Chapter 84: 84

Early in the morning, Ivona woke up to dim light seeping into the cave from the direction of the cave entrance. But the area where Ivona and Michelle were was way too deep for the light from the entrance to reach, so there was a high probability that a crack or another source of light was somewhere in the pathway leading from the entrance to the wider part where the two girls were.

Michelle was already long awake and she had noticed the strangeness in the light the moment it appeared, but she didn’t go investigate it. In the past, she used to do things on her own, but at the moment, she was with a friend, so she had to get used to doing things together. In the future, she couldn’t just ditch her teammates and go away on her own. That would be scummy.

“How are you feeling?” Michelle asked when she saw Ivona stretching her body.

It was clear that Ivona was aware that she must have been poisoned, as her body was a bit stiff and aching. “Did you save me?” she asked as she stared at Michelle. “I didn’t know you were skilled with poisons?”

Michelle just shrugged. “I didn’t save you. That poison wouldn’t have killed you even if you had more of it in your blood. You would just have been paralyzed for a while.”

That made Ivona arch a brow. “So you are skilled with poisons!”

“You could say so…” Michelle nodded a bit. In the end, poison mastery and medicine were quite similar in the world she was in, so with her knowledge from her old world, she knew things others didn’t know, and thus could easily create both poisons and medicines based on the principles of the world she was in by combining them with the principles of her old world.

Ivona frowned when she heard that. “How come a Lady such as yourself can use poison like it’s nothing?” she asked. “How come you changed so much after ’losing’ your memories?” she added. She was curious about the things she had asked the day before that Michelle hadn’t answered.

Michelle didn’t feel like explaining herself, but she knew that Ivona had long suspected her, so she would demand some kind of explanation. If she didn’t get it, or at least a reason as to why she couldn’t get it, how could she trust Michelle as a friend in the future?

Sighing, Michelle decided to give Ivona at least a quick explanation: “It’s complicated. But long story short, Michelle Grace is dead, and I’m just someone who looks the same and has the same name as her.

Though Michelle said it nonchalantly, Ivona was shocked. “What happened with the Archduke’s daughter?” she asked after gathering her thoughts. “And why does he act towards you like you were his real daughter? Don’t tell me he didn’t notice! The difference between you and his daughter isn’t something a doting parent like him would not notice.”

Michelle glanced at Ivona before speaking bluntly: “Michelle Grace died. She was killed by the oh-so-amazing Crown Prince whom she loved so much!”

That piece of news was much more shocking to Ivona than when Michelle told her that she wasn’t the Archduke’s real daughter. “Is that why you are so much against the Royal Family?” she asked.

To her surprise, Michelle shook her head. “I was never against them,” she said. “They were just unlucky enough to have their lives as the payment the Archduke wanted in exchange for letting me use his daughter’s identity.”

“And he let you use it…” Ivona finally understood some things, but there was still one thing she was curious about. “Why did you need the identity?” she asked. “Why can’t you use your own identity?” she added.

Then, a realization hit her. “Are you being hunted down?”

“No!” Michelle shook her head. “No one’s hunting me down,” she reassured. “One could just say… that I don’t have an identity, so I needed to borrow one,” she said simply.

But that just confused Ivona even more. “You said you have a name, so how come you don’t have an identity?” she asked.

“Well…” Michelle dragged her tone lazily. “To put it simply, I’m not from here, so I don’t have an identity here.”

That made Ivona raise a brow. “Where are you from, if not from here?” she asked with a tilted head. “What kind of place is it, if you can’t use your identity from there, here?”

Michelle frowned a bit. It was clear that Ivona wanted to know the whole truth, but Michelle didn’t want to go through the trouble of explaining that she was from another world. “Let’s just say…” She finally thought of something to say to avoid all the explaining. “Let’s say it’s a place that people consider to not exist,” she said.

“And what should that mean?” Ivona still didn’t understand.

Michelle just sighed. “I don’t know how I came to be here, but I don’t miss that place. And I don’t think I can ever return there.”

“What kind of place is it?” Ivona could see that Michelle had quite some negative feelings toward the place she was talking about.

Hearing the question, Michelle shrugged a bit. “Though the way that place works is fairly different, it’s the same as any other place you can see. Some people love it, some people don’t care, and some hate it. Some people are good, some are evil. Some are poor, and some are rich. And most of the rich ones are evil. Unless we work for the rich. Anyone who had enough money could live like me, and since the work I did was nasty, I usually met only nasty people. If I ever returned to that place, I would just be reminded of the nasty people and the disgusting things they did, so I don’t want to go back there.”

Listening to Michelle, Ivona lifted a brow, but she decided not to ask anything more. “Shall we investigate the light now?” she asked as she pointed to the pathway from the cave entrance.

Michelle nodded a bit as she stood up. “Let’s go! We might find something interesting.”

“You just want to fight,” Ivona said as she walked over to the pathway.

Not minding the last bit that Ivona had seen through her, Michelle followed Ivona to the pathway. “My desire to fight is never a problem,” she said with a sneer.

With Ivona in front, the two girls followed the light. And just as they had guessed, the light wasn’t coming in through the cave entrance, but from quite a big crack in the roof of the pathway.

When they were entering the cave in the evening, they didn’t notice it because it was dark outside, so there was no light for them to see.

“Where do you think it leads?” Ivona asked as she stared at the crack.

Michelle glanced at the crack, too. “Probably the Hinterlands… There, we can find monsters to fight!”

“How can you know that?” Ivona tilted her head back so she could look higher at the crack. “Isn’t this just a delusion of yours, since you want to fight so much?” she snickered teasingly.

Michelle chuckled a bit as she formed an ice spear in her hand, jumping up. She stabbed the ice spear into the crack and pulled herself up so her head would be above the crack. There, her face hit thin branches or grass, caressing her face as she used another ice spear to pull herself up, above it.

With Michelle suddenly climbing up, Ivona was shocked. “What are you doing?!” she exclaimed in shock. Even if both she and Michelle were at the peak of power reachable in the Land of Evie, Ivona felt like it was way too reckless to just jump into the crack above them.

Michelle looked back at Ivona with a large smile on her lips. “I felt something up there!” she spoke as she formed an ice spear beneath her legs so she wouldn’t need to help herself up merely with her hands. She could do it without much trouble, but if she didn’t need to do it, she would save herself the energy. “You stay where you are, and I’ll mark this place before trying to find the cave entrance,” she said before she completely pulled herself up.

Ivona stared at Michelle as she disappeared above the crack. Up above the crack, Michelle looked around for a moment before she found a string, with her dark wind spirit energy, and connected it to one of the ice spears she used to climb out of the cave. Then, with the other end of the string connected to her, she started walking in the direction where she thought the cave entrance might be.

Observing the forest around her closely as she walked, Michelle was in awe. In her past life, she never had the chance to go to a rainforest, so it was a pleasant surprise for her when she saw that the mountain’s hinterland was like the rainforests she sometimes saw on TV in her past life. The air was humid, and if winter wasn’t starting, it would have been warm too, but that would have been too hot for Michelle with her cold body.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep