The Last Apostle : Resurrection
Page 13
But there wouldn't be anyone to answer his questions so Jason had to disregard this thought.
He had to find out everything by himself but that was okay for him.
Calling a shuttle to take him home, Jason had to wait a few minutes.
Gazing inside the storage space he saw seven one-star wild beast carcasses and two two-star carcasses.
It was more than Jason expected for the first day and going through his fights while waiting for the shuttle to come he remembered many flaws.
But for Jason, the whole day proceeded smoother than he previously thought as he was still uninjured and healthy.
He expected to sustain some injuries but everything was fine.
The shuttle arrived and Jason was in front of his apartment 40 minutes later.
After ordering delivery Jason went inside the apartment to rectify his flaws.
Battling with wild beasts was definitely different than training at home and after today Jason understood that he had to hone his technique with real combat experience.
Otherwise, he would always stay behind others.
Chapter 26: Artemis awakening!
Waking up early in the morning like every day, Jason washed up and changed into a new set of clothes.
It was a set routine for him but somehow today felt different.
Jason´s eye itched and his muscles ached while his whole body shivered.
It was uncomfortable and slightly painful but Jason was still smiling as he felt something happening inside his soul world.
Artemis was waking up and Jason thought his body aching was the result of her sharing some of her strength, even if it wasn't much.
Jason's mana core grew almost one-third in size while his body went through a small change.
After a soulbond was formed, it took a certain amount of time to strengthen the connection.
This time was important as it allowed the master and the soulbond beast to get to know each other and after the connection was strengthened enough the beast would share some of its strength with the master.
The shared amount was determined by one's soul and this couldn't be changed even if the soulbond beast wanted to give its contractor more strength or mana.
While his body was in pain two things astonished Jason a lot.
Artemis woke up after almost two weeks and she was already completely grown up.
With a wingspan of 80 centimeters and a length of 30 centimeters, the snow-white Artemis looked almost like a normal snowflake owl except for her smaller stature and the fact that she previously digested pure mana.
But the most surprising fact was that his mana core grew so much in size.
According to normal standards, his mana core should only grow a little bit, at most 5% to 10% because one-star wild beasts don't possess much mana but Jason's mana core grew almost a third which was probably a shared amount of around 1/3.
Jason was still only at the 2nd Novice rank close to the 3rd rank and his mana core was previously only at the same rank but now it was larger than that and comparable to 3rd Novice rank mana cores.
Not only his mana core grew so much, but even Jason´s physique increased quite a lot.
When his body stopped itching and the pain subsided, he could feel that his physique also increased slightly less than 1/3.
The highest increase was however his body structure and Jason felt much lighter and more flexible.
Thinking about the increase he was once again reminded that Artemis was an agile beast type which was the cause for his priority enhancement on speed, flexibility, and so on.
Apparently, his soul would share around 1/3 of a beast's strength/mana/soul energy to the contractor which was more than three times the best average of 10%, which was seen as exceptional.
Seeing the shared amount was so big, Jason was happy that his soul was special even if his soul energy was weak.
Considering the fact that he could grow slowly with Artemis, once she evolved his power would soar.
Thinking about his soul he was reminded about the soul-awakening and it still felt that there was some space left and the previous feeling about his soul being incomplete confused him.
After waking up, Artemis left the soul world and she appeared in front of Jason inside a white magic circle.
She could already fly and flapped her wings to reach Jason's shoulder where she sat down.
After that, she rubbed her head at Jason's cheek showering him with her love.
While patting her Jason ate breakfast.
Artemis wasn't hungry and Jason felt that she was still full but to prepare himself for the worst case scenario Jason ordered another small mana stone for 50.000 Credits.
From his whole fortune, only 50.000 Credits were left.
It was 8 am when Jason went outside with Artemis on his shoulder.
He called a shuttle, like always, and went on his way to the one-star wild zone.
Before that Jason sold the carcasses of the seven beasts he killed, gaining him a huge fortune of 14 Credits.
Keeping the carcasses would probably be better than selling them but Jason had no use for them at the moment and their body would only rot in his spatial storage.
Without an integrated cooling system, meat and other food would only get bad inside the storage so it was better to sell it than wasting the beast's death.
Jason was really uncomfortable around crowds of people and he rushed out of the shop he sold the carcasses as soon as possible while avoiding eye contact with everyone.
Artemis was looking at the beast corpses when Jason took them out but there was only marginal interest in them and nothing much for her as she was saturated.
Continuing his journey Jason stepped through the dome once again 40 minutes later.
Jason pondered if he should set up a tent for the next few days as he had to waste a lot of time driving back and forth.
Adding the price for the shuttle each time, Jason decided to buy a tent and other necessities in the evening.
