Artemis gulped down the black pebble and looked at Jason with greedy eyes.
It looked like she could eat the incomplete cores that were full of impurities without worries as she looked at Jason, asking his permission to do the same.
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.
Thus, Jason decided to let Artemis consume each and every incomplete core of the beasts he hunted as wild beast cores weren't worth anything.
He was quite happy to find out that she would happily gobble these pebble cores because this would most likely relieve him of some of his financial burdens.
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 could 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 stated that higher potential equals an acceptance of more mana in one's body while more mana equals to a higher percentage of the possibility to evolve.
But this theory was yet to be proved.
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As the sun went down and evening arrived, one could see a youth who was probably living the happiest day of his life as he jumped around with a bright smile as a snow-white owl circled around him.
Jason's combat prowess increased over time and he got much better at killing beasts. He hunted three two-star wild beasts and another pair of 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 had 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. Now, she only 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 had absorbed all the small mana stones but now she would have to digest less than before.
Remembering that he had bought another small mana stone, he realised that he had to keep it away from Artemis as she didn't need it right now.
Another thing Jason had noticed was that Artemis was a greedy glutton as she didn't know when to stop.
He had sensed that she was full after devouring the third pebble core but she continued eating these cores as if they were snacks.
Jason had to restrain her otherwise it could be problematic.
The shuttle dropped him at his apartment, and Jason tried to fix the flaws he still had as he walked inside.
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 drying up but there wasn't much he had to buy after that and he thought that the freezer was a good investment.
He then sought the city AI's permission to camp close to the one-star plain wild zone. He didn't have to wait for long as it was accepted within 3 minutes.
All parcels arrived after Jason finished showering and he transferred the contents into his spatial storage.
Then he set down the Mana stone that had been 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's size due to Artemis' shared strength forced him to stabilize everything on priority.
Using the mana in his surroundings and inside the mana stone, Jason enveloped himself with a thin mana layer before slowly absorbing everything.
His mana core was filled to the brim and he used the mana that he had pulled out of the mana stone to invade the core., It began to grow slowly while the impurities that were 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 by like seconds and after a deep breath, Jason's pores opened as a black mist was expelled out of his body. His physique grew stronger, a bright shining light enveloped him and after a while, his mana core stopped enlarging.
He had officially reached Novice rank-3!
Finally!
The last few weeks had been exhausting for Jason, but it was exciting compared to the bland and boring 9+ years of him gathering mana inside the eyeballs.
Previously Jason had been extremely weak, blind, and had to heavily rely on others for the simplest of things. He had lived a monotonous and lacklustre life but now it was different.
Getting stronger felt amazing and Jason was almost addicted to the sensation of growing stronger and feeling powerful.
A bright smile shone on his face when he sensed the increased strength inside him.
After that he decided to open the file with the Heaven's Hell technique to read through it.
Greg had sent him a copy earlier but only now had Jason gotten enough time to read through it.
There were many pages and the content was fairly complex. It was riddled with jargon that was difficult to understand 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 committed every detail to memory but it was necessary for Jason before he would start training his soul. It was one of the most dangerous training methods one could practice.
Even small issues could lead him to accidentally injure his soul world while major issues could result in the destruction of one's soul world.
But this wouldn't happen if Jason were to follow the process word for word written inside the manual.
It was already late at night after he had read through the technique yet again. His eyes began to drop after learning for hours. Jason closed the copy and crawled into his comfortable bed, falling asleep just after a short moment.
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