Looking straight into Shane´s eyes, Jason was expectant to receive a pleasant answer however, unfortunately, he was left disappointed with Shane serious explaining

"You shouldn´t even remotely think about entering a four-star rift with your current combat prowess. You're simply too weak, and you can at most defeat weaker evolved ranked beasts thanks to your elemental affinity.

However, their strength is multiple times higher than yours, while they can retort with their own affinity attacks! If you can't defeat an unblemished beast, your life will be under a constant threat, without a high chance to survive.

Trying to adventure through the rift for the sole reason to find treasures that will solve your financial problem is stupid and arrogant. 

Even fighting against beasts at the same rank, you shouldn't be too full of yourself.. With your physique and mana core size, you´ll be able to fight mid-awakened beasts easily, but without your affinity, even peak-awakened and the weakest evolved ranked beasts will tear you apart as if you're a piece of paper."

This was definitely not what Jason wanted to hear and his facial expression showed this, causing Shane and Dalia to smile dryly, as they could roughly understand their disciple's reasoning.

When Shane continued, Jason´s facial expression soured even more.

"The four-star rift is only a temporary one which will dematerialize in a month from now on. Within a month you´ll never be able to reach the required strength to survive on the other side. I´m sorry, but you won't be able to use this opportunity!"

Even though Jason was stubborn, it would be stupid for him to enter the rift just like that.

But it still hurt his heart slightly, as he wanted to experience how the other side of the rift would look like.

`Were there buildings from other civilized races, or only nature in its purest form? What kind of unknown magical treasures, beasts, herbs, ores, and mysterious things exist there? `

He wanted to know everything and reading books solely began to bore him, as it was a one-sided action without pushing his adrenaline higher.

In the last weeks, he hadn't left Cyro-City for a single time with the last adventure being his journey through the goblin settlement. 

He felt as if he was imprisoned within Cyro-City, even if he had more than enough tasks to focus on.

If he continued everything according to his own plan by increasing his combat prowess as well as possible, without being hindered, he wouldn't leave the dome for quite some time.

But was that really what he wanted? If Jason was honest, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do because it was obviously extremely dangerous in a place with unblemished ranked beast as the average combat strength

Even so, Jason grew more curious about the other side, and he tried to find a solution to satiate his desire, without doing anything suicidal.

For him, it felt like the last few weeks were just too one-sided with his affinity training, forging, Heaven's Hell practice, and so on.

There was an indestructible demotivation spreading slowly through every inch inside his body, planting inside his heart which only Jason could feel.

Jason was sure, if there wasn't a change in his schedule soon, he would go insane or maybe feel unmotivated to do anything at all.

After discussing and explaining the incident about the sudden materializing rift with other facts that involved the rift's appearance, Jason understood rifts much more.

Because it was still early, he had more than enough time to cleanse other grade-1 ores into purified bars in order to become more proficient with the different types of cleansing processes with all kinds of ores, which was necessary to build a strong foundation.

Time passed slowly and it was already lunchtime when he practiced the Heaven's Hell technique inside his soul world in order to increase his soul energy to 154.8 units.

Thanks to Artemis and Scorpio´s high demand on soul energy, Jason was required to have 200 soul energy units in order to store both of his soulbonds inside his soul world, with an additional 0.01 soul energy unit for his black origin flame, which lustfully gazed at the vacant soul energy inside his soul world.

His black origin flame was already extremely powerful without having annexed a single soul energy unit and Jason wanted to nourish it with soul energy.

The only problem was that he wanted to take one step after another.

If his black origin flame could enhance his physique and mana core size without a baptism, Jason would ponder what to do, but according to Dalia, the only time he would receive an increase in strength and mana core size would come with each baptism, while the flame´s capabilities would increase with the quantity of soul energy units it annexed.

Thinking about his black origin flame, Jason remembered something he wanted to check, as he entered his soul world once again.

Previously, he wasn't sure if the black origin flame was comparable to a normal soulbond because it required a normal soulbond contract, but after checking what he wanted to figure out, Jason was astonished to see that the thin connection between him and the black origin flame became thicker, even if he already expected this outcome.

His eyes widened and his mind was tormented with multiple questions, as a "huh?" escaped from him, which was noticed by Shane and Dalia due to their high mana core rank and exceptional senses.

They would never distract their disciple during his soul energy refining process, but it seemed as if he was done, as they came closer to Jason.

"What´s wrong Jason? Is there an obstacle or something, hindering you in your Heaven's Hell practice, or has something else happened?" Dalia asked while Shane stood next to her equally curious, as Jason looked straight into Dalia´s eyes.

Without trying to hide anything, Jason´s curiosity about a certain question filled his whole mind, overwhelming the other questions by a large margin.

"Is it possible for an origin flame to establish a fortified soul conjunction?" He asked, because the connection between him and the origin flame became thicker, which indicated that not only the communication between them intensified but also their trust, which sounded weird to Jason.

Nodding her head, Dalia pondered how to answer this question in order to satiate Jason´s curiosity, because his eyes seemed to pierce her with his thirst for knowledge.

"Well...That's difficult to answer...Yes, because the connection between the contractor and soulbond origin flame will be strengthened with the compatibility between both increased due to constant usage.

At the same time, I want to answer this with a no, because even after using my silver origin flame for more than a hundred years, I wasn't able to establish a fortified conjunction with it and I haven't heard about a single human capable of doing something like that.

Nobody knows if it is really possible, but according to our knowledge about the soul world and soulbonds', it should be.

Some tried to experiment with their origin flame in order to establish a fortified soul conjunction without any results.

As such, humanity gave up on their experiments for the time being, until everything about the constant threat of foreign intelligent races and strong beasts, would lessen around them with a tranquil ground to continue experimenting.

A few theorists think that the innate compatibility of one's soul world towards the particular origin flame is important, while other theorists say that the constant usage of the origin flame would be the final solution."

Jason nodded his head, after listening, as he remembered his soul world trembling when it perceived the existence of the unawakened black origin flame.

`Was that a sign?` he wondered, but there was obviously no answer and he could only disregard this thought for the time being, as his quantum bracelet vibrated violently.

Looking at his quantum bracelet, he noticed that it was only an announcement from the Vanguard, school, which he wanted to disregard, as he subtly glanced at the content.

[School announcement: Special combat classes will be canceled for the next three days. Normal combat classes will be continued with the Special combat class seats joining them.]

`Is that because of the four-star rift?` Jason asked himself, with the weird feeling that the next few days could change a lot for him.