Today he was much more comfortable to fight than the day before and his confidence reached a new high as his combat prowess increased due to fixing some of his flaws.
He wanted to try fighting a two-star wild beast and looking around for two hours Jason found a solo two-star fanged coyote.
Sneaking up to the fanged coyote Jason was much calmer than the day before but he was still noticed around 20 meters away from his prey and Jason changed his position into a sprint without hesitation.
But he still didn't use his mana as he had learned that the amount of mana he possessed was too small and could only hold out for a short moment.
Wasting mana? Not with me!
Even if his mana core increased in size the stored amount was still marginal compared to his average pals.
Seeing Jason running up to it, the fanged coyote's eye turned bloodthirsty.
Charging at Jason with it full speed it was faster than the human.
Pouncing at him, Jason was slightly astonished to see that his eyesight was better than the day before.
But there was no time to think about that right now as the coyote's claws were only a short distance apart from Jason's chest.
Seeing the attack clearly, Jason used a little bit of his mana to reinforce his feet and ankles and stopped within a minuscule amount of time causing the claw to miss its target.
It wasn't healthy to stop abruptly out of a full sprint for the ankles and feet but the mana-enhancement protected him from suffering serious injuries as he pierced out with his dagger, aiming at the shoulder.
The dagger pierced easily into the coyote's shoulder, only to stop slightly at the obstacle, also called bones.
But with his grade-1 dagger, bones of a two-star wild beast were comparable to thin sticks, and the bones shattered without much resistance, killing the coyote.
Jason's hand was deep inside the dead coyote's shoulder and even if he had made up his mind about killing beasts…that was too much.
Until now Artemis was still on Jason's shoulder but after killing the coyote it jumped off and used its talons to open up its chest.
Pulling out a pebble-sized black core that radiated some mana, Artemis picked it up and gulped it down.
Magical beasts have mana cores while every beast below them has uncompleted cores.
Wild beasts don't even have a core and when they absorbed mana a black pebble would slowly form.
The black color came from the impurities inside the incomplete mana core and they had to be removed before a beast could enter the next rank or another beast could eat the incomplete core of its prey
Once a wild beast reached the awakened rank or evolved the core would slowly begin to begin form and it was called awakened core.
The evolved beast finished forming the core while unblemished beasts refined their core and finally when a Beast reached the magical beast rank a complete mana core was formed.
Humans were lucky as their mana core was formed since birth and they didn't have to struggle like beasts.
Chapter 27: Glutton
Artemis gulped down the black pebble and looked at Jason with greedy eyes.
It looked like she could eat these incomplete cores full of impurities without worries as she looked at Jason full of desire.
He knew Artemis wasn't hungry. However, she wanted to get some mana as she felt that eating more of this black pebble core would benefit her.
After understanding that these impure cores weren't harmful to her, he was relieved.
So Jason decided that Artemis would get every incomplete core from the beasts he hunted as wild beast cores weren't worth anything.
He was quite happy to find out that she would eat these pebble cores because this was most likely the solution to his financial problem.
Jason wouldn't have to feed Artemis mana cores all the time as he could hunt beasts for her.
Digesting pure mana would strengthen her whole body and maybe it could increase the limits of her race over time or force an evolution.
Normally beasts can only digest a certain amount of foreign mana and strengthen themself until they reached a certain limit but apparently Artemis loved eating these pebbles and Jason continued his hunt happily.
There was a theory about the relation of a beast's potential to the amount of mana one could absorb and how it was related to the evolution of the beast.
The theory said that higher potential equals to an acceptance of more Mana in one's body while more mana equals to a higher percentage to evolve.
But this theory was still not completely processed.
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In the evening one could see the happiest youth one had ever seen as he jumped around with a bright smile with a snow-white owl circling around him.
Jason's combat prowess increased over time and he hunted another three solo two-star wild beast and another group of two two-star beasts which he killed easily with his increased amount of mana.
Fighting against two beasts was relatively difficult but Jason attacked the tendons of one beast causing it to slow down while he defeated the other beast with the help of the Glutton Artemis.
Artemis continued eating the pebbles and Jason felt his body itching all the time while Artemis grew in strength.
When the shuttle arrived Jason calmed down and Artemis vanished inside the magic circle she summoned.
The magic circle was connected to his soul world and only he himself and his soulbounds could use it.
After eating five two-star wild beast pebbles Artemis was completely filled with mana and she had to digest it so she went into the soul world in order to sleep.
Jason thought it would probably be the same as the time when Artemis absorbed all the small mana stones but this time she would have to digest less than before.
Remembering that he had bought another small mana stone he noticed that he had to keep it away from Artemis as she didn't need it right now.
