After eating, Jason noticed that both Malia and Greg were still preoccupied with absorbing mana and Jason noticed that they haven't moved since they started their trip.

This astonished him extremely.

Before, he thought that everything depends on one's wealth in the end.

Jason knew that both Greg and Malia were strong but previously his opinion about them was different and he thought that it was only because of their family's wealth.

They were really determined and Jason found himself much more motivated than before.

Sitting down again, he absorbed the mana more greedily and the sky turned dark, while the interior of the hovering truck began to shine in a white light.

Jason was breaking through and everyone noticed that the mana around Jason gathered forcefully with an incredible suction, slowing down Greg´s and Malia´s mana gathering greatly.

They noticed that Jason was about to break through, finished their mana absorption, and looked at Jason without distracting him.

Gabriella and Mark didn't know that Jason only absorbed mana for almost two months yet, but Greg and Malia knew it and they were shocked to see Jason breaking through once again.

Even if most people said the first steps are the easiest and fastest while increasing one's mana core rank, this wasn't necessarily the case without a certain degree of control.

One needed to control the mana through all mana channels and inserting it afterward gently into the mana core and to do something like that took a lot of time and was very taxing to the body.

While Greg´s sensitivity to mana wasn´t that high, Malia had a high sensitivity.

Both began to sense mana at the age of 8 and Greg took half a year to reach the 2nd Novice rank while Malia needed 2 months to reach it.

As they were really young it was even more taxing to their body to absorb mana for too long and the time to make a big circle through one's mana channels was relatively long causing their growth to slow down a lot.

It takes a child quite a long time to comprehend what mana was, how precious it was, and how to absorb it more efficiently.

For them, it seemed like Jason´s sensitivity and control over mana was extremely high even if his mana core rank was still below the average middle school graduates.

Greg was jealous because his sensitivity was worse compared to Jason and Malia´s and he noticed more and more that he had no time to grow stronger if he didn´t want Jason to overthrow him in the future.

Right now his only unique characteristic compared to his future classmates would be his soul and his first soulbond which would increase his combat prowess.

Greg estimated that he would only be an average student in Cyro-City because of his low rank which frustrated him.

Seeing Jason breaking through one shackle after another, while ha also had such a special mutated snowflake owl, Greg could only do a single thing!

Work harder! He would never allow Jason to catch up to him!! At least he would give his best to prevent that.

Greg decided that Jason would be his arch-rival, even if he was less than a small mouse before when he was blind…. Right now Jason looked like a fierce dragon to Greg, when he saw the white shining cocoon slowly dissipating and Jason´s golden eyes that opened slowly, gleaming with vigor, while his black hair fluttered lightly in the air thanks to a perfectly timed draft.

Meanwhile, Malia had extremely complicated feelings.

On one side she was astonished about Jason´s speed but her mother had already told her that Jason had mana eyes and that he was probably extremely sensitive to mana because of that.

But after seeing Jason after the cocoon vanished, her heart fluttered slightly and she had to pinch herself to fall out of a trance.

`He is more than 2 years younger than you!! What are you even thinking, you wench!!!`

Shaking her head, she congratulated Jason, before she averted her gaze and took something out of her spatial storage to eat

Everyone congratulated Jason and he smiled lightly before he scanned his own body again.

Reaching the 5th Novice rank felt nice. His physique and mana core received both a nice push, while his mana core reached the size of a quasi 7th Novice, his physique broke into the 6th Novice rank thanks to the amplification provided by Artemis through their soulbond.

There was a big difference between a mana pool of a 6th and a 7th Novice rank because it was a minor threshold one had to break before one could break into the level and Jason was about to weaken this limit once he reached the 6th Novice rank or Artemis reached the four-star wild beast rank.

The limit other people had to face, would be easily weakened by him reaching the 6th Novice rank.

Jason changed his clothes because they were full of filth and impurities and after he had changed, they talked for some time while eating lunch with a comfortable ambiance.

Afterward, Jason entered his soul world only to notice that his soul energy has increased by a small amount.

Smiling lightly, Jason knew that it was because his mana core increased rank increase.

His physique also increased and his whole body improved because of his breakthrough.

His soul energy was around 5.3 now if he were to estimate it, and Jason was getting more and more confident in himself because the worst thing about him was his low soul energy.

But he was still not able to gather his courage to ask Greg how high his soul energy was because his starting point was much higher than his.

Thinking solely about the soul energy provided by the reinforced bull, Jason gulped…

Thinking for a moment, Greg was estimated to have soul energy of 450 while a mid-evolved beast has around ~~300.

With a 10% share Greg's soul energy would increase by 30 only because of his soulbond..

Jason didn´t know if Greg practiced the Heaven's Hell technique every day or not, but if he did, his soul energy might have reached something between 600-700 or even more….

He was barely holding his tears, thinking about that but he held them in and decided to practice the Heaven's Hell technique as often as possible because he noticed that his soul energy production rate increased slightly, while his soul world was enlarged concurrently.

Jason´s head was aching all the time but he was almost numb to the pain after such a long time which was somehow good and bad at the same time.