Spirit Soul

Waking up from a deep and much-needed sleep Kyle rubbed his eyes.

He was still drowsy and with half-lidded eyes, he saw that Beatrice was lying next to him.

Upon hearing her stable breathing, he realized that she was simply asleep which her body desperately required after everything she had gone through.

In comparison to the burden Kyle had faced, Beatrice had it much more difficult.

Kyle had been tasked with killing Undeads for more than 30 hours while constantly using his Nurture ability, which was already arduous and painful.

But Beatrice was struggling to control herself and her desires that had been buried deep inside her for 50,000 years.

As such, Kyle didn't wake her up, and instead, he got up from the ground.

While dusting his hands, he saw that there were several layers of blankets on top of the clothes he took out from his spatial ring before he was pulled into the land of dreams.

Looking around, he quickly figured out that the Undeads had already left them, and Kyle couldn't even comment on it. Like them, even Kyle wanted to leave the area which had the remains of the once tall and mighty Razkadan castle.

The further away from the castle, the better was what he thought.

And that was after barely half a year had passed since he had been pulled inside it, giving Kyle a rough idea of how the others were feeling.

In comparison to him, the Undeads had been imprisoned much longer, and he simply accepted their impatience.

There was nothing else he could do about it, to begin with.

In the end, he was just a little bit frustrated that he could not wish them farewell, or anything like that, which astonished him.

Initially, he didn't think that he would grow attached to the Undeads because they had treated him extremely harshly in the beginning.

However, after thinking about it again, he recalled that he was the first living intelligent being to ever enter the Razkadan castle.

His entry had initially confused them extremely, only to turn into restlessness when they saw what he was capable of.

At least that was what Kyle interpreted from the situation while recalling everything from the beginning.

Turning his head back to Beatrice, he suddenly saw Arashi, who seemed to have emerged from his body earlier. Nearing her, Arashi started sniffing the Vampire before he began to sneeze, confused by the smell that surrounded her.

Thus, instead of growing more curious about her, Arashi jumped on Kyle's shoulder before he rubbed his head against Kyle's neck.

The Horned Tempest Fox had already grown to a height of 22 centimeters and his features were much sharper than before.

Kyle hadn't noticed this before, but after taking a closer look at Arashi, he realized that his Spirit Soul was growing up at a much faster speed than he expected.

Arashi felt proud of himself and wanted to show off his achievement to Kyle.

Thus, he released his soul force while simultaneously barking out in joy revealing that it had already compressed its first bead made of liquefied soul force.

Sensing this, Kyle recalled once again that he should truly start liquefying his soul force, in order to enter the Vitae stage.

His combat prowess wouldn't directly increase drastically just because he was to liquefy his first drop of liquefied soul force, but it would still elevate his strength!

Patience and willpower was the most important for a cultivator at the Vitae stage, and with Arashi's help to absorb and convert energy into soul force at a rapid speed.

Meanwhile, his control over soul force was the most important aspect in his current cultivation process.

In the future, Arashi wouldn't be able to absorb and convert enough energy into soul force at the same time.

Fortunately, Kyle had already made advance preparations for this predicament.

For the very same reason, he had chosen the energy absorption technique.

This technique, which was one of the rewards from the treasury, would allow Arashi to solely focus on generating soul force.

It would take quite a while before he would have to use it, but that was fine with him.

He had been thinking about the long-term gains either way!

With that in mind, he decided to cultivate for the time being, until Beatrice would wake up.

Taking the first step into the Vitae stage would be a great start.

This would be while considering that their current combat prowess was extremely weak.

Every single characteristic of his might has been enhanced during the last six months.

Despite that, he still had a long way to go.

Even with his current strength, Kyle knew that beasts at the Krysal stage were something he wouldn't be able to even scratch.

Because of that, traveling through unknown lands would be extremely dangerous.

He distinctly recalled that Li had said that the Sadorla Forest was quite a distance away from their current location.

While he didn't even have the slightest idea of where exactly he was, or what direction he had to go, the dangers lurking in the surroundings were also uncertain.

Yet, even weirder was the fact that the area around them was still void of beasts.

It was similar but somehow different in comparison to how it had been when he had arrived in the foggy swamp.

Unfortunately, this was not his only problem.

Beatrice had just lost her entire cultivation progress, and it would probably take quite a while before she would have adapted to the current situation, including being outside the castle.

The living conditions inside the castle and outside were completely different.

Now that he was back in the open,  Kyle began to wonder if they had to sleep under the sky.

Only now did he realize that they didn't have a tent or anything that would serve as a shelter.

There were all kinds of things they needed.

Thankfully,  he had also carried a little bit of food and water to drink along with him owing to the unlimited supply reward he had made use of before it had disappeared.

In the end, he wanted to take a look at the content of Beatrice's spatial ring.

But that was not possible owing to the fact that spatial rings were restricted to an imprint of one's energy.

Nonetheless, he gave it a try, feeling that the spatial ring Beatrice had given him and that of her own were oddly similar.

At the same time, some things had changed since she had sunk her fangs into his neck, sucking some of his blood.

As such, he attempted to access her spatial ring on a hunch and was relieved to see that he could truly access it.