Another thing Jason noticed was that Artemis was a greedy glutton as she didn't know when to stop.
He thought and felt after the third pebble core that she was full but she continued eating these cores as if they were snacks.
Jason had to restrain her otherwise it could be problematic.
Arriving at his apartment, Jason tried to fix the flaws he still had.
Afterward, he used the quantum bracelet to purchase a tent non perishable food and other necessities to camp close to the dome.
Furthermore, he bought a large mana-operated freezer which could hold a bunch of carcasses.
He could even inject incomplete mana cores to operate the freezer which was convenient.
The material of the freezer was cheap but the size of the freezer with over 300 cubic meters caused its price to reach 30.000 Credits.
Jason's funds were slowly dried up but there wasn't much he had to buy after that and he thought the freezer was a good investion.
Requesting the city AI if he could camp close to the one-star plain wild zone, it was accepted within 3 minutes.
All parcels arrived after Jason finished showering and he put the content into his spatial storage.
Then he set down with the Mana stone in his hand.
He wanted to break through and now was the time for it.
Normally he wouldn't need the Mana stone for his breakthrough but the sudden increase in his mana core size due to Artemis shared strength forced him to stabilize everything first.
Using the Mana in his surrounding and inside the Mana stone Jason enveloped himself with a thin mana layer before slowly absorbing everything.
His mana core was filled to the limit and using the Mana he pulled out of the Mana stone to invade it, the Mana core began to grow slowly while black dots inside the core began to get pushed out.
Jason´s pores opened slowly and he couldn´t notice anything in his surroundings because he was immersed in gathering and absorbing the mana around him.
Hours passed and after a deep breath, Jason's pores opened as a black mist was exhaled while his physique grew stronger, bright shining light enveloped him and his mana core stopped enlarging.
Novice rank-3!
Finally!
The last few weeks were exhausting for Jason but it was exciting compared to the straight and boring 9+ years of him gathering mana inside the eyeballs.
Previously Jason was extremely weak and he didn't have any type of strength and everything was boring for him but now it was different.
Getting stronger felt amazing and Jason felt almost addicted to the sensation of growing stronger.
Sensing the increased strength inside him Jason smiled.
After that he decided to open the Heaven's Hell technique to read through it.
Greg had sent him a copy before but only now had Jason enough time to read through it.
There were many pages and the content was complex and written in technical language even for the first Level so Jason had quite some problems reading it at first.
He had to re-read every page a few times until he understood it slightly.
It would probably take a day or two until he remembered every detail but it was necessary for Jason before he would start training his soul as it was one of the most dangerous training methods one could practice.
Even small issues could end with injuring his soul world while major issues could in the destruction of one's soul world.
But this won't happen if Jason follows the descriptions written inside the manual.
It was already late at night and Jason went into bed as he slept in after a short moment.
Chapter 28: Mana-infused blood
Getting woken up through suffocation wasn't something pleasant and Jason was forced to gather his thoughts, as he couldn't breathe due to something soft covering his face.
It was Artemis trying to cuddle with Jason and unknowin
gly she caused him to suffocate a little bit.
Jason was fully awake now and he got out of his bed to notice that Artemis looked more lively and her plumage shimmered faintly.
Only Jason noticed that her whole body was covered with lines of mana flowing through her whole body like blood.
This astonished Jason and he wondered if Artemis blood fused with the digested mana since yesterday because the mana was moving around full of vigor and life.
If that was the case Artemis's strength would increase by a lot because every move she made would be naturally enhanced by mana.
Even if that was the case Jason guesses that the amount of mana fused inside her blood would be almost negligible as it would boost the strength of Artemis by less than 0.001% at the moment and it was more than negligible.
The lines of mana Jason saw were almost invisible and thinner than most threads but still there.
Artemis jumped on Jason´s shoulder after he changed his clothes and both went outside.
Jason was ready to sleep outside and to be honest, he was expectant to sleep on the plains under the sky even if it was inside the dome.
40 minutes later, Jason stepped through the dome again as his hunt began.
Aside from eating a small lunch, he hunted the whole day until around 6 pm when the sun came down.
Jason was pleasantly surprised about his teamwork with Artemis as it was much easier for him to take out two star wild beasts in groups of 2 to 3 with her.
Artemis was a one-star wild beast but she seemed to be extremely smart, causing him to wonder if she would be able to defeat beasts on a higher rank than her own once she gained some combat experience, because most wild beasts were extremely dumb and driven by their instincts.
While Artemis was a very good companion, Jason's combat experience brought him huge results as he was tempted to fight a lone three-star wild beast.
However, he disregarded this thought for now as he could still sense some minor flaws in his technique which he couldn't really detect.
A single fault could cost him his life.