Jason decided to focus on his alchemy progress, martial art techniques, and affinity practice until the tournament would finally start, while he also told himself multiple times to only practice the Heaven's Hell technique if he had enough time left.
As such, instead of focusing on his soul energy, Jason decided to adjust himself to his physique that was already comparable to normal 2nd Expert ranks.
There was still a difference towards evolved ranked beasts, but he estimated that it wouldn't be long until his physique was refined to such a degree in order to fight evolved beasts head-on, without the usage of mana, which would probably shock most citizen on Astrix, because it was unheard that a normal youth who was only at the Adept rank was able to defeat evolved beasts without using mana at all.
Without being a prodigy or someone from a big family who learned martial art techniques since their childhood, it was unlikely to be able to do something similar to that.
There were exceptions with one of them having a high-quality, physical soul world, which would allow one to attain a strong physique without an extremely high-ranked soulbond at the mid/late unblemished rank.
Smiling foolishly, the whole week passed silently and Jason's body felt much lighter compared to before, which caused him to accidentally crush Greg while sparring because his physique was neither further refined nor had they the same unrefined physical rank.
This shocked not only Greg but also Malia who watched the whole fight if one could even call it a fight because it was more like Jason beat her brother into a pulp without much difficulty.
Suppressing his strength, Jason and Greg fought against each other head-on while honing their respective martial art skill.
However, compared to before, Jason was somewhat dissatisfied with this, which led him to suppress his strength further in order to feel pressure pushing him down before he exerted his martial art techniques while at the same time trying to use his affinities.
Since Scorpio and Artemis established their fortified soul conjunction with him, Jason felt, as if it was much easier to control their affinities, which was advantageous in order to have a shorter reaction interval, while everything was even better with his Black origin flame.
His black origin flame affinity was considered his soulbond per se and instructing it what to do was immediately executed, without a slight disruption, while his partially refined physique further supported fire affinities, accelerating its circulation to a certain degree, decreasing the interval between his short order and execution by a large margin.
Being overwhelmed by Greg felt extremely beneficial in accordance to his proficiency which soared, even if Greg looked at him annoyed and frustrated when Jason suppressed himself further.
As if that was not enough, Jason also started to bother Malia about spars, because he knew that she was extremely strong with her 3rd Master mana core rank, which she entered during the last month.
She was less proficient in close combat, yet she liked to fight long-range with her wand and two affinities, which she clearly showed Jason.
In the end, both her rank and proficiency with the water and fire affinity were extremely high, and firing simple water jets and fireballs at Jason was already difficult and tiring to evade.
However, with this, a sudden thought emerged in his mind and Jason continued to bother Malia that she should give her best to hit him, while he started to exert his weightless steps technique to its limits, without caring about anything else.
At the same time, he instructed his black origin flame to start an experiment with all kinds of movements in order to figure out possible ways to further increase his speed.
Since he had to run away from two magical ranked crystal horned pythons, Jason felt the urgency to attain a high velocity, in order to either flee or if he was at an advantage, he could even attack with his high speed, before the opponent was able to react could react.
Only a single week passed between him concocting his first perfect purified grade-1 potion and new year, yet he was able to manufacture ten more perfect potions, while his remaining several dozen potions he concocted were relatively close to perfectly purified.
But even more important was, that there were only three failed products which further decreased his failure rate by a large margin.
This was a great leap in his success rate and Jason felt extremely satisfied with his current progress when he heard that the ingredients would arrive a few days after new year, causing him to feel slightly disturbed.
It was not, as if he felt incapable of concocting the easiest evolution solution, but the pressure from the possible failure weighed heavy on him.
But even if he felt the pressure from the news about the arrival of the required ingredients for Taurus' bloodline unsealing potion, Jason felt exactly the same pressure, radiating from his surroundings and everything that happened throughout the last few months.
Figuring out that he might be a half Celestia was only the tip of the iceberg, while the revamped cultivation ranks and knowing that humanity was only comparable to livestock for the foreign races was even difficult to digest.
But as if that was not enough, Jason was unsure how he should behave if he were to see Old Drake again, while he remained in contact with Seron and even Till.
Apparently, the two of them would also leave Astrix, once their mission was finished and Seron already told him that their task was to capture his second soulbond, which was a Guardian-ranked cub, which caused Jason to praise his na?ve friend inwardly.
Seron was extremely na?ve in his opinion, even if he was bullied for being a cripple and so on, he remained optimistic which was a good point, while his naive belief in humanity's kindness was weird, compared to the fact, that he was the descendant of one of the big clans, that reigned an island.
