CHAPTER 264: 264

Alexander stared at Michelle as she inspected the poison Mavreth gave her, wondering how to use it.

Seeing that, Alexander narrowed his eyes a bit. "Tell me, did you think about how to break the pact?" he suddenly asked.

Michelle turned her attention from the poison to Alexander. "Yes!" she smiled. "I did think about it."

"And what was your conclusion?" Alexander got curious. If Michelle was smiling, she must have known something.

"Let’s see..." Michelle didn’t feel like answering right away. "I thought of a way, but maybe it won’t work..."

Alexander narrowed his eyes. "Then let me give it to you like a challenge. If you succeed in breaking the pact, I’ll teach you some shadow essence skills. You will be the one to choose which skills they will be."

Hearing that, Michelle put the poison pill back into the bottle and stored it in her spatial ring. "Then show me some of your skills!"

"Are you that sure you will be able to break the pact?" Alexander raised a brow.

Michelle shook her head. "It seems more fair if I get to choose the skills before the challenge starts. I want to know what I’m fighting for."

Alexander agreed to that. So the two went into the forest. The room wouldn’t be able to withstand the skills.

They went to a familiar area—the lake suitable for cultivating shadow essence. No one would bother them there since not many Shadow Masters were in the sect.

Michelle stared at Alexander, waiting for him to show off the first skill. He had already told her its name—Liquid Shadows.

Physically, Alexander didn’t do anything, but Michelle could feel the shadow essence flicker around him.

It was just a flicker, but Michelle could feel that the power in it could crush her to dust if it so much as brushed past her.

But the flicker wasn’t directed at her. It wasn’t really directed at anything.

A moment later, Michelle could no longer feel the shadow essence, but she could see visible changes in the forest.

As if the shadows had turned into black water, they started literally dripping from the trees, forming puddles on the ground. And the puddles kept getting bigger.

A tree had its branches spread above Michelle, and the black liquid fell on her too.

It felt like water.

"What can this be used for?" Michelle narrowed her eyes at Alexander. It didn’t seem all that useful.

Alexander let out another flicker of shadow essence, and all the black liquid that had dropped from the trees rushed together, forming a big puddle in front of Alexander.

Then, according to his will, it stretched and narrowed, acting just like water under the control of a water-element Spirit Master.

Finally, Alexander had the puddle rise and crash into Michelle.

It no longer felt like water. It stuck to her like honey.

Feeling that, Michelle was pleasantly surprised. Alexander didn’t demonstrate anything extraordinary, but it was enough to show the potential of the skill.

If the black water could be controlled according to one’s will, it could be used in the most extreme ways possible. Basically, anything could be done with it.

Especially since its properties changed according to Alexander’s will.

"It’s a nice skill..." Michelle nodded a bit. She liked it.

But Alexander didn’t stop there. "It has a second stage. Living Shadow. Want to see it?"

When Michelle nodded, Alexander immediately acted.

The black water on Michelle pulled away from her and quickly reshaped into a human.

Before Michelle could react, she was lifted off the ground by a pair of hands, her neck squeezed hard.

"These ones have their own will, but they unconditionally listen to their creator," Alexander explained. With a wave of his hand, the shadow person let go of Michelle and stepped back.

"Of course, it’s possible to create other creatures other than humans."

With that, the shadow person changed shape, turning into a wolf. "You can make it change into basically anything."

That made Michelle extremely curious. Rubbing her neck, she walked over to the wolf.

She didn’t ask if she could touch it. She just reached her hand out. The worst that could happen was that the wolf would bite her.

But it didn’t. When it was still in the form of a human, it received a command from Alexander not to hurt Michelle under any circumstances, so it didn’t show any hostility towards her.

When Michelle touched the wolf, she quite enjoyed the feeling. It was furry, but cold.

She had a cold body, so when she wanted to pet animals, she couldn’t exactly do it because she would burn herself on their warm bodies. But the shadow wolf was cold, so she could pet it all she wanted.

But it wasn’t like Michelle was all that interested in animals. She was the kind of person who, every now and then, would enjoy petting an animal a bit, but nothing would change even if she couldn’t do it.

The main reason she wanted to touch the wolf was to feel whether it was really a physical creature, not just a shadow.

She already had it partially confirmed because just a while before, the shadow person was able to choke her, but she still wanted to check with the wolf.

Alexander then showed Michelle a few more skills, and they were all amazing.

The one that was the most fascinating was when he took hold of the shadows within her body and hit her from inside. To achieve that, he just needed his shadow essence to brush past her.

That one was called Inner Shadow, and Michelle liked it a lot.

She didn’t really like the feeling of being punched from the inside, but she liked the idea of doing it to someone else.

After showing the skills to Michelle, Alexander let her choose those she wanted him to later teach her if she succeeded in breaking the pact.

And Michelle chose three: Liquid Shadow, Living Shadow, and Inner Shadow.

All that was left was to break the Shadow Pact.

Michelle had lied when she said she wasn’t sure whether her method would work. She was sure she would succeed. "Let me try breaking the pact now!" she said with a smile.

Alexander nodded a bit, watching Michelle.

Instantly, she put her spirit energy to work. She had it swirl around her body before pushing it all towards her neck—to the shadow essence absorption center.

She literally flooded it, severing its connection with the shadow essence coming from the outside.

Nearly instantly, Alexander felt the Shadow Pact go quiet. Even when he tried to sense it and put his shadow essence to it, it stayed inactive.

But it was still around, which meant Michelle had yet to break it.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t do it. She was determined to succeed.

As time went by, she pumped more and more spirit energy into the absorption center. But that wasn’t enough to break the pact.

So she sat down and started cultivating her spirit energy. And the whole time, she made sure it got absorbed into her body through the neck—through the shadow essence absorption center.

When the foreign spirit energy crashed into the pact, it shook.

So much that Alexander felt it.

And Michelle had it crash into the pact repetitively.

For Alexander, it created the feeling of the second heartbeat getting extremely strong. And the heartbeat was only supposed to get strong when Michelle was hurt or in pain. And it would be that strong only if Michelle was on the brink of death.

Alexander stared at Michelle.

It was fascinating. If he didn’t see her healthy and well in front of him, he would have panicked, thinking she was in life danger.

But he didn’t have enough time to think about it.

With each crash of the spirit energy into the pact, it got weaker, the second heartbeat getting stronger.

And finally, it snapped. The second heartbeat disappeared as the pact broke.

"I did it!" Michelle opened her eyes, a smile on her lips. "You now have to teach me the skills!"

Alexander nearly burst out laughing. He had been fooled. He even started suspecting that from the start, Michelle knew what the Shadow Pact was. That she didn’t enter into it with him because she lost a bet, but because she knew she could break it.

"Did you want to see how I would react if you died?" he asked. He was nearly sure that was the case.

Michelle grinned. "Isn’t that quite obvious?"

Alexander chuckled. It didn’t feel all that bad to be fooled by Michelle. "You won, so I’ll teach you the skills."

First, he had to explain the theory. And since Michelle didn’t even know the basic theory about shadow essence, he had to start there.

Michelle listened to Alexander carefully, and the more he spoke, the more surprised she was. And the more she liked the fact she had the shadow essence.

It was unlike any other power she had ever come in contact with.

Like any other energy, there was a need to cultivate it to some extent—to gather more in one’s body—but that wasn’t what determined someone’s level or rank.

That was determined by their control over it.

It was true that shadow essence was a power that came from within someone, but to use a huge amount of it, the person didn’t have to have that much of it.

They just needed to compensate for what they lacked by pulling it in from the surroundings.