Chapter 74 - Crude And Cowardly?

Jason ran with his highest possible speed while scanning through his own body.

Never had Jason thought that he could breakthrough in a single hour and consolidate his mana core with the remaining two hours, which was extremely fast.

The mana around the sea was like a paradise for him and Jason hoped he could come back there sometime in the future.

After entering the 6th Novice rank, his mana core size broke through the 7th rank easily, while his physical strength was at the 6th rank infinite close to the 7th rank.

Artemis was more of a mana beast than a physical contributor for Jason and his mana felt vigorous while swirling inside his body.

When he landed inside the water, Jason entered his soul world for a second in order to look how much his soul energy improved by ranking up.

Apparently, it increased by around 0.2 when he ranked up to the 6th Novice rank, which could be considered slightly above the commonly average.

Arriving at the arena, only ten seconds were left as Jason stood there with wet hair and clothes.

The clothes he put on got wet because Jason didn´t waste time to dry himself and clothes.

His classmates began to laugh when they saw him running towards the arena completely wet.

"Yoo...mud-head... Did you fail to drown yourself?"

"Hahaha….Idiot!!"

"Did he fail in running away by swimming for a bit?"

"Does swimming increase one´s courage?"

Listening to his classmate's words, he was dumbfounded.

Why should he drown himself? And how can one fail in running away by swimming? Was this student's brain out of mud or was he just simple dumb and clueless.

Jason didn't answer anyone as he stood in front of the teacher, who told him to change into a dry set of clothes after cleaning his body.

Till knew that Jason jumped into the lake in order to clean himself and at the same moment to not waste any time, so he gave him some time to clean and dry himself.

"Let's start the matches. Jason can follow us after he changed into a new set of clothes."

He said in order to change the attention towards the upcoming battles.

When Jason arrived at the designated arena ten minutes later, there were already a few injured youths at the side with broken arms, cuts, and various elemental injuries but nobody seemed to be seriously injured.

Next to the injured youths stood a 3-meter tall whiteish-golden furred wolf with two golden crystals grown on its forehead instead of horns.

The wolf released a calming and purifying energy that could slowly heal the injured youths.

Jason noticed that this wolf was a beast with either the light or holy affinity.

While light abilities were inferior out of both of them but Jason couldn't differentiate the affinities as he had never read either os their mana fluctuations.

Additionally, Jason didn't know what beast it was except its canine race as he had never seen this race within the beastarium.

Looking around the arena, its construction was pretty simple with a few quadratic reinforced stone platforms as the sparring area while the platform could be surrounded by a cubic protection field if needed.

This protection field could absorb all kinds of attacks below the Magus rank hindering them in leaving the combatant area and to prevent injuries among the spectators.

However, for the first spars, this protection field was not activated so the teacher could save the two combatants if needed.

Deflecting adept ranked attacks was not even worth lifting a finger for him.

Releasing some mana was more than enough for Mr.Greil.

Mr. Greil saw Jason and called him onto the platform with his seat neighbor as first spar.

Standing opposite each other, both got into position while Jason scanned his classmate's mana to find out what kind of elemental ability his opponent had, if there was one.

However, Jason was lucky and Nr.224´s mana seemed normal, without any transmutation from elemental affinities as a small smile emerged on his face.

His opponent thought it was somewaht weird for a 5th Novice rank to smile while fighting against someone 6 levels above.

He thought Jason was overestimating his own capabiltiies and made himself ready to fight, entering a common battle stance.

The teacher gave the starting signal and in Jason´s hand appeared two small knives, while his opponent used a longsword that looked extremely heavy.

His opponent began to rush at him with a speed that surprised Jason.

Calming down within a millisecond, Jason took one step forward before he changed his direction without delay in order to step backwards with large strides.

Jason was happy on his inside while his smile froze on the outside causing his opponent to feel happy before their real clash even began.

His opponent's speed was fast but not fast enough to overwhelm Jason entirely, as he had to carry a heavy and cumbersome long sword with him, while Jason was almost empty-handed.

This happiness of the longsword wielder vanished extremely fast as Jason, who wore the mechanical knife holder, began to throw knives at him.

The accuracy Jason achieved over the last week, was exceptional, as such it was essential difficult for his opponent to deflect the throwing knives.

