” Michelle sighed as she sat climbed a tree outside the cave. The disgusting energy she and Cold Flame felt from the cave before was gone. “Why did he have to be trapped there till he nearly couldn’t even properly remember his own name? And what’s the creature he talked about? And the visitor the creature told him about. Did it somehow know that I would come here when I wasn’t even in this world fifteen years ago?” Michelle’s mind was raging with thoughts as she remembered the monster’s last moments.

When they were still in the cave, Michelle asked the monster for its name, and it took it a long while to remember the word Rivenaar since the creature never called its name even if it visited the monster. After remembering his name, Rivenaar had a request: “Little human, if you ever go to the heavenly realm and meet a female monster similar to me, please, pass on my memories to her…”

“Your memories?” Michelle was confused. “But I don’t have your memo…” Before she could even finish speaking, Rivenaar breathed at her an especially hot breath which forced her to her knees as memories started flooding into her brain just as when she took over Michelle Grace’s body.

“Within those memories, you’ll find useful skills and knowledge, and even a skill to pass on memories to others. If you reach higher comprehension with the skill than I did, you might even be able to mess with others’ memories. Take the knowledge within those memories as repayment for giving them to my daughter if you ever meet her. Don’t search for her. But if you meet her, tell her that her father loved her…”

With that, Rivenaar reached to his forehead and clawed out the silver stone. It fell to the ground and just then Michelle realized how big it was. When she stood next to it, it reached her chest. “Senior?” she looked at Rivenaar and saw that his forehead was bleeding.

But he just chuckled. “Don’t worry, child. Take the stone and once you reach Spirit rank in your cultivation, eat it. It will be of help to you.”

“Spirit rank?” Michelle was getting more and more confused by every moment. But she couldn’t get any more answers from Rivenaar as he closed his eyes and his warm breath hit Michelle for the last time. With his last breath, the huge cage bars started trembling and slowly turned to dust. Michelle glanced at the silver stone and wondered how to take it. She tried to lift it up, but the moment she touched it, it shrunk into the size of a human head. So, Michelle lifted it up and left the cave.

Sitting on a brunch up on the tree outside the cave, Michelle looked at Nyxaroth and Cold Flame. “What’s the Spirit Rank Rivenaar talked about?” she asked, knowing that since both of them had memories from ancient times, they might have answers for her.

“That’s the lowest rank of cultivation,” Nyxaroth said lazily.

Michelle raised a brow when she heard that. “Lowest? But that would mean that I’ve already reached it.” She titled her head in confusion. “Why would Rivenaar say that I should eat the stone when I reach Spirit rank, when I’ve already reached it?”

“You didn’t, Michelle!” Nyxaroth smiled.

That made Michelle frown. “What do you mean?” she asked, not understanding.

Nyxaroth rested the big black scythe against the tree and returned into Michelle’s body. “No matter how powerful you are, you are in the Land of Exile of the lower realm, which limits the power you can gain or use here. For one to reach Spirit rank, they need to have certain power which is impossible to attain in the Land of Exile. If you left here and were only in the lower realm, you would be able to reach the Spirit rank.”

“How many ranks exist?” Michelle asked.

“Seven, and each rank is decided into levels,” Nyxaroth said lazily. “The ranks are: Spirit, Divine, Monarch, Paragon, Emperor, God and God of Gods. The levels of each rank are: Junior, Apprentice, Warrior, Knight, Master, Lord, Overlord, King, Saint and Paragon. Michele, if you want to eat the Life Stone that Rivenaar gave you, you have to leave the Land of Exile, but for that, you need to have the power just before breaking through into Spirit Junior. Otherwise, you can’t leave this place as a barrier will block your path.”

Michelle carefully listened as Nyxaroth explained and frowned a bit. “Nyxaroth, by making each of my contracts, my power raised equivalently to the power of the creature I contracted, so how come I didn’t reach the level when I could go over the barrier?” she asked.

