Jason was way too exhausted to continue sparring and nobody dared to come closer to them, even though Milo was looking around foolishly, while Bella looked at him like an idiot. 

There was nothing for Jason to do, except watching some spars in front of him, and while observing them he tried to passively gather mana while his sub-area did the same. 

He wanted to figure out if he could stack the passive technique´s effects and increase his mana gathering and absorbing like that.

If that was possible, he could exert much more mana during a fight without worrying about his expenditures. 

Furthermore, he could increase his absorption effect without wasting much time and increase his mana core faster... 

Jason was already close to breaking into the 2nd Adept rank thanks to his cleansed body he received from the baptism and it would only need a few more days to reach the threshold.

With the mana stones he received, he was confident in breaking through multiple times in the next 3 months until the Big Three tournament would start and the only thing he had to take care of was not to be seriously injured or something similar like that.

It didn't even matter if he would be thrown out of the special combat class for a few days which was not that unrealistic, considering that there were thousands of students alone in the 6th branch school.

In the hope that rumors about him would spread, Jason had to defeat Milo and Bella in an extremely terrifying manner.

He was confident that there were already rumors spreading around him, as the last 300 years were not only the age of the mana outbreak but also a time for technology to develop even further, thanks to the seemingly infinite mana supply.

Other than watching spars,  Jason figured out that from his combat experience alone, he was definitely more profound than them, with the only disadvantage being his non-existent proficiency with affinities and his own black origin flame´s affinity usage.

This would give his classmates a large advantage, even though his combat prowess in every other aspect was better thanks to Greg and Seron´s constant help as sparring partners.

He wasn't sure what to do with Milo, but time would tell him and he didn´t want to waste time thinking about that for now.

Before he went home, Jason decided to tell Mr.Greil about his situation with Artemis and requested permission to let her enter the school grounds and the combat arena because he had to enter the combat area everyday thanks to the special combat classes and the upcoming challenges.

Till only nodded his head, without caring much about it because such a request wasn't an exceptionally rare occurrence on Canir´s highschools before he messaged the principal of the affiliated school.

While the principal only looked at the message with shock, both Jason and Till weren't aware of what they did to the unfortunate principal, who had never seen such a case from a first-grader in his whole career.

If Old Drake heard this, he would also be astonished about Jason´s soulbond evolving after a few months already, even though he was rather tolerant to shocking news, but fortunately, he was the principal of the main school.

At the Fler´s, Jason saw Greg and Malia and both looked like they were beaten into a pulp, causing Jason to run towards them.

Upon figuring out that they also entered the special combat classes of their grade, Jason began to laugh for a few minutes.

Even though Jason laughed, he was extremely astonished to see Greg obtaining a spot in the special combat class, and it looked like he fought with all his might, which Jason admired.

And only now did he also realize that Greg broke into the 4th Adept rank, which was probably thanks to the pressure he had to overcome during his fight, which was something to celebrate for.

Considering Greg´s classmates' average strength at the 7th Adept rank, the top students of his class should already be at the 9th Adept stage.

Adding a low/mid evolved beast to his calculations, Jason calculated that Greg must have defeated someone with an Expert rank physique.

'How the hell did he win?' Jason asked himself, but how should he know, that the reinforced horned bull unsealed a part of its hidden bloodline, enabling it to increase Greg´s physique by a few levels for a short amount of time.

Only due to this [Berserk] skill, Greg called it later was it possible for him to barely enter the combat class ranking.

*Meanwhile Jason´s thoughts* 

There was still the possibility that Greg´s class had only weak combatants or was filled with youths playing lowkey, but considering that it was the main school and checking Greg´s injuries, that looked extremely serious even after Gabrialla healed him, showed his will to enter the special combat classes.

Jason could only nod in admiration as his view about Greg changed somewhat.

Malia looked better than Greg but still injured, with her burned clothes and disheveled hair.

Apparently, she also fought the top of her class to enter the special combat class, and considering that she was already in the top 10 classes, it was even more difficult for her, even though she was already at the Master rank as one of the only ones.

