Chapter 223: 223
Evading the flail, Michelle reached into her spirit domain with her mind, and the big black sickle appeared in her hands. The next moment, she coated it with her soul energy and swung it at the man.
The soul energy slid off the sickle’s blade and flew straight at the man.
As Michelle was close to him, there wasn’t really a way for him to dodge it, but that wasn’t worrying. In an instant, the man conjured up a wall of earth-element spirit energy in front of him.
It was to be expected that Michelle’s attack would be stopped by the wall, but instead, it cut through the wall and continued flying at the man. The next moment, blood and gore spilled on the platform, and the metallic scent of blood filled the air.
At the same time, the array under the platform activated. It acted the same way as when Michelle was hit by the flail. After a while, the man was back on his feet.
The only change was that the red barrier around the platform turned an even brighter shade. It showcased that both parties in the fight had already received a fatal hit. The array would no longer revive them.
After getting up, the man felt bewildered. He couldn’t understand how an attack so much weaker than his defense could penetrate through his spirit energy and land a killing blow on him so easily.
A deep frown formed on his face. He decided to take Michelle seriously.
The next moment, Michelle felt the pressure in the surroundings rise. The man was trying to crush her with his spirit energy.
But she just smiled and swung her sickle at the man again.
Seeing it, he quickly dodged. He was shocked that Michelle was unaffected by his pressure and could even launch an attack at him.
Michelle was a bit surprised by it too. The pressure the man was exerting was nothing compared to the pressure she had felt in Blue Flame City when Tenether was exerting pressure all around.
And that raised a few questions within her. Back then, she was still in the lower realm, so Tenether was affected by the Heavenly Law. His power should have been limited. So how come the pressure he was exerting was much stronger than what one of the strongest people in the middle realm could cause?
She knew that Tenether was a monster, which allowed him to showcase more power than humans, but that still wasn’t enough to surpass the pressure of the man. Did that mean that Tenether was somehow able to bypass the restriction? Or was it just temporary because of the seal Tenether was under?
Whichever was the case, Michelle didn’t have the time to think about it. She had to save her neck. She was in a fight with someone more powerful than her by not just levels but whole ranks. She couldn’t afford to lose focus.
Ignoring the pressure, she dodged an attack the man sent at her and kicked into the ground to get closer to him. At the same time, she started discreetly sending a massive amount of soul energy into her sickle so that with the next swing, she could form a large-scale attack impossible for the man to dodge.
But the larger the scale of the attack, the less damage it would do in one place.
Still, Michelle would be satisfied with knocking the man out because that was enough for someone to win an arena match and be transported outside. And the arena would prevent both participants of the fight from fighting for an hour so they could recover at least a bit.
Seeing that his pressure wasn’t affecting Michelle, the man retracted it so he could solely focus on sending strikes at Michelle. He had already seen what she was capable of doing, so he wouldn’t give her another opportunity to swing that sickle at him. He would finish her off before she could do anything.
Michelle felt the increase in the pace at which the man was attacking her. For a moment, she stopped sending soul energy into the sickle and instead sent it into her legs to speed herself up. When her speed went up enough, she continued pouring her soul energy into the sickle.
Even though in Soul Mastery she was still in the Mortal rank, not even the Soul rank where Anastasia was, from having cured Alexander and David of Void Plague and from having been in contact with Void Obsidian, she had a ridiculous amount of soul energy within her body and soul.
After a while of sending the soul energy into the sickle, a black mist started gathering around the blade. At the same time, Michelle felt sizzling on her hand holding the sickle. The sickle was reacting to the constant supply of soul energy.
The man noticed that Michelle was preparing for an attack, so he decided to use a powerful counterattack. So he stopped attacking recklessly, discarded his flail, and started gathering spirit energy in his arms. Once again, it became a competition between Michelle and the man about who could cast their spell faster.
But since Michelle had a big head start, she was nearly finished.
Within the next few seconds, she gripped the sickle with both hands and propelled herself up. Then, with a swing of the sickle, she aimed to stab it at the man.
He sensed it, squatted down, and used the spirit energy gathered in his arms to form a protective cocoon around him.
