"And this contract would really stop you from attacking me?" He asked her.
She released some of her aura and it formed a page in front of her. It was glowing lightly as it floated in the air. She bit her thumb and smeared the page.
He looked at the page and saw that there was some blood on the page. He was surprised. How was she able to hurt herself to get her own blood in his mind? He didn't know how that worked. Meanwhile, Nefrati explained what she was doing.
"This is called a blood contract. It forces someone to honor it. I wanted to give you an example, so I made this one. It says that I will stand still while you slap yourself once," she said.
Leo raised an eyebrow while she scrambled to explain herself.
"If I made myself do it, then you won't know if the contract truly forces someone to do something. That's why I wanted to let you experience it for yourself," she said. The page floated toward him.
"And you chose for me to slap myself?" He asked.
"Name a better thing to do. Nothing else entered my mind," she said in response. He didn't say anything and grabbed the page out of the air to look at it.
As she said, there were a couple of words strung on the page. They were the same characters that consisted of the language he used in Solaria, so he was able to read it easily.
After making sure that those were the only things on the contract, he bit his finger like the woman. When he smeared the paper with his finger, a similar bloody mark appeared on it. The glow emitting from the paper intensified as the blood was absorbed by the paper.
His hand moved like a whip and slapped his own face the minute the paper absorbed the blood. Once he did that, the paper dissolved into dust.
"Do you believe me now?" She asked him. He nodded.
"So will you please help me escape in exchange for the information?" She asked him.
"No," he said while shaking his head.
She was confused. "But you said -"
"You wanted me to spare you in exchange for the information. If you want me to help you escape, then it will be a completely different thing," he said.
"What do you want, then?" She asked him.
"I want you to obey all of my commands for the next 10 years," he said.
"All of your commands? What do you mean?" She asked him.
"Any information that you have that I might need will be told to me. If I ask you something you will answer truthfully. If I need to learn new magic, then you will help me find it," he said.
"Magic?" She asked with a puzzled expression.
"That is beside the point. Those are my conditions," he said.
She thought for a while. She was essentially going to be his slave for the next 10 years. Leo was surprised she was even considering it. He thought that she would have a huge ego that wouldn't let her do that.
"And you will let me go after 10 years?" She asked him.
He nodded.
"I will do it," she said without skipping a beat. She seemed so happy as if she was benefiting from the deal. She quickly went to making the contract, leaving Leo confused. Did he make a mistake in his conditions? Were they this lucrative?
She put up the contract in front of him. He scanned it and found that there weren't any problems with it. They both signed it. This time, the document split into two, staying inside his mind.
"One copy for each of us," She said. "But I won't need mine."
"Why?" He asked her.
"Because I am going to stay in your mind anyway. I wouldn't need a copy since I can access the one in your mind," she answered.
"But I was going to help you escape. Why aren't you going to go back to your real body?" He asked her.
She smiled bitterly.
"I can't. Even if I went back to my own body, you can't help me escape. Especially not with your strength. You're only a 2nd Circle Aura Knight. There is no way that you can destroy the locks that bind me. So I will need to leave my body and most of my aura behind," she said.
Leo was surprised. His curiosity took over.
"Why are you chained in the first place? Why are all of you chained?" He asked her.
"Because of greed. We all opposed the Blood God at one point and were imprisoned here after that. For me, it was because I tried to steal his treasures. For the others, it was because they killed his subordinates. I'm not sure about their stories," she said.
"Treasure?"
She sighed. "I will tell you. It's how I found out about the location of this place. There were rumors of the Blood God having this temple, so I decided to pay it a visit. While I was here, I started to have a little greed.
The temple used to have one sword stabbed into the center by the Blood God himself. I came just to steal that one sword. However, I came on the wrong day and was caught by the Blood God. Ever since then, I have been stuck here," she narrated.
"How many years was that?" Leo asked.
"Maybe 600. Could be more, or could be less. My track of time went away after going through more than 50 Blood Moons," she said.
He sucked in some air. He didn't think she would be this old.
"How are you alive then?" He asked.
"He made it to that we could live eternally. He gave us the hope to somehow escape. But many chose to die after the first 100 years. More than a dozen people used to be bounded here. The number is now three." She said.
Leo nodded. He quickly changed the topic. He had a lot of questions to ask and his curiosity couldn't wait at all. He was aware that there was the real world to get back to but he didn't care.
"What about the voices? All of you were trying to lure me in with voices. You talked about wealth. They talked about aura manuals and pills. What was all of that?" He asked.
"Empty words. All of us do have manuals, and we can all help you find wealth. I am sure there could be pill formulas you can learn from the old one. But none of them are items you can't obtain by yourself from your master," she said.
He chuckled. "Master?" He asked.
"The person in your clan that trained you to be this strong. You look very young and you are already a 2nd Circle Aura Knight. That is considerable progress," she said.
"Well, thanks but I don't have a master. So I don't really have any of these techniques," he said.
She was shocked. "Are you saying that you came to this stage by yourself? It makes sense. Your aura circle is a very crude piece of work. No self-respecting Aura Knight would let their disciple make this circle," she destroyed the progress that he made with a few statements.
