Jason wasn't all that sad that the class battle was over for them, rather than that he was expecting to do some missions in order to be able to purchase a tiered movement technique.
He immediately entered the school website before he clicked on the section for lace points where many columns like a trading section, mission board, purchase, sell could be seen.
What made him curious was the sell section because he might be able to sell something he owned.
However, he became disappointed because the items the school would purchase were extremely rare and the price was below average in his opinion.
Looking at the purchase section however was the complete opposite to him, as he was immediately dumbstruck.
Thousands of manuals, magical plants, weapons, armors, accessories, and so on could be purchased, only the price seemed slightly high, compared to his 75 points.
He wanted to know what types of tier-1 movement techniques he could purchase.
Only around 100 techniques could be seen and even the cheapest of them would cost 500 Lace points...
10.000.000 Credits if converted but in the end it was probably more, considering that it's harder to obtain Lace points.
This frustrated Jason and he closed his holographic screen while his mood hit rock bottom.
He had 75 points but even the worst Tier-1 technique was extremely expensive and wouldn′t satisfy his needs.
*
It was Friday afternoon and Jason was walking to the school gates to enter the shuttle with a sour facial expression indicating his frustration when Seron ran after him.
"JASON!! Wait a moment!" Seron said and Jason stopped in his track, shaken out of his absentminded walk.
"Hmm? Is something wrong?" Jason asked because Seron looked somehow serious and hesitant.
Seron was similar to Greg and didn't have many friends.
He was extremely intelligent since young but his malfunctioned mana channels, caused him to be a disgrace to his family as he was seen as a nuisance.
Sparring with Jason for a whole week was different and he felt accepted around him, even if he couldn′t show his true combat prowess all the time.
Because Jason would hide his master′s secret and not train the floating sky movement technique anymore, Seron felt bad and he had a short discussion with his master about it.
Clearing his throat he began "Jason! Thank you for covering our secret!! My master and I want to gift you something in order to say thank you… you are not allowed to decline!! I don't know what happened but master feels bad about something he apparently did to you and I feel also guilty because you felt the might of a secret movement technique.
Now we force you to stop practicing it, must be frustrating.
Our present will help you increase your combat prowess!! Maybe I don't have to hold back next time hahaha"
Seron′s silly laugh was annoying and he felt embarrassed as he sent him a file before running back to the school, leaving an astonished Jason alone.
Received wasn't sure what to do right now but he got a notification that his shuttle was waiting for him.
Entering the shuttle, he opened the file sent from Seron.
[Tier-1 Weightless Steps] `Huh?` Jason was astonished to see that Seron sent him a movement technique!
Was Seron really sorry that he sent him the Tier-1 skill manual or was it his teacher's guilty feelings?
Jason didn't know the reason but after finding out that Seron and his teacher came both from big families that governed an island with over 400 million citizens, he thought that a tier-1 skill might not be worth much for them.
Nevertheless, Jason was still grateful for this opportunity.
He thanked Seron sincerely and even wrote a message to his teacher in order to thank him sincerely.
While the 14-year-old Seron seemed quite happy, Mr.Greil messaged him `It's okay, you deserve it`, which confused Jason.
It was not like Jason did something to deserve that, or did I?
Without really thinking about his teacher's answer, he messaged Seron.
`If you need help with picking your second soulbond, I might be able to help you out. I′m pretty good at picking beasts with high potential.`
There was not much meaning behind his words to Seron, who looked a little bit confused at the holographic screen, but to Jason, it was quite dangerous to tell anyone about his ability to distinguish between a beast's mana core purity.
At least until now, Jason had reviewed his mana eyes abilities over and over again but he couldn't figure out their limits or what exactly they could do.
Somehow, he innately knew roughly what they were supposed to do, but it was still difficult for him to comprehend it and express it into words or actions.
In the end, he decided to stop thinking about his eyes' ability with the conclusion that he could detect almost everything with them, including the purity of beasts which was probably their potential.
