Chapter 144 Soul Contract

Upon hearing Beatrice's explanation, Kyle couldn't help but stare at her in doubt.

She said quite nonchalantly that she would lose her cultivation base once her seal on the Undead Heart was to be broken as if she was discussing the weather.

While he was still wondering, she further added,

"In that case, why would you do a blood pact with me? Wouldn't it be better to search for a way to keep your cultivation, and not to be dependent on me?"

His question was justified because it didn't make sense to give up the cultivation she had painstakingly built up in 50,000 years. That made no sense and neither did the fact that she wanted to do a blood pact with him.

A blood pact would force her to follow him everywhere he went and leave her with no freedom.

Furthermore, if what she said about the blood pact was the truth, she wouldn't be able to hurt him in any way, to begin with.

Yet, her answer astonished him.

"Obviously, I would be happier if I had a different choice. Who is willing to depend on someone of their own accord? But that's unfortunately the bitter reality! I might be old but I still want to see the world and how it looks outside the castle. I wish to explore things and meet new people.

I've never tasted blood in my life and without my soul mate's blood, I will definitely fall into a crazed state.

Though I don't need it yet, my body is already craving blood just because a living being is nearby.

I don't want to kill hundreds of beings just to satiate my desire for blood for a short time…

In the end, the amount of blood I need will proportionally increase with an increase in my cultivation.

If my knowledge is correct, only the blood of my soulmate can quench my thirst.

Fortunately, I can still control myself but that is because the Undead heart seals my desires to a large extent and keeps them in check.

Other than that, I've never been outside the Razkadan Castle for as long as I can remember. What does my age matter when I don't have a cultivation base or any basic knowledge about the things I have to pay attention to?

As such, having someone by my side is very helpful."

Kyle was not sure why, but Beatrice's words sounded reasonable.

Even though she had approached Kyle to touch him once again, she let go of trying to use her art of seduction on him.

Thus, Kyle was able to control himself to a certain extent, giving his mind the necessary focus to digest the information.

He was requested to destroy the Undead heart, which would release everyone from their seal. Simultaneously, it would restore the Undead's old powers, destroy Beatrice's cultivation base, and force her to drink blood, preferably that of her soulmate.

Kyle was still not sure what made him her soulmate, but instead of being too bothered about that, he tried to weigh the pros and cons of this whole mess.

In the end, he couldn't be sure that Beatrice was not lying to him.

Neither did he know what the other Undeads would do once the Undead heart was destroyed, and their old strength restored.

Believing them was not exactly difficult because he didn't think that they were being unreasonable.

But from what he had seen and gauged so far, some of the Undeads had a bad temper.

Meanwhile, the Vampire Beatrice was acting more like a Succubus.

She was using her pure physical strength to make him unable to escape her grasps while she touched him.

It didn't necessarily feel bad, and Kyle clearly felt how the hormones of his young body were reacting to her touch as his desires erupted.

Fortunately, he was able to control himself and think straight, even more so given the serious situation they were in.

The Undeads simply stared at Beatrice in doubt, not sure if she was intentionally doing all of this, or if it was her racial trait that was trying to seduce her.

Even if it was neither of these reasons, Nitran had decided to intervene.

Thus he rescued Kyle from her grasp, preventing Beatrice from pouncing at him.

"I'm sorry Kyle, I think Beatrice is… a little bit excited after meeting the first living intelligent being in her life. And according to what she told us before, she feels that you are her soulmate.

I believe this is why her instincts are probably overwhelming her.

Even the Undead Heart cannot suppress a Vampire, and Succubus halfling's desires for 50,000 years.

She had kept all of those feelings at bay, and everything is probably erupting right now! I hope you understand. She will be able to calm down soon."

After saying this, Nitran stopped for a moment, allowing Kyle to finalize the fact that Beatrice didn't seem to be only a Vampire but also Succubus, at the same time, at that.

However, even if he thought about this before as well, he was still confused.

But in the end, it was reasonable because she was getting uncomfortably close to him, which he reasoned with the fact that Beatrice believed they were soulmates.

Even if it was inappropriate in the current situation, Beatrice's behavior showed him that everything she had done since they met was genuine.

It was not certain that she didn't lie, but now the possibility was small. On one hand, Beatrice seemed rather confused and unsure of what to think and do in front of the unknown.

On the other hand, she was being a bit provocative and had instinctively inclined to seduce him.

As such, Kyle was not sure if he should accept the blood pact with her.

He was not even sure if he wanted to gain another partner on his journey.

He had Selene and given his current situation, a partner could either drag him down or support him in dangerous moments.

While his body told him that he would be the most foolish being in the entire universe if he were to reject getting into a blood pact with Beatrice, his mind was more rational.

'Even if her cultivation decreases, given her knowledge, and experience, she shouldn't have any problems to fight, cultivate, and to help me improve my knowledge...right?'

In the end, he didn't know enough about Beatrice to make her his partner.

But, upon recalling how he had decided to take in Selene, Kyle couldn't help but accept that he had simply relied on his gut feeling.

The current decision might be more important than it had been the case with Selene owing to the fact that he would enter a pact he knew nothing about.

Though he was in the dark, his gut feeling told him to accept her.

With that being said, Kyle continued to rake his mind, trying to figure out the possible dangers upon accepting Beatrice as a companion.

She might create lots of trouble if she were to be attracted to every single male being they would encounter on their journey. It would unnecessarily waste his time and might end up rather disastrous.

While Kyle was staring at Beatrice with a doubtful expression, the Lich was the first one to act.

"I don't think anyone except Karnias knows which race Beatrice belongs to. She is different from a normal Succubus, and Vampire, and I've seen quite a few unique individuals of both races.

