Chapter 143 - Igniting The Desire To...

The calming potion was one of the most common potions and it was as useful as an expensive calming tea.

Drinking a potion, one would feel refreshed and the tension of one's body would ease up.

The potion was mostly used before important events and exams to calm down, increasing the activity of the mind passively.

Being tensed up would cause students to be worse during exams and tests, while one would be able to think faster about a solution with calm composure after drinking the calming potion.

Antalia inspected the potion carefully.

Before she had already seen Jason using a black flame affinity instead of the burner, which she deemed as a mutated fire elemental being.

But there was something she was suspicious of and inspecting the potion Antalia noticed that the potion was partially cleansed which was not something someone who brewed for the first time should be able to do.

It was only a calming potion and extracting the impurities within wasn't difficult even for proper rank-1 beginner alchemists but Antalia hadn't seen Jason using any kind of method to extract impurities that would explain the purity of the calming potion in front of her.

Uncertain she asked:

"Does your mutated elemental being have the ability to cleanse ingredients to a certain extent"

Antalia didn't expect Jason to reveal his secret but she would combine the signs to herself upon seeing Jason's reaction.

However, surprisingly Jason answered her which she didn't expect.

"You could say so" Previously he was slightly nervous about how to explain the high purity of his inscribing mixture and potions but Antalia gave him the best answer he could choose.

As such he took the opportunity and accepted her idea.

Dalia told him that he could even expel impurities from ores but that would require lots of practice and was quite taxing to one´s body.

Before it was safe to purify high-grade ores, Jason would have to reach the Magus rank or evolve his tierless origin flame, while grade-1 ores were an exception.

The only problem was that neither Jason, Shane nor Dalia knew how much soul energy his black origin fame needed to evolve.

Even Dalia's silver origin flame needed a few hundred soul energy units and it was only a b-rank origin flame while Jason's black one was at least one rank higher.

While Antalia digested Jason´s answer, she wasn´t excessively shocked because she predicted this outcome but it was more like she was envious of Jason finding such a perfect soulbond for all Artisan occupations.

Working with purified materials would result in a qualitative better product which would in return increase the price for the products.

If Jason focused on his Artisan career, according to the talent she was, he would probably be able to reach at least her faster's rank in one of the three occupations and a slightly lower rank in the rest.

Maybe he could even soar higher if his ambition was high enough.

Looking at Jason with twinkling stars, Antalia asked the question she wanted to ask for the last few days since he met her father.

"Do you want to be my disciple? My father also said that he is interested in you, but he told me to not ask you anything regarding master-disciple relationships. I don´t care about what my father said and it's probably nothing special to begin with.

Maybe dad wants to ask you too if you want to be his disciple. Wouldn't that be great?"

Antalia was full of ambition and determined while her eyes gleamed in anticipation

"Please think about my offer! I can provide you with a lot of information and resources and if you want, my dad and I can teach you all our knowledge together...Wouldn't it be great to have a master who is almost a Rank-6 in terms of forging and smithing in addition to a future Rank 5 alchemist?"

She said proudly not forgetting to show off her own and her dad´s talent, but Jason was only smiling faintly

'If you only knew..' Jason thought and he could barely hold in his laughter.

Before he shattered her joyous time, he asked if he passed the exam, which she affirmed eagerly.

She only wanted to hear Jason approving her as master, but his next words shattered her dream immediately.

"Ms. Sharon, thanks for this kind offer but I have to reject it. I have other plans. Please keep in mind that you owe me a request from the Artisan tower"

Jason said before he took his calming potion back which he stored inside his storage device.

Antalia looked at him with a flabbergasted and depressed expression, not knowing what she did wrong or rather why Jason should reject her generous offer and she was about to rebuke his rejection, when a unanimous feeling approached her, preventing her from saying anything.

Jason noticed that and opened his mana eyes, only to see familiar mana fluctuations within the shadows, enveloping Antalia.

