An Omniscient Lady Cultivator

To think about escape was simple, but to execute it… Alexa had no idea. She tightened her grip on the chains that held her. Entering the Shades, every emotion of hers shifted into one—fear.

It's not the grey appearance of the Shades that scared her, but the stillness without sound. Even the rustling sounds of wind seemed to be hidden somewhere, as only their footsteps echoed in the air.

"Cough…" Suddenly, she heard a sound. A boy in front bent over, making those behind him fall on top of him.

Followed by that, like a chain reaction, those chained teenagers seemed to awaken from a kind of slumber.

Her brows raised in surprise at the sight of their dead bodies coming alive with human breathing and heartbeats.

Fantastic. Medically impossible! Might be magically possible.

"Boss, the spell is loosening…" she heard Bratel speaking in a strained voice.

The spell? A spell was a formula of one or multiple elements drawn in a certain pattern to manipulate elemental essence into required forms and properties.

So, the reason these teenagers appeared like hollow's was because of a spell!

She tried to recall a type of spell that could control a group of living people. Nothing came to mind. The previous owner of her body had no memory of it.

There were a total of ten categories of elements; her memory only had knowledge of three of these categories.

These were:

• Fundamental elemental category , with the four building elements of existence: air, water, fire, and earth.

• Energy elemental category, with the manifestation of energy elements like lightning, plasma, radiance, etc.

• Dark elemental category, which included elements like shadow, chaos, necrotic, etc.

These three categories were commonly known as Base elemental categories.

Only elements from these categories could be drawn by a cultivator who had just augmented a star, as a beginner-level cultivator only had radial values to control these elemental groups.

'A cultivator who has augmented his star has a radial capacity of 20. To draw a spell from any of the base elemental categories, he has to burn 10 RN (radial numbers) as foundation and 2 RN for each element. So, to summon a spell, he has to burn 12 RN.

For other categories, they must burn more than 20 RN as foundation.'

A spell that could control people would have properties of elements from the Dark elemental category.

Necrotic element was the only possibility because it's the only element in the Dark elemental category with the ability to control.

But for a necrotic spell to work, the person controlled would have to be dead. The teenagers before her were obviously alive.

So, there was another element in that spell from some other elemental category she had no idea about.

And that element cost more than 20 RN for Bratel. Which meant Bratel had a radial capacity greater than 20. Hell, he might even be able to control a two-circle spell!

Cultivators were graded based on the number of circles they could summon to draw a spell. These circles contained the elements they wanted in the spell.

She he had only a vague idea of these things, as the previous owner had only theatrical knowledge about them. But one thing was sure: the husk before her was a person far stronger than the current her.

Her gaze on Bratel changed. Someone who was so casual— made someone like her to let her guard around him—wasn't someone to trifle with.

It soured her mood that if he wanted to do anything to her, she had no capability to stop him.

'I want strength. Far greater than jest's like him, so he shivers under my Shade. Just like this place.'

Alexa became silent. If this husk was stronger, then what about his boss?

Her gaze wandered towards the walking armour who rubbed his metallic mask, as if in contemplation. It was surprising for her to such a slow person to have a power which could dread millions.

Her opinion about this world improved, and the thought of escape burned more fiercely.

When the teenagers found themselves chained, their first reaction was panic. After some time, some of the smart ones started to assess their situation.

They quickly noticed the only free persons and directed their anger at them.

"You… aren't you the street cleaner in Endrax? How dare you kidnap me?" A boy in his late teens asked aloud, pointing his fingers at Bratel.

"My father is a Knight of Primal. Dare to kidnap me? Courting death!"

Alexa almost choked on her own saliva. God, how annoying!

Only after these annoying pricks started to speak did she realise how noble that husk was for putting them under the spell. He deserved an applause.

The teenagers seemed to have a lot of arrogance despite the dire situation they were in.

She studied all of them, quickly noticing the reason for that. They all wore expensive silks, most of them had the confidence only high society people should have.

'So they are nobles,' a word came to her mind. There were no social hierarchies in most of the world, but in regions under a domain master, the high-ranking minions enjoyed a status higher than the rest.

