CHAPTER 290: 290

The Life Stones crunched in Michelle’s mouth as she chewed on them. They were tasteless, but it wasn’t a bad feeling to have them in her mouth.

After chewing and swallowing the first few that Michelle put into her mouth, she took the rest too. When she swallowed those as well, she waited for the effects to come.

Sitting on the ground, she closed her eyes to feel within her body.

At first, nothing much changed. At most, Michelle could feel spirit energy in her stomach. But there, it couldn’t do much.

So Michelle waited. She was guessing that when the Life Stones moved to her intestines, some effects would appear.

And she was right.

Though it took a while, after some time, she felt a wave of warmth surge up from her belly, spreading across her body.

Michelle didn’t like that. Her body was always cold, so the warm surge felt like a fever. She got dizzy from it. Luckily only a bit.

For a while, Michelle felt the warmth all over her body, making her sweat, her body even turning itchy from the changes in sensation as the heat changed every now and then.

But after just a few minutes, the heat started moving solely to her head.

Michelle’s dizziness got worse. Her head started throbbing, and she could barely focus on anything. Except for the heat in her head, she couldn’t exactly discern anything else.

It was one nasty feeling.

Alexander watched Michelle with a frown. He could tell she was safe, but she didn’t look good. Her face was flushed red from being too hot, and her eyes were hazy. It looked like she would faint any moment.

Alexander squatted down and picked Michelle up, taking her into his arms. That didn’t interfere with her experiment at the moment, and if things turned serious, he could quickly intervene.

Michelle could feel a pair of hands around her, but she couldn’t even make out who it was. At most, she could tell it was someone she knew and someone she didn’t have an exactly negative relationship with. So it was safe to stay in those arms.

Michelle’s senses started to blur together. She didn’t know whether she was feeling hot or if something was buzzing in her ear. Or maybe she ate something spicy? She felt completely messed up.

And when the heat started gathering not only in her head, but directly on her forehead, she completely lost all sense of herself. She directly fainted into Alexander’s arms.

Alexander held Michelle safely on his lap, his hands gently massaging her temples to help bring back her consciousness.

But it didn’t have much effect as the process caused by the Life Stones hadn’t finished yet.

Hot blood suddenly started trickling down Michelle’s forehead. A small cut wound was suddenly in the middle.

And with each moment, it was widening.

After a while, Alexander could see what was causing the wound. And when he saw it, his stomach tightened. A purple Life Stone was pushing its way out of Michelle’s forehead. It was growing out of Michelle’s skull.

Alexander frowned. With the gem on her forehead, Michelle looked nearly the same as she did back in the dream he had because of Lavreth.

So was the dream really prophetic?

Many in the heavenly realm were guessing Lavreth had the power of foresight, and it was also known that he could mess with others’ consciousness and subconsciousness.

And by doing that, he could easily manipulate someone’s dream.

Alexander watched the Life Stone grow bigger on Michelle’s forehead, a frown adorning his brows. With each second, the bleeding got a bit bigger.

The scent of Michelle’s blood spread out. But within the usual sweetness of it, there was something new.

Alexander took a deep breath, trying to identify the new part of the scent, but he couldn’t. But it was clearly doing something, because even after a while, not a single beast or monster was attracted by the scent of blood.

Unable to figure out what had changed about the smell himself, Alexander glanced at Unlucien and Noctis. They were monsters, so they were more sensitive to scents. "What has changed in her scent?"

Noctis and Unlucien looked at each other. Identifying changes in scents wasn’t a field they were experienced in, but they could do it. Noctis was a wolf-monster, though he was mostly focused on space manipulation, and Unlucien was a snake, a double-headed one. Two creatures sensitive to scents.

But in their human forms, their sense of smell was suppressed.

Noctis took on his monster form and sniffed the air. His three red eyes then narrowed. He didn’t like the scent.

When Unlucien transformed and licked the empty air in front of him, his golden eyes narrowed just like Noctis’ eyes did.

"So?" Alexander stared at them. "What is it that has changed about her scent?"

Unlucien was the one to answer. "The scent carries the smell of chaotic spirit energy."

Hearing that, Alexander raised a brow. When he took a deep breath, he nodded a bit. It did resemble the scent, but it was quite weak.

He could finally understand why monsters didn’t come.

With their Life Stones being filled with spirit energy, they didn’t go near places with chaotic spirit energy. If the chaotic spirit energy crashed against their Life Stones, they could shatter, killing them within a matter of seconds.

"But that doesn’t explain why beasts aren’t coming here," Alexander frowned.

With that, Noctis and Unlucien couldn’t help.

But there was one beast around that could.

A speck of black mist left from in between Michelle’s eyebrows, before manifesting into a person in front of Alexander.

Nyxaroth was outside, staring at Michelle.

While he was still within Michelle’s body, he couldn’t smell anything, but after listening to Alexander talk with Noctis and Unlucien, he decided to check. He was a beast, so there was a high probability he could smell something Noctis and Unlucien couldn’t.

Taking a deep breath, he caught something. "There’s a strong smell of death," he said with a frown.

By smell of death, he didn’t mean the smell of blood and corpses rotting after someone died. It was a scent that even starving scavengers avoided like plague. It was the scent of those who had killed so much the smell of rot and blood clung to them.

But it wasn’t a smell just anyone could smell. Only beasts could catch it with their noses. And they all avoided it.

Also, they mostly caught it on monsters or other beasts, not humans. Even Alexander, who had probably killed thousands, didn’t have the smell of death on him.

Alexander stared down at Michelle. If the Life Stone had caused her scent to change so much, she wouldn’t have to worry anymore about hurting herself. Her blood would no longer attract monsters and beasts to her.

But there was also the possibility of it being just a temporary effect while the Life Stone found a proper place for itself.

That guess was basically right. But the scent didn’t last around until the Life Stone found its place.

While Michelle was still asleep, the Life Stone grew to the size of a man’s fist, before starting to shrink back.

When it was the size of a thumb, it started sinking into Michelle’s head like an invisible force was pushing it inside.

At the same time, Michelle opened her eyes.

And her expression wasn’t happy. Even though she was basically sleeping the whole time, she didn’t feel well rested.

"Ouch..." she hissed, touching her forehead. She felt like something was being compressed into her skull, the bone aching.

"How do you feel?" Alexander tilted his head a bit.

Michelle would have frowned, but any movement in her face made her skull ache more. "Shitty..."

Alexander chuckled. "Well, you were the one who decided to experiment with Life Stones. You should bear the consequences."

Michelle glared at him and stood up. "I will!" She rubbed her forehead.

As she did so, her finger grazed against the tip of the Life Stone still peeking out of her skin. It had a sharp edge, cutting her finger.

Michelle wanted to pull her hand away, but it got stuck. And she could feel the Life Stone sucking her blood out through the wound.

"What a nasty thing..." she muttered, feeling blood leaving her body rapidly. It felt just like when she was making contracts with her beasts. When she pressed her bleeding wound to them, their bodies started sucking her blood.

That made Michelle think about something. If her body regarded the Life Stone as something to be contracted, she could make it appear and disappear whenever she liked.

But it was way too early to reach a conclusion. She had to give it time. The process had to end first.

Alexander watched Michelle. He couldn’t tell what exactly was going on with her, but from the fact that she wasn’t taking her hand down, it was easy to tell something was happening.

On the other hand, Nyxaroth could feel what was going on. He was in a contract with Michelle, so he could feel what was happening with her.

So he once again took on the form of a small speck and returned into Michelle’s body. That way, he could check her state.