Chapter 204 - Naivety

Jason only remembered his fight against the Tiny two-headed amber lion with Malia and Greg, while thinking carefully about their current situation.

'Well it was not that much of a challenge to defeat it with three people, right? Shouldn't it be possible with us six?'

But upon thinking about it more in-depth, the prior fight against the tiny two-headed amber lion, Jason also remembered that it only had a single drop of mana within its core which indicated it having reached the magical rank a few days before.

Meanwhile, the magical herb Jason saw was guarded by two magical ranked beasts that had two and three mana drops, which was not much more, however, there were two beasts, which was the bigger issue.

'Can we win against them?' He asked himself when he noticed the determination and greed flickering in Lin, Jennifer, and even Lux´s eyes.

Sighing deeply, Theo said

"We can try it … in the worst case, we have to use our weapons to injure them and flee. At least we shouldn't die from newly advanced magical ranked beasts"

Right as he said so, both Theo and Jennifer took out grade-2 mana desert eagles, similar to Greg's weapon.

However, theirs were stronger with a mightier recoil, while they similarly used up more mana.

While Greg could only injure the tiny two-headed amber lion because its head was almost severed due to Malia´s fragmentation grenades, Jason was sure that the two guns within the Daer siblings' hands wouldn't be much help against magical ranked beasts with a high defense.

The only real question was if the two magical ranked beasts had thick defenses or not as the barely advanced tiny two-headed amber lion had a rather shallow defense.

If Jason were to decide whether or not they would fight against the two magical ranked beasts to obtain the almost ripe magical herb, he would definitely object, but unfortunately, they didn't have any leader and voted.

As such Jason could only helplessly shake his head because even if the remaining votes objected to give the fight a try, it would end in a tie.

With Theo accepting Lux´s suggestion, Malia and his votes were useless and they immediately began to prepare a plan to fight against the two magical ranked beasts.

Before that, Jason and Jennifer went closer towards the two beasts' position to find out what beast races they would have to face and their affinity, which Jason already knew.

Even though he couldn´t clearly identify what kind of beasts they were, the mana fluctuations circulating through their bodies already told him what he should expect, while he clearly perceived their affinity.

The beasts in front of them, behind a large protruded stone, definitely snaked with one having a wind affinity while the other one had a fire affinity.

Once he and Jennifer, who was also able to see further than others due to a certain technique, enhancing her eyes, sneaked around the large portruted stone stealthily, two roughly twenty meter long Crystal horned pythons came into their view.

Jason thought that that was normal and nothing special, but Jennifer seemed shocked, as she exclaimed "Elemental affinity mutation" once she saw the Crystal horned pythons scale color that was commonly more leaned towards grey.

While he could see their elemental affinity and potential, Jason was rather inexperienced with mutations and only because Jennifer knew Crystal horned pythons, which were normally at the unblemished rank, she could immediately tell, that they mutated.

She seemed shocked but Jason didn't really care about this, as he glanced at the almost ripe plant behind the two pythons, which radiated a faint light-gray color.

This was nothing special per se but Jason knew of the plant in front of him and immediately figured out that it was a peak-grade-2 herb normally that was universally useful for potions/ Inscribing solutions and even low-evolution serums.

"A rios folium Yarrow?" Jennifer exclaimed, forcing Jason to shut her mouth with his hand, as he glared at her.

'Am I the 14-year-old Adept rank or is she?!' Jason wondered as he indicated her to walk back.

However, while walking back, he was reminded by what he perceived with his mana eyes far away from the rios folium Yarrow that covered his eyesight due to its mana fluctuations in the beginning.

'What were all this rigid transmuted mana fluctuations? There were even colors radiating from some of them! But even so, they were too weak and too large in number to be beasts normal beasts within the four-star rift... Otherwise, Malia and the others would have already said something like this, right? Am I becoming paranoid?!'

Jason was confused but before he could continue to torment his mind, they returned to their group.

Jennifer reported everything she saw with shock and greed at the same time, while Jason could only shake his head.

'Will we really try this?' He wondered as the others began to prepare a tactic to kill the two Crystal horned pythons with an elemental mutation.

Due to their team's weaker rank and physique, a magical ranked beast with a wind affinity was much worse to fight than a fire ability, because wind elemental attacks were much stronger and faster on a larger distance, while the wind crystal horned python could envelope itself in order to become faster

As such, they had to kill it first and the fire elemental crystal horned python afterward.

Fire affinities had the strongest area of effects attack and damage output for basic elements, but at the Master rank, every elemental attack at the magical rank could kill them, which decreased the fire affinity slightly.

The only issue their group had to face, was to prevent the python from spewing out flames or using other large scale attacks, while their assasination on the wind crystal horned python had to be perfect.

Jason didn't intervene in their discussion and helplessly shock his head in denial while inspecting his Five-SeveN which he most likely had to use later with his predicament about this whole situation in mind.

He was sure that the fight would end up in a devastating loss, because the crystal horned python´s defense was extremely thick while he also had a bad feeling about their affinity mutations and why they seemed to be so common throughout the whole valley.

Almost every beast they met had an elemental affinity and he knew some of them, which caused him to understand that something within the valley was able to trigger beast mutations, even if he didn´t know what or how that was possible.

What he previously saw could have been important for this, but when Jason noticed that his team finished their preparations, he saw that only Malia´s Nightmare horse and Lin´s treant were summoned, with the others soulbonds being withdrawn into their bodies.

From what Jason heard, their plan heavily relied on luck or rather perfect timing with a tinge of luck, which was not really that much of a difference in his opinion.

Slowly approaching the large protruding stone, Jason noticed that both crystal horned pythons slithered on the ground at a relatively large distance from each other which was the only positive thing he noticed.

Reaching the distance of 100 meters, they stopped because they didn´t know how advanced the two magical ranked pythons' senses were.

Not wanting to be discovered before their attack, Jennifer slowly nocked a pitch-black arrow on the bowstring as she looked at Malia, who nodded, before injecting a vast amount of mana into it.

The black arrow began to gleam lightly due to the darkness mana injected, while black-silver runes began to lighten up, creating a thick, pointy layer around the arrow.

Meanwhile, Malia used her wand in order to manifest a five-meter long water spear which she compressed to less than half its former size, as sweat pearls formed on her head, indicating the immense focus she had to use up in order to maintain the compressed spear, as she aimed at the green-scaled Crystal horned python, waiting patiently.

Time seemed to have stopped, with every second turning into eternity, when Jennifer released her pitch-black arrow, with Malia´s compressed water spear following behind.

Jason was astonished about their teamwork because he immediately noticed that both aimed at the exact same position when the wind crystal horned python turned around.

Noticing two dangerous objects enveloped in thick mana approaching it, the wind crystal horned python roared out enraged while it radiated thick tides of mana, pushing Jason a few steps away from his current position, even though he stood more than 100 meters away from it.