'Living in delusion with that fake illusion of being important, while they were nothing but slaves,' Alexa shrugged her shoulders.

Such people were the ones she hated the most. People born with the choice to be free but who chose to avoid it at any cost for a false reality.

So when Alexa saw the walking armour retracting the metallic parts from his right hand, she knew danger was out of her reach.

She perfectly remembered that tree being cut in two by the power of this man.

"Crap," that was all she said while ducking. A bright light flashed before her, momentarily blinding her eyes.

When her sight returned to normal, what greeted her was a shining metallic surface reflecting her own face.

The girl in the reflection had a pair of blue eyes. Her silver hair was unkempt but perfectly cut just below her shoulder. There were freckles on her cheeks, but that made her more natural than ugly.

'Tara Kingsley….' The runaway princess of a distant region. She tried to recall the name of the region, but the memories were too cloudy to reveal.

Different from Alexa, Tara wanted to completely erase herself completely from this world. she didn't know the reason, but one thing was sure. 

Current body of her wanted Alexa more than Tara, but the Alexa now wanted only one thing - a fresh start. 

That's when she chose to accept her new identity. The name Alexa hid a past she wanted to forget—not as a mad doctor, but as Alexa Walker, an ordinary surgeon.

Today onwards, there was no Alexa Walker, only Tara Kingsley. An ordinary girl dreaming of becoming a cultivator. A smile nudged her lips before curling into a disgusted frown.

It gnawed at her clean-freak self that her body was currently covered in mingled meat and blood. Glancing to the side, she saw a hellish scene.

A path of metal spikes stretched through the chained teenagers. More than half of them were obliterated into mingled pieces.

Except for a few, including her, the rest of the survivors had no chance to survive their injuries. Most of them had their limbs severed, some even plainly cut in half.

"Silence…" The voice of the walking armour was menacing, forcing the veiling teenagers into silence.

Tara missed the arrogance in their faces. Now, they only had one emotion—primal fear.

Fantastic.

Her eyes glinted looking at him. These teenagers might not have noticed, but the spell the man had just used wasn't a simple spell using the metallic element.

That spell contained something other than it—something capable of controlling emotions.

There was no reason a surgeon as herself to feel fear at the sight of blood. She had seen far more gory than this.

'What is that sprouted fear in me?' Tara couldn't wait. She couldn't wait to become a cultivator and unravel the mysteries scratching her heart to explore.

"Good…" The walking armour nodded to them, like a teacher impressed by his students.

"The Shades have another name: Vacuum. Here, sound becomes a spell…" His words were followed by rustling sounds from every direction.

"We are in the outer area. The monsters here are nothing serious, but if we were deeper…" A wall of metal surrounded them, followed by loud bangs and monstrous roars.

Tara saw a part of the metal wall bend into the shape of a paw imprinting on the skull of a teenager.

"Don't stand on the edges if you want to live," Bratel mocked, positioning himself away from the wall. A metallic wall rose beneath the walking armour, lifting him into the air.

Before reaching the top of the wall, his armour completely retracted, revealing a frail-looking man with half of his face shriveled like Bratel's.

"Ironborne…" One of the surviving teenagers exclaimed in horror.

"Ironborne?" Tara murmured, looking at the four circles that appeared before the man.

His hands moved in the air, connecting these circles into a sphere, intricate patterns appearing inside the sphere as it gathered energy from the surroundings.

"My name is Adian… people call me Domain Master Ironborne…" Adian spoke into the air.

The spheres before him shimmered in different colours, and from them, a rain of metal fell like meteors to the surroundings.

Suddenly, everything became silent. The Shades returned to their stillness. When the metal wall disappeared, there were no monsters.

It was just the grey surroundings that now became a metal field. Everywhere her eyes went, there was nothing but metal.

'So it's the power of a domain master…' Tara thought in awe, staring directly at Adian. He turned at the same time to lock eyes with her.

Then the armour reappeared around him, fully covering his body in heavy metal.

"Don't look at me like that, I don't like underage girls, especially the one's with flat..." 

"What does that mean?" Tara was fuming.