It was somewhat difficult to explain what happened to Jason´s mana core and how he increased it by two levels in such a short amount of time but even more confusing for him was that the Fler´s didn´t ask him any questions, neither the siblings nor the parents.

Unbeknownst to Jason, his teacher called Gabriella and Mark to explain the situation roughly in addition to his request, that they should call him if something were to happen to him.

After Gabriella and Mark got to know what happened, they were extremely shocked and worried about Jason.

Even Mark was worried about Jason as he grew slowly attached to him, which he would never say out loud.

Malia heard her parents talking about Jason and she was even more shocked than her parents, to get to know about his situation, causing her to watch over him when he slept.

It was only on Friday, that Mark and Gabriella had an appointment when Jason wrote them that he woke up in the morning and everyone sighed in relief.

When he returned home from school everything seemed fine but they got another call from Till talking about his killing intent and the cause of it.

The three of them were bewildered and also slightly scared about Jason´s health.

Nevertheless, when Jason dragged out Greg to the combat grounds, everyone spectated the spar carefully.

Jason´s teacher told him that it was still unknown when his killing intent would surface.

As such, every battle or injury could be the cause and they were not only worried about Jason but also Greg´s health.

But their worry was needless because the spar between Jason and Greg took place like always.

There was only one important difference.

Jason was using his daggers mantled with mana to dull them differently than before due to the knowledge about the Weaponry Knight technique imprinted into his refined mind.

His whole demeanor changed compared to before and his attacks seemed to be more violent.

Jason´s set of sequences was somehow different and Greg only noticed that he being overwhelmed over the course of their spar.

He couldn't even fight back on the same rank? 

This couldn´t be accepted and Greg decided to loosen up the restriction from the soulbonds amplification that enhanced his physique almost to the second-Adept rank within a second.

His mana core restriction was also loosened up and reached barely the first-Adept rank.

Greg´s grin was sly and what he said caused everyone to frown "Now it's fair, right? We have the same mana core rank and both of us get the share of our soulbond...hahaha" 

He laughed and Jason was now the one being overwhelmed.

It was still endurable and Jason was also beginning to grin

`Finally` Jason only thought with a bright smile blossoming on his face.

Previously it nagged Jason, that Greg restricted his strength so much in order to fight him head-on.

He was still overwhelmed all the time but now, without the strength of his reinforced horned bull, Greg would be the one getting overwhelmed while fighting at the same rank.

Jason was still unfamiliar with the Weaponry Knight technique, its sequences, and how to perfectly use them. 

As such his superior control over mana helped him to distribute his mana accurately without thinking much and Jason was able to adapt slowly while Greg pressured him. 

The mana-consumption of a Tier-1 technique was much more compared to tireless techniques and under normal circumstances, a Novice rank would only be able to use tiered techniques for two minutes at most. 

But right now more than four minutes passed and only now Jason was about to slow down in using the Weaponry Knight technique because he used up his mana. 

Greg had also problems providing enough mana for his tiered martial art technique and he could only sustain it because he was replenishing his mana with the passive mana replenishing technique. 

The only problem Greg had to go through, was that once he focused his mind too much on the mana replenishing process, Jason would immediately use his opening to attack him which distracted his focus greatly, causing his fighting style to become chaotic. 

In the end, Greg only won the spar because of his superior soulbond that gave him a decent boost for his mana core size and the enormous boost in his physique. 

This frustrated Greg much more than Jason who was panting heavily because of exhaustion with a radiant smile on his face, as he recalled some flaws during the practice and how to fix them. 

Jason looked at Greg with gleaming eyes while sweating out of every pore.

Greg was frustrated about his fragile concentration during the fight and the smile on Jason´s face looked devilish to him, causing goosebumps to spread all over his skin.

Even if his eyes only showed ambition and determination Greg had a bad premonition.

"Let´s replenish our mana and continue!! Please, Greg?!" Jason looked at Greg with puppy eyes and the others who were worried about the two youths' health, began to chuckle.

Greg however frowned, but he couldn´t decline Jason pleading.

The following week was intense for Jason and a few things happened.