Her being at the Master rank was also the reason that she barely defeated her opponents, as her combat prowess was rather bad compared to real prodigies in Astrix.

Her mana aptitude was superior to others while her combat aptitude could have been better, which doesn´t really matter as she has a wide knowledge.

Furthermore, nobody would ever force her to fight someone with a life or death battle, at least Jason hoped so.

Having reached the Master rank at the age of 16, she would probably be able to compress her mana and create a drop of mana before she turns 20 years old which is definitely a great feat.

The aptitude towards mana on Canir was not per se better than on the archipelagos, while only the big family clans and companies increased this aptitude ratio slightly, by inheriting their mana aptitude to their descendants.

There were always exceptions, either positive or negative while both Jason and Malia could be said to be positive examples.

After they talked with each other for some time, everyone went into their own room to absorb mana or to train outside, honing their combat techniques.

Right now the most important thing for everyone was to increase their combat prowess and mana core rank to gain a good ranking on the Big-Three tournament if they were still able to take hold onto their spots, as the benefits were just too good.

Jason wanted to break into the 2nd Adept rank before Friday or rather before Artemis finished her evolution and because of that, he took out a few mana stones to actively absorb mana, before he took Scorpio out of the bag with all the mana stones within.

Some of the mana stones lost a little bit of their luster but Scorpio´s mana absorption rate was much slower than Artemis and his own, causing Jason to place Scorpio next to him before he began to absorb mana for the next few hours until he switched to the Heaven´s hell technique.

After finishing the five-braided soul energy helix, Jason was once again awoken which leads him to absorb for another few hours mana.

He knew that the practical Artisan exams would start tomorrow, but he wasn't even the tiniest bit worried, as he knew the crux for most of the basic things to do thanks to the books he started to read.

Jason hoped he would be allowed to forge a graded weapon instead of some basic things which were almost worthless.

In addition to that, he was expecting what kinds of herbs he would receive to concoct a potion and what type of rune he would have to inscribe to pass the exams.

But somehow, Jason had a bad feeling that he would be disappointed tomorrow.

Reading the few dozen profound books with thousands of sites each in addition to Shane and Dalia´s teachings would probably be much more helpful than the Rank-3 and Rank-4 lectures he would be able to attend.

Jason had two monsters as masters, after memorizing the books in his memory chip, he would finally be able to learn something from them and Dalia could maybe even increase Scorpio´s potential once they meet again.

As of now, Jason was forbidden to contact them, as a kind of motivation or punishment, which he couldn't really understand.

The only exception was if something urgent happened or he finished memorizing all books.

This was some kind of passive torture to him and he lamented about this a lot, before he washed up, changed his clothes, and went into bed.

---- 

Waking up early in the morning once again thanks to Scorpio stinging him, Jason finished his morning workout, washed up, changed into his uniform, and ate something for breakfast when his shuttle arrived.

Inside the shuttle, Jason practiced the Heaven's Hell technique like always and noting that he reached soul energy of 17.1 units made him joyous, even though it wouldn't be enough for Artemis.

Inside school, he received the location for their practical test and it was in a small extra building that looked like a miniature artisan tower.

However, in reality, it was probably only an exquisite warehouse as he noticed that the forges he could see were portable and quite advanced at that.

The interior of the large hall, they were inside, was crude and if Jason was not wrong, nobody cared about this building as cobwebs and could be seen everywhere.

Jason smiled weirdly as the contrast between the high-technology advanced forges and the whole building seemed to have an intentional effect.

They tried to increase the Artisan tower's reputation, even though some of their school's teachers looked unpleased.

Nevertheless, Jason didn't care either way and he sat on his designated forge, patiently waiting for everyone to enter the room.

One-by-one the examiners came inside and unsurprisingly it was the same blacksmith and runemaster he had seen before while Antalia stood in front of the once again, eyeing Jason with curiosity.

This caused him to shudder and he decided to ignore the busty woman´s gazes, focusing on his forge, when he heard the task they had to accomplish