Shane didn´t like the young busty woman next to Jason and after trying to lure his disciple over, he had to do something to release his anger, even though it was only a minuscule revelation.

With a slight amount of mana released, Shane caused Antalia to be unable to move around or even speak.

She wasn't hurt in any way and only restricted.

As such, Jason decided to let it go as he looked at Shane within the shadows before he turned towards the stairs he descended slowly.

If Jason was honest, he felt extremely disappointed in today's exams and even more so in his classmates.

From the initial 30.000 students, less than 10.000 had the required mana aptitude while less than 2.000 made the cut for the theoretical exam as they were too lazy or untalented to learn.

Even so, Jason hadn't seen a single proper forged item, concocted potion, or inscribed rune and everything seemed crude.

He wasn't sure if it was his high standard or the extremely low standard for the artisan occupations, but he couldn't help to sigh in regret.

'Maybe, the real talents already started with their forging or other lifestyle occupations some time ago? Why would they bother to show up at such a test, if they don´t need the lectures?'

Maybe Jason wouldn't think so, if he didn't have the knowledge from his masters, which increased his standards by a large margin but fortunately he got to know them, causing his high interest in all Basic-artisan occupations.

Walking out of the slightly shabby building, Jason suddenly heard a voice below him.

"Good job brat! I´ve never thought that your first forged weapon and inscribed rune would come out this well.

But don´t think too much of yourself!! You act way too slow and there were many flaws within your technique while the time you allocated for every step was also wrong.

There is much for me and Dalia to do once you finish reading the books about everything theoretical.."

Obviously, it saw Shane speaking and he praised Jason before he complained about him, causing Jason to cringe a little bit.

But even so, Jason had to acknowledge that his first work was crude while it was still valuable for his practice experience.

Jason knew that Shane only wanted to motivate him more, but he felt that Shane could use better words to make him strive for more.

Nevertheless, after today, Jason´s desire for artisan-occupations increased, even the exams were boring.

With his first try in the different occupations, he found out the perks from each of them.

Jason found alchemy the easiest as of now due to its demand for focus and mana control, while forging took most of his time and strength.

Inscribing was somewhat between the two other occupations

Shane was inside Jason´s shadow and he wondered how that was possible

'Is this an ability? But from which soulbond? Definitely not from the Death-Knight and neither from the bane of the thousand eyes wolf...Did he study his Darkness affinity?...or is it something else? It can´t be a mixture between darkness and spatial affinity, right?' Jason was extremely astonished and that was exactly what Shane wanted from his disciple.

The desire to find out more about the world which changed completely after the mana outbreak.

As long as Shane awoke this desire within Jason, his whole potential could erupt.

In addition to the unimaginable potential of Jason´s black origin flame, he had Artemis, the evolving snowflake owl, whose potential was also unknown.

Shane wondered how far Jason could go with enough time.

Reaching his own rank shouldn't be a problem as long as Jason survived and maybe humanity would even be able to fight to conquer their main continents once again.

As long as mankind united, recapturing the other mainlands should be possible with enough time passing.

Jason´s desire was still not completely awoken but his interest in all kinds of affinities heightened causing him to wonder what he could do with his own fire ability he received from the black origin flame.

Abilities could be described as imprinted knowledge from soulbonds' special traits, at least that was what the books, Shane and Dalia gave him, said

Seron's mutated slime was able to store high amounts of mana and release them with an explosive speed, which was in return the mana injection.

As long as the mutated slime stored enough mana, Seron could even rival magus ranks with his vast amount of mana.

But to store enough mana to rival a magus rank, while the mutated slime was at the evolved rank, would take some time and it wasn't worth the effort one had to go through as one was still physically weaker and without liquefied mana which amplified one´s mana output by a large margin

There was still much for Jason to learn and he talked with Shane for some time before they parted ways, as Jason went towards the forest to gather and refine mana.