After practicing the Heaven's Hell technique, Jason felt much better, and standing up, his shoulder seemed to hurt less compared to before.
'Is it because of the tension?' He wondered, but moving the shoulder slightly reminded him of the pain.
'Maybe 6 days?' Jason predicted and thinking about the remaining time their expedition team planned to remain within the four-star rift, he estimated that he had between 19 to 24 days left until the rift would close.
'No time to stress myself, right? I shouldn't be that far from the highland plateau.' Thinking about the remaining time, Jason calmed himself down and the most important thing, for now, was to heal his broken shoulder with all kinds of potions, nutrition, and mana supplying the recuperation process.
Pondering what he should do first, he decided to eat something, because his stomach was already revolting against the emptiness inside it.
It was only fortunate for him that he purchased so much food and taking out one plate after another, Artemis approached him in order to receive a mana core.
Handing out an incomplete unblemished beast core, she stared daggers at him, which Jason ignored knowingly, by focusing on his own food.
Screeching out, she revolted but there was no need for Artemis to digest complete mana cores from beasts, because the digestion time was roughly the same, while she would only have to eat more incomplete unblemished ranked cores at once in order to balance the mana scarcity out.
Jason knew why Artemis wanted a magical ranked mana core and it was most likely because liquefied mana was extremely helpful for her, however, he forgot to purchase a large number of such cores, while a bulk of unblemished ranked beast cores waited for Artemis to devour them.
He obtained the unblemished ranked beast cores from Cheng when he sold the pseudo-mana grade-3 anvil and Artemis had to eat them, either now or later.
As such he could only act ignorant and once he finished his large breakfast, Jason decided to actively absorb mana, as a faint smile emerged on his face.
The surrounding mana was extremely dense and somehow even more so after the earthquake which most likely dug out some crystals which laid around him.
Initially, Jason wanted to collect all mana- and elemental crystals before starting to absorb mana, but he wanted to recuperate a little bit more before straining his broken shoulder even more than he already did.
He was already scared that the burden his broken shoulder had to endure the day before was too large to handle and permanent injuries would be the worst-case scenario, for now, which Jason didn't even want to imagine.
Still smiling with the dense mana streams around him, Jason opened his pores without hesitation, as he created a large suction force within him, greedily accepting everything in his surrounding, without differentiating between transmuted mana or neutral mana.
This could be seen as foolish, but from his previous experience, Jason was sure that the black origin flame within him, could cleanse the harmful transmuted mana, expelling it if necessary.
There was no secured proof to this, but his strengthened soul connection with the origin flame told him so subconsciously.
If he couldn't even trust his own soulbonds, who could he trust?
Trusting his gut feeling, he just began to do as he thought, without considering that it might be a mistake.
With time passing, Jason felt all kinds of transmuted mana infiltrating his mana veins, while his whole body was heated up by the black origin flame, cleansing everything instinctively.
Meanwhile, the pain in his shoulder soothed with him circulating mana through his shoulder's mana veins.
**
Five whole days passed and Jason sat on the ground with a thick mana cocoon stripped in different colors enveloping him.
Absorbing mana greedily, his mana core creaked loudly, as Artemis looked curious towards his direction.
Circulating the mana through his mana veins, his mana core enlarged slightly, while his physique toughened.
Expelling a black reeking liquid, Jason slowly opened his golden eyes which flickered vigorously.
The colored cocoon slowly dissipated with Jason stopping his absorption and he stood up, only to notice that his shoulder was already completely recuperated from his previous injury.
"Faster than I expected" he mumbled joyously, while slowly moving his shoulder around to test if anything felt uncomfortable.
Figuring out that everything was fine, he looked at Artemis with a smile emerging on his face as he said
"I finally did it!"
Not only did he break into the 4th Adept rank after painstakingly absorbing mana over five days, but he also practiced the Heaven's Hell technique three times a day, which increased his soul energy by a large margin.
Before breaking through, Jason's soul energy reached 239,74 units, while Artemis' requirement increased to 165 units as her strength increased once again, while Scorpio's soul energy demand increased to 75 units.
With this and his black origin flame's negligible 0.01 soul energy demand, Jason required 240.01 units in order to take Artemis into his soul world.
After breaking through, his soul energy increased by one unit and with him reaching 240.74 soul energy units, he could finally take Artemis back into his soul world once again.
It had been a long time and finally, it was done, which made both Jason and Artemis happy, as they smiled foolishly, at least Jason felt like Artemis smiled.
Artemis was happy because she could flee from the narrow cave she loathed, while Jason was expectant to figure out more about the fortified soul conjunction and how much his strength would increase by taking her into his mana core instead of Scorpio.
With a large, white magic circle appearing below Artemis, she screeched out one more time before vanishing from his sight only to emerge within his soul world.
Feeling Artemis within him, Jason smiled lightly and he similarly entered the soul world to take a look at his three soulbonds.
Scorpio grew slightly in size while his exoskeleton was already fully healed from the previous torn state, Jason caused.
The black origin flame was still below his soul world core, purifying and toughening everything, while its demand for soul energy increased even more with time passing.
Now that Artemis was finally back within the soul world, Jason feared his black origin flame's demand, because he wasn't sure how greedy it would become with time passing.
But before he would give his black Origin flame a single soul energy unit, he would save some for safety matters, because Scorpio's evolution might happen a short time after he leaves the four-star rift, while there was also the possibility of him finding a high potential beast.
If that was the case, the worst thing that could happen was the lack of soul energy, which was not something Jason wanted to experience ever.
Soaring through his soul world, Artemis screeched out in joy, as Jason noticed something weird.
'Was my soul world always so large?' He never really estimated the size of his soul world but weirdly enough it felt larger than before, causing him to look around confused.
'And why does everything here seem so vibrant and full of energy?'
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