First, he focused on his opponent's legs, which his opponent deflected with much difficulty as his longsword was heavy and not smooth to handle, slowing him down by a large deggre only to widen the range between both of them.

After throwing the sixth knife, Jason penetrated the longsword wielder´s defense and hit his shoulder, inflicting a light injury that would worsen over time as it would be constantly shifted.

Moving to the left and right in order to avoid leaving the combat area, the spectators began to blame him for being a coward, which Jason didn't even notice.

He was too focused on his fight, when his opponent was suddenly only a meter away from him-

With wrath in his eyes, the longsword wielder slashed at him.

Jason was still completely calm and analysed the situation within a moment, as he used a quarter of his mana in order to enhance his legs.

He bend down, only to jump into the tiger's den straight to his opponents side.

The swordwielder´s legs were already injured and his reflexes were much slower than Jason´s which gave him a excessive advantage.

Before his opponent could do anything, Jason already pierced into both femoral veins, which is between the calves and lower thigh, with his throwing knives, causing his opponent to cry out in pain as he kneeled down unconsciously.

Stopping the fight immediately, Jason was sure the fight was obviously over, as Nr. 224 was immediately brought next to the other injured students.

Even though the disparity between both of their ranks was wide, Jason´s combat experience and choice of weapon was much better.

Furthermore, Jason focused less on looking great or a prideful tactic.

Surrounded by the light or holy energy, his blood congealed and the wound began to heal slowly.

Looking at his opponent who looked like he was about to cry, Jason didn´t know what to think…

`I´m not too cruel, right?` as his facial expression turned unsightly.

It was only now that he realized his other classmates looked at him with disgust as if the fight was sickening to them.

"Scaredy-Cat … the only thing you can do is running away, HAHAHA...even if you beat your opponent, he was only nr 224. Don´t think you can do anything"

"Running away and throwing knives….everyone can do that… your nothing special" A subordinate of Leo Heart said.

"That was unfair!! How dare you run away" Some idiot lamented

Jason could only now understand, what they were saying and their stupidty annoyed him extremely, before he turned to Mr.Greil who declared.

"Jason Stella won the fight and is now Rank: 224. Anyone who says he won because he is scared or fights unfairly, can try to fight someone 6 levels above your own rank without using tricks.. I´ll be waiting."

Turning to Jason he said

"Your fight was decent. Do you want to continue?"

"I need ten minutes to replenish my mana. After that, I´m ready to fight" Jason honestly replied.

It was way too important to replenish his mana right now.

He was sure that he couldn't beat a 5th Adept rank without giving his all, even then it would be quite difficult

After listening to Jason, the teacher called up other students while he spectated their fight.

Meanwhile he passively replenishing his mana, with mana stones laid next to him to accelerate the process.

This was only possible because he trained for more than two weeks, how to passively do that while watching videos.

It was most likely also thanks to the ardurous workout he underwent by Mark, that he was able to persist.

Furthermore, the foundational guide about replenishing mana passively helped Jason a lot in order to basically understand what he had to do.

He fixed the flaws he made when he learned how to passively replenish mana without relying on a guide and was able to replenish his mana passively after that.

A few fights passed and his teacher noticed Jason spectating all fights without doing anything when he emanated a string of mana.

Mr. Greil instantly noticed that Jason absorbed the mana in his surroundings in order to replenish his mana pool as he nodded his head in approval.

It was a decent feat to be able to focus on the battle while replenishing ones mana.

If he also knew that Jason learned to do that within a few weeks, partially without following a guide, Mr.Greil would probably be delighted and shocked at the same time.

Ten minutes passed, when Jason´s mana pool was completely filled while Leo Heart already nagged the teacher to let them fight now, impatiently.

"Ughh… how annoying!! Up with both of you… don´t kill each other.."

Mr.Greil noticed that Leo was somehow a little bit bothered with Jason, even if he wasn't sure why but he wanted to know how far above Jason was able to fight.

Jason stood opposite Leo with a distance of around 50 meters as spiked gauntlets appeared around his hands, causing Jason to curse inwardly.

The choice of weapon was definitely a disadvantage for him.

Looking at Leo´s mana core, he noticed that the mana was slightly transmuted into a thin brownish color, indicating to Jason that he had an earth affinity.

Jason was honest when he thought about his chances to win.

`Ahh I don´t want to` he wailed, when the starting sound was initiated.