Chapter 92: 92

Smiling a bit, Michelle observed the hole in the ground for a while before she sent all her beasts, except Nyxaroth who was inside her body, into her spirit domain, and jumped down, landing softly on the ground. She knew that most beasts that lived in the ground had excellent hearing, so they could hear her landing if she wasn’t careful. But using her Shadow Spirit Steps, her landing was completely silent and unnoticed.

Sneaking towards the hole, Michelle realized that it was much bigger than she had guessed when she was above it. She thought it would be a hole barely the size of a pathway into which a person could slide, but in reality, it was more like a small cave into which she could easily walk if she lowered her head a bit. Also, a pungent smell and extreme warmth were leaving the hole, making her frown and step back a bit, putting her hand over her nose. She didn’t know what was living inside the cave, but it most probably had fire element spirit energy.

“Don’t go there!” Nyxaroth’s raspy voice sounded within Michelle’s body as she stared into the hole. “You won’t survive if you go in now,” he added. “If you are curious about it, return after you reach at least the level of Spirit Master.”

Nyxaroth’s words made Michelle raise an eyebrow. “Do you know what lives there?” she asked with a slight frown.

“No… But with your power, you don’t stand a chance against it…” Nyxaroth said, after a while.

Hearing that, Michelle nodded a bit and quickly returned to a tree, climbing it to get to the ice bridge she had formed before. But when she was just a few meters under the ice bridge, she noticed a presence on it, making her arch a brow. She stopped and formed a small stepping platform on the side of the tree she was climbing, so she could observe the creature. She caught a glimpse of its head, and saw that it didn’t have a gem on its forehead, meaning it wasn’t a monster but a beast, but she couldn’t recognize what it was, as she didn’t get to take a proper look at it.

Finally, Nyxaroth’s voice got her out of her thoughts about the beast’s identity. “That’s the inhabitant of the cave… It doesn’t seem to have a good smell, so it didn’t notice you, but things like that have good eyes and ears, so your best bet to get out of here is to get above it and then use your Shadow Spirit Steps over the tree crowns.”

Nodding a bit, Michelle slowly climbed back down the tree and then used another tree, which didn’t have an ice bridge connected to it yet, to climb up. She made sure she was on the side of the tree trunk where the beast couldn’t see her as she climbed. When she was at its height, she felt its presence and slowed her climbing so she wouldn’t make a single sound as she went higher.

When she was a few meters above the beasts, she sped up again until she got to the top of the tree. There, she activated her Shadow Spirit Steps and rushed away in an instant, having to keep her concentration at its peak so she wouldn’t miss a step between the branches of the trees. But. She still made the mistake and soon found herself falling between the trees, her body being whipped by the thin branches all around her.

Knowing that if she didn’t stop her fall, she would soon hit a bigger branch and get seriously hurt, she summoned her scythe and stabbed it into the tree trunk next to her to slow her fall down at least a bit. But the scythe had a sharp blade and only slowed her fall a bit, so she also formed a few ice spears around it and stabbed them next to the blade, connecting them all horizontally, forcing the scythe to stop.

Her whole body jerked as she suddenly stopped, making her grit her teeth as she felt the momentum of the fall pulling her down, nearly making her let go of the scythe’s handle. But that was just for a moment before she was fine. Except that her arm muscles hurt from being strained. Still, she didn’t mind it.

In her past life, if she ended up in a situation like what she just went through, her muscles would have been unable to bear the momentum of the force and would have been severely damaged, and her tendons would have most probably been torn in most places. Also, as far as she knew, her spleen, an organ close to the stomach, was filled with blood, which made it sensitive to strong momenta, making it easy to tear and thus cause fatal internal bleeding. But at the moment, she had a body filled with spirit energy, so it could bear much more than it could have borne in her past life.

Letting the ice melt away and the scythe disappear back into her spirit domain as she landed on a thick branch beneath her. She rubbed her sore arms as she started forming ice bridges between the trees again, running over them through the jungle. In her running, a few beasts and monsters noticed her, but the speed with which she formed the bridges beneath her and ran over them was quite extreme, so they had no chance of following her. Also, to make it impossible for anything or anyone to follow her, she made the bridges from quick-melting ice, which basically started melting the moment her feet left them, so it looked more like she was flying through the jungle with an ice platform beneath her.

In the lower realm, the jungle was huge, and for Michelle to finally leave took her over five days. When she was finally out, she saw unending fields and small hills spread out in front of her, with small and bigger streams and rivers flowing through them. It was an astonishing sight, but Michelle didn’t really enjoy it as she jumped off the last tree and landed with a roll on the ground. For about two days, she felt like someone was observing her, and she could perfectly guess who it was, but since the creature didn’t show its face, she didn’t plan to expose it.

So, walking through the endless fields without any aim, Michelle stopped in front of a small river and sat at the bank, observing the clear water. There, she saw smaller and bigger fish swimming around, some clearly dangerous and some seemingly peaceful; but since they could stay alive among the aggressive fish, they were clearly just hiding their teeth.

“I expected you to come later…” a familiar voice sounded around her, but even as she looked around, she couldn’t see the source.

But she didn’t really care, since she knew who it belonged to. To the humanoid creature clad in all black who basically invited her to the lower realm. “Then, it seems, you’ve underestimated me…” she said lazily. “Or were you guessing that I would wait for my friends before coming here?” She laid into the grass, her eyes still searching for the creature. “I’m not so stupid as to take them with me when I don’t know your intentions, especially since you are acting so shady.”

Suddenly, a black something, looking like a cave entrance, appeared in front of her, and a hand forced it open. Then, the creature clad in black appeared with a smile. “You can’t call me shady when I’ve only been helping you so far,” it chuckled.

Michelle moved her head to stare at the creature, a bit surprised by what she saw. She knew that the creature was powerful, but not that it was so powerful that it could tear open the space in the lower realm and just pass through it.

Tearing space was a skill only those of Emperor rank and higher had, but in the lower realm, everyone was restricted to the Divine rank, and only those from the heavenly realm were somehow resistant to the restriction, and their power was only restricted to the Paragon rank, but that power wasn’t enough to tear open space and pass through it. If the creature could tear open the space in the lower realm, it meant it could completely bypass the restrictions between realms, which showed that it was probably at God of Gods rank, or maybe, an even higher rank existed.

And the only ones whom Michelle knew to be God of Gods rankers were the two most powerful people in the heavenly realm. And as far as she knew, these two were known to be human, but from Rivenaar’s memories and her few encounters with the creature, it clearly wasn’t human.

“You’ve helped me as much as you are a human…” Michelle rolled her eyes at the creature. “Oh now… I’m sorry! You at least look like a human, but I don’t know about the help,” she smiled as she sat up on the grass. “Anyway, why did you invite me here?” she tilted her head in question. “What is it that a creature such as yourself wants from me?” she continued. “Why would you let me make a contract with Nyxaroth and the sealing book? Why would you let me meet Rivenaar? Why would you place the Life Stone in the Archduchy’s annex where I cultivated? Also… the skill books I got from the old man in the Dark Lord’s market don’t seem like a coincidence. And how come a Vermilion Bird was in the Land of Exile? Even if it were elementless, how could people from the Land of Exile capture it?”

She smiled a bit. “You may say you’ve helped me, but I can’t consider this help. So many good things spell trouble. You want something, but you don’t want to tell me what it is, and I don’t like that.”

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