Chapter 28 - Mana
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 unknowingly 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.
They hunted four groups over the day all in all 10 two-star wild beasts were killed by him.
Most of his time was used up for searching small beast groups with weak combat prowess.
Artemis was saturated after eating two two-star wild beast cores but she wanted to eat more which Jason interrupted instantly.
He had to maintain the Mana-operated freezer and he wanted Artemis to not eat too much so she wouldn′t leave him for a good nap.
Jason was still unsure how to calculate how much Artemis could digest in a few hours that they could hunt together while Artemis could grow along with Jason.
Still, Jason knew that she could digest around 5 two-star wild beast cores in one night so eating five over the whole day should be fine for now.
He could increase it later on but for now, giving her five two-star wild beast cores was the best solution for Artemis to grow stronger during the night.
She had to accompany Jason during the day while earning combat experience, which led him to his previous solution
He felt lonely since his mother died, even Greg who he hadn't called previously was growing attached to him.
Now with Artemis′ birth, he suffered a little bit, even though he knew she was with him during her slumber but she wasn't really there in a materialistic way.
His hunting skills increased each day and Jason hoped that he would be able to kill five star wild beasts in less than 3 weeks.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to enter an A-grace city let alone a school there.
Jason used the remaining wild beast cores to maintain the Mana-operated freezer and it looked like the freezer could be operated for a day with his remaining five two-star wild beats cores.
The best thing about the freezer was that even if Jason stored it inside his spatial storage, it would still work perfectly.
One could say that the large freezer was comparable to a small integrated cooler and it was definitely cheaper.
Jason practices his martial art under the clear night sky and it felt much better than train in a small apartment.
After that, he took out a basin and poured water inside to wash up.
When Jason finished cleaning himself, he opened the Heaven's Hell manual and read it for a few hours before he went back inside the tent to sleep.
He fell asleep soundly while Artemis digested her incomplete wild beast cores.
During the next day, nothing special happened except his tries to hunt slightly bigger groups of at least 3 two-star wild beasts when he came back to his tent.
He saw a few hundred luxurious mansion-sized tents erected and compared to his two-person tent they looked gigantic.
Probably around 20 people could stand in such tents with enough space left to walk around.
Jason wondered what's going on but he hoped that they would train inside the pen star plain wild zone as he had trouble avoiding so many beasts all the time.
The one-star zone Jason entered every day was overpopulated by almost every kind of beast but the main problem was that the beasts gathered up in bigger groups instead of striving around alone.
Jason had to avoid many beast groups and he was often way too close to get detected and attacked by them which was slightly scary.
If these mansion-sized tents had trainees inside, they would most probably hunt huge numbers of wild beasts, decreasing his efforts to walk around inside the wild zone tremendously.
Today he hunted 15 two-star wild beasts and he gave Artemis five of them while another 5 were used for the freezer before eating something and improving his martial arts.
After an hour Jason stopped his practice and he took out the Heaven's Hell manual to read it through.
Another two hours passed and it was already dark while only a few lights and the stars lightened up the surrounding.
Jason remembered now every crucial detail of the manuals first level and he readied himself to use the technique today.