SPIRIT SOUL

Kyle felt like a heavy burden was lifted from his mind the moment they signed the soul contract.

He wasn't sure if this was a side effect of the soul contract or his gut feeling that told him everything was fine now.

However, in the end, the reason he felt reassured and as if a burden was lifted from his soul didn't matter.

What mattered was that his time inside the Razkadan castle was soon over.

Other than that, he wouldn't be alone and would have Beatrice by his side once he completed the task he was requested to fulfill.

Along with the Undeads, he slowly approached the Castle's treasury.

For this, they made use of a portal that would guide them to the correct floor.

But before reaching the portal they had to walk for a considerable time in which Kyle explained the Nurture ability in its entirety.

In the end, his knowledge about his ability wasn't a lot, to begin with.

All of it was based on the information he had received before reincarnating and what he had learned since beginning to use it.

Yet, given the fact that he was able to devour the souls of the deprived in order to use his ability, there were different conditions he had to fulfill.

Though the Undeads make it look easy, he knew he had to put in a lot of effort in order to nurture the Undead Heart, and destroy it through the life force that had been given to them.

While thinking about it, Kyle realized that nurturing the Undeads would probably also result in their destruction if he were to have enough energy to achieve this.

This thought alone was weird because he had always wanted to use his ability for something good.

But somehow it had turned into a tool of destruction for Undeads.

However, this condition didn't apply to Beatrice, who was said to be both Vampire and Succubus.

At the same time, Beatrice was not dead, which Kyle had clearly felt when he had felt her heartbeat the moment she had leaned on his back.

Because this had made him suspicious, he had used a tiny fraction of his energy to activate the Nurture ability.

He had tactfully used it on Beatrice's Maest cultivation vein, nurturing it to an untraceable degree.

What he found was that her talent was great and much higher than his own or Selene's.

Through this, Kyle knew that Beatrice would quickly regain her cultivation base even if she were to lose it.

Nevertheless, all of this was unimportant because if this were to be true Beatrice's existence would make no sense.

If she was born as a Vampire that would be a miracle, something that should have never existed.

Simultaneously, her body felt warm to the touch.

He was further amazed at what she told him while they had been creating the soul contract- that sunlight didn't bother her at all.

She had lived on the highest floor of the castle for thousands of years.

All her life she had focussed on training and cultivation, whether it was dark, bright, rainy, stormy, and so on.

Thus, Kyle couldn't help but agree to the Undeads' comment about being unsure of what exactly Beatrice was.

Sometimes, he thought that she was just a normal young girl, who acted timidly in front of strangers, yet, only a moment later, turned into a seductress.

And then before he could retaliate her advances, she would turn serious, acting like someone who was tens of thousand years old.

As such, one could summarize Beatrice, as someone mysterious, yet also confusing being.

It was possible that she would turn into a hazard, but considering that they had signed a soul contract he felt a bit reassured.

It was mostly owing to the clause stating that Beatrice's soul would feel unbearable pain the moment she wanted to destroy the blood pact.

The Undeads found this a little bit too harsh because everyone could feel imprisoned and hatred for something or someone if one was forced to stay by their side unwillingly.

However, it was in fact Beatrice, who had wanted to add this clause in order to show Kyle that she was sincere and that she wanted to leave the castle alive, by all means!

Thus, Kyle accepted Beatrice in her entirety, even without being sure who, or what she was.

Her past or identity did not matter as long as she was sincere.

Nurturing her was out of the question for now as he was too weak.

And, even in the future, it would probably take a long time before he would be strong enough to nurture her.

With that in mind, Kyle found himself eager to know what the future would look like with Beatrice and Selene by his side.

After the others had received every little information about his ability, the Undeads nodded their heads.

Now they were aware of the fact that Kyle required a ginormous mass of energy to nurture and destroy the Undead Heart.

And this energy would be provided by the souls of the other Undeads, which Kyle should kill like livestock in order to harvest their souls.

Kyle felt a little bit bad about doing this because he thought that he would simply devour the entire souls of the beings he killed. Though it didn't mean that he would hesitate in doing so.

However, after he voiced out his concern, Nitran explained to him that all this time he had not been devouring their entire soul, but everything around the core of souls!

That was something Nitran had perceived owing to his racial trait as a Reaper.

In the cultivation process, the souls of cultivators apparently grew in correspondence to the cultivation base.

As such someone with a cultivation base at the Vitae stage had a bigger soul than someone at the Fortification stage.

There were exceptions, but these were rare!

When Kyle heard that he didn't devour the entire soul of the beings he killed, he felt less guilty about the lives he had taken so far.

This was because the core of the beings' souls he had devoured were intact and could return to the cycle of life and death once again.

Thus, he was quite happy the moment they entered the treasury that was filled with all kinds of items he could think of.

This not only included weapons, armors, books, equipment for auxiliary occupations like forging tools but there were also miscellaneous items that Kyle had only seen in the book, Karnias heritage.

Because of that, he roughly knew what item had which effect, and what was more valuable.

With that in mind, he turned towards the Undeads as he asked a doubt,

"If you guys want to leave, why don't you take some treasures too? Shouldn't we claim the entire treasury and leave? It's not like Karnias will see us… or does he?"

Upon hearing Kyle, a sly smile appeared on Beatrice's face as she shook her head.

Yet, before she could say something Li intervened.

"Right now we have to follow the rules of the Razkadan castle because we are bound to the Undead Heart. That means nothing in the vicinity of the Undead heart can be stolen by those who are bound to it.

Other than that, we can only allow you to take a specific amount of rewards.

This would amount to one special item each for every trial you passed with a perfect completion rate."

It was interesting to hear that the Castle enforced its own rules, but Kyle was confused about the 'perfect completion rate.' He was well aware of the fact that he had certainly made many mistakes during the trials which made him believe that he had not passed any of the trials with a perfect score!

His confusion was visible and Li simply answered,

"Trials that were adjusted by at least one of us are always considered as passed with a perfect completion rate even if you, in fact, barely passed them!"

Upon hearing him, Kyle let out a faint "OH" showing that he had understood what the Lich meant.

It was great to know and good news considering that he had five rewards left to choose from!

This left him with lots of treasure he could choose in order to gain a huge fortune.

And this was exactly what he required right now, heavenly treasures that allowed his strength to elevate!