The Evil Lord's Wife Has Spirit Blood
Chapter 74

Chapter 74: 74

The Archduke stared at Michelle as she succeeded in binding her soul energy and soul leash, the binding chains. "Since you’ve connected them, now you have to control the soul energy with the binding chains," he started speaking. "But that alone is quite easy, so to make you grasp and master it perfectly, I’ll keep attacking you with my own soul energy, and I’ll only stop if you can block my attack and retaliate with your soul energy!"

When he finished speaking, he didn’t even give Michelle the chance to prepare and straight away formed blades all around him without explaining anything further. The blades flew at Michelle at a dangerous speed, showing her that he was serious about attacking her, and that if she was too slow, she would get hurt.

Michele quickly dodged the attack and frowned, frying to focus on the binding chains. But before she could achieve anything, another wave of blades flew straight at her.

Groaning in frustration, she dodged again, rolling to the side. The Archduke’s blades were relentless, and he had excellent strategic thinking as the blades went into a formation around Michelle. To dodge the formation, she had to pit her full concentration into it, leaving her no room to think about the binding chains.

And that was exactly what the Archduke wanted. For Michelle to still be able to form the binding chains even when she would have to put her full focus on something completely different, because if she succeeded in that, she would be able to use her soul energy no matter the situation she ended up in.

After having to dodge her father’s formation for a few times, Michelle realized what his plan was. At first, she didn’t understand how he wanted her to learn on her own how to control the binding chains when he didn’t give her any chance to think about it, but after being kept in such a state for long enough, she started calming down and understood his intentions. And she liked the way he thought, the way he wanted to teach her.

When the Archduke created another formation of blades around her, Michelle put a bit of her focus on remembering it, so she would have an easier time dodging it the next time. She did that for the next few formations, and though she still had to put nearly all her concentration on the formation, slowly, a part in her brain went back to her binding chains, thinking quickly about ways to use it.

After dodging a few more formations, the golden chains reappeared on her neck and spread from there to her hands like snakes crawling over her body. When they reached her arms, they solidified, and she held a thick chain in each hand. But no matter how thick the chain was, it was still short, so she couldn’t use it to defend against the Archduke’s attack and had to dodge again.

She retracted the chains back to her neck before solidifying them again, trying to make them longer. But they were still each just a meter long, so she had to dodge the next formation too.

The third time, her chains reached the length of over two meters, and she tried to use it like a whip to block the blades of the formation, but she could only block a few and had to dodge again so she wouldn’t get stabbed.

Seeing that Michelle was getting better, the Archduke decided to step up the difficulty. When he formed the blades, he let them spin around Michelle, cutting off her escape routes, forcing her to stop dodging and use her soul energy controlled by the binding chains.

When Michelle realized what the Archduke was doing, she retracted the chains before quickly solidifying them again and whipping them around herself. She had nowhere to dodge and if she didn’t want to get hurt, she had to fight back.

The chains were already long enough for her to use to somehow defend, so though clumsily, she hit the blades with the chains, stabbing them into the ground.

After stabbing a few of the blades into the ground, she formed a small path between them which she used to dodge the rest. She could already use the chains to block the blades, but she didn’t have good enough control over them to take care of all the blades.

The Archduke smiled a bit when he saw her form a path in his formation to escape, so he stepped up the difficulty again. The blades would turn at her again even if she dodged them, so unless she stabbed the blades into the ground deep enough for them to be unable to come out, the number flying at her would just keep increasing, making it harder for her to concentrate on her soul energy and binding chains.

Retracting and solidifying the chains much bigger, Michelle whipped them around herself like a net, but some blades still got through and rushed at her, forcing her to dodge to the side a bit. But that opened her net a bit and more blades flew at her. She gritted her teeth and enlarged the chains again, forming a sphere of slashing chains around herself, pushing the blades away from her.

Seeing that, the Archduke’s smile widened, and he added more blades to the formation, doubling their amount. Again, some got through Michelle’s chains, but she made sure not to open the sphere of her chains while dodging. Then, she added more chains to the sphere, stopping any blades from coming at her.

The Archduke finally stopped his blades and Michelle retracted her chains. "What do you think, father?" she asked with a smile.

"You’re good. You were able to use your binding chains to shape your soul energy into chains." the Archduke nodded. "But chains aren’t something you can always use, and for you, they are the easiest to form since that’s the shape of your soul leash. We’ll do it again, and this time, you have to reshape the soul energy into something other than chains."

Michelle nodded a bit and closed her eyes for a moment. She heard the sound of the blades all around her being pulled out of the ground and flying at her. As she dodged, she once again let the golden chain appear on her neck and spread to her hands. When it reached her palms, she tried to focus on creating something other than chains, but as the Archduke’s formation took a part of her concentration, she ended up creating chains again, so she quickly retracted it and tried again as she dodged another formation.

Already feeling a bit tired from having to constantly dodge or fight back, Michelle’s movements were a bit sluggish, but the Archduke matched his moves with her, so he would push her to the limit, but no harm would come her way. He knew that while training, getting hurt was sometimes needed, but when learning to use soul energy, it was unnecessary.

Michelle dodged a few times, trying to form something other than chains, but she always ended up creating them, making her groan in annoyance. But soon, she realized that after forming the chains, she could shape them, so she smiled a bit, an idea coming to her mind.

She formed a long chain in her right hand and tangled it into something like a stick. Then, she put her full concentration on reshaping the chains as she kept dodging the Archduke’s blades.

Slowly, the chains mended together and formed a long stick. She twisted it in her hand and used it to block a few blades as she dodged again.

She didn’t really like that she formed a stick, so she retracted it and tried reshaping the chains again. She ended up forming something like a shield.

Frowning, she tried again and finally formed what she wanted. A small knife. She smiled and formed one just like that in her other hand. Then, she used the twin daggers to block the Archduke’s blades as she ran in between them. Being a former assassin, she loved cold weapons the most, and small knives were her favorite. With them, she was untouchable.

Soon, Michelle blocked all the blades flying at her and rushed at the Archduke. Just as he said before they started training, she had to train until she was able to land a hit on him when he was attacking her with his soul energy, in other words, when he wasn’t defending himself. Because even though Michelle was a former assassin and the Archduke’s power was suppressed, both of them knew that he was more skilled than her at the moment.

"How was it?" Michelle smiled as she retracted her knives, letting them disappear.

The Archduke looked at her and a small smirk appeared on his lips. "Excellent! You’ve learned to use your soul energy."

That made Michelle’s smile widen. Though she knew that she couldn’t use the soul energy too much, she was quite happy that she learned to use it. After she had come to the world, except when she was making her own cultivation method, she had never struggled with something as much as she did just moments ago.

"But... Only partly!" the Archduke added.