Jason felt that Petri's connection was slowly dispersing, dissolving the entire fortified soul conjunction as the black scales, tail, and claws disappeared, revealing his fair skin.
Exhaustion overcame him the moment the connection was fully severed. Through blurry eyes he saw that the light Tigron called Xyna had used her physical strength to punch Jarid, who had been thrown towards her, away.
After that, the light spears she had manifested shot towards Jason, who had reverted to his normal appearance.
The exhaustion prevented him from reacting immediately, but fortunately enough, he was not alone!
Instinctively, Petri and Artemis exchanged their places in occupying Jason's mana core before Artemis forcefully manifested her wings on Jason's back.
This drained his nutrition but it was not as severe as the nutrition consumed for the regrowth of Petri's black scales.
Artemis' wings flapped without Jason making a move which allowed him to evade the dozens of light spears by a hair's breadth.
Only then did Jason react on his own as he shot higher into the sky, reaching an altitude of more than 50 meters before he could finally take a deep breath.
"You guys can fight now. I'll take a short break!" He said in between two deep breaths.
His voice had been low but clear enough. As such, everybody had heard it, which caused a small commotion within the rows of spectators.
All of them had expected that Jason would continue beating up the prodigies of the Olympus federation's races, and some spectators had even looked forward to that!
However, Jason couldn't care less about that because the exhaustion he was feeling right now was incomparable to what he sensed from fusing with Artemis.
'Does it feel more exhausting because we were not ready to fuse yet? Could it be that, or is it simply because my connection with Artemis is both stronger and stabler?'
Jason didn't know the answer, but what he knew was that his mana core rejected fusing with Artemis!
Apparently, the mana core required a certain period of time before it could initiate another fusion.
That was interesting and extremely important to know, but unfortunately not very helpful for Jason's current situation.
Despite that, he had already defeated the dragonewts rendering them incapable of flying for some time due to the injuries.
As such, he could take a short break which he had already announced.
The cooldown wouldn't take too long and by absorbing the surrounding mana, he might as well replenish some of the nutrition he had used up.
Not only food and other supplements had nutrition but also mana and even more so the life force Solaris could drain from its opponents was enriching.
There were still several fragments of Solaris' flame inside the participants of the first battle royale while some life force from the dragonewts he had previously pierced with black blazing spikes had entered his body.
Jason had never tried to absorb life force, and he had grown even more apprehensive after what had happened when he'd tried to absorb primordial energy out of a pryr stone.
But absorbing life force was also not something he wanted to do.
In the end, Jason just wanted to figure out a way to replenish his nutrition, which was why he tapped the life force Solaris had sealed within it, trying to test a few things.
He didn't have anything to do either way because his task had been completed.
The first task had been to show how strong he was and that mankind was not to be taken lightly.
At the same time, he hadn't killed anyone despite his evident strength and capabilities to easily kill most prodigies.
This goodwill gesture would most likely award him brownie points resulting in a few credits from the Olympus federation.
These credits should be advantageous for mankind which was another reason for him to participate in the liberation tournament.
The wish his masters had spoken of would soon be fulfilled, and the Flers would be rescued as well.
Nevertheless, Jason felt that he required the lesser origin flame, which was the reward for the first place of the liberation tournament, in order to upgrade Solaris' strength and advancement limitations.
As such, Jason decided to ignore the surroundings' opinion, with his focus trained on winning the tournament.
While he was deep in thoughts, the other participants looked into the sky, trying to figure out what the young human was planning.
However, not much time passed before the first, mostly unscathed participants started to attack those that were severely injured, trying to gain an advantage for their own race.
Jason had been unable to injure every single racial group because he had been interrupted by his time limit with Petri as well as the light Tigron, Xyna's attack!
Despite that, the most talented prodigies' power was displayed and perfectly shown as the groups began to fight against each other in a serious manner.
The existence of someone, who was recuperating his energy while levitating in the air was slowly pushed into the back of their mind as the fights were becoming more and more dangerous.
Elemental attacks were thrown around with dozens of beings enveloped in dense streams of mana could be seen fighting against each other as if their life was on the line.
Each race was fighting in their group against the other races, and the bias against certain races was slowly surfacing as the Lizr, and Klarir race's group was targeted first.
They were the most injured and only their strongest fighters could turn into a lethal threat later.
As such, it was best to defeat them as early as possible before they even had the chance to breathe.
A few participants tried to attack Jason in the air, but Artemis, who could see everything through Jason's eyes, controlled her wings perfectly.
Meanwhile, Jason focused on absorbing the surroundings' mana while trying to pay attention to the time it required for his mana core's cooldown to wear off.
Thus, he didn't even focus on the fight on the ground that took a total of ten minutes before it reached the climax.
Despite not being the strongest, Jarid had used his utmost efforts to stay up on his feet for as long as possible.
In the end, there were only a small bunch of participants left standing, amongst which the Tigron race had the most members.
Xyna had protected her group as the strongest member, but even then three of the weaker Tigrons had been defeated!
This only showed that the other prodigies were not to be taken lightly either.
In total, there were only 8 participants left, including Jason, Jarid, and Xyna.
The remaining five consisted of two Tigrons and the strongest prodigy from the young generation of the Fyrmn, Hran, and Hamaa race.
While the Hran race was similar to humans, they had pitch-black arms and golden veins spreading through them. Not only did this make them appear magnificent, but their darkness affinity was extremely strong too!
As for the Fyrmn prodigy, she was a young female, whose resemblance was strikingly similar to the mythological beast called Gumiho, a fox in the appearance of a human.
Thus, the Fyrmn race were also demi-humans that were part foxes, while the Hamaa race could be easily described as a mixture of humans and rabbits.
The Fyrmn prodigy had a psychokinesis affinity which was something Jason had always found interesting, while the Hamaa prodigy did not have an innate affinity.
He was more of a close combat fighter with an extremely strong physical advantage, that could be further enhanced by the particular mana he had.
As a matter of fact, Jason had assumed the Hamaa race to cultivate in the path of primordial energy, but that didn't seem to be the case. Their mana was transmuted in an extraordinary way, amplifying their physique drastically by circulating mana through their body!
Not only their body's defenses but also the weapons they enveloped with their mana would receive a drastic enhancement.
Despite all the advantages the other races had, the Tigron race currently held the biggest advantage.
They had Xyna, who was by far the strongest prodigy and also the oldest participant, in addition to having a total of three members out of the last eight participants.
Jason had already sensed that the fight was coming to an end, which was coincidentally the exact time his mana core's cooldown had run out.
The fusion with Petri hadn't lasted long, thus the cooldown before another fusion could be initiated was not long either.
Having fully recuperated his nutrition and mana core that was now overflowing with mana, Jason opened his eyes that were gleaming in a bright golden-silverish color while releasing his Celestia aura and stigma.
'I think it's time to join the fray once again...let's end it here!'
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