Only two hours passed after Jennifer had advised him to rest a little bit.
In that short period, she trained the other cadets, awaiting Jason to fully recuperate.
She eyed him once in a while, and during one such stolen glance, he sensed someone's rage lingering around him.
It was Rex, and Jason couldn't help but feel odd to be eyed as the love rival of someone at the Ascendion stage, without having done anything.
Jennifer was beautiful, kind, and extremely interesting, but Jason had never really thought of the possibility of being in a relationship or falling in love.
These things were something he had never had enough free time on his hands to figure out by himself because his time had always been scarce or the opportunity to even think about.
As such, before he even thought about finding a partner, Jason wanted to figure out what his plans for the future were, and if it was even possible to fall in love without endangering his loved ones.
He had already lost his masters and Scorpio, and without the necessary strength, falling in love was a luxury. He didn't think he could stomach the loss of someone as close as them again.
However, at the same time, Jason didn't realise that emotions were harder to control than he could have ever thought.
Love wasn't a choice, a decision that you made after weighing the pros and cons; it was something that just happened, even if the timing couldn't be worse!
Unbeknownst to himself, his heart that had been closed for anyone except his soulbonds, was slowly opening up to this mysterious girl.
After having lost those he had loved in the Great Argos war, his heart had been locked, but with a new chapter of his life manifesting the moment he emerged on Manyr, its shackles were shaking.
Thus, meeting Jennifer, someone who made him curious, was different than it had been during his puberty when he met someone who was beautiful or strong.
It was also different from encountering someone during or immediately after the Great Argos war, it was just something new and something that made Jason comfortable.
In the end, Jennifer was just like him which was, in fact, the reason that made them comfortable with each other, and equally eager to fight each other right now.
Thus, the moment Jason had fully recuperated, his mana entirely replenished, he got up from the ground where he had been cultivating to accelerate his mana replenishing process.
Jennifer noticed this immediately, and halted her lessons, telling the other cadets to simply continue with whatever they were doing before ignoring them completely.
This caused a commotion in the rows of cadets as they stared at Jennifer with a scheming smile.
"Is it what I think it is?" One of the Devirs said with a devilish grimace on his face, only for an Aeus to blush as she said,
"Maybe...it is?? Is she finally...That's something new!"? However, just as the female Aeus said this, Rex, who was standing close to the Aeus growled.
"Shut it, bitch!"
Releasing the intent to kill, Rex looked at them furiously and the cadets who were gossiping about Jennifer's behavior with bright expressions on their faces, quieted down.
They hadn't noticed Rex, and could only apologise multiple times before they retreated as far as possible from him.
Since their arrival to the cadet training camp that was hidden inside the hill on the barren lands, they had never witnessed Rex behaving like that.
Under normal circumstances, he would just eye Jennifer from a distance, ignoring the others who stared at her, sometimes even lustfully, however that had now changed.
Rex couldn't even approach Jennifer as he had been doing occasionally during the last few years because she had already rushed towards Jason the moment he had completely recuperated from the exhaustion of his earlier two fights.
Even if Rex acknowledged that he had underestimated Jason, it didn't mean he would let a newbie take Jennifer away from him.
Jason's combat prowess barely reached the Prismar stage, while his own was at the Ascendion stage!
He might be older than Jennifer, but what was the difference of a few decades, if the lifespan of Cultivators having reached the Prismar stage was well beyond thousand years?
It was negligible, and Rex as well as everyone else was aware of this.
Only talent and true strength mattered in the era of cultivation where the strong reigned and the weak were exploited and devoured.
However, in order to release one's full potential and strength, one had to reach a certain age, a fact every living being knew very well.
Even with unlimited talent, being very young, their inability to make full use of their potential made some prodigies succumb to their arrogance or to the fact that they had attracted the anger of someone they shouldn't have offended.
This was exactly what was happening with Rex, whose entire being was filled with anger and jealously, and poor Jason right now, who was completely ignorant to what he was doing.
In the end, it was not his fault, and neither was Jennifer's for being interested in Jason, the specific things about him, and most importantly to fight him, even if she had to restrict her strength.
Rather, it was Rex, whose uncontrollable emotions were causing chaos, as he watched Jason and Jennifer enter the combat ring.
Both the young halflings were oblivious to the fact that Rex was eying them, trying to suppress his emotions, waiting for the finale.
Jason eyed Jennifer intently, ignoring Rex's gaze that lingered on him.
Rather, he focused on Jennifer and the words she had said earlier that he should unleash his full potential.
He could do so, but initially, he was not sure if that was the best to do because his abyssal effect was still something he had no control over.
The control over the Chaos attribute in his body evaded him, and the mysterious being had returned to its slumber.
At least, that was what Jason assumed because even if he wanted to, there was no way for him to talk to it at all.
Thus, he was reluctant to use his abyssal effect or the natural pressure he had comprehended to release because it was intertwined with his chaos attribute.
However, this reluctance dispersed into thin air, the moment he noticed that Jennifer barely restricted her strength to the peak of the Lique stage in all three cultivation bases only to release all three cultivation energies at once.
They merged together, amplifying each other several times instead of deteriorating or negating each other as it would normally be the case for the three repulsive energies.
Jason had seen this once from far away, several months ago when Jennifer had fought against the army of the Aeus and Devir race in the barren lands while rescuing some humans from Manyr.
However, what he hadn't felt at that time was the overwhelming pressure that radiated from Jennifer, originating from the merging energies and a specific technique she was utilising.
With her aura, she enveloped the entire arena with its size of more than 100 meters in radius, causing the energies within her aura to vibrate wildly as if they were oppressed, and couldn't move at all.
Seeing this through the Emperor Eyes, Jason couldn't help but smile brightly as goosebumps appeared on his body.
"Why the hell did I even consider holding back? I need to be careful about not being beaten into a pulp…."
As such, Jason instinctively released his entire Stigma, in addition to his Celestia aura, while instructing Artemis to occupy his mana core once again.
Yet, instead of waiting, he immediately began the fusion process with Artemis that transformed his entire appearance in a matter of seconds.
The spar had yet to start, but both Jennifer, with her restricted strength, and Jason, who was preparing to use every trick up his sleeves, were ready to give their best!
Both smiled at each other, and they could feel the other's excitement to fight as the battle's countdown was initiated by one of the cadets who had been ordered to act as a referee.
"Just what kind of Monsters are they?!
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