Two shadowy figures slipped unnoticed into the Sloan family’s gardens, glancing around. One remained hidden behind, and the other rushed through the shadows.
The sunset behind the mansion was painting the snow red, and shadows were long and wide, making it easy for Michelle to move around.
The guards patrolling were on high alert. They weren’t yet tired from standing guard too long, and darkness was falling, so they knew intruders could use it any mont to break in.
Michelle would use that. Unlike usual, she wasn’t the one who would gather all the information. She wanted to leave that to Anastasia. Michelle would just take away the guards’ attention.
Rushing through the shadows, Michelle overturned a small decorative statue to get the guards’ attention and continued going forward.
Hearing the sound, Anastasia remained still, hidden. When she heard another thing shatter and the guards shouting, she finally moved. The garden was empty.
Pursued by the guards, Michelle arched her lips into a smile and turned toward the building.
The next mont, a staircase out of void appeared in front of her, and she rushed up to the roof.
The guards wanted to go after her, but they couldn’t step on the staircase. Their legs just passed through it.
One of the guards started quickly forming a ladder out of wood on the side of the wall to follow Michelle up, while another one ran into the residence, searching for one of the Spirit Overlords. The intruder wasn’t soone the guards could deal with.
They could tell from the staircase. It carried no spirit energy; they passed through it, but the intruder was able to walk on it. A natural guess was that the intruder used a skill of natural discernnt, where the staircase only let on those whom its creator chose.
That was sothing only Spirit Lords and above could do.
When the Spirit Overlord heard it, he got a bit curious. Everyone was aware of the Spirit Saint’s presence in the Sloan family, so who was courageous enough to intrude so recklessly? It felt like a trap.
Still, he got up and followed the guard outside. There, he saw what was going on on the roof. A slim figure clad in black was easily fighting off all the guards, pushing them off the roof one by one. It was as if the intruder was toying with them.
The Overlord took that as an insult.
Being an ice-elent Spirit Master, he used the snow all around him to lift himself up to the roof, landing just a few steps behind Michelle. From up close, he realized his opponent might be a young girl, but that didn’t an he would show her rcy.
"That’s enough!" the Overlord exerted his pressure all over the roof, making the guards stop, barely able to move.
Michelle stopped attacking and turned around, completely unaffected by the pressure. What Tenether had put her through in Blue Forest City was much harder.
"Finally, soone less boring!" she smiled wickedly, her originally purple eyes gleaming with red. She was excited about finally getting to fight.
Michelle’s voice surprised the Overlord a bit. Why did such a young girl have so much power in her voice? Even he felt a bit intimidated by it.
"Little girl, don’t overestimate yourself..." the Overlord frowned. "Here, anyone can crush you with a single finger!"
Michelle shrugged. She knew. "I can’t co for a fight?" she grinned and kicked into the ground beneath her, lunging at the Overlord.
Her sudden movent made her hood fall off, revealing her beautiful face.
But she didn’t worry about being recognized. She wasn’t wearing her disguise mask, and her eyes were blood-red at the mont, so once she took on Michael Grayson’s identity again, they wouldn’t recognize her. Or at least not instantly. Even if the silver hair remained the sa.
The Overlord was a bit stunned by Michelle’s sudden action, but he reacted quickly and dodged to the side. He didn’t yet have a good grasp of her powers, so he didn’t want to underestimate her. Who knew whether she was a hidden expert?
Feeling a bit bothered by the coat she was wearing since it was getting in her way, Michelle closed her eyes montarily, and it disappeared.
Then, she lunged at the Overlord again.
He was fairly surprised when he saw Michelle’s coat disappear, but he quickly got back to his senses and blocked Michelle’s attack. He couldn’t sense any spirit energy from it.
What he had no clue about was that Michelle deliberately wasn’t using any spirit energy. Instead, her whole body was swirling with soul energy.
As for the coat, back in the cave, she had ford a bond with the Everfrost Mantle, and one of its features was that she could make it disappear while wearing it. Well, its main feature was to keep the wearer cool and increase their stealthiness. The second ability would be lost if the mantle was made invisible.
The Overlord kept blocking Michelle’s punches and kicks with his hands, trying to gauge her strength.
But Michelle kept increasing her strength with every attack, so he was unable to gain any information.
Feeling the pressure of the Overlord, the other experts ca out to take a look. It had been a long ti since soone dared to attack the Sloan family, so they were quite bored. They had no plans of interfering with the fight unless the Overlord seed unable to take it. They just wanted to watch.
That was exactly what Michelle desired—for everyone to co out of the mansion so that Anastasia could get in.
"Brat, just how long do you want to drag this on?" the Overlord was getting a bit annoyed by the continuous attacks.
Michelle just smiled. "Not for long!" she said as she started gathering void around her hands.
Instantly, the Overlord retreated a bit and started gathering spirit energy on his palm at full force.
With a grin, Michelle ford a ball of void on her palm and threw it forward.
The Overlord threw his spirit energy at Michelle’s void in retaliation. And his eyes widened in shock the next mont. Michelle’s black ball swallowed his light blue one and continued forward.
All he could do was dodge quickly.
But even before the black ball could reach the place where he had been just a mont ago, it dissipated into nothing.
The Overlord turned to look at Michelle, and his blood nearly froze when he saw her eyes. Two pitch-black balls.
"Just what are you?" he asked, frowning.
Michelle’s grin widened. She was letting void freely swirl around her whole body, so her eyes naturally turned black.
"Do I seem inhuman?" she asked, tilting her head to the side a bit. It looked creepy.
In actuality, the tilt of her head was so she could better see a window through which Anastasia was to leave the residence. When she saw a shadow move through there, she knew it was ti to leave.
"You definitely don’t seem normal!" the Overlord said, a frown on his face.
But Michelle didn’t wait for him to say anything more before she suddenly turned around and went the direction she ca from.
"Not a chance!" The Overlord instantly threw a ball of condensed spirit energy in front of her, letting it explode to prevent her from running away.
And Michelle needed exactly that. Using the impact of the explosion to propel herself back, she jumped back, getting behind the Overlord.
Instantly, she stabbed a needle of void into his neck, paralyzing him.
What she did was a bit different from what she did to Noctis, because this paralysis was only temporary, and she didn’t need to remove it. She liked the Overlord quite a bit, so she didn’t want to cripple him.
Before the other Overlords could react, she let her mantle appear again for higher stealth and disappeared into the darkness of the night.
Once outside the mansion, Michelle went to Anastasia, and the two of them rushed back to the cave. With the Soulstep Anklet, Anastasia, too, could move in a way where she didn’t leave footprints behind in the snow.
In the cave, Kieran and Ivona were already waiting. They had finished their own tasks for the day and returned early.
They were assigned to kill so beasts and monsters and get things like their fangs, claws, certain bones, skin, blood, and so on. While Michelle and Anastasia were gone, they killed two monsters from the list.
"Did you succeed?" Kieran asked quickly, handing Michelle what he and Ivona had gotten.
Michelle glanced at Anastasia. And she nodded. "The Sloan family head and his closest family are living in the innermost rooms of the residence, and the experts are just around them. Four Spirit Overlords are living by the walls." Anastasia explained what she found out.
"So the plan can go on!" Ivona said with a smile. The Sloan family’s living conditions were playing into their hands. If they were living differently, it could have been difficult to carry out the plan.
While listening to the talk, Michelle went through the things Kieran gave her, a soft smile playing on her lips.
Before returning to the cave, her eyes had returned to their normal purple state, but at the mont, they were once again red. She was satisfied and excited to make the poison.
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