Chapter 86 - First Level

Over the rest of the week, nothing special happened, while the first students finished their assignment on the third day.

They choose their desired rewards with gleaming eyes, while some other students sustained serious injuries.

At the end of the week, around 40 students had come up with plans to kill beasts two stages higher than their own rank.

While some of them assassinated their prey, others backstabbed fighting beasts and killed them like that or installed traps that would kill them.

Weirdly enough, there were only a handful of students, that poisoned their targets as he did.

Meanwhile, a few classmates were even able to fight beast two stages higher head-on.

Upon looking closer, Jason noticed that their mana core was relatively low-ranked while their mana core size was extremely large.

Furthermore, it looked like almost all of them were special assigned students with a scholarship or like Jason knew some nobles that used their nobility rights for them.

Jason concluded that their first soulbond had to be an evolved beast or their soul was unique in some ways, but he didn't really care about these people as he didn't have enough time to understand his chosen technique completely.

The last week was extremely important to him because he had to understand at least the first level before his teacher would stop answering his questions about the [Splitting Mind] technique.

He hadn´t slept for a single minute over the last week while the only time he could relax was during the time he fed Scorpio with the holy white bacuri fruit juice and during the practice of the Heaven's Hell technique.

It was extremely tiring, but using mana stones to replenish his mana, Jason could his sleepless state without having too many issues.

Seeing Scorpio scarfing down the first small pieces of the holy white bacuri fruit was astonishing to him, as his soulbond began to writhe in pain almost instantly.

The astonishing fact was, however, once Scorpio stopped writhing in pain, he wanted to eat the next piece.

If Jason didn´t stop Scorpio from eating the holy white bacuri fruit, he would be worried about his soulbond's health.

Maybe his soulbond would only be in pain for a short period after eating the holy white bacuri fruit wholly? Maybe not and Jason wasn´t sure about that, but safety first!

Even so, Scorpio grew up to a length of 8 centimeters and it was infinitely close to reach the three-star wild beast rank which was its innate limit

Jason thought it would have its second molting when it reached the three-star rank which wasn't far away.

But that wouldn´t mean Scorpio was matured once that happened...

Jason found out that his purity theory was working as he began to notice the first faint, almost invisible strands of black lights radiating from Scorpio´s mana core a day ago, which caused him to be extremely joyous.

His soul energy was increasing steadily and it wouldn't be long until he would reach the threshold of 10 soul energy, which Jason longed for.

The soul energy was already stable and purified enough in order to start practicing the second level of the Heaven´s Hell technique while the only requirement left was soul energy of 10 units.

Jason was infinitely close to completely understand the first level of the splitting mind technique which would allow him to form the first sub-area inside his mind, which was his current goal.

This would be the perfect time for him.

Once he finished constructing the first sub-area, Jason would only need to assign the tasks to the sub-area and the task would be like playing an idle game, receiving the benefits from it, without lifting a single finger.

Right now Jason sat in the classroom with the 40 other students who passed the assignment and Mr.Greil was walking around busily, answering everyone's questions in a detailed manner.

His other classmates were even worse of than Jason because most weren't as persistent and determined as he was, even if they only took a Tier-3 technique with one- or two-star difficulty.

While not a single one picked a special or unique technique, the students who had an elemental affinity took the particular advanced affinity book, while others preferred offensive techniques with their most skilled weapon.

If everyone who finished their assignment worked hard through the next few weeks, their combat power would soar through multiple ranks, allowing them to fight beasts at least one stage higher than them head-on, without risking their lives with traps and other dirty tricks.

At least that's what Jason thought.

He was still unsure why their teacher was so generous to them but apparently, he was either greedy to improve his student's combat power to fight the other classes head-on, or he had some other reasons that he couldn´t comprehend with his available knowledge.

The Splitting mind technique had various stages or levels and each one would enable his mind to construct an additional sub-area.

While the first level was the easiest, the following were only becoming more difficult to understand and comprehend.

But that was not even the worst.

The brain was still a mystery for humanity and it was too dangerous and taxing for one's mind to create too many sub-areas.

Mr. Greil said that one should at most create two or three sub-areas because creating a fourth sub-area was not possible by the momentary means.

What these means were, was unknown to Jason but he thought it might be the mana core rank or the degree of tempering one´s brain went through.

Mr.Greil even told him that if he was able to create his first sub-area before reaching the Magus rank, he shouldn't construct a second one before ranking up to the Magus if not the Grandmagus rank.

