Dragged out of his thoughts, Jason looked around, only to see the Daer siblings waiting for them.

Next to them stood two other youths who looked proud and visibly annoyed because they had to wait for him and Malia.

Both youths were roughly as tall as he was, with a height of slightly more than 1.7m, while one of the youths was even smaller than him.

The smaller student had thin eyes, a slightly brown-yellowish skin color, while his hair was black.

Staring at Jason with his brown eyes, he didn't know where exactly he should look.

Jason had never seen anyone with such a skin color as almost all citizens on Astrix had rather fair skin, not like the small youth in front of him.

However, with his facial features, it didn't look bad and Jason smiled at the youth, trying to make a good first impression before he averted his gaze to the taller youth whose hair was also black while his eyes looked extremely eerie due to their brown, almost black color.

The taller youth´s facial features were nothing special, while his skin was pale, almost paper-white, and could be ranked as average or maybe slightly above average at most.

Malia greeted everyone before she started to introduce every team member to Jason and vice versa.

While the taller almost black-eyed youth´s name was Lux Jul, the smaller youth´s name was Lin Yoa.

After everyone got to know each other, Malia´s team started to explain everything to him, while Jason was still scanning through everyone´s mana core once again in order to figure out their team's rough combat prowess.

While the Daer siblings had roughly a mana core size of a 4th Master rank, Theo´s was slightly larger. Lin had the weakest mana core at the 1st Master rank, while his soulbond seemed to amplify it to the 3rd Master rank, which indicates that his soulbond is at least at the mid-unblemished rank, if not at the later-unblemished rank, considering that he only contracted one soulbond, with a high amplification from his soul world core.

Lin´s mana was transmuted into a lush green-brownish mixture which was typical for wood and nature affinities, that were rather rare.

As such, Jason concluded that he contracted some sort of sentient, plant, tree, or something similar, like Dalia did, while Jason wasn't sure what kind of beast it was.

Malia was still at the 2nd Master rank, but due to her having contracted two soulbonds at a high rank, she had the second-largest mana core size of all four of them.

However, Lux Jul was a huge contrast to the four of them, causing Jason to feel extremely uncomfortable when he inspected his mana core.

According to his mana core, he was at the 3rd Master rank, while his mana core size reached the 6th Master rank, which was already extremely strong and would indicate that Lux contracted a magical ranked beast.

However thanks to Jason´s exceptional eyesight, his mana eyes could identify that Lux´s mana had multiple different transmutations, while all of them belonged to the same branch, causing goosebumps to cover him unintentionally...

He had only once felt such a transmuted mana and it was Shane´s…

Even though his master´s transmutation was much denser, it was the transmutation his master's Death-Knight caused.

Lux had a darkness affinity or rather it seemed like he only possessed a Death affinity, which was a branch of the darkness affinity.

This caused Jason to pity Lux slightly, however, this was most likely not needed, because he seemed to do well even without any other affinity, because he contracted multiple death affinity beasts already, indicating a large soul world, while his soul energy had to be equally high. 

However, the feeling Jason got about Lux was weird, and staring at him was even more uncomfortable as if he was looking at something dead yet alive…

He wasn't sure how to describe his thoughts, as Malia tugged at his clothes, dragging him back to the real world.

"Did you even listen to our explanations? If you make a mistake it might kill all of us!" Malia lectured him, as Jason apologized, causing the others to frown.

Lux however noticed Jason´s gaze with interest as a small, yet eerie smile blossomed on his pale face.

Summarizing everything important, Malia glared at him, forcing Jason to repeat everything she said which he did unwillingly before they took out their weapons and other equipment they wanted to prepare before stepping through the rift, even though it was completely useless, as the rift was protected by the government.

However, the youths felt better if they were fully prepared for everything and Jason just decided to tag along.

The rift was still a few hundred meters away from them, but it was better to be safe than sorry as beasts from the other side of the temporary rift could also appear in front of them without anyone noticing.

Once everyone was done with changing their stuff, Jason decided to take a look at the others, only to notice that not a single one of them used a mana weapon or -armor, except himself.

This attracted some attention because everyone could sense the mana fluctuations radiating from his daggers and leather armor. 

While Theo and Jennifer wondered why someone with such high-grade equipment had to venture into a dangerous four-star rift while being at the Adept rank in order to secure expensive treasures to evolve his soulbond, Lux and Lin labeled Jason as someone rich with the need of an adrenaline rush.

However, the only one who was really astonished was Malia, as she seized Jason up from close before she whispered.

"Where did you get this equipment? These things are extremely expensive...Weren't you poor when we first met? How?" 

But Jason just shrugged his shoulders, telling her that he obtained them legally and that he would tell her later after they returned from the four-star rift.

Malia could only lament in her mind and she would remember Jason´s word and nag him later!

Artemis was still squeezed on his shoulder, attracting some attention from Jason´s expedition team, but she remained silent which led to the result that nobody said anything about her existence.

Jason felt slightly uncomfortable because Artemis was the only summoned beast at the moment, as they suddenly stood in front of the rift, barely one hundred meters away from it.

Even though he felt uncomfortable with his soulbond as the only summoned beast, he couldn't help but praise the magnificent runes he perceived with his mana eyes.

Jason couldn´t understand them even a tiny bit, but he still tried to imprint them into his mind, which didn't seem to work well.

This caused Jason to feel slightly dejected, as his surroundings began to attract quite a lot of mana from their surroundings, causing him to turn around.

Looking down towards the ground, Jason estimated to see a total of four large magic circles in front of everyone.

The only exception was Lux as three green-whitish magic circle appeared in front of him, summoning bipedal, humanoid beasts, which immediately filled their surrounding with the stench of death 

'Damn… where did he get these beasts from?!' Jason asked himself, as the surrounding turned uncanny.