Spirit Soul

Kyle's brain felt as if it had been dropped in a pot of searing hot oil and being deep-fried.

His head was aching, and he had the mad urge to yell at Nitran to vent out his frustration.

It took him a lot of effort to do nothing of that sort and calm down.

But, Nitran seemed to be hell-bent on torturing him.

The Soul Reaper simply continued with his questions as if they were meant to attack him verbally.

For a fleeting minute, Kyle felt that Nitran was really enjoying making him feel miserable.

When Kyle couldn't take it anymore, he simply slumped to the ground and accepted his defeat.

He was already struggling with the burden created by the other restrictions.

And to add to his misery, he was tasked with solving not one but a total of 11 riddles which he had to solve, in addition to more than a hundred questions Nitran had already asked.

And only half an hour had passed since he had received the first riddle!

This was shocking, but Kyle tried to somehow focus as he barely uttered,

"Stop asking questions, please!"

Because he was not forced to answer any questions, the same should apply to them getting asked, in the first place.

With that in mind, Kyle hoped that the Reaper would stop asking him more questions.

And thankfully, it seemed to work somehow.

Nitran didn't stop asking questions, but the speed at which he asked them had slowed down by a large margin.

This gave Kyle the opportunity to sort the mess in his head, which took him quite some time.

Ignoring all questions he had been asked until now, Kyle first thought about the riddles.

The first one was supposed to be easy, and without even thinking about the answer, he felt as if he knew it already.

[What is alive, keeps living even after it is dead, yet is never visible?]

He assumed that this riddle was just like a tutorial designed to show Kyle what he had to pay attention to.

Thus, he simply stated,

"The answer to the first riddle is [Soul]!"

After that, he tried to ignore everything around him to make sense of the other riddles.

They didn't sound extremely difficult, and somehow it was as if the most difficult task was coping up with the onslaught of questions.

It was then followed by the blood-thirsting Scythe, the ever-changing surroundings, and the Reaper's white glowing eyes.

With a calmed mind, Kyle tried to ignore everything that could distract him in any way.

Clearing his mind of stray thoughts, he walked through the enclosed zone of the Lands of Life and Death.

In the end, Life and Death were two sides of the same coin.

Every life would end in death, and death was just the start of something new.

Every beginning has an end, but sometimes, the end was just the beginning.

Kyle was one such example of a new beginning, and countless other reincarnations were exactly the same.

As such, he couldn't help but stare at the landscape in interest.

Not only would it help him figure out more about the answer of the riddles, but Kyle believed that the surrounding was also helpful to get to know himself.

Unbeknownst to him, he was continually impressing the Undeads that were observing Kyle.

This included the Reaper, who silently followed him while continuing to ask questions.

All of them were astonished as well awed about the way in which the young man handled the situation.

They could only exchange glances while trying to figure out how Kyle could continue to keep his cool.

Their minds thought of different reasons for the same.

One of the reasons could be that he accepted everything around him so easily because he had been inside the Razkadan castle for several months.

He had been exposed to the death-aura ever since stepping inside.

Thus, they were inclined to think that it had somehow conditioned his mind.

Kyle continued to be a mystery to them even when they were learning more about him with every passing day.

However, what the Undeads knew was that Kyle was extremely fast in answering all the riddles.

The Scythe's bloodthirst didn't seem to influence his mind anymore.

He had gotten used to it barely in a day.

And, the ever-changing surrounding was something that took less than half a day to be comprehended by Kyle.

Being able to tell how long it would take for the 'shift' to occur helped him understand the Lands of Life and Death without too many issues.

As such, the only issue was the Reaper's white eyes, which Kyle simply avoided looking at.

This was enough to avoid being distracted for now. And, the only things that had annoyed Kyle for several days were the Reaper's constant questions and the fact that he could read Kyle's mind.

Fortunately, the more time passed, the less burdensome these two things became.

This, in turn, gave Kyle the ability to fully focus on the riddles.

Even if he didn't think that answering Nitran's question would worsen his situation, it was simply distracting him.

And, being distracted was a luxury he could not afford.

As such, even if it made him feel bad, Kyle took his time and did not rush. He spent another week answering the remaining 10 riddles because the first one was apparently correctly answered.

At least that was what he assumed considering that the Reaper did not comment on his answer.

Having no idea if his assumption was correct he could only move on to the next one.

Because of that, he took out Karnias' heritage, in which he began to note down the riddles from the levitating book and possible answers against each of them.

In the end, he didn't want to scribble and damage the other books he had procured inside the Castle.

Thus, the most useless book was turned into his notebook.

Fortunately, he had also stored away a feather and some tint when he had been inside the tiny ancient village. It came in handy, otherwise, finding some sort of ink to write would have become quite difficult.

The only alternative, he would have been left with was to use his blood. The idea seemed somewhat barbaric but also quite pragmatic.

While writing down all kinds of possible answers the riddles could have, Kyle recalled that he had dozens of books. Those held a wealth of knowledge and could possibly help him procure more information about the answers he had in mind.

With that in mind, a small pile of books appeared next to him.

All these books originated from the tiny ancient village and were a treasure in itself. W

Without any hesitation, Kyle began to read through them one after another.

He flipped through the pages eagerly, searching for the topics that should revolve around the answers he had in mind.

In the end, Kyle didn't think that the answers to the riddles would be too difficult to find.

After all, that was the point of asking most riddles.

The answers were so simple that he began to doubt if they were correct in the first place.

Thus, within the first three weeks in which he had entered the last normal trial, six out of eleven riddles had been solved.

Meanwhile, the other five riddles were something Kyle was not exactly sure of the answers.

Too many answers flashed through his mind when he thought about the riddles. It was even worse than being utterly clueless to the answer.

Given the fact that he was not pressured by time, Kyle could relax.