Jason was only half-heartedly listening to this advice as he wanted to create two sub-areas as soon as possible due to his passive mana gathering technique and another theory that spun in his mind a long time ago.

The permanent tempering of one's soul world core!

It was said that one can immediately use the produced soul energy ejected by the soul world core in order to inject it again into the soul world core by forming a chain or circle with the ejected soul energy.

This could cause a continuous tempering of one's soul world core.

However, this would also cost a lot of focus and brought other issues.

First, one had to be careful in order to make everything correct, as a fault during the soul energy injection could damage the soul.

Furthermore, one would have to collect the ejected soul energy to form a thread before injecting it.

All these procedures would take a lot of concentration.

There was also the problem with the time soul energy needed to regenerate.

Normally one would need 24 hours to completely eject one's soul energy out of the core and with a soul energy of 100 units, one would only regenerate around 4.2 soul energy per hour.

Forming a continuous chain of procedures would be entirely useless for someone with such a little soul energy.

This was also useless for someone with soul energy of 1000 because the regeneration would be around 0.7 soul energy per minute.

One would need to divide the focus on the necessary things one was doing while at the same time carefully form the ejected soul energy into threads, before injecting them at the right spot of the soul world core.

Jason thought, once he created his second sub-area, he would use this area to continuously temper his soul energy because his regeneration time was a third compared to others which meant that he would regenerate almost 2.1 soul energy per minute while having a soul energy of 1000 units.

He was almost daydreaming and lost focus for a moment before his eyes stared back at the splitting mind technique.

It was already evening and everyone went home when Jason was still torturing his teacher with questions.

Till was happy that Jason was so diligent and he was even more astonished about his student's comprehension ability because, in a single week, Jason was able to almost completely understand the first level of the Splitting mind technique: Mind division

Right now, Jason was asking the core questions and Till felt that after answering all questions, Jason might as well start creating his first sub-area.

After the fourth day, Till noticed Jason´s extreme ambition and determination, which caused him to be astounded, and right now Jason looked like his desire to start practicing the first level was devouring him completely.

Jason now knew what to do and how to construct his first sub-area, but there was one major problem, he had to face.

With this in mind, Jason wanted to ask for some advice from his teacher, feeling slightly ashamed.

Clearing his throat, he wasn't sure how to start and Till noticed that as he was already aware of the problem, Jason faced.

"You want to know how to gather enough mana in order to temper your brain, forcing it to split your consciousness without burdening or damaging it, while being at the Novice rank, right?"

Jason´s eyes widened and he could only nod dejectedly.

The thing that annoyed Jason the most wasn't that practicing the first Level: Mind division would be extremely painful, which was kinda logic, but the information that he would need a vast amount of mana.

There were even some rough calculations made, that discouraged Jason quite a lot.

Someone at the magus rank or higher would have to inscribe a large mana gathering circle with the main ingredients being a non-elemental Guardian ranked mana core with more than 100 grade-3 mana stones stored within the circle at the worst.

Even 100 grade-1 mana stones would cost 5 million credits but grade-3 mana stones?

Purchasing a head-sized one with 5 million credits would already be a wonder.

Jason wasn't even remotely close to the magus rank and he researched about certain magical treasures protecting one's brain during the tempering.

Unfortunately, he couldn't find anything within the official websites which left him somehow dejected and frustrated.

His teacher was his last hope because he would know what Jason could do about it as his background seemed special.

"Well...that´s kinda difficult with your capabilities…." Till started and Jason´s heart sunk into the ground before he continued.

"Obtaining a non-elemental Guardian ranked mana core is easy and mana stones are rare and expensive but that's it, a few hundred star-notes should do the job...the main issue is unfortunately something else.

Considering your rank, you would need a high-grade magical treasure to protect your brain during the whole procedure.

Such a treasure can´t be found on Astrix and is also exceptionally rare to find on Canir…."

Jason felt his heart exploding, after trying so hard to understand the technique during the last week, his last hope was about to die when he heard his teacher mumbling.

"Do I have something like that….or at least something similar?..."

Jason wished away the non-existing tears that might begin to pour down his cheeks as he waited patiently for his teacher to say something.

Maybe he could help him… Money can be earned but getting the hang of the treasure Jason required, was almost impossible for him to do with his current capabilities.

After some time it looked like his teacher remembered something as he looked at him with a painful facial expression.

"Can you endure pain? And I mean real pain...maybe you would wish to rather die than to survive… but that won't happen until you finished the designated task...."