However, in the end, Jason wouldn't be able to change his friend's mindset, even if he wanted to, which was however not the case, because he had more than enough work to do with himself.
Nevertheless, even if there was more than enough for him to do, today, on new year's eve, he was told by the Fler's that he should take a break, at least for one day.
In the beginning, Jason wanted to reject their proposal, but after they told him, that it was important to relax and have fun for some time, he just nodded his head.
He was extremely exhausted from trying to improve everything at once over the whole day, almost without any sleep or a single day he skipped to practice anything at all.
As such, Jason took off his first day since half a year in order to talk with the Fler's about all kinds of things, which included their school life, the upcoming tournament, and much more, before they started to eat.
As everyone summoned their soulbonds, Jason also released Artemis and Scorpio for the first time in a while, which caused Artemis to screech out in joy, while Scorpio did the same.
The only difference between the two was, that one was an over two-meter long Scorpion that sounded rather cruel and horrifying, while Artemis was a 1.2-meter long owl with fluffy plumage and a gentler voice.
It was also the first time for the Fler's to see Scorpio after his evolution and the Fler's were shocked to see that the small miniature Parascors changed to such a shocking degree.
Noticing the joy radiating from Artemis and Scorpio because they were finally allowed to leave the soul world, Jason felt bad and he began to wonder how boring it would be to stay within the soul world for over a month without anything to do, except using their soul connection with Jason to communicate with him and see through his eyes, which was only possible thanks to the fortified soul conjunction.
"Is there a way to change the soul world into a more comfortable and maybe even fun place?" Jason mumbled to himself, when Mark, who already warmed up to him, suddenly said.
"Of course that's possible, but the required soul energy is extremely high while the benefits are almost nil. You are still young and you need the vacant soul energy in order to contract more, stronger soulbonds, which is why I recommend you to not change too much within your soul world for now! "
Hearing what Mark said, Jason averted his gaze, as he asked with curiosity gleaming in his eyes.
"How can I change the interior of my soul world?!"
Maybe he already read it somewhere or his masters told him, but he just couldn't remember, however, when he heard Mark telling him that it brought him nil benefits to change the interior of his soul world, Jason immediately knew that his masters wouldn't tell him something without any benefits.
"It is a rather counterproductive measure, but you can even bind objects to your soul and let them enter your soul world in order to decorate or change the interior.
Like this Gabriella and I started to gather soul energy in order to contract all kinds of plants, trees, bushes, even stones, and so on to create a comfortable environment for our contracted soulbonds, because we don't call them out often.
As such, they don't think it's boring or uncomfortable within the soul world, and staying within may even be more comfortable for them instead of being summoned out of it!
However, we only started with this process, after our soul world's space was completely occupied by beasts, which allowed us to save soul energy units to bind other stuff to customize our soul world!"
Listening carefully, Jason was immediately interested in the information Mark told him.
'Does that mean I can customize my own soul world?! I don't even know how large my soul world currently is, because it's consistently increasing in size with the increase of soul energy units, and now, Mark tells me that I can bind normal trees and so on to plant into my soul world?!'
If Jason were to say, that he was not shocked, it would definitely be a lie, and Gabriella noticed that, as she said
"Even if creating a comfortable habitat for your soulbonds is important later on in order to thicken your bond with each other, the required soul energy is extremely large. For example, to bind a single, common large flux-oak tree, I had to accumulate several thousand soul energy, while it also required a large amount of nutritious soil, which I also had to bind to my soul world.
In the end, you would have to build your own ecosystem inside your soul world, which is extremely difficult, to put it simply.
Just imagine the difficulty of raising a tree in a completely empty area, without any nutrition, sun rays for the tree to utilize photosynthesis, and you would also need water!
You have to provide everything, otherwise, the living beings you bind to your soul world will die, and even if it won't damage your soul world, you would have wasted the used soul energy to bind the tree.
Please don't act carelessly and think about your priorities!"
Gabriella's words caused Jason's curiosity to die down almost immediately because he couldn't imagine a way to customize his world while supplying everything with their required needs to survive, except if he were to use stones and other objects that were not alive, to begin with.
'In the end, I also don't have any soul energy to spare…who knows, when I need it?' He thought, before promising his soulbonds inwardly, that he will take them out more often from now on!
Even if it might take years for him to build his own small customized world, knowing that something like this was possible, ignited his interest.
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