Spirit Soul

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

Beatrice voiced out the same doubts that had been lingering on Kyle's mind, and he couldn't help but shrug his shoulders, unsure about the correct answer.

He felt a little bit different than before, and could converse with Beatrice much more easily now. However, that didn't necessarily mean that they had formed a blood pact.

Because of that, Kyle decided to test it out in the crudest possible way.

An idea popped in his head as he said,

"Attack me with the intention to hurt me and we will be able to figure it out…but please don't cut off a limb or anything like that…"

Even though he presumed Beatrice to have some common sense, he couldn't simply rely on that.

After all, she had lived in a castle for her entire life, with Undeads at that.

As such, her level of common sense should be hard to describe as that, to put it bluntly.

Thus, Kyle had decided to add the next line and tell her not to seriously injure him.

Listening to Kyle's words, she thought about it for only a moment before her blood affinity reacted according to her thoughts.

Manifesting a needle out of the reserves of blood inside her body, and the bloodline affinity's unique effect to duplicate blood, she shot it towards Kyle.

The duplicated blood might be weak in terms of potency, but when Kyle sensed what Beatrice was doing with the bloodline affinity, he was intrigued.

Yet, the moment the blood needle pierced through his hand, or to be precise the thin membrane between his thumb and index finger, cleanly penetrating it, something weird happened.

First, he was astonished that Beatrice's attack was still so strong and accurate.

Even if he were to try evading it out of a dozen blood needles, at least two would hit him.

They would probably be strong enough to puncture him too, which was also unexpected because her entire cultivation had been destroyed just days ago.

In the end, in order to attack, she had only used a faint trace of the mana that her body had subconsciously absorbed during the last few days.

Nonetheless, that was not the weird event that occurred because both Beatrice and Kyle received substantial proof that they had already completed their blood pact.

That was the case because Beatrice began to scream out in endless pain, the moment the blood needles pierced through his hand.

This made their situation clear, but instead of bothering about his light injury, Kyle rushed towards Beatrice.

He felt a little bad about having asked her to test if their blood pact was already formed.

Beatrice continued to cry out in pain, and finally slumped to the ground when she was unable to stand anymore.

It was only when he came in touch with her, and tried to help Beatrice in any way, that she suddenly quieted down. She began taking deep breaths as she complained in a low voice,

"This pain is just because I lightly punctured you?... but sinking fangs into your neck will…be fine right?"

Kyle felt odd seeing Beatrice on the ground and feeling uncertain about everything that just happened.

She was still flinching owing to the pain that her mind was vividly recalling.

However, there was nothing he could do to ease her pain except saying,

"Well…we will have to test that out too…but if I accept your bite, it should be fine, I guess? You don't want to hurt me intentionally after all."

That being said, Beatrice and Kyle started to test out a few things.

So far, everything seemed to work according to her plan, with the only issue being one particular circumstance.

Even after having consumed more than half a litre of his blood, Beatrice was still hungry.

Despite that, she conveyed to him that she would not require more for a very long time.

"If I'm not wrong, your blood will be naturally replenished before I require it…as a Cultivator you can hasten up your blood formation process too.

This way, I would never require more blood than what you can provide….but I'm still so hungry right now even though I don't need it…"

This realization bothered Beatrice the most because she had never felt hungry in her entire life, and the sensation was simply too bothersome.

It prevented her from cultivating properly, which was what the two of them wanted to do.

Their current strength was too weak, and entering the Vitae stage was the highest priority for both of them.

If one were to consider that they had just completed the experiments about how much blood Beatrice required, cultivating was the most important task.

Seeing, and also sensing that Beatrice felt uncomfortable, Kyle couldn't help but wonder.

'Maybe she requires more blood to adjust her body to drinking blood? Is that it?' Confused, Kyle had no idea whether he was right or not, but he still shared his assumptions with Beatrice.

After listening to what he had to say, she was not sure about the answer either.

For now, she could only sigh deeply as her stomach rumbled once again only to hear Kyle mumbling,

"Take some more of my blood. A little bit should be fine." Saying so, Kyle pulled his shirt aside, revealing the two punctures Beatrice had made before.

Seeing him readily allow her to drink his blood, caused Beatrice to be overjoyed as she jumped towards Kyle.

Hugging him tightly, she let her fangs puncture his neck yet again as her scent permeated the surroundings.

The moment Beatrice sucked his blood, Kyle felt excitement streaming through his body once again, which made him feel uncomfortable the first time.

He had even assumed that he might be a masochist because it excited him when she sucked his blood.

