Chapter 18: Soul Contract
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Malrik’s gaze remained locked on the glowing inscription of the newly acquired skill.
[Soul Contract.]
It was a doorway. A bridge spanning the chasm between the living and the hollow, a way to reach into the Realm of Souls and tether an echo of the dead to his own shattered mana core. His hesitation had long since evaporated, burned away by biting hunger of ambition.
"Let’s see what kind of existence answers the call."
He didn’t pray. He simply reached out and pulled.
The moment he activated the skill, the mana within his body didn’t just move—it stampeded. Malrik’s eyes widened. The spell was a starving beast. It wasn’t drawing on his reserves; it was tearing them out, vacuuming his core dry with a speed that made his vision blur at the edges.
"So much...?" he wheezed, his fingers trembling.
Then, the world turned cold.
The air in the room grew heavy, saturated with a necrotic chill that seeped into his marrow. Before him, emerald light bled into reality, coalescing into a circular gate. Ancient, jagged runes crawled along the edges like trapped insects, and the space within the ring began to distort, folding in on itself.
Two minutes passed. The silence in the room became absolute, the kind of stillness that precedes a landslide.
Then, the emerald surface rippled.
A soft, melodic laugh drifted from the void.
Heh.
Malrik stiffened. Someone’s laughing?
The sound sharpened. Hehehe.
The gate shivered. A crushing weight spilled out, invisible and suffocating. It was a pressure so dense it felt like the very atmosphere was turning to lead. Malrik took an involuntary step back, his boots scuffing against the stone.
Hehehe... Hahaha...
The laughter climbed in pitch, turning manic. It was no longer a sound; it was an intrusion, a tidal wave of mirth that rattled the walls and made the furniture groan in protest.
AHAHAHAHA!
The pressure spiked. The air pressure in the room plummeted, and Malrik found his breath snagging in his throat. Cold sweat drenched his back. Every fiber of his being—every primal instinct he had honed—was screaming one word: Danger.
Whoever was standing on the other side of that threshold was a predator, and he was nothing more than an inconvenient snack.
What the hell did I summon?
Abruptly, the laughter cut off. The silence that followed was even heavier.
A figure stepped through the emerald light.
She was devastating. Long, violet hair cascaded down her back, and she wore a black gown embroidered with silver patterns that hummed with a dormant, noble malice. Her horns—dark and twisted—curved elegantly above her brow like a crown fashioned from obsidian. She was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a catastrophe.
A translucent notification flickered into existence before Malrik’s eyes.
[Warning.]
[Significant rank disparity detected.]
[Original Rank: Saint.]
[Suppressing the contracted soul’s rank...]
[Suppression Complete.]
[Current Rank: Awakened]
The crushing pressure vanished as quickly as it had arrived, leaving Malrik gasping for air. His gaze drifted to the line beneath the warning.
His heart skipped a beat. A Saint. He had pulled a legend from the grave.
The rush of adrenaline lasted only a second before the cold sting of pragmatism took hold. What a waste. To take something of such cataclysmic scale and prune it down to the level of a common Awakened? It felt like an insult to the cosmos.
He let out a ragged, hollow sigh. Don’t be greedy, Malrik. You’re lucky to be breathing at all.
The woman tilted her head, her violet eyes locking onto his. A smile bloomed on her face—wide, radiant, and utterly devoid of anything resembling genuine warmth. She knelt, one hand pressed gracefully against her chest.
"My deepest apologies, Master," she said, her voice like velvet draped over a blade. "It has been far too long since I breathed anything other than the stagnant air of the void. I became... somewhat excited."
She let out a soft, melodic laugh. It was stripped of its murderous weight, yet it didn’t soothe him. It made his skin crawl.
"My name is Lilith," she continued, lowering her head in a mockery of subservience. "I have answered your summons. It is an honor to service you, Master."
Malrik kept his face neutral, though his heart was hammering against his ribs. She was smiling, but her eyes were cold, observing him like a specimen under a glass slide. He didn’t trust the display for a heartbeat.
Without a word, he pulled up her status window.
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[Soul Information]
Name: Lilith
Race: High Demon
Title: Former Princess of the Underworld
Current Rank: Awakened
Level : 50
Potential: Rare ★★★★★
Description: Once destined to inherit the Demon Throne, Lilith was the rightful Princess of the Underworld.
Before her coronation could take place, the Supreme General betrayed the royal family, seized the throne for himself, and personally ended her life.
Her soul was imprisoned within the Realm of Souls, where she remained for countless years...
Until she answered the call
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The silence in the room was absolute, punctuated only by his own heavy breathing.
"A demon?" he muttered, running a hand through his hair, his voice dripping with ironic disbelief. "Great. First shot at a summon, and I get a high-ranking hell-spawn with a royal grudge. Fantastic. As if my life wasn’t complicated enough already"
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