The blade of the sickle struck the cocoon, and black smoke exploded all around the platform.
The next moment, the barrier around the arena disappeared.
The onlookers were shocked. No one doubted that Michelle would die, but in the end, she won. No one knew whether the tall man died under her hands or just fainted, but it didn’t prevent people from feeling respect toward the young girl.
She was so much weaker than them, but she was able to show off a skill with such destructive potential that they could never pull it off.
After stabbing the cocoon with her sickle, Michelle felt her gaze blur. The next moment, she found herself in the arena’s resting area. And next to her was lying the tall man. He was alive but unconscious. Some sect disciples were already tending to him.
Getting up, Michelle quickly rushed back toward the platform. The platform could recover itself, so if she wanted to see the damage she had caused to it, she had to return there quickly.
When Michelle rushed out of the resting area, murmurs spread around her and complicated gazes turned to her. Not only was she still covered in blood—some hers, some the man’s—from the fight, which made her look like some kind of maniac, her last attack had left a huge pit in the platform, leaving everyone present shocked.
Michelle ignored all gazes on her except one. It was coming from higher up, completely unconcealed. It was obviously challenging her to look back. There was only one person who would look at Michelle like that.
Turning on her heel, Michelle went into the arena building, and a disciple was already waiting for her. He led her to Mavreth’s private room to observe the fights.
When Michelle entered, the disciple bowed his head and left, closing the door behind him. Then, Mavreth spoke. "Do you now understand what you should train the most?" he asked lazily, his gaze plastered on the numerous platforms in the arena.
Michelle nodded and unceremoniously came to sit on the chair next to Mavreth. "Soul energy is weak against spirit energy, and spirit energy is weak against soul energy. I need to bring up my spirit energy."
Mavreth nodded a bit, but he wasn’t entirely satisfied. "The last move you did, what do you call it?" he asked.
Michelle glanced down at her hands and smiled a bit. "Grim Hand," she answered truthfully.
"Why is that?" Mavreth finally turned to look at her.
Michelle raised her right hand, the one she used to inject the soul energy into the sickle. "It’s self-explanatory, isn’t it?"
"Well, that’s quite amusing!" Mavreth chuckled. Instead of looking at a normal hand, Michelle’s hand was the skeleton of a hand, with just some soul energy holding the bones together to move as they would if the hand was intact.
"It will recover quickly..." Michelle put her hand back down.
"Is an hour enough for it?" Mavreth asked. But it was clear he wasn’t really concerned about Michelle’s hand. He was curious whether Michelle would be in a condition to once again step onto the arena in an hour.
Michelle nodded. "Until then, I plan to check a new skill," she said in passing. Back in the land of exile, she had gone to the dark alleys belonging to the Dark Lord, and from an old man, she had bought many skill books aimed for assassination and annihilation. She was wondering if she could find a suitable skill for herself there.
She already had the Spirit Clone, which was good for sneak attacks, but that was completely ineffective against people of the Monarch rank.
"Use your time wisely!" Mavreth said lazily as he leaned back in his seat. He turned his gaze to one of the fighting platforms. Quite a bloody fight was going on there. A Beast Tamer Master was fighting a poison master, and both were in quite bad condition.
Michelle didn’t pay any attention to the fights and reached into her spatial ring. The next moment, she had a box full of skill books in front of her. She had already gone through them before, so she knew what they were about, but choosing a book suitable for her style of fighting wasn’t that easy.
Especially since she had gone through the books a long time ago.
Still, after about half an hour, Michelle was holding a book with a disturbing name: "Nonexistent Hymn."
It could only be activated using extremely dark gray soul energy, and when activated, melancholic humming would fill the surroundings of the caster. Slowly, the humming would turn into words in the language of void, forming a song—a song of death and erasure. The only things people could understand from the lyrics would be the names of the targets.
Once the names were sung, the words would once again distort into humming, and a black ball of soul energy would form in front of the caster. It would grow in size before falling into itself. And in the process of falling apart, it would suck in the targets, erasing their existence.
Then, the black ball would disappear and the humming would stop. As for those who had heard the song or the humming, they would be unable to recreate the sound.