Yet, the second time they started their experiments, he had realized something, which Kyle wanted to test out now.

As such, he had allowed her to drink some more blood in order to test what was going on with his body.

Closing his eyes, he focused on the inside of his body, only to notice something that plastered a vibrant smile on his face.

It was even more exciting than what Beatrice's bite caused to his body.

His eyes gleamed brightly as he mumbled,

"So…did the circulation speed of my soul force increase?"

With an increased circulation speed of his soul force, Kyle could not only accelerate his cultivation, but other than that, he would heal at a much faster pace.

That meant his blood would replenish faster than it would be the case by normally circulating soul force through his body.

Following that, his combat prowess would also increase because he could initiate attacks much earlier while his execution speed and potency of attack increased.

This was truly exciting, and without a second of doubt, he wanted to figure out how high his energy circulation speed had become, and how long the effect would last!

At the same time, it would be interesting to test if it was possible to increase the potency of the blood draining effect or actively control the period for which it would last.

If that was possible, having Beatrice by his side would be even better than he could have ever predicted.

However, even if it was not possible, the blood-draining effect's potency felt quite strong to him.

As such, only the period before the effect would wear off was unknown!

With that in mind, Kyle felt that it wouldn't take long until he would be able to enter the Vitae stage.

Once he did so, that would be the last step outside the Fortification stage as he had long since reached the bottleneck.

Yet, just as he began to smile while patting Beatrice's head for doing a great job, he felt her body losing all her strength.

She was about to slump to the ground, and Kyle could barely hold her.

Despite the exhaustion, she gave him a vibrant smile while his blood trickled down her full lips.

Her eyes fluttered shut as he heard her regular breathing.

Carefully picking her up, he put her down on the blankets before staring at the soundly sleeping Beatrice.

'Just who is she?' He wondered, scratching the back of his head with a faint smile.

Following that he circulated soul force through his body, stopping the bleeding from the two punctures as he shook his head.

He had no answers to any question about her and was inclined to give up on trying to figure out what kind of existence Beatrice was.

Instead, he decided to focus on his cultivation and felt that it was time to enter the Vitae stage right now.

His soul core was already fully constructed and was overflowing with soul force that had been expelled by Arashi.

The Horned Tempest Fox was currently inside the soul core, resting and preparing more soul force for Kyle.

Because of that, Kyle followed the instructions he could recall from the cultivation manual he had read several months ago before he started the liquefaction process.

By forcing to gather the soul force that was in a gaseous state in one particular spot, he forced it to be slowly compressed.

After he amassed more and more soul force inside the soul core, everything seemed to be gathered at the same spot.

It required tremendous focus from Kyle while the gaseous soul force was slowly liquefied.

An almost untraceable drop of liquid was formed in the center of the compressed soul force which had slowly started to enlarge.

Time passed slowly, and Kyle, who was seated next to the soundly sleeping Beatrice, was sweating profusely.

Though he did not give up and continued finalizing the process of the first liquefied soul force drop!

Opening his brightly glowing emerald eyes, he first smelled a pungent scent permeating the air.

Sniffing around, he looked at his arm and spotted a bad, reeking, and black-colored mass of impurities.

It made him wrinkle his nose and frown as he enveloped his entire body with soul force before separating the mass of impurities from his body.

Once that was done, he enveloped the black mass before he simply stored it away.

He found the mass of impurities Inside his spatial ring, and without too much delay, he released it after getting up and leaving Beatrice's side.

By this, it was possible to have it at one place, further away from their location.

He didn't want the black reeking mass to remain in his spatial ring, and upon returning, Kyle first noticed that it was about to get dark.

'Did it really take half a day to liquefy my first drop of soul force?' He wondered, not sure whether it was fast or slow.

Either way, he would have to start absorbing mana once again, filling his soul core before he would be able to liquefy his second drop.

However, somehow, Kyle didn't believe that Arashi would require a long time to absorb and convert energy into soul force in order to fill his soul core.

As such, the liquefaction process of his Soul force would take, by far, the longest.

With that in mind, he began to annex the soul force Arashi was expelling to him after absorbing and converting the surrounding energies.

Simultaneously, he utilized the blood-draining effect Beatrice was causing.

Still feeling the stingy sensation around the area she had bitten him, Kyle recalled something which made him access his spatial ring.

Taking out a white glowing orb, he smiled faintly.

The moment he held the Orb of Life in his hand, the energy it radiated began to spread through his body, reaching every single cell.

When it reached his neck, the warmth around the two punctures increased. Kyle couldn't help but grin because it felt like everything was working perfectly, much better than he could have hoped for.