Even though it was quite advantageous to be able to cultivate while finishing an annoying task, not everything was great.
In the end, cultivating with the mana that was led through the black flame thread caused his progress in removing the mass of ocean materials to slow down tremendously. He had to split between keeping an eye on the black flame thread and the fact that he had to annex the neutral mana.
Furthermore, it was important to not let the black flame thread touch the mana vein.? Even the slightest contact could damage it, or worse, the black flame thread could get out of control because of the mana that would surge into it.
As such, everything took much longer than Jason could hope for. Even his previous estimate of taking only two days, at most, was not even close to the time he had truly required.
This was owing to the careful work he had to undertake as the entire compressed ocean material spanned over more than 40 meters, which was crazy if one thought about it.
Earlier, Jason was not exactly sure how broad the mana vein truly was, but now that he was close, he realised that it was a ginormous construct. He didn't even want to imagine how powerful the Mewi would have become had the Oceanfolk not damaged the mana vein because it would only annoy him further.
However, without the damaged mana vein, his mission would be too easy, and even if Jason was just about to fully remove the ocean material, there was no way to figure out whether the Mewi would be able to make proper use of the extra mana or not.
There were less than six months left before the large-scale attack was said to happen, but Jason couldn't trust the words of the Deepsea Scia, which was why he decided to think of the worst-case scenario.
This scenario was that the army of the Oceanfolk would gather soon and that they would attack in the next few months.
Jason doubted that it would happen in the next two months, but that was not something he could be sure of.
Nevertheless, he had to get his work done, which took a total of two weeks because it was extremely difficult to not injure the mana vein. He had to be extremely slow and careful as even the slightest single touch of the black flame thread might be the cause of eradication of the entire mana vein.
In the end, Jason didn't know much about Solaris, whether it was truly just an origin flame or something different.
It would make sense for it to be something else because Solaris was sentient, and exhibited more intelligence than Spyro in specific situations.
As such, Jason was astonished that Solaris was unable to control its flames within the mana vein.
However, only later did Jason find out that Solaris was preventing itself from actively lunging out towards the mana. It managed to overcome its deepest desires in order to prevent Jason from failing the trial he was working so hard for.
Preventing itself from doing something which was a natural behavior was extremely difficult for the black origin flame, and Jason was thankful for this.
Unfortunately, it didn't make things much easier for him because there were still too many things he had to pay attention to that he couldn't even appreciate Solaris' efforts.
In the end, removing, or precisely, burning the Ocean materials was completed only two weeks after he had begun to work on the mana vein.
This took longer than expected, but at the same time, Jason was sure that the dungeon never expected him to remove the ocean material from the mana vein.
The task itself had simply taken extremely long, and without Solaris, he would have never been able to remove it by only using his hands or other tools.
Even with other origin flames, the task would have been too difficult.
Who would be confident enough to repair a mana vein, to begin with? Definitely not someone weak as even existences like Luna wouldn't be able to achieve such a feat.
Damaging something was not difficult, but repairing it was certainly tiring and burdensome.
That was also the reason why every single energy vein would be protected if it was used by a sect, kingdom, or any kind of organisation.
With even a single scratch in an energy vein, one could severely lower the nurturing capabilities of these organizations, thus, safeguarding and protecting them was extremely important.
Whether the Mewi knew that the damaged mana vein had been an issue, or not, Jason wasn't too sure.
However, what he realised was that the Mewi might not even be aware that they had a mana vein, to begin with.
Otherwise, they would have acted differently from the beginning, trying to protect, or repair it with all their might.
As such, Jason could only think that it had been an extremely good achievement to repair the mana vein. Now that he had cleared their problem of mana scarcity and they still had a few months left, the Mewi should be able to start practicing their martial art techniques once again.
Furthermore, they were supposed to start cultivating too, which was something Jason hoped for them to start doing soon.
If they wouldn't start cultivating and practicing in order to prepare for the next attack wave of the Oceanfolk, he would actively force them to do something because their survival was on the line.
He wouldn't accept looking at them dying like idiotic moths that flew towards the flame, not after everything he had done for them!!
Even if it was not for the trials, solving the issue with the mana vein had been extremely uncomfortable because he was not exactly someone affine to water.
The only time he had been forced to swim was on Argos, or to be precise Cyro City when he had jumped inside the lake his late masters had been hiding in.
Nevertheless, he had still done everything to complete the mission of removing even the smallest particles of the Ocean materials, preventing them from regrowing in any way.
Thus, he retracted the black flame thread without touching the mana vein's borders that had been created by the Ocean materials.
Yet, the more he retracted the black flame thread, the more Jason noticed a problem he hadn't hoped to occur.
Now that the small gap which had been sealed owing to the mass of ocean material was free, mana was suddenly released from it, and Jason's eyes widened. However, there was neither shock nor certainty in his eyes about the things that were just happening before him.
In the end, the Ocean material had been pressed inside the mana vein owing to the strong force the stream of mana had created.
Thus, now that the Ocean materials had been removed, there was only a small hole left from which the purest mana leaked.
Because of that, the entire shelter was suddenly overflowing with mana, but fortunately, it didn't hurt him in any way because he had sealed off his pores early enough.
Despite that, he was unable to see anything properly because the bright light radiating from the enormous amount of mana dazzled him, even more so owing to his Emperor Eyes that were permanently active while he was underwater.
He couldn't simply switch off his eyesight, which was the reason he had to close his eyes.
Thus, he could barely sense his surroundings through his mana perception that was also interrupted by the overflowing mana which steadily increased, creating a formidable pressure that weighed Jason down.
Because of that, Jason was also only barely able to perceive that the mana vein was already starting to recuperate as it was actively sealing off the damaged part, but the progress was extremely slow, and Jason was unable to move properly.
'So...am I supposed to endure the highly purified mana? Absorb it and wait for the mana vein to seal off the damaged part?'
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