With a new idea in his mind, Jason’s thoughts began to torment him, because he was eager to give it a try.

At a slightly higher altitude than the bottom of the sea, Jason had seen a small tunnel that had a dead end just a few dozen meters after one entered it.

As such it was similar to a small room, and he assumed that a beast had inhabited this place before.

Approaching the room, Jason first inspected it in order to figure out if there was something his Emperor Eyes had failed to perceive.

The higher his cultivation base became, the stronger the Emperor Eyes were growing too. As such, the number of things he couldn’t perceive with them was small, but not zero.

Thus, he was careful in his inspection but fortunately, he didn’t find any beast lurking in the corners and Jason figured that the habitat had been abandoned for quite some time.

This was good and prevented him from running into unnecessary trouble.

Initiating the plan he had in mind, Jason approached the entrance of the tunnel before doing something extremely simple.

Exerting the ice affinity, he shut off the entire tunnel by sealing it with a wall of ice that was several meters thick.

Through this, the entire tunnel was sealed off, creating an ice-enclosed space that was filled with nothing but salty water.

Because of that, Jason slowly used his remaining mana before he transferred it towards the black origin flame affinity he had received from Solaris.

Manifesting a flame in his other hand while continuing to release the ice affinity, Jason released his Celestia aura and Stigma, followed by the moonlight affinity.

However, instead of targeting the ice affinity with the moonlight affinity, Jason decided to strengthen Solaris’ flame that began to burn through the water.

As there was no influx of water, he only had to evaporate the amount present inside the room that decreasing Solaris’ consumption by a lot.

Thus, Solaris evaporated it in no time, only to be cooled down at a rapid pace. The water droplets fell to the ground as faint ice crystals which Jason stored away.

Under normal circumstances, this simple action of sealing off the tunnel, before evaporating the water inside the tunnel would be something only a lunatic would do.

However, taking a deep breath after everything was done, Jason couldn’t help but smile lightly.

According to physics, he would be unable to breathe because Solaris would have burned away all the oxygen in the room under normal circumstances.

But that was not the case!

That was only feasible because of one particular characteristic Solaris had that differentiated it from every other flame.

It didn’t need any oxygen to be manifested, only mana!

Because Jason had recalled this ability of Solaris, he had initiated the plan to create a room filled with oxygen, to begin with.

Evaporating water before freezing the hydrogen freed the oxygen atoms, which was something that astonished Jason.

Even the salt within the water had burned, and only oxygen remained, but that was not something Jason should be worried about.

Rather, Jason could tell that Solaris’ flame would be extremely useful the moment he would fight against someone who wanted to deprive him of his oxygen, thinking that it would render Solaris useless.

In that case, his opponent would be shocked to realize that he was able to use Solaris without oxygen too.

However, Jason also noticed that Solaris required more mana if no oxygen was present, or if he didn’t want Solaris to use any oxygen.

This was not exactly a downside, but simply a prerequisite to replace oxygen as fuel with mana.

In the end, everything worked according to Jason’s plan, and the only issue was the mana consumption he had to figure out.

Looking at the several meters thick layer of ice, he figured that there wouldn’t be an issue to burn through it before sealing it off right behind him.

Through this, he could prevent water from entering the empty room, which was extremely useful.

Testing it out a few times, Jason could tell that Solaris’ flame had to be spread all over the layer of ice and that he had to use the ice affinity constantly to keep the ice behind him solid enough while leaving.

In the end, it required lots of focus and mana, but the time he required to reach below the seabed decreased by several minutes.

Making the flame burn through the layer of ice while manifesting it took the most time, and once he got the hang of it, even this would be less problematic.

Having created a safe shelter, Jason felt more reassured and less stressed to swim back and forth.

Because of that, he could finally avert his attention to the more important things, which were the mana vein, its problems, and the fact that he had yet to find a path that led towards it.

Hours passed, and Jason started to become annoyed because he couldn’t find the correct path towards the mana vein.

However, just when he thought of resting a little bit, he found what he had been searching for.

Happy to have finally found what he had been looking for the entire time, Jason quickly left the tunnel, only to enter a gigantic room that was filled with nothing but water.

At least, Jason couldn’t see anything but the distinct mana from the mana vein, followed by the Pryr and Spiral vein that were, however, farther away from him.

Unfortunately, when he arrived near the mana vein, Jason noticed that his focus was disrupted owing to the extremely dense transmuted mana currents that seemed to corrupt his mind.

It felt weird, and Jason had problems maintaining the mana membrane around him while actively inspecting everything.

Thus, he got another idea that would help him save even more time than the shelter did.

With that in mind, Jason decided to build a second shelter near the mana vein, just like the one he had constructed with the use of Solaris ability and his ice affinity.

In the end, Jason just wanted to save more time, even if the first few hours of digging demanded laborious work from him as he was often out of breath.

It was arduous work to create a tunnel by himself, but with the help of the body part manifestation of his soulbonds it somehow worked.

Nevertheless, after several hours of hard and detail, the shelter was finally constructed.

Only after that, Jason was able to get more than enough time to take a proper look at the mana vein.

Wiping the sweat with the back of his hand, he noticed that the vein’s condition became worse the closer and more intently he looked at it.

Staring at the brightly glowing mana vein, he couldn’t help but frown, feeling as if the mana vein had been maltreated by the Oceanfolk that wanted to go to extreme lengths to weaken the Mewi, even if that meant they had to wait for a long time to deteriorate the mana around them.

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