CHAPTER 218: 218

While Anastasia was struggling in the array-created dungeon, the rest of the group didn’t have it easy either.

Ivona returned to her childhood times, when she was often bullied by the servants and members of the Beltrez family.

Precisely to a time when, under the pretense of being punished for breaking a vase, she was locked up in a shed for over a week with no food or water given to her. They were trying to starve her to death. Luckily, by then, Ivona had already been cultivating for a while, so she was able to last that long and was eventually let out.

After that, the Beltrez family viewed her as a monster. That made it so no one dared to bully her anymore, but she became a complete castout.

In the meantime, Kieran was brought back to the time when his father asked for his title to be revoked. And after that, Kieran became a servant in the Sloan family in the Land of Exile, constantly driven to the corner by Mavreth Sloan.

Pete woke up back in the Dark Palace’s main house in the lower realm, when he was still a monster without his human form. He had to undergo harsh training every day and night to gain his human form. Only then was he dispatched into the tavern in Riptide City.

And, lastly, Michelle woke up in her past life. She found herself once again carrying out the most dangerous mission she was ever assigned. And it was the only mission she had failed. After the failure, she was brutally punished by her superiors, leaving her with permanent damage that obscured her future missions.

Before her wounds from the punishment could heal, she was forced to go on another mission.

It nearly cost her her life, but she succeeded.

With that, she was thrown out of the scene and found herself in a strange desert. Before she could look around, she heard rustling behind her.

"Well, that’s a big one..." she muttered, staring at the beast in front of her. A huge scorpion had locked its gaze on her.

Michelle wanted to summon her soul energy to fight back, but a realization dawned on her. She didn’t have any soul or spirit energy. She was in the body from her past life. She was just an ordinary human who had undergone training.

When the scorpion struck its tail toward her, Michelle had to roll on the ground to dodge. And that caused sand to enter her wounds from the punishment, making her wince a bit.

Michelle had long gotten used to her new body strengthened by spirit energy, so she felt a bit clumsy as she moved around. But the one thing that was a bit advantageous was that all her muscles were specially trained to move a bit unnaturally. That allowed her to move in ways others couldn’t.

Still, she needed a moment to get used to it, and the scorpion wasn’t really giving her the chance. It kept attacking relentlessly, its bloodlust making the air heavy.

In her condition, Michelle knew she had to finish the fight quickly, otherwise she would be in nasty trouble. The scorpion had the advantage in everything: strength, speed, spirit energy, stamina, and even size. A prolonged fight would be a death sentence for Michelle.

The most troublesome thing about the fight was that Michelle had no clue what she had on her. She was wearing tight black clothes, and over them, she had a long coat, which didn’t let her see what she could use. And because of the scorpion, she didn’t have enough time to check under the coat.

Dodging another attack, Michelle decided to do something radical. The next time the scorpion attacked, she dodged extremely barely, so the scorpion’s leg caught onto her coat and tore it off her.

Finally, she could look down at her body, and her eyes brightened a bit.

She would have been happier if it was a gun, but any weapon was welcome.

Tied to her leg she had a sheathed knife.

But that didn’t guarantee success. It was an ordinary knife from the 21st century. Its durability against the scorpion could be insignificant.

Still, it was worth the try.

Picking up the knife, Michelle held it up to block when the scorpion struck again.

To her pleasant surprise, it didn’t break. But the handle cracked a bit under the pressure.

And the worst thing was that Michelle couldn’t hold the scorpion back in that way. She had to quickly jump away. She just didn’t have enough strength to block the attacks.

Looking at it all through the sphere, Lavreth smirked. "Your plan has failed. She’s gonna die there." He glanced at Mavreth next to him.

But Mavreth shook his head. "You don’t know what she’s capable of. A single scorpion isn’t that much of a threat."

Lavreth wanted to retort, but the next scene in the sphere shocked him.

When the scorpion attacked Michelle again, she let its pointed tail slide across her back, making a nasty cut. While the scorpion struck her, she got under it and thrust her knife up. The handle broke, but Michelle was able to pierce the blade into the scorpion’s body.

The huge creature thrashed to the side in pain and sent its tail striking down at Michelle to prevent her from doing more damage, but she held tight onto the knife.

When the tail struck her, it moved her whole body to the side, and since she was holding on to the knife, it moved along with her, creating a gushing cut on the scorpion’s underside.

Light blue liquid with a yellow gleam started spraying out of the scorpion rapidly.

The scorpion knew it was dying, but it refused to go down alone. So as its last resort, it laid flat on the ground, squishing Michelle into the sand.

Using all her remaining strength, Michelle crawled through the sand to get out from under the scorpion.

But it got on her again. The grudge it held toward her was deep.

Barely able to breathe, Michelle once again started climbing out.

It took a while, so while she did it, the scorpion bled out and died, so it didn’t get on top of her again. So Michelle could breathe a sigh of relief and collapse on the sand.

"See! I told you!" Mavreth smashed the sphere, not even looking at Lavreth’s dark face under the hood.

The moment the sphere shattered, Michelle got transported out of the desert. She found herself back in the hall. And next to her was the corpse of the huge scorpion.

Too tired to think about anything, Michelle closed her eyes and went to sleep. She didn’t even know whether she was still in her old body or if she had back the one with spirit and soul energy.

One by one, Kieran, Anastasia, Ivona, and Pete appeared in the hall, all exhausted and with a dead beast by their side.

Kieran killed an earth-element snake, Anastasia killed a wind-element bird, Ivona a dark-element panther, and Pete a light-element scorpion just like Michelle. All the beasts were huge.

The group rested in the hall for a long time, no one saying a word. They were totally knocked out, without the energy to do anything.

When their energy returned, one by one they got up and looked at each other. Two people in the visibly worst conditions were Michelle and Anastasia.

Anastasia probably because of the mental blow she received by getting back her memories, and Michelle from fighting a beast with a broken body.

Before the group could even talk about what they went through, the disciple that led them to the hall came to them with someone right behind him. "I see you’ve all passed the test..." he was clearly a bit surprised.

But the figure behind him wasn’t. In the end, he had seen everything through the sphere.

Seeing Mavreth, Michelle frowned a bit. She wasn’t really expecting to see him. But since even Lavreth was in the sect, it wasn’t that unreasonable.

"I must say, you all are quite talented!" He had a sneer on his face. "How about joining the sect?"

"No!" Michelle blurted out before anyone could even think about it.

The response didn’t surprise Mavreth. "I see you don’t like me even after all I’ve done for you," he chuckled.

Michelle had a frown on her face. "Which sane person would like someone who constantly plans to use them?"

The rest of the group didn’t really understand what was going on. They all could see that Mavreth was a powerful individual. More powerful than anyone they had ever seen.

Only Pete knew who Mavreth was, and that only gave him more of a shock. He was already surprised when Lavreth had attacked Michelle, and to see her being on such familiar terms with Mavreth was even more of a shock.

Mavreth ignored the rest of the group and kept his attention on Michelle. "After you passed the test, did you notice any changes?" he asked lazily.

Michelle shook her head. "I didn’t have the energy to think about it."

"Then observe your body for a while!" Mavreth said. Then he glanced at the rest of the group. "You all should do so too."