Yet, the longer he took, the more restless he became.

He felt as if he was wasting precious time, in which he couldn't even nurture Arashi properly.

This slowed down the Spirit Soul's growth.

In the end, his own progress was not important right now.

He could always rely on his Spirit Soul and the moment Arashi matured, Kyle could easily cultivate with a rapid speed.

In order to not be distracted by Nitran, Kyle focussed on annexing soul force.

This allowed him to hasten the process and complete the creation of his Soul core.

He was happy to note that it was filled to the brim too!

With that, Kyle had reached the bottleneck of the Fortification stage, after a much longer period of time than what he had first predicted.

Because his soul core was completely formed he was now supposed to proceed to the next step.

This included compressing the soul force within it into liquid before creating the first soul bead.

Even though he was ought to do so, Kyle had realized that the cultivation progress in the Vitae stage was far slower than that in the Fortification stage.

That was something he could easily perceive because several weeks had passed since Arashi had entered the Vitae stage.

Despite that, the Spirit Soul had yet to create the first of nine beads!

There could be multiple reasons why Arashi was cultivating and growing much slower than expected.

One of the reasons he could think of was that he was not overflowing with soul particles that his Spirit Soul could consume anymore.

Rather, Kyle had to ration and reduce Arashi's intake of soul particles in order to prevent him from starving.

Feeling stressed because of his Spirit Soul's discomfort, Kyle tried to answer the riddles much faster than he was supposed to.

This might prevent him from answering all of them correctly, but that was not something he could pay attention to right now.

In the end, he might be able to feed Arashi with his Nurture ability, but that was not something he could do for a longer period.

Though the Nurture ability was potent it would not satiate Arashi's hunger on a long-term basis.

It would lose its effect the more often he made use of it in a row.

Keeping that in mind, he decided to postpone his breakthrough into the Vitae stage for now.

Unfortunately, even after directing all of his focus on the remaining riddles, they were not easily solved. But Kyle was persistent and he had to spend three more weeks to find the answers to all, but one riddle.

After that, Arashi had finally created his first bead of soul force which overjoyed the Horned Tempest Fox.

Meanwhile, Kyle's brain felt as if it was being melted in a furnace.

While lying on the ground, he didn't even want to move anymore.

His body was still alive and full of energy, but his mind seemed to have gone completely blank.

Even opening his eyes felt like a strenuous task and he let his eyelids flutter shut.

The landscape continued to transform as lush grass was replaced by twigs and thorns that scratched his back.

From the soft and velvety touch of grass and plants, to the sudden change in a dry and parched land, Kyle felt everything.

Yet, he was unbothered by all of this and his eyes remained closed, as he muttered,

"Space and Time"

This was his answer to the last riddle which he had mumbled before, his mind shut-off, leaving Kyle in an unconscious state.

Working relentlessly to answer all riddles as fast as possible, Kyle had read through the entire stash of books he had procured in the tiny, ancient village.

Even after that, he still hadn't found all the answers he required.

Thus, Kyle was forced to connect the dots and take the surrounding landscape into consideration that had been one of the hints the Reaper had thrown at him.

Other than that, the other Undeads had indirectly given him hints, without them even realizing it.

The time they had spent with Kyle had allowed him to get to know things even the Undeads had unknowingly shared with him.

Because of that, it astonished, and annoyed them that Kyle was able to pass the last normal trial in only six weeks.

Without answering a single question, Kyle had escaped the grueling questionnaire by just solving the riddles.

He had simply rendered the trial's semi-hidden purpose futile, making it lose its meaning.

This was frustrating, but at the same time something, the Undead powerhouses should have expected to happen.

Even though Kyle was not the most intelligent being they had ever witnessed, he was able to think rationally.

Despite a lot of information thrown at him, he could sift through it and separate the important stuff from what was useless.

Given the fact that Nitran had informed him that the questions he asked were not mandatory to answer in order to pass the trial, Kyle simply ignored them.

It was logical to do so, but Nitran had expected that Kyle would answer at least some of them.

Thus, he had miscalculated Kyle's iron will, which was something that had never happened to him.

Under normal circumstances, he could procure much information from the beings he had interrogated, solely because of his mind-reading ability.

However, that was not the case with Kyle, whose mind had completely sealed itself from the onslaught of questions.

Instead, his entire focus had been on the riddles, which was an achievement Nitran had to acknowledge. It was extremely difficult to enter a fully-focused state and completely neglect the entire surrounding.

With that in mind, Nitran enveloped Kyle with his shadows before he disappeared inside it.

A moment later, the mass that enveloped Kyle dispersed too, leaving behind the Land of the Life and Death.

There was no sight of the young, unconscious man, who had just completed the last trial he was supposed to.

**

Just moments after Nitran and Kyle had disappeared, they reappeared in the observation room where the other Undeads had been seated.

Looking at Kyle, the Undeads were not even surprised to see that the young man was sleeping soundly.

Knowing that the trials had ended, he had simply chosen to give in to the exhaustion and his body's demands for rest.

Thus, he was snoring lightly while his body and mind released the entire tension he had accumulated during the last few weeks.

"Is it only I, who thinks like that, or is he extremely weird?" The Banshee suddenly asked while staring at Kyle. She then averted her attention to Nitran as she added,

"And what exactly do you mean by 'youngest reincarnation of the Old Universe'? Is that something Karnias taught you?"

At that moment, Knirg, Lahan, and Li turned towards Nitran with the same question in their minds.

Yet, before the Reaper could say something the young Lady intervened, trying to avert the group's attention back to Kyle.

"What he is or isn't, doesn't matter, we can talk about that later.

Even if he doesn't want to be played around, let's give him one more task. If he passes it, which I expect to happen, we will request his help….and I will claim him as mine!"