Spirit Soul

While tightly holding the Orb of Life, Kyle felt its energy coursing through his body.

It was invigorating him, and slowly healing its wounds, which included making up for the blood loss.

This was great, and something the Orb of Life did passively, without him requesting it to do anything actively.

Because the pain around his neck disappeared, and the blood loss didn't harm him in any way, Kyle could finally pay attention to the changes in his body.

By liquefying the first drop of mana, he entered the Vitae stage after breaking through the shackles of the Fortification stage.

Under normal circumstances, he should have reached the Vitae stage a few months ago when Arashi had evolved.

It was around the same time that accelerated his energy absorption and conversion speed.

However, too many things had happened since then, and Kyle was already happy that he was alive.

He had also amassed lots of treasures that would allow him to become much stronger than he already was too!

He had received a spatial ring that had an enormous space, a great weapon that could probably be restored to its former glory, and many other items that made his life much easier.

As for the most important things, Kyle believed that it was the vast amount of books on a wide variety of topics.

These included the Lacra's secret books, which were the recipe books of a prodigious blacksmith, who had experimented with all kinds of ores in his lifetime.

Because he was now in possession of the books, Kyle was confident of widening his horizon which was definitely necessary because he had realized that he was still lacking a lot.

With that in mind, he decided to switch between cultivating and reading a few books until Beatrice would wake up.

There was something important he had to ask her even though he could already gauge an answer to his doubt.

And feeling certain about it caused him to be quite happy.

Unfortunately, a few more days had to pass until Beatrice would wake up, sleep-drunken and hungry once again.

This astonished Kyle only a little bit, and without hesitation, he gave her some of the blood his body had restored.

Oddly enough, Beatrice required less blood than before even though she was still in her adjustment period.

And, Kyle could only assume that this was because of his advancement to the Vitae stage.

'Could it be that the stronger my blood is the less she needs? That is if the gap between our cultivation base continues to grow…'

In the end, Kyle knew that Beatrice should be able to quickly enter the Vitae stage. She was a former cultivator and not a rookie. Hence,, she would be able to reach her old cultivation base much faster than before.

That was great, and Kyle hoped that she would become faster as quickly as possible as the unknown dangers around them were something he couldn't help but worry about.

Nevertheless, once Beatrice was finally awake, he could finally ask the question he had been wanting to get an answer to.

"You know the ancient language, right?"

After taking a look at each book inside his spatial ring, Kyle had figured out that more than half of them had been written in the ancient language.

This annoyed him extremely because he didn't know much of the ancient language.

But, the frustration turned to relief upon seeing Beatrice simply nod her head.

She didn't even bother to give a proper answer, and Kyle couldn't help but smile upon seeing her confidence.

'I knew it!' He thought inwardly, only to stare at Beatrice, who was licking his blood off her lips.

They had yet to start doing experiments to figure out more about the Blood draining effect.

But, before Kyle considered starting them, he wanted Beatrice to get adapted to drinking blood, or to be precise, his blood, completely.

It might take a while, but until then, he wanted her to teach him the Ancient language.

In the end, their current fortune was limited to the materials and equipment the two of them had inside their spatial rings. This was because Beatrice had never learned an auxiliary occupation in her life.

Thus, the only way to earn money would be to hunt beasts.

This was not time-efficient, even if it was quite useful for Kyle to have a killing machine right by his side.

He could store souls inside the Soul storage, which was one of the items he had chosen as his reward from the Razkadan castle's treasury.

Furthermore, his Nurture ability required the energy from soul particles too.

Despite that, neither of that would allow them to earn a huge fortune in order to purchase cultivation resources.

Currently, Beatrice required several cultivation resources to accelerate her cultivation progress.

Now, even Kyle felt that he should start using resources instead of solely relying on the surrounding cultivation energies.

Right now, the surrounding might be overflowing with energy that was more than enough for the two of them.

But once they progressed further, a cultivator's need for more and more cultivation energy would increase exponentially.

Furthermore, Kyle wanted to reunite with Selene as he had promised, and he was not someone who broke his promises easily.

With that in mind, they had to procure lots of information, including the path towards the Sadorla forest, once they would come across a settlement.

However, in order to achieve this, first, they had to know where they were, to begin with.

Sadly, it was not even something Beatrice could tell him.

She had been raised inside the Razkadan castle and had stayed in it for her entire life. As such, she was lacking the most basic information they required right now.

In contrast to that, she was overflowing with information about all kinds of other things that Kyle wanted to know.

Because of that, they spent a total of three weeks in the same area, increasing their cultivation base.

Other than that, they tried to increase their understanding of the blood draining effect.

Additionally, Kyle learned to read and speak in the ancient language.

This had been easier than expected because Beatrice was a good teacher, which Kyle had found to be odd.

