Chapter 112
After fruitlessly attacking Michelle a few more times, Anastasia stopped for a while and took off her clawed gloves and let the feathers disappear, before putting back the original blades. She realized that if she wanted to use her soul energy to strengthen and speed herself up, she couldn’t be putting her focus into the feathers used as claws on her gloves, because to learn to do something new she had to put her full focus into it, and with some of her focus used to fight or defend against Michelle, she didn’t have the privilege to use her soul energy for anything else.
Michelle waited until Anastasia was prepared to fight again, and once she put her gloves back on, Michelle struck with another chain, used like a whip.
In an instant, Anastasia blocked with the blades on the back of the gloves and then jumped backwards. At the same time, she moved her soul energy like when she was conjuring up the dark gray raven feathers, but she didn’t summon anything and instead kept moving the soul energy within her body.
Seeing what Anastasia was trying to do, Michelle smiled in satisfaction and whipped at her with two long chains at once, to nip at Anastasia’s focus.
When Anastasia felt the chains flying at her, she blocked again, but that, just as Michelle guessed, took her concentration away from the soul energy, and she lost control of her soul energy, which made it explode within her. Though it didn’t harm her, as it was the power of her own soul, it still made her stumble and fall down.
Just before Michelle’s chains could hit Anastasia, Michelle let them disperse into specks of void soul energy, which then returned to her.
Knowing that she still didn’t have enough skill to use her soul energy as an enhancer, Anastasia sighed and stood back up. "Let’s start again!" she said, her eyes flashing with determination, as she started moving her soul energy again, much more rapidly than before.
Repeatedly, Michelle whipped her chains at Anastasia, destroying her control over her soul energy, but Anastasia never gave up, and each time she failed, she stood up and tried again.
Just like that, hours passed, and even Michelle was starting to feel a bit tired from constantly using her soul energy, and Anastasia was already pale from exhaustion, but she refused to give in to her weakness. When Michelle pressed on her, telling her to go rest, she said that she wanted to try one more time. Over the hours, she had seen some progress in herself, and she could already create a thin cloak of soul energy around her hands, but she wasn’t able to keep it around for more than five Michelle’s strikes.