Chapter 250: 250
"Master, what is this for...?" Michelle stared down at the spike stabbed into her chest. Mavreth clearly had no intention to kill her, but what he had just done defied that logic.
Mavreth sat down on the table in the room and looked at Michelle. "Just wait a bit. It should start working soon."
That made Michelle frown. She wanted to ask what it meant, but she knew Mavreth wouldn’t answer her. She could only guess what it was.
Blood quickly dripped out of the wound, making Michelle a bit dizzy. So she sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall.
Her face turned quite pale, but she had a feeling it wasn’t only because of the blood loss. The spike was causing something else. She just couldn’t figure out what it was yet.
She thought she would figure it out after a while, but even after her skin turned completely white, she only felt dizzy. And along with it, she felt that she could lose consciousness soon.
She didn’t want that.
She was nearly sure that Mavreth was testing her. And if she failed, she would either fail the test, or it would come to an end. So she would stay awake as long as possible.
Knowing Michelle for a while already, Mavreth could guess her trail of thoughts. He didn’t really feel like correcting her, but when he noticed a flicker of mist on the black spike, he spoke up.
"You don’t need to stay awake for this," he said calmly. "Don’t push yourself too much. I still have things for you to do."
Out of what Mavreth said, the only thing Michelle believed was when he said he still had things for her to do. She doubted she was allowed to faint.
There was a high probability Mavreth was just trying to trick her. He was able to do that.
In the end, he had quite a nasty personality.
Noticing Michelle’s wariness, Mavreth scoffed a bit. It was clear his disciple had seen through his personality.
But at the moment, he was being serious. It would be better if Michelle was unconscious.
So he came over to her, and before she could react, he put his hands on each side of her head.
Pressing on her temples, he sent in some spirit energy.
Nearly instantly, Michelle’s gaze dimmed. The next moment, her body weakly slumped against the wall.
"Don’t you think she will see you as a pervert if you sneak around like that?" Mavreth asked into the silence as he retracted his hands from Michelle’s head.
The next moment, a shadow appeared in the room. "Does it seem to you like she has ever viewed me positively?" Alexander asked lazily, walking over to the unconscious form on the ground.
Mavreth shrugged. "Does it seem to you like I care about your relationship with my disciple?"
Alexander didn’t bother to argue with Mavreth. He just picked Michelle up into his arms and carried her to the bed. The whole time, he made sure the spike in her chest didn’t move an inch.
The process had already started, so removing the spike would only harm her.
"Since you are here, I can go now," Mavreth stood up straight and prepared to leave. "Make sure to watch over her until she wakes up!"
Alexander didn’t even glance in Mavreth’s direction. His gaze was locked on Michelle’s pale form. Even though she was wearing the disguise mask, her condition looked terrible.
And it was clearly getting worse. Especially from the wound.
With every moment, the spike sank deeper into her chest, the part deepest in her flesh falling apart and regrouping into thin black snake-like strings.
They crawled out of the wound and, as the spike sank deeper, proceeded to spread over Michelle’s skin like a net.
At first, Alexander couldn’t see it because it was happening under Michelle’s clothes. But after a while, the net spread even through her neck, not hidden by the fabric.
Seeing it, Alexander sighed. Glancing back, his gaze landed on the window.
Originally, it was closed, but when he went into the room, he used the window to get in, so it was wide open.
Standing up, he shut the window tightly. Then, he looked over at the shattered door.
With a flick of his fingers, he had some shadow essence manifest there and piece the door together, haphazardly putting it back in its place.
Finally, Alexander turned his attention back to Michelle.
Coming over, he placed his hand on her forehead. Usually, it was cold, but at the moment, it was icy.
"What would you do if I wasn’t here?" Alexander smiled carelessly, summoning some shadow essence on his palm. And then, he placed that palm on Michelle’s clothes, just around the spike.
Under the effect of the black mass, the clothes fell apart, leaving behind just some dust.
But only the part that Alexander touched. The rest remained intact.
When the clothes disappeared, Alexander’s gaze landed on Michelle’s skin. It couldn’t even be called pale or white.
It was gray, like the skin of a dead person.
And all over it was spreading a black net coming from the bloody wound in her chest.
Seeing all that, Alexander proceeded to take off the top of Michelle’s clothes. The net had spread from her chest up to her neck and the bottom of her chin. And downwards, it was already reaching the bottom of her ribs.
As for the sides, it had long reached Michelle’s shoulders and gotten to her arms.
"Don’t tell me I took advantage of you when you wake up," Alexander spoke more to himself as he touched the spike in Michelle’s chest and started inserting his shadow essence into it.
"I won’t..." Michelle opened her eyes.
She was a wary person. An extremely wary one at that. So no matter how bad of a condition she was in, she would wake up when someone was touching her in her sleep.
The only case when she wouldn’t wake up would be if she was really hurt or sick, making her unable to wake up.
But that wasn’t the case at the moment. Her condition didn’t force her into slumber. It was the loss of blood, and she could still be forcefully awakened for a moment if needed.
Alexander smiled when he heard Michelle. "You sound so gentle now!" he continued pouring his shadow essence into the spike.
But Michelle couldn’t even feel it. It made no difference to what she felt.
As for her reaction to Alexander’s comment, she didn’t really have any energy to make one.
She woke up forcefully because someone was touching her. But after making sure she knew who it was, her body and mind were starting to shut down again.
Alexander watched Michelle slip back into unconsciousness and nodded a bit. It wasn’t surprising.
Quite the opposite. It was expected for her to faint. It was actually shocking that she was able to wake up after fainting the first time. In her condition, that was nearly impossible.
Of course, only until she recovered.
For a while, Alexander continued pouring his shadow essence into the spike and Michelle’s wound.
When he was satisfied, he retracted his hands and watched how the net spreading across Michelle’s body was reacting.
It was quite an interesting sight.
While Alexander’s shadow essence kept pouring into the spike and the wound, it didn’t really affect anything.
But when the flow suddenly got cut off, without any beforehand preparation, the net stopped spreading. At some places, it even started cracking.
"You should be thankful to me." Alexander took hold of the spike and pulled it out.
A gaping hole was left in Michelle’s chest, exposing the white bones of her ribcage.
Originally, the blood was flowing quite fast, but after Alexander pulled the spike out, it got even more intense. Because even though the spike had caused the wound, it was somehow blocking it.
But once this blockage was removed, the blood could go at its full flow, without any restraints.
Seeing that, Alexander didn’t panic. He was expecting that.
He had seen a fair share of stab wounds, so he knew that just pulling out the stabbed-in object would intensify the bleeding.
But when it came to Michelle’s situation, there was no other way than pulling the spike out.
The spike was conjured out of Mavreth’s power to give a special soul link in between Michelle’s body and soul depending on her talent.
And the thing that was supposed to test the talent was the net from the spike.
In essence, if the net ended up big, it was good. It meant the person it was on had great talent.
But if their talent was either too big or constructed of talents for many contradictory things, the net would spread endlessly, swallowing up the person’s soul before parasitizing on their body.
To prevent that, Alexander had to pull the spike out since the net was coming out of it.