“Well…” Michelle felt Nyxaroth bubble in her body and seep into her veins. “It’s because your veins are messed up, so you can’t properly absorb the spirit energy. Because of that, you couldn’t accept the power given to you by the contracts, and it got lost in the air.”

Hearing that, Michelle frowned. “What’s wrong with my veins?” she asked.

Nyxaroth bubbled around Michelle’s veins for a long while before answering: “Your veins are too fragile. They have no suction force, which makes them useless. Michelle, you are the perfect example of gifted trash. You have the most gifted soul, and dantian, but with fragile veins, you can’t achieve anything.”

Cold Flame, who was half asleep on Michelle’s shoulder, woke up when he heard that and screeched angrily: “Michelle isn’t a trash! She’s a genius! She even made a merger of contradictory cultivation methods!”

When Cold Flame’s words fell, Nuxaroth whistled a bit. “It would be a pity to waist such a good potention, and don’t worry, a solution exists. And you won’t believe me, the solution’s right here…” he said with a chuckle.

“What’s the solution?” Cold Flame was instantly excited. He was up for anything that would speed up Michelle’s cultivation.

Nyxaroth left Michelle’s body and flew towards the scythe below the tree. “It can only be fixed by the weapon Michelle is the most proficient with and the weapon she pulled out of her spirit domain.”

Hearing that, Michelle jumped off the tree and took the black scythe into her hand. “What should I do, Nyx?” she asked. She herself was a bit excited. She believed Nyxaroth when he told her that her veins were fragile, since when she was cultivation, she had to occasionally stop and rest even after starting to use the merger she made, and she wanted a solution for it.

“It’s easy!” Nyxaroth flew away a bit, solidified and crashed into a tree, breaking it in half. “Push your body to its limit while absorbing the surrounding spirit energy without using it. Use solely your physical strength to destroy as many tread as you can until you collapse.”

When his words fell, Cold Flame protested. “No! Michelle will get hurt if she pushes herself to the limit like that! It’s too dangerous! I don’t allow it!” he screeched and screamed, trying to hit Nyxaroth with his wing, but the black mist just dissipated around his wing.

“Nyx, will it work?” Michelle asked with a tilt of her head as she grabbed Cold Flame’s beak to shut him up.

Nyxaroth bubbled around a bit before returning into her body. “Michelle, by using the scythe, you can concentrate, and push your body even more than usually. And if you push your body over the edge, first, you might get more proficient at using the scythe and controlling your body, and second, your veins are merged blood veins and spirit veins, and your spirit veins will start breaking a bit. Your body will react to it, and force you to collapse, so your spirit veins can repair. That way, they will get stronger and sturdier.”

Michelle listened to it and nodded. “So it’s like scars… They are sturdier than normal flesh…” she muttered as she lifted the scythe. “I’ll try it!” she said as she closed her eyes for a moment, starting to absorb the spirit energy surrounding her. Her whole body was constantly absorbing spirit energy because of her cultivation method, but at the moment, she pushed the absorption to the limit before opening her eyes.

She grasped the scythe tightly and lunged forward, her purple eyes narrowing in concentration. She stabbed the tip of the scythe into a tree trunk, and with a jump, turned the blade in the tree by 180°, making quite some damage. She did that with a few trees close to each other before slashing at all of them through the damaged area. She then jumped away to dodge as the fell.

Then, she lunged towards another tree, and used a different method. She slashed through the lowermost part of the trunk and as the tree was about to fall, she lifted the scythe, and started cutting the tree up.

The next tree was cut down using an even different method. She jumped high up and started mowing away the smallest branches, then moved to the bigger ones, until she completely shaved the trunk. Then, she went to a different tree.

Seeing that Michelle didn’t even break a sweat, Nyxaroth came out of her body and called at Cold Flame. “Hey, Birdie! Let’s attack her together to push her over the edge sooner.”

So, a very funny scene appeared in the forest as a beautiful young girl with long silver hair and deep purple eyes, holding a big black scythe, dodged white flames and ice spears thrown at her by a white bird, and blocked a black mist that lunged at her in its solidified form while she kept destroying trees.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep