Spirit Soul

With an excessive amount of soul force within his body, Kyle only had to annex it in order to use his wind affinity freely.

Under normal circumstances, this would require some time.

But his entire body was swept through by adrenaline, giving a slight boost to the acceleration process.

At the same time, his focus didn't have to be fully on the annexation process.

Instead, he was able to pay attention to the Ghosts that were trying to attack him with their incorporeal bodies.

However, before they could even reach him, Kyle made use of his wind affinity.

This accelerated the speed at which he could run, and move around.

His wind affinity also allowed him to move the silver serpent spear with a terrifying velocity.

The impact severed the Ghosts in two halves, sending them to the afterlife.

Or at least that was what would have happened under normal circumstances if Kyle's body wouldn't have devoured their souls.

After being forced to multitask, his mind was rattling as he struggled to put his thoughts together.

And, the dizziness that swept through his mind was burdensome.

However, it didn't decrease his combat prowess.

Rather, it felt like Kyle was starting to move faster and faster as his speed increased.

The amount of unnecessary steps that he would normally make seemed to decrease.

This allowed him to move more freely as every single swing of the silver serpent spear killed a few Ghosts at once.

Kyle knew that the battle hadn't been going on for a long time.

But the number of Ghosts he had killed was in the hundreds.

In just a matter of minutes, his surrounding was filled with their soul particles.

They were blocking his vision, preventing Kyle from seeing farther than ten meters ahead of him.

But, even without the soul particles blocking his sight, only Undeads would be revealed from behind the particles.

As such, there was nothing to complain about.

In the end, it was rather beneficial because he didn't have to focus on the other Undeads.

While paying attention to his immediate surroundings, Kyle could even actively annex soul force.

Simultaneously, he tried empowering his Nurture ability once in a while.

Right now, with enough soul force and energy to invigorate himself, nothing seemed to be able to stop him. Owing to both these factors, Kyle felt like a one-man army.

That was if one counted him and Arashi as one entity, which they actually were.

All of a sudden, a loud echo resounded through the air, as Kyle swung the silver serpent spear at another group of Ghosts.

Turning his head a little, he saw that a batch of Zombies at the Late Fortification stage had finally reached him.

This was something he had been waiting for quite some time, the attack of the first physical Undeads.

Close behind the Zombies were the Black Skeletons and other gigantic Skeletons that looked like skeletons of Orcs or Ogres, but Kyle didn't have time to identify them.

Using the momentum in which the first Zombies attacked him, Kyle stabbed at the closest one.

It penetrated its skull before retracting the silver serpent spear.

Afterward, he took a step forward before beheading a total of three Zombies with a seemingly simple swing.

A moment later, he pushed himself ahead.

Placing his feet on the Zombie corpses he used them as a stepping stone before he catapulted himself into the air.

For this, he used one of the Zombies that was walking over its comrade's corpse.

Catapulted in the air, he only stayed up for a while before the gravitational force did its work. It was never gracious to those who wanted to challenge it.

As such, he was pulled to the ground without mercy.

Yet, instead of letting himself crash into the ground, Kyle's emerald-colored eyes gleamed brightly as he activated his wind affinity.

When Kyle did this, two wind blades emerged below him, giving Kyle an opportunity to land on them safely.

The moment he landed, his soul force was rapidly drained.

At the same time, his head began to ache heavily.

Though he had saved himself from crashing, it had taken a toll on his body.

He was forced to maintain the solid form of the wind blades with his additional weight dragging them downwards.

This was extremely dangerous because the necessary focus and soul force had increased by several times.

Nevertheless, what Kyle had wanted to achieve had worked.

He successfully landed on the wind blade and pushed himself forward.

Right now, he was not able to fly with his wind affinity. But it was possible for him to run through the air as if it was solid ground. However, it was only possible for him to do so for a mere three seconds.

With the Swift Steps movement technique fully activated, Kyle forcefully conjured crescent wind blades.

He manifested them at the exact location he stepped on only a moment later.

This task required extreme focus, and it was exactly three seconds later that he was unable to maintain the solid form of the wind blades he had stepped on.

Owing to his high weight it was simply too difficult for Kyle to do so.

Based on this, he realized that his comprehension of the wind was still lacking.

When he couldn't maintain it any longer, he fell to the ground.

That was when he knew that he had almost killed the entire army.

He felt extremely relieved that he had escaped the encirclement of the Undead Army.

This was exactly what he had wanted to do and he had managed to do it, even if it had exhausted him.

Using some of the energy that had been accumulated in the Nurture ability, Kyle invigorated himself, alongwith Arashi a little bit.

The little Spirit Soul was even more exhausted than Kyle.

His very first act of conjuring a cloud of wind needles had already exceeded his capabilities.

Nevertheless, the following steps he had to do were comparatively less burdensome.

As such, it was enough to invigorate Arashi only a little bit before asking him to return inside the soul vessel.

Even after going in, he continued to gather and converse energy.

Meanwhile, Kyle's burden was much bigger.

Right now, he was fighting an entire Undead Army.

His tactic to slowly kill one opponent after another while staying in a peak condition seemed to work.

On the downside, the headache he felt seemed to increase with time.

Kyle didn't even know how much time had passed after he escaped the encirclement of the Undead Army.

But the silver serpent spear was already covered in all kinds of odd fluids and brain matter.

Fortunately, this didn't affect the spear's sharpness.

Thus, he wiped off the tip with the hem of his shirt and looked at his weapon.

He was glad to have chosen the silver serpent spear as his weapon.

It was simply perfect to fight against his opponents in a swift and smooth manner.

There was no way for him to fight dozens of Undeads at the same time, but that was not necessary.

Kyle was able to move around at a rapid pace.

For this, he focussed on using subtle and only the necessary movements, while exerting the Swift Steps technique.

Simultaneously, his wind affinity helped Kyle to accelerate himself further, even more so in his attacks.

The element of wind might also not be the best to fight the army of the Undead.

But if he were to take the factor of endless energy into account, the tides seemed to turn.

In the beginning, Kyle was sure to be at a disadvantage, but that was not necessarily the case anymore.

Ever since the fight had started, Kyle had already defeated and killed hundreds of Undead beings. Yet, it stil felt as if only five minutes had passed.

Time seemed to pass in a blur and he felt as if the battle against the Undead Army had just begun.

And after looking at the number of Undeads that approached him ceaselessly, this was exactly the case.

However, Kyle noticed one advantageous and rather interesting point.

The Death Knight and the Nightmare horse riding Dullahan were simply following the Army of the Undead.

They were intently observing what tactic he was using to fight against the sheer and endless crowd of opponents.

In the end, Kyle still decided to stick to the plan he had set up before.

And, it was because of this plan that he had yet to kill most Undeads at the Late Fortification stage.

They were the lowest in number, and also the biggest threats if one were to put it like that.

On the other hand, the gigantic number of Low and Mid Fortification Undeads were not worth as deeming 'opponents' for Kyle.

They simply were a horde of sheep that he could easily kill to prevent being overrun by them.

Because of that, he focused on attacking them first.

His wind blades slowly but steadily wiped them off as their numbers dwindled.

Simultaneously, Kyle was amassing a tremendous amount of energy inside his Nurture ability.

He was slowly preparing himself for the worst opponents he would have to face in the second trials.

Kyle was not sure if it was really necessary for him to fight the Death Knight and Dullahan.

But, in the end, it didn't really matter.

They would either fight him while their cultivation base was restricted in order to test his strength.

Or they would simply vanish once the other Undeads had been annihilated by him.

Both scenarios sounded logical to Kyle.

Thankfully, the possibility of them simply killing him was close to zero.

If they hadn't been planning on testing his strength and skills, they would have killed him by now.

It would be less time-consuming.

However, at the same time, it might be more of their kink to witness living beings suffer and try to escape their inevitable fate.

It was possible that they were sadists who would let living beings helplessly struggle before they would slowly realize that everything had been for naught.

Kyle couldn't tell what was truly the reason for the two powerhouses to stay idle, but he was glad that they didn't interfere.

Right now, his entire body was overly exhausted and every single cell was begging him to let it rest.

And, despite the invigoration he gave himself every few minutes, it seemed to wear off much faster than before.

As such, Kyle realized that he had two options to end his pain.

The first one was to annihilate the Undead Army faster.

While the second one required him to invigorate himself more often through the Nurture ability.

In the end, he had to do both, become faster in killing the Undeads and use the Nurture ability on himself in a time frame that was increasingly becoming shorter.

This was burdensome, but, in fact, the entire second trial was like that.

Not knowing his exact location in the vast farmlands, Kyle could only trust his senses, strength and the spear he was tightly grasping.

Its terrifyingly sharp blade allowed him to stab and pierce through his opponent's army.

And it was only Kyle's body that was slowly becoming weaker as his willpower to continue fighting seemed to run low.

When Kyle noticed this, he was terrified for a moment but managed to calm himself down.

Now was not the time to panic, not in the last leg of the trial.

Without the information of how many opponents there were still left for him to defeat, Kyle's mind visualized the worst-case scenario.

Because of that, he began to use more of the excessive amount of soul force that overflowed within his body.

He forced himself to exceed his capabilities and made use of both the Swift Steps movement technique and the Deathly Assault technique.

They were fully released and empowered with tremendous amount of soul force.

At the same time, Kyle began to summon wind blades which he shot out towards the opponents.

Using his silver serpent spear he thrust it at those near him while the wind blades annihilated the beings that were farther than his reach.

Wielding a spear, he could only target one Skelton at a time.

This would have been a different case for living beings that wouldn't be able to continue fighting after having sustained several serious injuries.

Skeletons weren't Ghosts either.

As such, he had to precisely target and destroy their Undead Cores.

It was annoying, and more time-consuming than Kyle wanted to admit.

But until now, targeting one Skeleton to fight and kill at a time before turning to the others had worked out quite well.

The surrounding space was vast enough, and while being nimble and agile, he could prevent being encircled.

There were times he had been in a pinch.

But that was something Kyle was able to solve with the use of his wind affinity, even if it made him only more tired than he already was.

With a slow and steady pace, his Nurture ability began to drain him of more soul particles and energy in order to invigorate Kyle.

Fortunately, the Army of the Undead was gradually diminishing.

And, Kyle's overstrained body that was almost on the verge of breaking apart saw a glimpse of a gap in the crowd of Undead beings.

'Soon...Soon I will defeat them all!!'

Unfortunately, the true dangers of the second trial were still not over.

And what Kyle didn't know was that the Army of the Undead had just been the warm-up!