She can control her emotions much better, and the blood pact will direct her desires purely on the being she made the blood pact with...you!"

From the looks of it, everyone except him knew what a blood pact was.

And while listening to everything intently, Kyle was sure that everything would be fine.

As such, he nodded his head while accepting Beatrice and the blood pact.

In the end, he was sure that he would gain much more from being able to travel with Beatrice than he would lose out on.

The fact that her desires would be focused on him was something Kyle had yet to truly digest.

But it was certainly better that she would only try to pounce at him instead of every random man they met.

Though the thought of her pouncing on him every now and then made him have mixed emotions.

For now, Kyle could only make predictions because he was not sure how exactly Beatrice would behave and what she would do once the Undead Heart was to be released, unleashing her desires.

Concerned about Kyle's final decision, the rest of the Undeads stared at him.

Kyle assumed that the Undeads could simply kill him and forcefully bind him to the Undead Heart but that was not the case!

According to Li's careful experiments, the Undead heart only accepted to fuse with beings that had died recently but had the fierce will to continue to live as well as the detail that they wanted to fuse with it.

As such forcing someone to bind to the Undead Heart was not possible, but that was something Kyle didn't know.

Because of that, the Undeads looked at each other, thinking of a solution.

A moment later, Nitran stepped forward as he proposed.

"If you decide to help us, we can set up a soul contract that says we won't do anything but fulfill our goals. Whether this is revenge or something else, we will only target those who are guilty, alright?"

In the end, they realized that Kyle was someone who was exceptionally careful.

He might look selfish sometimes, but now they could understand the reason behind this.

Sometimes, he only acted that way in order to get to know certain things, which was interesting.

Owing to that, the Undeads had agreed to make a compromise with the young man.

They needed his help and were willing to do anything to prove that he was in control of everything.

After all, it would be his decision of when he would decide to accept freeing them of their shackles!

A soul contract was a contract constructed out of soul core threads of all parties involved in it.

As such, Kyle, Beatrice, and the other five Undeads would have to weave the soul contract with the details previously mentioned to make it binding on everyone.

Even if it sounded complicated, only the detailed clauses were truly complex.

Furthermore, breaking a soul contract had disastrous consequences.

If the punishment was not clearly mentioned in the contract, breaking the clauses would cause great harm to the souls' of all parties that went against the soul contract's rules.

Because of that, soul contracts were extremely useful in tricky situations where all parties wanted to gain something but lacked the necessary trust for each other.

Kyle had only heard about soul contracts in his past life.

Though, he knew that it was a lifesaver for him.

And this knowledge made him nod his head almost immediately.

"If we can create a soul contract, I'm fine with both signing a blood pact with Beatrice and destroying the Undead heart as long as it is within my capabilities!"

Making use of a soul contract would satisfy all parties.

The only criteria was to ensure that the details mentioned in the contract were correct and mutually agreed upon.

With that requirement, or to be precise, the necessity of details, Kyle, Beatrice and the Undeads began to name the clauses they wanted to have in the contract.

Writing them down one after the other, they all had a heated discussion in which most of the clauses were altered and sometimes even completely changed.

The words were modified so as to make it equally binding and not give any party an undue advantage over the other.

Under normal circumstances, it would be better to create multiple soul contracts, even more so because Beatrice's condition was completely different than that of the Undeads'.

But in this case, they made only one soul contract because the entire situation revolved around a single individual and benefited all parties in the same way.

This was much trickier than Kyle first expected because the Undeads tried to wiggle themselves out of their individual responsibilities.

Making use of tact, they tried to insert certain clauses that would indirectly indicate that they were allowed to do certain things Kyle didn't like.

Intelligence played a huge role in being able to trick someone solely based on their wits.

But, intelligence could never make up for wisdom accumulated over years of experience, having overcome all kinds of trials, and betrayals.

That made one understand what words were good to interpret in different ways, creating the loopholes no one was expecting.

It was on that day that Kyle truly understood the difference between him and the Undeads, he had just reincarnated without much knowledge about cultivation, and every possible topic based on cultivation.

On the other hand, they had overcome all kinds of trials for tens of thousand years, only to be confined to the walls of the Razkadan castle.

Who knew how old they had been before they died and turned into Undeads? This was something Kyle couldn't comprehend, and he had no idea what kind of powerhouses the Undeads had been.

But he could gauge that they had to be much stronger than any kind of being around the Sadorla Forest, or the adjacent kingdoms.

That was something Kyle was sure of, and it was also the reason why he gave his utmost efforts to prevent them from doing anything against him, those he loved, and so on.

In the end, this was the most important, and he was a bit selfish in this aspect.

Even if he didn't want the Undeads to annihilate other kingdoms, or possibly, entire races, he was more concerned about his own safety and that of those around him!

Thus, after going over the contract they had created with the use of a thread of their soul, they signed it. Shortly after, everyone received a soul imprint, representing the completed contract.

Through this, everyone had access to the contract in order to read the rules, and know the punishments for each respective clause.

In Kyle's case, a single strand on Arashi's tail turned silver in color, indicating that the soul contract was in effect.

Once the soul contract was completed, everyone felt oddly reassured.

Even Kyle sighed in relief, trusting the soul contract more than anyone else.

Though in the last few hours, he had grown certain that the others wouldn't have done anything to him after he destroyed the Undead heart, he could always be proven wrong.

Hence, it was always better to be safe than sorry.

Suddenly Li's voice resounded behind him, in the happiest tone Kyle had heard the Lich use until now.

"Alright, now that you accepted, you should explain your ability to us, so that we know how to properly use it in order to destroy the Undead Heart.

Meanwhile, we shall enter the treasure trove, where you can choose your rewards!"