Chapter 92
Smiling a bit, Michelle observed the hole in the ground for a while before she sent all her beasts, except Nyxaroth who was inside her body, into her spirit domain, and jumped down, landing softly on the ground. She knew that most beasts that lived in the ground had excellent hearing, so they could hear her landing if she wasn’t careful. But using her Shadow Spirit Steps, her landing was completely silent and unnoticed.
Sneaking towards the hole, Michelle realized that it was much bigger than she had guessed when she was above it. She thought it would be a hole barely the size of a pathway into which a person could slide, but in reality, it was more like a small cave into which she could easily walk if she lowered her head a bit. Also, a pungent smell and extreme warmth were leaving the hole, making her frown and step back a bit, putting her hand over her nose. She didn’t know what was living inside the cave, but it most probably had fire element spirit energy.
"Don’t go there!" Nyxaroth’s raspy voice sounded within Michelle’s body as she stared into the hole. "You won’t survive if you go in now," he added. "If you are curious about it, return after you reach at least the level of Spirit Master."
Nyxaroth’s words made Michelle raise an eyebrow. "Do you know what lives there?" she asked with a slight frown.
"No... But with your power, you don’t stand a chance against it..." Nyxaroth said, after a while.
Hearing that, Michelle nodded a bit and quickly returned to a tree, climbing it to get to the ice bridge she had formed before. But when she was just a few meters under the ice bridge, she noticed a presence on it, making her arch a brow. She stopped and formed a small stepping platform on the side of the tree she was climbing, so she could observe the creature. She caught a glimpse of its head, and saw that it didn’t have a gem on its forehead, meaning it wasn’t a monster but a beast, but she couldn’t recognize what it was, as she didn’t get to take a proper look at it.
Finally, Nyxaroth’s voice got her out of her thoughts about the beast’s identity. "That’s the inhabitant of the cave... It doesn’t seem to have a good smell, so it didn’t notice you, but things like that have good eyes and ears, so your best bet to get out of here is to get above it and then use your Shadow Spirit Steps over the tree crowns."
Nodding a bit, Michelle slowly climbed back down the tree and then used another tree, which didn’t have an ice bridge connected to it yet, to climb up. She made sure she was on the side of the tree trunk where the beast couldn’t see her as she climbed. When she was at its height, she felt its presence and slowed her climbing so she wouldn’t make a single sound as she went higher.
When she was a few meters above the beasts, she sped up again until she got to the top of the tree. There, she activated her Shadow Spirit Steps and rushed away in an instant, having to keep her concentration at its peak so she wouldn’t miss a step between the branches of the trees. But. She still made the mistake and soon found herself falling between the trees, her body being whipped by the thin branches all around her.
Knowing that if she didn’t stop her fall, she would soon hit a bigger branch and get seriously hurt, she summoned her scythe and stabbed it into the tree trunk next to her to slow her fall down at least a bit. But the scythe had a sharp blade and only slowed her fall a bit, so she also formed a few ice spears around it and stabbed them next to the blade, connecting them all horizontally, forcing the scythe to stop.
Her whole body jerked as she suddenly stopped, making her grit her teeth as she felt the momentum of the fall pulling her down, nearly making her let go of the scythe’s handle. But that was just for a moment before she was fine. Except that her arm muscles hurt from being strained. Still, she didn’t mind it.