Scorpio was eating everything that came between its fangs and grew extremely fast.

He reached the length of 13 centimeters and broke through his racial limit without any indicators that the maturing process would stop.

Scorpio´s third molting happened on Saturday, completing his breakthrough into the four-star wild beast rank.

He would now occupy 6 soul energies, while Scorpio strengthened Jason´s physical toughness and bone structure, which caused it to reach a physique comparable to a normal 9th Novice. His mana core size was infinitely close to the 9th rank and only a paper-thin space was left between both levels.

Jason´s soul energy reached 10.3 units after Scorpio broke into the four-stars finally reaching the required amount to practice the second level of the Heaven's Hell technique.

He was only able to reach a soul energy of 10.3 units because Scorpio broke through and with Scorpio´s molting, Jason also broke through.

Jason had never thought that after breaking into the 8th Novice rank, he would break into the 9th Novice rank so soon, but it was all thanks to the passive mana gathering and refining technique that continuously provided him with mana and absorbed it without doing anything at all.

Adding on Jason´s determination to reach the 9th Novice rank before the class battles, he actively absorbed mana into his core, increasing his absorption speed even more.

Jason had reached the 9th and last level of the Novice rank, which made him quite happy.

It hadn't been long since he started absorbing mana into his core and Jason felt overjoyed that he reached such a `high` rank in the meantime.

Breaking into the Adept-rank would probably take a while because the obstacle between the ranks was much harder to overcome than the small hindrances on the 4th and 7th level of each rank.

Jason had to gather and absorb the needed amount of mana until he reached the required amount to break through without problems which would take some time as he wanted to prevent the marginal possibility to injure his core due to a lack of mana.

His physique was stronger than normal 9th Novice ranks but it was still not enough to overcome the gap between the Novice- and Adept- rank, while his mana core size was a little bit less impressive than his physique.

Even so, it was still better than a normal 9th Novice rank with a weaker soulbond or even without one.

It was Saturday evening when Jason re-read the second level of the Heaven´s Hell technique, also called Helix.

From the name, one could almost immediately understand what one had to do but there were still many different kinds of paths one could take to improve the enhancement the soul energy could achieve.

The most common way to practice the second level of the Heaven´s Hell technique was also the easiest and safest path.

One would have to divide the soul energy equally into two parts and intertwine them with each other, forming a firm string that would be slightly thicker than the sole thread one would previously have.

As such the pain while piercing and injecting the intertwined thread into the soul world core would be more painful than on the first level.

More uncommon ways would be dividing the soul energy thread into more than two parts and intertwining them with each other, but the main problem would be that one would have to be extremely careful and `braid` the threads exactly, without making a mistake.

Doing something wrong could be quite harmful to one´s soul as the faulty braid would be rejected by the soul world core and one would have to disentangle the whole thing.

At the same time, one would need to focus on controlling all divided parts of the soul energy, because soul energy was like an eel squirming around.

To hold control over two threads at the same time was already difficult and doing the same thing with multiple threads would require a lot of focus, exquisite control over soul energy, and much practice which would need a long time to acquire. 

Jason had exquisite control over his soul energy because he practiced the Heaven's Hell technique three times a day for slightly less than 3 months, which was comparable to others practicing it 9 months at the first level.

But he wouldn't be overconfident and just create multiple threads as he wanted to avoid possible pain and minimize it.

In the end, Jason divided his soul energy into two equal parts and intertwined them with each other.

Jason made the threads paper-thin to avoid pain even more.

After he finished braiding the two soul energy threads with each other, he injected them into his pebble-sized soul world core.

If he had to estimate the increase in pain, Jason would probably say it was double as painful as the first level but comparing it to the torture he endured slightly more than ten days ago, it was like a mosquito bite. 

It itched a little bit but that was it, which caused Jason to sigh in relief.

The difference between the first and the second level of the Heaven's Hell technique was almost immediately noticeable.

The second level was probably around 50% better, probably slightly more and Jason wondered how much the difference would be with more threads braided together but that would wait until Jason was confident in not making a mistake while braiding.