Chapter 220: 220
After multiple tries, Michelle saw a purple ripple in the water in the cup she was holding. It made her smile like a child who had finished making a sandcastle on a beach. "I did it!" she exclaimed.
But the ripple was small and quickly dispersed into the water.
It felt like a wave had swept over her sandcastle, leaving behind a pile of sand.
Seeing her usually cold and calm contract master acting like a little child, Mare felt like laughing. "You have too little of the poison element spirit energy to poison the whole cup. If someone drinks it now, they will just have a slight fever for a few days."
Michelle stared into the cup and frowned a bit. Then, without a second thought, she downed the cup in a few gulps. "It’s time to return to cultivating," she threw the cup into her spatial ring and went to sit down on her bed.
Seeing how Michelle was acting, Mare felt her brow twitch. "Even if it only causes fever, it’s still a poison," she felt a bit bewildered.
Michelle lifted her gaze to look at the shocked snake-girl. "But it’s my own spirit energy in the end, so it won’t harm me."
Mare stared at Michelle and frowned. "I didn’t tell you that..."
Michelle shrugged. "It’s obvious."
Mare couldn’t help but shake her head. "I don’t understand how a person as reckless as you was able to take down so many enemies stronger than you. You have the tendency to ask for a beating."
A smile spread over Michelle’s lips. "Maybe that’s why I can always one-up them. When they are angry, their judgment is clouded by emotions, while I remain rational."
Mare just shook her head at it and was prepared to return to her contract space.
But Michelle didn’t send her there. She had a few more questions. "Mare, the scorpion I fought used light element spirit energy, so how come I gained poison element after it struck me?" she asked, finally turning a bit serious.
Mare didn’t have to think about that for long. "Most scorpions are poisonous. Even if it didn’t carry the poison element, it definitely carried some kind of poison. And if you were struck by it, the array you were in probably somehow made the poison that entered your system turn into your own spirit energy."
"That’s possible?" Michelle raised a brow.
Mare couldn’t be sure about that one. "I’ve never heard about it, but you are dealing with the black god right now. You can never know what he’s capable of. What if he’s an array master?"
Michelle agreed that made sense, so she went to cultivating. She wanted to gain some more poison element spirit energy. The measly amount she had was barely usable.
Meanwhile, in the room next door, Anastasia and Ivona were staring at each other, the atmosphere tense.
"Do you hate Michelle now?" Ivona looked a bit worried. "Or do you hate us all?"
Anastasia shook her head. "I definitely don’t hate you or Kieran..." she had a slight frown on her face as she spoke. "As for Michelle..." Even she wasn’t sure about that herself.
"There probably isn’t a valid reason to hate her," she finally concluded after a long while of thinking.
That made Ivona raise a brow. "What do you mean? Didn’t she basically torture you when she tried out her memory manipulation skill on you and failed repeatedly?"
Anastasia sighed. "I can be sure about two things. I don’t ever want to become her enemy. And I enjoy being a friend to all of you. Michelle included."
But that didn’t mean she didn’t feel betrayed.
The start of her friendship with Michelle, Ivona, and Kieran was a big, fat lie to get her to join them. The memory loss was also a lie. That was a deliberate deletion of her memories.
Ivona stared at Anastasia for a long time before standing up with a sigh. "I’ll leave you to think about it." Then, she went to her bed and slid under the covers.
Ivona was the kind of person who could fall asleep easily no matter where she was, so the moment her head touched the pillow, her mind sank into dreamland.
Anastasia stared at Ivona’s sleeping form for a long time before going to sleep on her own bed. Though she was still conflicted, she had reached a decision. Though it would take a while for her emotions to get used to the rational decision her mind made, there was at least some progress.
And the decision actually wasn’t all that complex.
Anastasia remembered how she was always ignored when she was the former Emperor’s concubine. When she was the Crown Prince’s mistress, he was only with her to use her because of her brilliant scheming abilities. Once she was useless, he would have discarded her.
The Crown Prince’s constant usage of her even led to the fact that she became a death-row prisoner. She basically ended up just a day away from death.
And though it was a bit hard to admit, it was Michelle, the person she tried to bring down, who brought her out of the prison.
And Anastasia wasn’t the type of person who would blame Michelle for ending up in prison.
It was true that Michelle was the one who exposed the scheme to poison the Emperor, but it was the Crown Prince and her own wish to kill him. No one forced them.
So the death-row prison was just one of the outcomes that could have come.
In the death-row prison, every day was full of despair, never knowing when she would be called to be executed. Or when she would be given poisoned food.
And there, Michelle appeared to test her memory manipulation skill on her.
It was a terrible experience, but it also made Anastasia realize something. No matter how good a plan was, there would always exist someone who could foil it. A better schemer. A more experienced mastermind.
And the price of falling into their trap would be fatal.
After having her memories erased, Anastasia was brought to the Grace Archduchy where she met Michelle and the rest for the "first time." They offered to become her friends.
And though they had ulterior motives, they were sincere to her. Just like she let them into her heart, they let her into their hearts.
Finding out it was all planned out hurt, but it also felt a bit warm.
After being with them for long enough, Anastasia was able to think back about it all and realize what was act and what was genuine. And most things were genuine.
She was their former enemy, but they took her as a genuine friend.
So Anastasia came to the conclusion that, even after regaining her memories, their relationship wouldn’t change. Maybe she would go to Michelle about it, to give her a piece of her mind, but it would end there.
That was at least what she had decided in her rationale. Her emotions were still in great turmoil, so she couldn’t be sure whether she would be able to control herself.
But maybe lashing out a bit was healthy both for her and her relationship with the others, instead of just keeping it suppressed.
After having decided, Anastasia went under the covers to go to sleep.
In the meantime, in the room next door, Kieran was staring at his hands, thinking about what Mavreth had said. He said Michelle wasn’t the only one whose body had undergone a change. So he was checking his body.
But he couldn’t find anything.
Meanwhile, Pete was just leaning against the wall, his eyes half-closed. That was his way of resting.
Even years after he had finished his training in the Dark Palace, he couldn’t shake off the habit of sleeping standing up, with his back against a wall.
And he never really fell asleep when someone was wide awake next to him. In those times, his eyes were just half-closed. Just like at the moment.
Because of that, he knew what Kieran was doing, and he was able to guess what he was trying to figure out. "Try to think about abilities you had in the past but lost over time," he said calmly. His voice was a bit dragged from nearly sleeping.
Thankful for any kind of advice, Kieran remembered the time that the array had shown him.
Back then, he had immense explosive strength and was a good sprinter. He was able to use a massive amount of energy all at once.
But after becoming Maverick Sloan’s servant, he had to focus on saving up his strength and energy because of the workload he received every day.
So he slowly lost the ability to use a huge amount of energy all at once. Instead, he was able to use a steady flow of energy over time.
"I’m going out for a bit." Kieran quickly got up and rushed out of the dormitory building.
Nearby was a training field accessible to everyone at all times.
Kieran had seen it on the map in the dorms, so he quickly went there.
He didn’t care that midnight was coming. He stationed himself on one side of the training grounds and crouched down a bit. The next moment, he kicked into the ground and lunged forward.