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 exclaid.
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 elent spirit energy to poison the whole cup. If soone 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 ti 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 ."
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 judgnt 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 elent spirit energy, so how co I gained poison elent after it struck ?" 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 elent, it definitely carried so kind of poison. And if you were struck by it, the array you were in probably sohow 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 so more poison elent spirit energy. The asly amount she had was barely usable.
anwhile, 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 an? Didn’t she basically torture you when she tried out her mory manipulation skill on you and failed repeatedly?"
Anastasia sighed. "I can be sure about two things. I don’t ever want to beco her enemy. And I enjoy being a friend to all of you. Michelle included."
But that didn’t an 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 mory loss was also a lie. That was a deliberate deletion of her mories.
Ivona stared at Anastasia for a long ti 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 mont her head touched the pillow, her mind sank into dreamland.
Anastasia stared at Ivona’s sleeping form for a long ti 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 so progress.
And the decision actually wasn’t all that complex.
Anastasia rembered how she was always ignored when she was the forr 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 beca 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 bla Michelle for ending up in prison.
It was true that Michelle was the one who exposed the sche 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 outcos that could have co.
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 mory manipulation skill on her.
It was a terrible experience, but it also made Anastasia realize sothing. No matter how good a plan was, there would always exist soone who could foil it. A better scher. A more experienced mastermind.
And the price of falling into their trap would be fatal.
After having her mories erased, Anastasia was brought to the Grace Archduchy where she t Michelle and the rest for the "first ti." They offered to beco 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 forr enemy, but they took her as a genuine friend.
So Anastasia ca to the conclusion that, even after regaining her mories, 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 anti, 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.
anwhile, 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 soone was wide awake next to him. In those tis, his eyes were just half-closed. Just like at the mont.
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 ti," he said calmly. His voice was a bit dragged from nearly sleeping.
Thankful for any kind of advice, Kieran rembered the ti that the array had shown him.
Back then, he had imnse 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 ti.
"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 tis.
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 mont, he kicked into the ground and lunged forward.
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