Lilya attempted to protect herself the moment she noticed the black flames behind Jason's back in addition to his scheming smile.
Using a vast majority of her primordial energy and mana, she inserted it into her strongest defensive technique which she exerted, the moment the black flames behind Jason's back erupted.
The sudden heat, and the gravitational force that had done its work for the entire time… Meanwhile, Jason, who was hovering above Lilya, still clashing with her, was propelled towards the ground of the arena, where they crashed into.
Only a moment later, an explosion occurred as cracks appeared on the ground where Lilya had been catapulted into and saw herself spit out blood.
Just at that moment, Jason, who was completely unscathed, began to release dense mist that enveloped him and Lilya while the mist began to enlarge at a rapid pace.
Being able to see clearly through the mist owing to his Emperor Eyes, Jason let Byakur vanish into the soul world, only to lash out with his empty hand, knocking out Lilya, who was still wriggling, trying to defeat Jason.
In the end, Jason had to acknowledge that the cadets were somehow, both stronger and weaker than he had expected.
Under normal circumstances, he would have an easier time against opponents with the same combat prowess as the cadets, but at the same time, their will to fight was a little bit low, decreasing the strength they utilised at a time.
This was somewhat disappointing.
Nevertheless, Jason was glad to have fought against the last three opponents that were all different, and unique in their own way, only to recall that Eran was still standing in the arena.
'Right…I just hit his doppelganger!'
It was interesting how the Cultivation path of Spiral could be used, and Jason assumed that the doppelganger was just one of many tricks one could use to play with someone's mind.
Eran's instinctive behavior had caused him to protect himself in the safest way, which was to create a doppelganger.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})Unfortunately, this used his entire stored spiritual force, preventing him from combining his spiritual force with mana, decreasing his strength tremendously.
Thus, after having knocked out Lilya, Jason continued to release the icy mist, only to completely retract his Celestia aura and Stigma, making himself almost invisible.
Only his mana fluctuations that were also restricted to the extent at which he could barely release enough mist with the use of his ice affinity, were an indicator of where he was standing.
Unfortunately, this forced Eran to rely on his mana perception, and not on his eyes, while Jason could see everything clearly.
Trying to figure out how high the mana perception of the cadet Jennifer had chosen for him to fight was, Jason didn't even think of entering close combat with Eran for the time being.
Instead, he waited for some time, trying to figure out a few things about the cadets, only to feel the eyes of someone on his back; eyes that were boring down into him with their anger.
It was a human at the Ascendion stage, following the path of Maest, and his mana core seemed extremely interesting.
Nevertheless, Jason couldn't be bothered about all of that because the anger targeted at him by this individual was not good. It felt like a special kind of hatred, reserved only for him.
'Did I kill his entire family, or is he enraged because it looks like I'm playing around? What else could I have done to him?…'
In the end, he had no idea what he had done to the young man to incite his rage.
Thus, Jason simply decided that said cadet had an anger management issue, which was the most likely reason in his opinion.
Despite that, Jason couldn't help but think that it was better to finally end the battle, now that he had given Eran some time to find him.
As such, he released everything at once, only to push himself towards Eran, and arrived in front of him a moment later.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})Because Eran couldn't see anything, he reacted a fraction of a second too late. He could barely perceive that Jason was exerting his movement technique, while circulating mana through his entire body, only for everything to be further enhanced owing to the fully unleashed Stigma and Aura.
However, that was not all as Jason had propelled himself towards Eran, the moment he pushed himself from the ground, accelerating the speed he could reach even more.
Thus, the moment Jason appeared in front of Eran, it was already over for the cadet as he moved his hands towards Eran's abdomen to reveal a compressed, black flame that emerged within it.
Shooting out one of Solaris' compressed flames, Jason saw Eran get flung more than a dozen meters away, who felt something burning through his abdomen.
A moment later, this sensation dispersed as the compressed black flame dissipated into thin air.
Only a moment later, he had appeared at the position Eran had landed, only to smile faintly as he apologised.
"Sorry, I went a little bit over the top with the last attack!"
Eran looked at Jason as if he was a monster, only to shake his head.
'He almost killed me, huh?'
Accepting his defeat far more easily than the others, Eran stood up with a sigh before he replied,
"No problem… thanks for not killing me, I guess…"
Jason wanted to say something, but before he could, he noticed that Eran had already turned around, leaving the arena and him behind.
This caused him to smile dryly, only to turn around himself, where he saw that a few people had rushed to look after Lilya.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})His ice fog had dispersed the moment he had begun to utilise his fire affinity, and it was only then that Jason could see the appearance of the man glaring at him.
It was a muscular human, with a height of more than 1.9 meters.
His expression was full of scorn and hatred could be felt a mile away from him which confused Jason, only to see his eyes flitting to Jennifer once in a while.
However, Jennifer was only looking at Jason with a radiant smile that could have multiple meanings.
After connecting the dots, Jason slowly began to understand what was going on!
'This guy is plain jealous that I get all of her attention! Doesn't look like he is confident with his own charm…'
Turning away, he could barely avoid the guy, whose name was Rex, from seeing his smile.
Jason found it ridiculous to see that he had managed to irk someone at the Ascendion stage just because of Jennifer.
However, somehow, he found it quite funny, and without even considering that Rex would attack him out of the blue, Jason approached Jennifer.
Even if he would attract the rage of Rex, or even more cadets, he was eager to fight Jennifer. Ever since he had seen her, he had been trying to figure out how much of a difference it would be to fight someone with three awakened cultivation veins, and several more unique characteristics.
One could say that Jennifer was his first opponent with multiple traits, or special characteristics such as being a Halfling with repulsive elemental affinity seeds in her mana core, or her three cultivation veins.
As such, his battle intent was noticeable, which caused Jennifer to smile from ear to ear as she said.
"Rest until your mana is replenished, I want you to unleash your full potential when we fight!"
