In the depths of a forest, a young lady with violet eyes and silver hair, dressed in a dark purple dress, was looking coldly at a group of men dressed in all black, with masks over their faces. One of the men was holding an unconscious girl at a knife point, clearly using her to threaten the lady dressed in purple.
Seeing her loyal maid being held hostage, the young lady's originally purple irises flashed with something blood-red for a short moment, her silver hair dancing behind her in the wind.
"What do you think, Lady Grace? Will you watch your maid die?" the man holding the maid asked with a malicious sneer as his eyes roamed over Michelle Grace's body.
Michelle Grace looked at him coldly as her face slowly twisted up into a malicious smile of a mad person. "Go ahead! Try it!" she said with a hint of cold amusement in her voice. "But let me remind you before you do anything, that if even a strand of her hair is harmed, I'll raise hell! You don't want to lose your hostage, do you?" her eyes gleamed madly as she pointed her bloodstained knife at the group of men.
Seeing the mad smile, the men stiffened in instinctual fear. They had already seen the capabilities of Michelle Grace, and the corpses surrounding them were the proof of it, and that was exactly why they decided to take her maid as a hostage to threaten her, but they never thought that her reaction would be like that.
She was right. If they killed her maid, she would no longer need to restrain herself as they would have nothing to hold over her, but if they let the maid go, they, again, would have nothing to hold over her, and she would just need to be careful not to hurt the maid while going on a rampage.
The only thing left for them to do was to try to somehow hurt the maid without killing her, to continue threatening Michelle Grace.
"But Lady Grace, we never wanted to harm a beautiful girl like your maid!" The man decided to play the car of a rapist as he placed his hand on the maid's chest. "Surely you won't be angry at us if we let your maid enjoy yourself with us!" He smiled perversely, hoping in his mind that it would be enough to stop Michelle for a while.
Unfortunately for him, Michelle wasn't so kind as to leave him a chance to escape. With the maniacal smile still on her face, she clapped her hand and her smile widened.
"You see..." Suddenly, a person identical to her appeared behind the man. "You should always watch your back!" The clone said as she pierced her knife into the man's neck, snapping his spine. Then, the clone picked up the maid and easily carried her over to Michelle.
When Michelle took the unconscious maid into her arms, the clone disappeared. Michelle gently put the maid on the ground and covered her with her own cloak which quickly reshaped into a protective sphere around the maid, so the men, assassins, could no longer take her hostage.
Then, Michelle directed her attention back at the assassins, who were about to fleet. "Want to run away?" she asked with a tilt of her head, a surprisingly gentle smile on her face which would usually take breaths away, but to the assassins, it seemed like the smile of a devil, because they remembered that Michelle showed them the same smile when they stopped her carriage. Right after she smiled like that, back then, she went on a rampage and annihilated more than half of them, with her annihilation only stopping after they took her maid hostage.
Knowing that even if they turned to fleet, Michelle would still kill them all, the second-in-command decided to distract her, so his brothers could run. Nodding at the others, he lunged towards Michelle with his sword, which was a sword with hooks directed in the opposite direction of the blade, so that if he stabbed someone and pulled the sword out, he would tear off a chink of their flesh.
Understanding what the second-in-command was planning, Michelle smiled coldly and stood in place, her eyes fixated on the sword. A devilish idea appeared in her mind, and just as the sword was about to strike at her chest, she shifted her body a bit and the sword pierced through her left arm.
The second-in-command wanted to pull the sword out to cause more damage, but before he could do so, he received a ruthless kick into his abdomen, sending him flying, leaving the sword stabbed in Michelle's arm.
The moment the second-in-command landed on the ground, an earth splitting roar shook the forest, causing the blood of the assassins to run cold in terror. They didn't know what caused such a roar, but they knew that it must have been a monstrous existence.
Before they could wake from the shock and run, the ground shook, and a huge white beast landed next to Michelle. It was a huge fox with white fur and scarlet eyes.
The fox ignored the assassins and directed its gaze at the sward piercing through Michelle's arm and at the blood dripping down her hand.
"Hello darling!" Michelle smiled at the huge fox and grabbed the sword with her right hand. Without any hesitation, she pulled the sword out of her arm, tearing off a huge chunk of her flesh.
"Can you help me with the swift clean up?" Michelle asked as she looked at the fox, playing with the sword dripping with her blood and flesh.
The huge fox stared at her wound for a moment before turning its head towards the already fleeting assassins. With a single jump, the fox landed behind one assassin and crushed him with her paw.
After a short while, the assassins were all killed and the fox slowly walked back to Michelle. Standing in front of Michelle, the fox transformed into a young child around eight years old dressed in a comfy white dress. The child had the same scarlet eyes and white hair as the fox had eyes and fur. "I'm hungry, master!" she said with a lick of her lips as she stared at the wound on Michelle's arm.
Michelle glanced at the hole in her arm and smiled a bit. "Come here!" She sat on the ground as she beckoned at the small girl.
The girl instantly jogged over, and without needing for anyone to invite her, she plastered her small mouth over Michelle's wound and let the blood flow into her mouth.
When she felt full, she leaned back and glared at Michelle. "Master, you should really be more careful! What if I didn't come in time! You know that your blood smells especially delicious to all monsters and beasts, so why do you keep wounding yourself? What if a monster came before I made it here? It would have torn you apart!"
Michelle looked at the angry girl and smiled. "Do I look so weak that I can't defend myself against one or two monsters?" she asked with a chuckle.
"One or two monsters?!" the small girl shouted in anger. "This forest is swarming with monsters! It wouldn't be only one or two monsters that would come at you, but whole hordes of monsters that would swarm at you from all directions! Master! You should be really happy that I used my roar to chase them away and that I covered the smell of your blood with my aura, or, even now, monsters would be rushing at you!"
While Michelle was being "lectured" by the little girl, a person was sitting on a tree branch above them, observing the situation.
Being concealed within the tree crowns, the person watching Michelle and the little girl couldn't help but lift a brow. "Spirit Blood..." he mumbled to himself with narrowed eyes. "How long has it been since someone with Spirit Blood was born? And this one even survived this long...? And in a lower realm at that..."
The man smiled a bit as his eyes gleamed in amusement. "Seems that I'll stay here a little longer..." he hummed as he disappeared from the branch. "But her way of dealing with things is very... interesting, should I say...?" his voice lingered in the air, but it was too quiet for Michelle or the little girl to notice.