It was only obvious that Shane could defeat Jason and his soulbonds with his overwhelming strength.
This felt even worse when he adjusted his strength to be on par with a peak-Master rank because his combat awareness, experience, and also proficiency in martial art techniques were in a completely different league than Jason's.
Nevertheless, Jason learned a lot thanks to Shane's sparring and his [Devious Swordmaster] technique was already approaching the familiar mastery that came immediately after the basic mastery.
Thanks to his mana eyes and Shane demonstrating the Tier-2 martial art technique in detail, Jason didn't have any problems while practicing it.
He was also able to fix his flaws shortly after Shane pointed them out.
Other than sparring with each other, Shane decided that it was time for him to teach Jason about blacksmithing more in-depth.
Not only was it important for him to learn more about blacksmithing and every little process of it but Shane was also able to demonstrate everything.
This helped Jason a lot to see the tiniest details he would have to pay attention to.
Through this, Jason was able to forge a pseudo-mana grade-2 weapon after only two months which was a shocking achievement.
Jason knew that the pseudo-mana grade-2 light longsword was not even close to perfection but it was already better than the Viridi-Starstream dagger-set he possessed.
The light longsword in his possession was sharp enough to pierce through the hide of every magical ranked beast as long as he was able to supply it with enough mana which was probably the biggest downside of his current situation.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})Two months passed and Jason absorbed mana for several hours daily, which included the liquefied mana from grade-3 mana stones which he placed around him to accelerate his mana absorption.
This should have accelerated his speed further, considering that his mana mastery was superior while the same applied for his aptitude, he should have been able to break through several levels.
Unfortunately, this only included youths that were at the Expert rank after receiving their soulbonds share of strength.
Jason was on a whole different league with his mana core size that reached the 3rd Master rank while his mana core rank increased by only one level in a duration of two months.
Under normal circumstances, this was a very good achievement for most youths.
However, Jason was not satisfied with it because he knew that he could do much better.
His whole body was craving for Mana, but something was holding him back!!
Whether it was the amount or pureness of mana around him, his current mana absorption speed which increased only slowly, or something else, Jason could only accept his situation as it currently was.
Attaining a mana core of the 4th Expert rank at the age of 14 years and almost 9 months was nothing special but his soul world's amplifications not only slowed down his breakthrough speed but on the other side, it allowed him to be much stronger than his mana core rank too!
As such, Jason told himself that he shouldn't be too disappointed with himself because it was unlikely that many youths at his age were able to have a mana core size comparable to that of an average 3rd Master rank!.
While his mana core rank was still bothering him slightly, his body refining process accelerated and Jason noticed that the Netherworld's fort body refining technique was slowly reaching the first quarter of the Initial phase.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})This might sound weak and like nothing special but the Initial phase of the Netherworld's fort technique could only be completed when he left the Mortal stage by compressing his mana into the first liquefied drop of mana!
As such, he had to reach the Magus rank or also called Lique stage, which would take a while.
That was if his soul amplification would stay so high without being cursed and weakened.
During the last two months, Jason didn't neglect to practice the Heaven's Hell technique either!
He was unable to practice very often because his time was tightly scheduled but Shane told him that he should reach a certain amount of soul energy units before he could switch to doing other, more important things.
In the end, Jason would need enough soul energy to bind a new soulbond, however, after figuring out that the Mythic Garden was only a four-star rift, the possibility of finding a suitable cursed beast among Guardian ranked beasts that shouldn't exist in four-star rifts in the first place, was almost zero!
Thus, he required 10,000 vacant soul energy units if he were to find a suitable cursed being at the peak Magical rank.
That was, if he cursed beings were not similar to mythical beasts that required more soul energy units, which was something Jason was unaware of.
Even Shane was unsure about this fact because his bane of thousand eyes wolf was just a pseudo-cursed beast.
It didn't demand more soul energy units than a common Guardian-ranked beast would!
Unfortunately, he would have to defeat and catch such a suitable cursed beast first before binding it and Jason was sure that he would be unable to defeat a peak-Magical ranked beast.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})Even low-magus ranked beasts with strong curses would be able to defeat him and his soublonds without much difficulty, which was frustrating but the bitter truth.
The Golden-Soul shop's profits increased manifold after Jason began to exhibit perfectly purified grade-2 bars, potions, and weapons.
Thanks to that, his shop became much more popular and only two months later Jason's wealth increase to 700 Star notes which would have been enough to purchase a lot of mana stones.
Taking the mana stones he had still left into account, Jason was confident to refine his brain and create a second sub-area by splitting his mind as long as nothing went wrong.
To his misfortune, neither Shane nor Dalia were able to procure a brain protection treasure which gave Jason two choices.
The first one was that he would still refine his brain, which would cripple him permanently if he were to make a small mistake, while the second choice would be to postpone refining his brain until he was able to acquire a brain protection treasure!
Taking the first choice would be extremely dangerous which might cripple him or cause his death, while the second choice would slow evidently become a small thorn in his eyes because he wanted to establish his second sub-area.
Jason wanted to create a continuous circle in his soul world core with which he could increase his soul energy without practicing the Heaven's Hell technique.
This would save him a lot of time which he could use more efficiently.
However, after thinking about it, Jason found it unreasonable to take the first option because his current soul energy was already enough to take on a peak-magical ranked beast!
He had 22,000 Soul energy units, while 16,000 of them were still vacant!
After he decided to take the second option, Jason couldn't help but feel a little bit frustrated.
However, he took only for a short time to notice that his black origin flame already constructed three-fourths of its mana core.
This caused his frustration to dissipate almost immediately.
It would only take a few weeks until the mana core was finally constructed and when that happened, the black origin flame would hopefully evolve!
This was good to hear because it was right before his final departure to the Mythic Garden which would happen soon.
Jason had already received a notification about their assigned meeting point, which was a C-grade city called Asgar.
He was nervous and didn't know what would happen, but on the other side, Jason also knew that his life was on the line which caused him to calm down extremely fast.
On the 1st of June, Shane brought him to Asgar before he wished Jason good luck, threatening him that he would be hunted if he were to die inside the Mythic Garden.
"Even if it's very important for you to find a suitable cursed beast, don't act suicidal! You have only one life!"
Jason was aware of this fact, however, this was not really helpful.
In the end, he would have to give his all in order to procure a suitable cursed beast in order to survive in the first place.
His life was definitely the most important but risking a little but to might not be the wrong decision in some situations.