This astonished him greatly, and upon sensing the numerous items inside her spatial ring, Kyle was a little flabbergasted.

However, instead of holding Beatrice's warm hand for too long and possibly waking her up, he wanted to finish investigating the contents of the ring.

He wanted to assess what they had, and what exactly they were currently lacking.

With that in mind, almost half an hour passed before Kyle had finished his investigation.

His findings made him feel a bit dumbfounded.

'Where the hell did she get so many clothes from…and all those items? Nobody inside the castle should have been capable of procuring these items and creating them by themselves would mean that everything is intertwined with death-aura and energy. However, that is not the case… Did Karnias bring these things?'

Kyle was confused, but even then he realized that they weren't truly lacking anything.

It was as if Beatrice was equipped with every last thing she would need to live outside the castle.

Her spatial ring was filled to the brim with all the necessities which were unexpected, to put it simply.

As such, having completed his investigation, Kyle wanted to let go of Beatrice's hand and get up, only to sense a sudden twitch in her hand.

It was only a moment later that he felt a light tug, and Beatrice's eyes flew open.

Brightly glowing crimson-colored eyes stared at him as she turned her head to look at him.

Initially, Kyle wanted to ignore the pull and stand up. But after thinking about it for a fraction of a second, he allowed Beatrice to pull him towards her.

There was something he wanted to test out, and not knowing how much time had passed, he presumed Beatrice to be hungry.

Right now, it was likely for her to require lots of blood to adjust to her new situation.

It was also necessary to balance out the lack of blood she had been dealing with for 50,000 years.

Using the Undead Heart as a replacement for blood might have been harmful.

Hence, Kyle was simply ready to offer his blood if she wanted to drink it.

Yet, instead of revealing her fangs, Beatrice focused on his emerald eyes. And, the moment he has pulled merely a few centimeters away from her, the crimson eyes moved lower and settled on his lips.

Perceiving that Beatrice didn't want to drink his blood right now, he wriggled his hand out of hers.

Using the same hand, he lifted her chin before he smiled cheekily.

"You really are a naughty girl!"

Hearing this, Beatrice wanted to retort something, but Kyle's entire face seemed to bewitch her.

It felt weird and she was unable to avert her attention from him.

But, when she was able to regain her senses for a quarter of a second, she slapped her cheeks.

This caused Kyle to furrow his eyebrows before he noticed that Beatrice had regained control over herself as she mumbled,

"Urgh…that was scary!"

Shrugging her shoulders, Beatrice clearly showed that she had no idea what had been going on with her.

And, it was only after some time that she began to look around in confusion, not sure of where she was.

Having lost her consciousness shortly after drinking Kyle's blood for the first time, she didn't know what had happened afterward.

Thus, Kyle gave her a short briefing, while trying to ignore the lust that swept through his body.

'I almost lost control over myself… I should really try to control my urges…'

Even though he thought like that, Kyle knew that it was easier said than done.

Once he finished the short briefing, he saw Beatrice's dumbfounded expression.

Though it quickly turned sad only a moment later as she mumbled, "So… you want to tell me that they left, just like that?"

Scratching the back of his head, Kyle was not sure what to answer. He sensed that everything he said would hurt her one or the other way.

Thus, he instinctively lifted his hand before he lightly caressed her silky, silver hair as he tried to reassure her,

"It's fine. I'm here!"

It was just a moment later that Kyle realized that he was not talking with Selene, but a 50,000-year-old Vampire.

His hand stiffened and he retracted it, thinking that he had somehow offended her.

But then he sighed in relief seeing that Beatrice's reaction was better than expected.

She didn't seem annoyed, rather the sudden separation from the Undeads that had raised and trained her, hurt less than before.

It was confusing, and Beatrice had never felt like that.

She wanted to find out answers, but before she could say anything, her stomach began to rumble.

This caused Kyle to smile as he looked at her for a moment before asking, "Are you possibly hungry?"

Not saying anything, Beatrice could only nod her head, feeling that this was not the behavior appropriate for someone aged 50,000 years.

Yet, in the end, she had never felt old as she had always been treated like a treasure and a spoilt kid by the other Undeads.

Her experience of life was also less than Kyle's and only her knowledge was vast and thorough!

Thus, she didn't act her age which Kyle had already noticed.

Seeing that she was easier to interact with than before, there was no need to beat around the bush.

Instead, finding out answers was the most important right now.

"We should try testing how much of my blood you need until you don't feel hungry anymore.

After that, we should try to figure out for how long your hunger will be satiated after a feeding.

Following that, we could try to test out if you can consume more and what kind of result this will have!"

Kyle was nonchalantly talking about his blood being drained by a Vampire as if it was nothing serious.

He was not the slightest worried that she might accidentally kill him because even though they hadn't even undergone the blood pact.

Or at least that was what Beatrice thought. But then she felt something peculiar about her body as if it was alien to her.

This feeling confused her and it felt as if her entire body was changing. Like her, Kyle was probably feeling the same!

When she understood this, Beatrice couldn't help but blurt out,

"Is it possible that our blood pact was formed?... When I drank your blood??"