Chapter 232: 232
After Michelle spoke towards the boulder in front of her, a rumble came from it. The next moment the ground beneath her shook.
The next moment, Michelle felt something fly at her from behind.
She didn’t have the time to react, but Nyxaroth and Serith acted quickly. Nyxaroth came out of her body and solidified to create a shield around Michelle, and Serith created a wall of void between Michelle and the thing flying at her.
In the end, it was Nyxaroth who took the hit. But it didn’t affect him. He couldn’t feel pain in his mist form, and when he solidified parts of the mist, they were more like weapons than his own body. The only way he could feel pain was when he was in his human form, or when someone tore off a part of his solidified body.
Quickly assessing the situation, Michelle narrowed her eyes. The city had tricked her. From the start, there wasn’t just one monster that had its eyes on her.
The reason she couldn’t pinpoint the direction of the gaze on her was because she was surrounded by monsters that were all staring at her the same way.
Just the monster right in front of her had a slightly stronger bloodthirst in its gaze to trick her into thinking it was the only monster around.
"It was a while since someone had tricked me like this..." A wide smile spread across Michelle’s lips.
Then, she did something she hadn’t done for a while. She summoned her spirit energy.
No one from the middle realm was around, so there was no one to discover her Spirit Soul Blood. In other words, she could freely use all her powers.
Feeling that Michelle was about to let loose, Nyxaroth pushed back the boulder that had crushed against him and retracted into Michelle’s body. Serith also felt Michelle’s intention, so the void ended up disappearing too.
With the purple in her eyes getting replaced by blood red, Michelle let spirit energy rage around her, enjoying the feeling of raw power coursing through her. "Let’s play for a while!" She grinned and made all the spirit energy flowing outside her body condense.
It blew up in a massive explosion.
After having not used her full power for a long time, Michelle didn’t care about using techniques. If she wanted to, she could use her Spirit Clone. Or the full power of her Shadow Spirit Steps. But at the moment, all she wanted was to experience the feeling of being drained of her spirit energy.
Recklessly, she let it flow out of her body and condense all around, causing explosions every second. She didn’t care whether the monsters around her were just being pushed back or directly killed by the power. She wanted to let loose.
For the first time in a long time, Michelle’s expression was that of a maniac. Her eyes were blazing with fire.
And her expression wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Since she went full maniac mode, even her posture changed. Usually, her body was somehow relaxed, but at the moment, it was relaxed in a completely different way.
Her shoulders were hanging low, and her arms were carelessly swinging by her side. Her back was slightly hunched, and her knees buckled a bit. It could be seen even from a distance.
Squatting down, Michelle stopped letting her spirit energy out for a moment. She wanted to check the situation.
The part of the old street she had been standing on was reduced to nothing but rubble of rocks and a broken road. The huge boulders that Michelle had passed by before the fight started were much closer, all showing huge cracks, some even split in half.
Those were the monsters that had been observing her with bloodthirsty gazes. At the moment, all the bloodthirst was gone. Maybe because the monsters weren’t all that powerful, their intelligence wasn’t that high, but even they could tell that Michelle was much more powerful than them.
What they didn’t know was that she wasn’t in reality. Just the aura around her body was making it seem so.
If Michelle hadn’t gone on the rampage, a single one of the monsters would have been able to kill her. But for slow-moving monsters like the boulders, chaotic spirit energy was the biggest weakness. Its unpredictability could wipe them out in a matter of seconds.
Seeing how many living boulders were still around, Michelle knew it was unsustainable for her to keep blowing everything up with her spirit energy. So finally came the time for her skills.
Putting ice-element spirit energy into her Shadow Spirit Steps, she started swishing around the boulders, leaving an ice trail behind. Constantly, she kept pouring her spirit energy into the ice, which made it spread further and grow thicker.
After a while, a small ice field was under the boulders. That was when Michelle crouched down and placed her palm on the ice. Under her control, she made the ice-element spirit energy floating above the ice turn into the skill she learned from Cold Flame, Ice Fire.
The white-blue flames illuminated the darkness of the city, bringing chill to the air. And naturally, it engulfed all the boulder monsters.
But Michelle didn’t expect just that to kill them. She knew they were much more powerful than her.
So before the monsters could react, she moved the rest of her spirit energy to activate her Spirit Clone skill.
The last time she had used it, she was only able to summon one clone for a moment. This time, she was determined to summon more of them.
Since there were about a dozen boulders, a dozen clones would be ideal.
"Ah—" a lazy sigh resounded through the air as a shadowy figure appeared behind the nearest boulder. And one by one, Michelle made more and more of them appear, until each boulder had one figure.
When there were enough figures, Michelle added more spirit energy and they took on their final shapes. Wearing the same clothes as her, over a dozen clones of Michelle in the disguise as Michael Grayson appeared.
Supplying them with her spirit energy, Michelle knew she could only keep them around for a moment. And the clones knew so too, so they acted quickly, all at once.
They summoned the spirit energy they were made out of and let it flow in their legs. Then they kicked their respective boulder monsters, letting the spirit energy reshape into ice spikes to stab through the monsters.
With the monsters gone, the clones disappeared too. Michelle was left alone, crouching on the ice. She retracted the Ice Flames and laid down on the ice beneath her. If she wanted, she could thaw the ice and have the spirit energy from it return to her, but she didn’t feel like doing so.
Slowly, her irises returned to normal. The blood-red retracted, revealing the rich purple.
"I didn’t know you had so much pent-up frustration over not being able to use your spirit energy," Nyxaroth’s creepily raspy voice rumbled in Michelle’s ears.
She shook her head. "I’ve never really minded. But since I got the chance to let loose, why waste it?"
Lazily, she closed her eyes.
But Nyxaroth didn’t like that. "How can you relax so easily in a dangerous dungeon? Just a while ago, if I and Serith hadn’t reacted in time, you would have been squashed into a puddle of blood by a piece of rock!"
Michelle rolled her eyes. "I’m keeping my guard up."
Nyxaroth was still seething, and Michelle could clearly feel it because the black mist kept bubbling within her blood.
So, with a sigh, she summoned some of her spirit energy and had the ice under her reshape a bit. Suddenly, she was in a box made of ice, with only a small hole next to her to let in air. "What about now?" she asked with a frown.
"Better than nothing..." Nyxaroth grumbled.
Michelle smiled a bit. "Goodnight, then!" Michelle rolled to her side and closed her eyes.
Within Michelle’s body, Nyxaroth nearly exploded in rage. He just couldn’t understand why his contracted master, who was usually extremely meticulous and scheming, was now acting so extremely. Like a spoiled brat.
He was already used to the fact that Michelle sought out the thrill of danger and was always careless with her life, but this was a brand new level.
In a dangerous place completely new to her, where a monster could pop up anytime to tear her apart, she boxed herself in ice and went to sleep.
Nyxaroth didn’t know whether Michelle was just acting stubborn or was planning something. Because if it was the second, he had absolutely no clue what kind of plan it could be.
Boxed in the ice, Michelle completely ignored the bubbling mist within her body. Instead, her focus was on something completely different.
She was sure the boulder monsters weren’t the only source of the bloodthirst she had felt. Something more powerful was lurking around, but for some reason, it hid its gaze the moment she started her fight with the boulders.