Both didn't neglect their cultivation either and continued to work hard.

To Kyle's astonishment, he noticed that Beatrice had a unique trait that forcefully restricted her cultivation pace.

As such, she had only been able to reach the Mid Fortification stage after three weeks of cultivating a few hours a day.

Apparently, the trait was something unique to her race.

This specific trait allowed her to increase her physical strength to be close to the standards of someone who cultivated in the path of Pryr.

This was interesting, but the required energy was much more than what Kyle needed to cultivate his entire being, including his physique.

It was probably a necessary means of Beatrice's race to make up for the lack of physical strength.

Fortunately, owing to her cultivation speed, the demand for energy by her unique trait wouldn't turn into a huge burden.

Rather, it made her much stronger and allowed her to move much faster than before.

Initially, she had been displeased about her cultivation having been taken away from her.

But it didn't matter anymore because having gained freedom made everything worth it.

Some may think she was not free, owing to the blood pact, but that didn't bother her as Kyle didn't demand her to do anything against her wish.

If she wanted, Beatrice could go wherever she wanted.

The only downside was that she required blood, lots of blood to survive.

Only Kyle was the exception, which made her dependent on him.

And, if she didn't want to turn into a blood-thirsty monster that had to drink the blood of several powerful beings just to prevent starving, she had to be with him!

Kyle was nice to her, and she could not travel through the unknown lands of Shima all by herself.

She was oblivious to the dangers of the outside and was required to stay with someone to survive, to begin with.

Yet, the moment he told her that their journey would bring them towards the Lahin Kingdom that was next to the Sadorla forest, Beatrice became confused.

There was no need to return to a place that had less qualitative and quantitative cultivation energies…or so Beatrice had assumed, only to hear Kyle's reasoning.

"So…you want to return to a… different woman?"

She asked with a rather sharp tone in her voice.

The abrupt change in her voice made Kyle feel that he should pay attention to what he would say right now.

He was not sure why, but somehow Beatrice felt extremely dangerous right now, and he could see a distinct gleam in her eyes.

Thus, he tried to placate her using a slow and reassuring voice and neatly explained his story to Selene.

"...So to summarize it, before I was separated from Selene, I made a promise to her to return and meet her in the Lahin kingdom… I'm responsible for her because I fixed her 'disease' and that is the reason she suddenly became a noble of the Lohar race…"

However, even after he had explained everything, Beatrice was still displeased and staring daggers at him.

If they wouldn't have the blood pact, Kyle was sure that she would just tear him apart right now.

Somehow, it felt weird because he was not sure why he had to explain himself to Beatrice.

Despite that, he felt that it was a necessity to prevent her mood from worsening.

If he didn't pacify her it would only create more trouble for their lengthy journey.

In fact, Beatrice didn't stare daggers at him because she was eager to visit the Sadorla forest or the Lahin Kingdom. It would be an interesting experience in her life, which excited her a little.

Furthermore, it was the way Kyle was talking about the Lohar he had rescued from the grasps of a Nasga merchant that made Beatrice curious.

After rescuing her, he had been by her side, helped untangle her cultivation vein and unleash her darkness affinity.

His efforts had allowed her to become nobility.

And now, he wanted to return to her, reuniting with the woman he had rescued and been a companion to.

This was just wrong, and Beatrice's mood plummeted further as she mumbled, "Are we in some sort of drama or what?!"

The only thing that prevented Beatrice from feeling even angrier than it was already the case was the fact that Kyle seemed to have accepted her entirely.

He had shown no signs of thinking about abandoning her after everything was solved.

Instead, he was eager to bring her with him, knowing that she was free to go wherever and whenever she wanted.

Thus, he kept explaining everything, while they were packing up to leave the region around the Razkadan castle, forever.

It took him quite a while to calm Beatrice down, who seemed to have been more agitated by his reason to return to the Sadorla forest than he thought.

During that time, they had decided to walk in one particular direction in order to search for the closest settlement with an intelligent race. In that, they could ask for information about the current situation of the surrounding areas, and the location of the Sadorla forest.

Furthermore, Kyle had the premonition that the Sadorla forest and adjacent kingdoms were in much more danger than he initially thought.

He had no way to verify the extent of the danger looming over them, but his entire being told him that something was wrong there.

He had subtly felt this premonition when he had been in the Razkadan castle.

But only after it had collapsed, and Kyle had regained his freedom did this feeling become more intense and overwhelmed him.

Worried about Selene's well-being, and that of the Jars, he couldn't help but hurry up.

Yet, only a few days later, Kyle couldn't help but feel that he should be worried about himself instead of others.

Thinking that, he stood on top of a ledge as he looked down into the bottomless pit.

"We…are not on a flying island, right?!?"