Furthermore, Jason knew that without injecting mana into his eyes, he could intimidate opponents with them without even trying.
Adding his released killing intent, even someone with a slightly higher mana core rank than him would be horrified by him.
Remembering the battle against Leo Heart, Jason knew that his abyss effect was only the amplification of this intimidation effect thanks to mana, or at least that was what he thought.
Jason was almost entirely clueless about his eyes and thinking about it frustrated him a lot.
He was expectant to open the [Weightless Steps] manual to learn a movement technique that Jason was allowed to practice without anyone hindering him when his soul world began to shake slightly.
Entering his soul world, he noticed that the thick cocoon around Artemis was slowly starting to become thinner as sweat drops began to appear on Jason′s forehead.
`Darling!! I′m not ready yet!!!` He thought and from the diminishing speed he saw, Jason could estimate that Artemis would finish her evolution in one or at most two weeks.
`F***` Was the only thought in his mind and he decided to read through the Weightless Steps manual later before he went closer to his soul world core.
Over the whole week, Jason′s soul energy reached 11.1 units while he used up 10 for his soulbonds.
Considering that Artemis would at least reach the awakened rank, he would have to speed up his increase of soul energy by a few folds, which was extremely annoying.
But right now, he couldn't be calm as he practiced the Heaven′s Hell technique with a normal helix formed by two strings.
Without being able to calm down, practicing a higher difficulty of his Heaven′s Hell technique could be considered suicidal due to the dangers as Jason was rational enough to discard this stupid thought without looking back.
He estimated that his soul energy increased by 0.1 or 0.2 daily right now which was astonishing, considering the fact that Jason′s innate soul energy was only 11.1 units right now.
Normally others would need 3 days for that, but Jason′s insanely fast reproduction of soul energy was the cause for this astronomical speed.
The increase of one's soul energy was exponential instead of linear and Jason was confident that it would only take one week time, with his current speed to have a consistent increase of 0.2 soul energy per day.
This meant in two weeks, Jason would be able to increase his soul energy to 13.2 at the worst.
Deducting the soul energy used for Scorpio, he would have 7.2 soul energy for Artemis.
If Artemis had a soul energy of 11 units at the bare minimum, Jason would receive an amplification of his own soul energy of 2.3.
Calculating everything, Jason noticed that his soul energy would still be short of around 1.5 soul energy units.
This calculation was the best-case scenario, including the fact that Scorpio could enter the five-star wild beast rank in the meantime and the high possibility for Artemis to have an innate soul energy of more than 11 units.
Jason didn′t like his soulbonds reaching a higher soul energy than him because of the marginal chance, that they hated him, for whatever reason, causing them to break out of the soulbond contract or even worse.
Everything was possible even if Jason was confident in the thick connection with his soulbonds.
He adored them more than anything, even Greg who became his best friend over the last few weeks was not as important for Jason as his two little companions.
Jason felt extremely pressured by Artemis' surprise event and before he could continue his train of thought the shuttle arrived.
Leaving the shuttle he decided to eat dinner with the Fler′s and everyone noticed that he was absent-minded, which happened quite often over the last few days.
Greg wasn′t concerned about Jason as he had to think about his own combat prowess because their own Class battles also started.
Only now understood the strength of his peers, which was nothing to scoff at, even if his combat experience was superior.
Malia had it slightly easier but she would have to leave her home soon for an expedition mission from the school as one of her exams which made her somehow expectant and anxious at the same time.
A single mistake could kill her and the whole expenditure team, which was quite some responsibility for a 16 year old kid.
Gabriella and Mark looked at the youths with worry, but there was not really anything they could do to help them.
Their own strength was at most above average, considering that both of them had entered the magus rank, but that was it.
It was only that their beast capturing ability was superior to others which made them slightly famous and caused them to receive a noble title.
But to real nobles, their title wasn't worth anything because commoners couldn't enter the real royal society according to their beliefs.