'Bastian's Bloodline is interfering. His soul has incredible vitality, to the point that it's changing mine.'

The Tyrian Double-Headed Storm Dragon was a beast with near inexhaustible Vitality. Everywhere it went, abundant life would flourish, or so Kenshin had been told. The two heads represented diametrically opposing forces across multiple spectrums. One of them was the spectrum of existence. In other words, one head, the red one, represented death, while the blue one, represented life.

'This vitality, it will call them.' silently mused Kenshin. He was waiting for something.

With a wave of his hand, a virtual interface appeared in front of Bastian. It showed a map of the area as long as it displayed multiple options about the place.

"We are not done, bro. Now the real work begins."

Buzz!

High up in the red sky, a dark oval portal appeared in the skies above them. The portal was as large as a house but it had the presence of a tsunami. The presence it had was more intimidating than a mountain.

All kinds of horrifying killing Intent and fear-inducing intent spewed out like a geyser from the portal. If this was not a metaphysical Soul Site fused with a heavily infused with powerful bloodlines, matrices and souls, who knows what damage could have been done?

Despite the horrendous flood of killing Intent, the duo remained unaffected, calmly waiting for whoever was arriving.

The louder the buzzing sound became, the closer the source of the sound was.

At some point, the source of the buzzing noise came into the area illuminated by the sun.

A flood of floating creatures swarming like locusts burst forth from the portal in unceasing waves.

It was what looked like a group of ghost-like translucent creatures covered in black cloth from top to bottom. The creatures had no legs and merely floated in mid-air, seemingly without any visible means of propulsion. They only had two holes in the cloth for eerie red eyes and their hands were like the hands of a corpse that had been void of life for years.

Bastian had seen these ghost-like creatures time and time again in his dreams and when he visited the soul site. From time to time, Bastian would visit the Soul Site to take a look at these mysterious spectre-like creatures.

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The ghost-like creatures outside had an incredibly dense bloodlust, one that could induce fear of stupendous potency. They were fear incarnate itself.

Once they locked onto your existence, they would direct their intent toward you, intending to harm your soul. Even if they could not touch you, just their bloodlust alone was enough to make the weak-minded insane. The creatures were like mindless maggots hungry for vitality while inducing a bone-chilling fear.

Before Bastian contracted Kenshin as his Soul Brother, the ghost-like creatures would come at set intervals, and they would all rush at the white-haired boy. Entering his body and causing some sort of harm, or at least Bastian assumed they were harming him, because every time the creatures entered Taiga's body, his screams became louder and more intense.

These creatures were quite fast, and the Kenshin at that time had no way to defend himself against them.

At those times Bastian could only watch. He had hopelessly looked through all of the knowledge on souls he had been given by Li and his bloodline, but none of it had any information on the creatures before him.

He tried to study them and research their origins as best as he could, but his endeavours were futile. Afterwards, he had been in his Soul Site for quite some time and had observed the same patterns occur over, and over again.

During the initial Soul Brethren Contract, the wraiths had unleashed their bloodlust on Bastian as well. Kenshin did not try to assist Bastian through his experiences; he knew quite well that this was a battle that Bastian had to fight on his own. Because Bastian now had Kenshin's perspective, it would only be a matter of time for him to get used to the bloodlust.

After what seemed to be a few hours, Bastian had regained his sentience. He groggily stood and collected his wits about him. After going on a rant complaining to Kenshin about not warning him, Bastian managed to calm down. The bloodlust was still there, it was still just as intense as before, but Bastian had somewhat gotten accustomed to it.

Since that day, Bastian had every day just before sleep, entered the Soul Site to observe and expose himself to the fear-inducing Aura that the wraiths produced. He was sure that there was a benefit to this. After becoming Soul Brethren, it wasn't just Kenshin who had been affected, but Bastian as well.

Long back Kenshin had shared his knowledge on why he thought Bastian could deal with the wraiths after the duo had talked for a while.

You were only able to resist the bloodlust due to my experiences and my insights into the Dao if I had not given you my perspective...

When Kenshin revealed the truth of the matter to Bastian, the latter shuddered at the thought of what might have happened had he not been given Kenshin's perspective. Not only did it improve Bastian's battle capability, but it also improved his mind's fortitude.

You fail to understand how much good karma you possess, but for this karma to even improve my own, my idea must be correct.

Bastian did not like the fact that his so-called 'karma' was to thank for the fact that he was alive. He was already grasping at straws in a world that had natural laws unfamiliar to him. Now he had to grasp abstract concepts like fate and karma.

'Don't tell me that my presence here has something to do with Reincarnation from Buddhism? Nah that's a bit of a stretch.'

Bastian turned his sombre gaze at the approaching creatures and activated a large spell matrix on his arm which was connected to the ground.