Chapter 83: 83

Ivona was a fair bit surprised that Michelle wanted to see her wounds, but she still pulled up the hem of her skirt so Michelle could check them.

Michelle squatted down and carefully inspected the small wounds to check for poison. In the rats’ mouths, she found glands right next to their teeth, which probably

contained poison, so she wanted to check Ivona for poisoning.

First, she checked the small wounds themselves before taking the pulse from Ivona’s both legs to check for any differences. When that was the same, she took her pulse from her wrist, too, and only when that was the same did she relax.

“The rats have poison in their teeth?” Ivona wasn’t stupid, so she could easily guess why Michelle was acting like that.

Michelle nodded a bit. “It seems they didn’t poison you this time, but be careful next time!” she said as she stood up lazily.

As it was still too early to tell if the rats really hadn’t poisoned Ivona, Michelle was planning to check on her one more time after a while. Meanwhile, she could use the time to analyze the rats’ poison, so if Ivona was really poisoned, she could quickly make an antidote for her. Being prepared beforehand wouldn’t harm anyone.

So, a very strange scene appeared in the cave. By the long path leading from the cave entrance to the wider part stood a young girl with bleeding bite marks on her legs, while a girl who looked to be completely fine was decapitating corpses of rats, not caring one bit that blood was getting all over her. Luckily, the cave was shrouded in darkness, so even Ivona couldn’t see the ridiculousness of the situation. She could just smell the blood of the rats, accompanied by the sound of bones being broken and flesh being cut.

“What are you doing back there?” Ivona asked, a frown on her brow, when she felt her skin crawl from the sounds reaching her.

Michelle’s purple eyes glinted creepily as her dark element spirit energy swirled inside her pupils, so she could see in the darkness of the cave. “I’m analyzing the rats’ poison,” she answered nonchalantly as she broke open the jaws of a rat’s corpse to see the poison glands.

“Is it possible to do it without making so much nasty noise?” Ivona requested.

Michelle glanced at the dead rat in her hands and arched a brow. “I’ll cut out this one’s poison glands, and then I’m done with the breaking and cutting,” she said as she took up her bloodied ice knife, using it to cut out the rat’s poison glands in a single, clean move.

Hearing the sound of flesh being cut, Ivona arched an eyebrow. She was getting to know more and more things about Michelle than had ever been known about her. Since the news that Archduke Grace’s daughter lost her memories spread, Torna felt quite curious about it. From the few times she had met Young Lady Michelle Grace al balls, she knew that she was a lazy, arrogant, and really incompetent brat who wouldn’t hesitate to shame her father’s good name to achieve her selfish goals. And that made her a scorned idiot in the social circles, because no matter how important or powerful one’s Lasher was, if they were incompetent, no one would listen to them.

But when Ivona saw Michelle at the Harvest festival ball half a year ago, when she was said to have amnesia, she was like a completely different person; at first glance, she seemed to have changed into a meek and innocent girl, but when Ivona paid more attention to her, she realized that Michelle was actually the same as herself, just better. And that intrigued her. How could someone who was clearly arrogant and incompetent before, suddenly turn into a top-tier scheming manipulator, who was able to play with a ballroom full of aristocrats used to schemes?

“What are you thinking about so hard?” Michelle asked as she kept her attention on the poison glands she cut out of the rats’ mouths.

Michelle’s words rudely pulled Ivona out of her thoughts, and she snapped back to reality. Even in the darkness, she could sense the direction where Michelle was. “It’s nothing much…” she said after a while. “I was only thinking about what a strange person you are,” she admitted.

Her words made Michelle raise an eyebrow. “How am I strange?” she asked curiously. Many people had told her in the past that she was strange, but she never had the chance to ask them what was so strange about her.

Ivona lit up the cave with a speck of her spirit energy so she could see Michelle, but the sight that greeted her wasn’t really beautiful.

From head to toe, Michelle was covered in blood, and all around her were the rats’ corpses, all with their jaws broken open and the insides of their mouths bloody.

Though Ivona grew up neglected, she had never seen anything so gruesome, so a frown was forced onto her face.

“Well…” Ivona said, after a while, her frown finally easing. “Just the fact that you can cut up the rats like it’s no big deal is strange for a Young Lady from an aristocratic family…”

“And,” she continued. “Since the Harvest festival ball, you’ve been acting like a completely different person? Like someone changed her, but your father doesn’t seem to be the least bit suspicious of you. He knows what happened with you, doesn’t he?”

Michelle forced the poison from the glands into a small bottle, before closing it and putting the empty glands into a cloth and storing them in her spatial ring. “Of course he knows,” she smiled. “Being my father, it’s just natural for him to notice the changes in my personality before anyone else…” she yawned lazily as she stood up. “I explained things to him even before he noticed, so I wouldn’t have to listen to his rage if he found out himself.”

“Michelle… Who are you in reality? How come you can easily decapitate rats, scheme up strategies that leave even your father in awe, and also, how come you changed so much?” Ivona was extremely curious.

But Michelle didn’t really feel like explaining herself, as she was highly interested in the way the rats’ glands worked. At the same time, since the moment Ivona lit up the cave with her spirit energy, she heard the footsteps of more rats approaching, meaning more fighting for her.

Ivona also heard the rats approaching, so she sighed a bit and retracted her light, letting the darkness envelope the cave once again. “Will you fight them this time?” she asked.

“Yes…” Michelle nodded, her eyes the only source of light in the room, as they had a dim glint deep inside. Not even waiting for the rats to come, she charged into the pathway, forming an ice dagger in each hand.

Before the rats could react, most of them were sliced to death by the cold blades. And even when the others tried to retaliate, Michelle was too fast for them to stand a chance, and soon, the pathway was filled with corpses. Then, not waiting for another wave to come, Michelle headed straight towards the cave exit.

There, she found, probably, the rat leader and the strongest rats. She expected them to be stronger than the others, but maybe because they weren’t deep enough in the mountains, she was able to kill the rats without any problems; not a scratch appeared on her body.

Burning away the corpses with her ice fire, staring at the moon hanging in the sky above her.

Using the flame to illuminate the path into the cave, she walked back and saw Ivona resting in the back, curled up on the ground in a small ball.

At first, everything seemed fine, but then, Michelle noticed a slight red flush on her body. On the area of her legs, the flush was more evident, but it was already on her whole body.

So Michelle took her pulse and nodded a bit. Just as she had guessed, the poison took effect only after a while because the rats weren’t prepared to poison someone when they struck at Ivona, so they couldn’t infect her with enough poison for her to collapse right away.

Taking out the bottle where she stored the poison, Michelle started studying it quickly, closing her eyes as she inserted her spirit energy into it. After a few hours, when Ivona’s whole body was bright red, she reached into her spatial ring and took out a simple pill furnace, making the antidote.

Making the antidote didn’t take much time, so soon after, Ivona already had the antidote in her mouth and swallowed it instinctively.

The antidote worked slowly, as Michelle didn’t have enough time to perfect it to the point where it would work instantly, but it was still good enough to get rid of the poison overnight.

The poison itself wasn’t strong enough to kill Ivona with the power she had, but it was enough to paralyze her for a while, and Michelle didn’t like that idea since they had come to the mountains to train, not to be paralyzed in a cave. She was planning to let Ivona rest the next day, but she wasn’t willing to sacrifice a week until the paralyzing poison wore off.

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