CHAPTER 210: 210

Staring into the room, a few ideas popped into Michelle’s mind. "Maybe there is an array beneath the bodies."

Michelle’s words made everyone freeze. There existed thousands of arrays, all with different effects, power, and range. If there really was an array under the corpses, they could have already signed their death sentence.

"How sure can you be about it?" Ivona stared into the room too. The placement of the corpses was unnatural upon careful observation.

For a moment, Michelle didn’t answer. Her brows just knitted together into a frown. She wasn’t an expert in arrays, so she couldn’t really figure much out.

But her guess was that if there really was an array in the room, it was one able to isolate the people inside from the outside world.

"I want to test something." Without letting anyone stop her, she stepped into the room, going to the biggest horde of corpses. As she walked, she reached into her spatial ring to take out a small knife.

Once in front of the horde, she stretched her hand out so it was above it and stabbed the knife into her palm, pulling it out right after.

A sweet stench filled the room as blood flowed down Michelle’s hand, onto the corpses. She glanced back at Ivona. "Can you smell something sweet?" she asked, tilting her head.

Ivona took a deep breath, but even after a while, she couldn’t smell anything. "No!" she shook her head.

Michelle frowned a bit. "Do you think it’s covered by the stench of death?"

"It’s very much possible." Ivona agreed.

With a slight frown, Michelle walked toward Ivona. A few steps away from her and the room entrance, she stretched her hand out, only for it to land on an invisible wall.

The blood from her hand slid down along the wall, showing some parts of its structure.

"So it really is an array!" Ivona frowned at the sight.

It wasn’t that hard for Michelle to understand the array a bit. "It lets things in, but blocks everything and everyone from going back out."

Her frown deepened. "But that doesn’t mean it’s its only function."

As Michelle finished speaking, Pete stepped through the array. "It’s a special killer array. It won’t attack unless you trigger it."

The group showed mixed emotions. They were relieved that they were safe for a while, but they also didn’t relax, not knowing what the trigger was. No one wanted to accidentally activate it by moving around carelessly.

"Do you know what triggers it?" Michelle looked at Pete.

Pete shook his head a bit. "I’m not sure..."

Michelle raised a brow. "But that means you have a guess, right?"

"Since the array is stopping you from leaving, the most probable trigger would be if you tried to force your way out."

That made Michelle retract her hand for a moment, sinking deep into her own thoughts. But then she put her hand back on the array and started walking alongside it, making a circle around it.

The whole time, the array was blocking her from even touching the wall, windows, and doors, but in one place her hand touched the door. The door was exactly opposite the entrance to the room.

"That seems to be the only way to proceed," Anastasia, standing in the middle of the room with Kieran, noticed Michelle’s gaze on the door.

"So, shall we go?" Kieran asked, but he was already stepping toward the door. Since they didn’t want to be stuck in the room forever, they had to go through the door.

Still standing outside the room, Ivona entered and followed everyone to the door.

Stepping through the door, the group finally saw something that wasn’t completely dead and still.

They were in front of a somehow strange forest. It seemed that it was originally man-made, but over time, the trees spread, creating what it was at the moment. It still wasn’t a normal forest, but it resembled one.

And there were signs of someone taking care of it.

The lowest branches of the trees were mostly cut off, so walking through the forest was easy. The tree crowns by the edge of the forest were all cut vertically to not spread out beyond a certain point, creating a wall of leaves above the ground.

The fallen leaves and small branches were in piles, prepared to be taken away when they got bigger.

"Someone must love this place..." Ivona mentioned in passing as she stepped toward the forest.

"That is, if this place is real," Michelle spoke with a slight smile, sensing spirit energy pumping around them in a coordinated order. That wasn’t normal.

Still, the group decided not to concern themselves with the fact that the forest could be an illusion. Since they were already there, if it was a trap, they would face it head-on. In the end, there was no way for them to go back.

There was just one more thing to discuss: whether to split up or move as a group.

It was obvious that the forest was an illusion array. And it was common knowledge that to get out of an illusion array, one needed to destroy its core.

To find the core, it would be more effective to split up, but moving as a group would be safer.

"Leave it up to fate if you can’t decide," Pete interjected into the discussion, holding out a coin.

Michelle took the coin and started playing with it between her fingers. "Heads or tails for splitting up?" she asked, looking at the rest of the group.

"Heads," Kieran blurted out.

With a flick of her thumb, Michelle let the coin fly up and spin in the air. When it started falling down, she caught it and put it on the back of her hand. "Heads!" she smiled. "So we split up!"

It was the reckless and more dangerous option, but she liked it more.

That didn’t mean she disliked moving in a group with the rest. She had just always felt a pull toward dangerous things.

To her, danger was like a tasty but poisonous snack. She knew about the poison, but she also knew about the delicacy. And she decided to give in to the temptation.

So the group split up.

Michelle went straight ahead, Ivona around the edge of the forest to the right, Kieran around the edge to the left, Anastasia diagonally to the left, and Pete diagonally to the right.

Of course, only their first steps were like that. After a while, all of them disappeared randomly among the trees.

Entering the forest, Michelle took notice of a few things. First, the air wasn’t still. Wind was moving through the forest.

Second, she could hear animals around her, but she couldn’t see a single one. Not even a bird was flying above.

Third, there were nearly no bushes around. Just grass and flowers, here and there some stones. Well, and naturally, the trees.

The array’s core would most probably be hidden within one of those things.

It was highly unlikely that there would suddenly appear something completely new. It would be too obvious, and any sane person would break it right away.

Or so Michelle thought until she reached what seemed like the center of the illusion.

A small clearing between the trees, with bones of all kinds of creatures scattered around. There was even a human skull.

The placement of the bones was completely random, so it was impossible to guess which one was the core. And Michelle couldn’t rule out the possibility that the core wasn’t among the corpses.

For a moment, Michelle thought about destroying all the bones, but then she remembered that if one broke too many things in an illusion array, it could start reshaping, making it even harder to find the core.

Not wanting that, Michelle restrained her desire for destruction and just stared at the bones.

As far as she knew, moving things around in an illusion array was possible without any consequences. Or at least in the arrays she had heard about before.

"Let’s see what a genius me is..." Michelle mumbled with a careless smile as she started briefly inspecting the bones one by one.

After some time, she had the bones divided by shape and size into groups.

The only thing that remained alone in its group was the human skull.

But that didn’t mean Michelle would break it right away.

For the second round, she used her soul energy to inspect the bones and divide them into animal bones and human bones.

The result was that the amount of human bones seemed about enough to create a single human skeleton. As for the animal skeletons, she could create numerous of each kind if she wished to.

Staring at the human skeleton, Michelle had a bold idea. What if the core wasn’t a single thing but a set of things?

That could be problematic, because the other parts could be found by someone else, and they would need to bring them together.

But there was no guarantee that the one who would discover one of the other parts would realize it and bring it back.

So it was finally time to start communicating with the rest of the group.