Chapter 228: 228
"Nyx, wait-" Michelle couldn’t stop Nyxaroth from sending an even bigger wave of spirit energy at the wall than before.
"What do you dislike so much about this place?" she asked. Since there was no stopping Nyxaroth’s violence, she could at least ask him some questions while he did as he liked.
Nyxaroth glanced at Michelle before turning to stare at all the Life Stones forming a wall. His black eyes were burning with rage. "I’ve never seen anything more disgusting than this," he hissed.
Michelle could already guess that. "What’s so disgusting about it? The amount of Life Stones? Or that they are forming a wall? Or is there something wrong with their alignment?"
Nyxaroth shook his head. "These aren’t Life Stones..."
That made Michelle even more confused.
But it was clear Nyxaroth wouldn’t answer her any more. She could only watch as he took on his full mist form and started crashing into the wall.
Closing her eyes, she contacted all her contracted beasts at once to ask them what they knew about the situation. But they didn’t know anything.
The only one left to turn to was Serith. So Michelle kept her eyes closed and tried communicating.
And she got an answer. "Those are probably artificially created Life Stones. They can be made by stuffing Life Stones of monsters into the hearts of beasts. That can somehow change the beasts’ hearts into new Life Stones. And they are much more sturdy than normal Life Stones. The only downside is that the process of creating them is torture to the beasts. And it mostly fails."
For Serith to sign that using the spirit energy within Michelle’s body, it took a while. But when she read it, she understood a bit more about what was going on.
Still, she couldn’t understand why Nyxaroth was so enraged by the artificial Life Stones. He clearly wasn’t the type of creature that would care about the torture and death of others. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been called an ancient disaster.
Hearing Michelle’s thoughts, Serith had an answer for that too.
Apparently, by using Wailing Mists as the hosts to create the artificial Life Stones, the probability of success increased. That led to their near extinction.
That somehow cleared up Michelle’s doubts about Nyxaroth’s anger, but for Michelle, it raised another doubt.
Wailing Mists were well-known ancient disasters. Humans and other creatures stood no chance against them. So how were they able to capture so many of them and nearly bring them to extinction?
Serith didn’t have an answer for that. All that was known was that there used to be guilds specialized in hunting Wailing Mists, and they never leaked their hunting techniques.
After finishing her talk with Serith, Michelle turned her attention back to Nyxaroth. In his solidified mist form, he kept crashing against the wall, determined to crush the artificial Life Stones.
Michelle didn’t know what to do with him. "Can I help you with that?" she finally asked after a while.
Nyxaroth stopped moving and the mass of black mist started bubbling around itself. "How?" It had been a while since Michelle had last heard that creepily raspy voice.
The contradiction between how Nyxaroth sounded normally and when he was in his mist form was just too great.
"I could explode this cave for you..." Michelle shrugged.
Even though Michelle couldn’t see Nyxaroth’s eyes, she could feel his gaze on her. He clearly remembered how she was able to blow up the cave where Rivenaar died to create a grave for him with the strength and resources she had.
Since then, her power had grown, so blowing up a cave like the one they were in wouldn’t be a problem.
The only reason Nyxaroth couldn’t do it himself was that the nature of his spirit energy wasn’t really explosive. Otherwise, the cave would have already been a pile of stones.
After a while, everyone was outside the cave and Michelle was preparing to blow up the cave.
First, she needed to make sure that no stranger was around.
She was planning to use her spirit energy, and if a stranger saw that, they could discover her Spirit Soul Blood. That would just bring about unnecessary trouble. And Michelle wanted to avoid that if possible.
So Tenether spread his wings above the area around the cave and created oppressive aura no one from the middle realm could rival.
Though he was a monster well known for shape-shifting, his best skill was creating pressure fields.
To avoid the pressure at least partially—otherwise, it would have killed them—Kieran, Ivona, and Anastasia hid within Nyxaroth’s mist body. To make the least pressure reach them, he solidified the edges of his body to create a barrier.
As Tenether’s contract master, Michelle was immune to his pressure, so she moved around freely.
Standing by the cave entrance, she summoned both her soul and spirit energy and the Binding Chains.
With the soul energy, she created a black bow. The Binding Chains became the bowstring, and the spirit energy formed an arrow.
A white arrow of ice element with a black gleam of the dark element around it. The explosive aura around it was glaring.
Since the spirit energy deep in the cave was at the verge of exploding, Michelle needed to give it just a small helpful tap.
Releasing the bowstring, the arrow flew deep into the cave, disappearing into the darkness. But Michelle could still see it. She could see in the dark.
When the arrow got impaled into the wall of the artificial Life Stones, Michelle formed another arrow the same way and sent it into the cave. When that one landed, she formed the last arrow.
But that one was a bit different.
Instead of a black hue, it had a black string attached to it.
To control the spirit energy once it reached the depths of the cave, Michelle needed to have a direct connection with it.
The string was for that. It was made out of dark element spirit energy, which could easily stretch around the dark environment of the cave.
Once the last arrow hit the wall, Michelle took hold of the spirit energy of the other two arrows and had it all condense into one big explosive ball.
The next moment, a chain reaction of explosions filled the cave. First was the explosion of Michelle’s spirit energy, and then followed the spirit energy around it.
Before long, the cave fell apart.
It was quite a satisfying sight. Michelle enjoyed looking at it—the rising smoke and the falling stones.
It reminded her of all the explosions she had set off in her past life. A nostalgic feeling she hadn’t had in a long time.
When the cave finally fell apart, Michelle called Tenether back, and he retracted the pressure around the area. At the same time, Nyxaroth returned to his human form.
"You have a strange love for destruction," he said, staring at the destroyed cave entrance. He could no longer feel the mixture of all elements of spirit energy. They got buried along with the cave and the artificial Life Stones.
Michelle glanced at Nyxaroth. "I don’t know who loves destruction more out of the two of us." She smiled carelessly.
It would have been a beautiful smile had she not been disguised as Michael Grayson. That made the smile quite plain.
Nyxaroth just turned into a small speck of mist and returned into Michelle’s body. He couldn’t argue against Michelle’s statement. He, too, loved destruction and chaos.
In the past, before he got sealed in the sealing book, wherever there was chaos or destruction, he would find his way there to fan the flames—or at least watch the show.
And it was clear his contract master was similar. That was good. He would never be bored as long as he was with her.
Especially since trouble always found its way to her.
And some stupid people always tried to provoke her and make her their enemy. With those around, boredom would never be an option.
Since the problem of the cave was gone, Michelle knew it was time to take care of other things. For example, she had to go back to the lower realm to visit the information guild. She had to keep her promise.
Michelle asked Kieran and the rest whether they wanted to return to the lower realm with her.
But since she wasn’t really doing anything interesting or dangerous, they decided to stay in the middle realm to train and cultivate. It would be nice to get some kind of head start against Michelle, whose cultivation speed was faster than theirs.
Michelle was expecting that kind of answer, so she left Mare with the group so she could later find them, and then got on Tenether’s back.
At rapid speed, he flew her to the barrier of Heavenly Law and landed in front of it.
Michelle had to get off to pass through the barrier, and only back in the lower realm did she get back on his back.
The journey then proceeded smoothly and Tenether landed in the information guild.