CHAPTER 294: 294

When the sphere of ice was done, Michelle pushed some of her spirit energy outside it, keeping it in non-solid state.

It wasn’t all that difficult since Michelle was proficient with her ice element.

So, it was time to make the ice sphere into a spirit energy sphere. To desolidify it.

That was a bit troublesome. There were two ways to do it, and neither was optimal.

First, Michelle could thaw the ice, but some of the spirit energy in the sphere would then leave along with the melted water, potentially creating gaps in the sphere.

Second, she could force her spirit energy to rage within the sphere until it shattered and only the spirit energy was left behind. But that could destroy the shape of the sphere. And getting it back together would pointlessly waste her energy.

So how to do it?

Maybe there was a way to combine the methods.

For example, Michelle could keep moving her spirit energy through the sphere while melting it. That way, when the water flowed away, the spirit energy would theoretically stay.

Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try, so Michelle proceeded.

Only to end up disappointed.

First of all, the water sprayed all over her, annoying her quite a bit. But that could still be overlooked.

And second, the moment the ice sphere was gone, the spirit energy she had outside the ball pushed back the rest of the spirit energy, destroying the space without spirit energy.

So, Michelle did succeed in thawing the ice, but she needed to find a way to keep the spirit energy in its non-solid state firm, so the other spirit energy wouldn’t push it back.

Retracting her spirit energy, she once again created the sphere of ice and put quite the abundance of spirit energy behind it.

Then, she started once again thawing the ice, but she did it slowly, from the inner side of the sphere. She started from the ice going from her hand, connecting to the sphere.

The new method proved to be useful. Though it was extremely slow, it did work. After a while, Michelle could no longer see, but could feel the sphere of spirit energy around her. But right next to her was an area without spirit energy.

Just like she wanted.

Closing her eyes, Michelle started sensing the spirit energy to observe their flow. In her mind, they appeared as tiny white orbs flowing around.

And she had to find out in what pattern they moved. Because all spirit energy that was owned by a person had a pattern in its movement.

Only free spirit energy could remain patternless, just flowing along with the rest.

And that, too, was extremely rare since spirit energy always tried to remain with other spirit energy of its element, and they would dance around each other.

Mostly, the pattern in free spirit energy was much clearer than in owned spirit energy. But if it was difficult to sense that pattern in free spirit energy, though it barely happened, it was without a pattern.

Spirit energy like that could one day be in the heavenly realm, and the next day in the Land of Exile. It traveled fast and unnoticeable.

No one could tell how much patternless spirit energy was in the world. With how it moved, it was hard to even notice if a gust of it flew by someone. So maybe, there was more of it than spirit energy which had patterns in its movement. Maybe it was even the energy most abundant in the world. But no one could notice or use it since it wasn’t bound down by rules and places.

But at the moment, Michelle wasn’t concerned about patternless spirit energy. Owned spirit energy always had milder, harder-to-make-out patterns, and she needed to find the one in her sphere.

It wasn’t all that difficult. It just took time to see the whole pattern. Depending on how big the pattern was, that much longer it would take to see it whole.

Luckily, Michelle wasn’t trying to understand the pattern. She just wanted to see and remember it whole. Since it was her spirit energy, and not someone else’s, she could replicate it without deep understanding.

If it was someone else’s spirit energy movement pattern she wanted to copy, she would have to have great understanding of the specific pattern.

The spirit energy’s pattern in the sphere somehow resembled a flower.

If the pattern was drawn on a paper, it would be a simple but beautiful pattern if used right.

To draw it, one just needed to circle the pencil thrice to create a spiral before having the line continue, crossing the first line that started the spiral. And just a bit further, the pattern would start a second spiral.

Finally done with her observations, Michelle retracted the sphere and summoned some of her dark element spirit energy. If she wanted to alter its flow, she first needed to know what pattern its flow followed.

Once again, she closed her eyes and observed the small black orbs that flowed around her hand.

After a while, she discovered a pleasant surprise.

Maybe because both the ice and dark element spirit energy were hers, their flow was similar. The only significant difference was that when creating the spirals, the dark element circled twice while the ice element circled three times. The spirals of the ice element had one more layer.

So, to achieve a sphere with similar properties to the one of the ice element, Michelle just had to make her dark element add one more layer to its spirals.

But how to do that?

She wasn’t sure if it would work, but she had an idea.

Opening her eyes, she started controlling the black mist in front of her to swirl around. After three spins, she always had it go straight for a moment before having it do another three-layered spiral.

She did that for a long time, just sitting on the ground, not doing anything else.

She highly doubted it would work, but she was hoping that by having the whole bunch of spirit energy spin around in the specific pattern, the singular orbs of spirit energy would take it on too, at least temporarily.

When she stopped, she let the spirit energy flow around freely and closed her eyes again. Then, she started sensing it.

She was expecting to be disappointed. In reality, she was taken by surprise. She didn’t achieve exactly what she wanted, but she was halfway there.

The spirals were bigger. Not three-layered, but about two and a half. Or something like that.

That made Michelle wonder. Was it because she just spun the spiral for too long, or was it impossible for the spirit energy of the dark element to spiral on its own more?

If it was the first one, it would just be a bothersome detail, and if she put her mind to it, she would find a way to speed it up. But if the second guess was the case, she would have quite some trouble.

Either she would have to find a way to bypass it, or she would have to find a completely different way to create the stable sphere of dark element spirit energy.

But maybe, just maybe, the sphere could be stable enough with the state the spirals were already in.

So she decided to try it. Testing things like that could never be harmful. It just took up time and some energy.

Summoning more dark element spirit energy on her hand, Michelle had it swirl and spiral on her palm for a short while so it all got the same pattern, before pushing it away from her. She had it slowly spread around in the distance, bending it to the side with each centimeter.

After a while, she already had half a sphere in front of her, but she started feeling her control slipping. The spirit energy leaving her palm was starting to flicker.

At that rate, she wouldn’t be able to complete the sphere.

Still, she wanted to at least see how far she could push it. When would the sphere collapse?

Pushing it further and further, the half sphere stretched to a two-quarters sphere before Michelle could no longer stretch it.

But one thing pleasantly surprised her: the sphere didn’t collapse. She was just unable to make it close up any further. No matter how much spirit energy she added to it, it remained the same, just getting thicker.

That could be used. But later.

Michelle decided not to try new methods while she didn’t finish what she started. She was first going to continue trying to make the spirals of the dark element spirit energy three-layered.

Closing her eyes, she retracted the spirit energy around her, leaving only a small ball on her palm. Then, she started creating the spiral pattern with it again. But she did it much faster and more recklessly than before. Because what if her handling of the spirit energy changed things up.

When she was being reckless with it, every now and then, a speck would leave the group before returning to it.

How did that affect the pattern?