Chapter 98 Final placement
During their talk, Jason found out that the two of them would only stay on Astrix until Seron´s second soulbond would hatch, which was roughly 4-6 months from now.
Until then, both of them would stay in Cyro-City and play teacher and student, while Seron would improve his strength and mana core rank.
Mr.Greil would most likely just continue playing teacher, because he asked Jason to keep their identity a secret.
Jason didn't mind that and getting to know how long the two of them would stay on Astrix gave him the chance to receive more benefits from them.
Considering the fact that he already got a unique skill that was more difficult to obtain than most tier-3 techniques and equivalent to Blessed Skills without much effort made Jason expectant.
The fact that Mr.Greil gave him resources worth multiple hundred star-notes was neglected by Jason because he had to endure 60 hours of pure torture which felt like years to him.
It was not like he liked holding grudges but he saw the cultivation resources he received from his teacher to perform the first level of the splitting mind technique as compensation for the torture he endured because Mr.Greil informed him wrongly.
Maybe this mindset was wrong, but there was nothing he could do against it.
He was not an exceptional greedy person but after figuring out how important movement techniques were, he was obsessed with the thought of obtaining such a technique.
"Teacher! Is there a way for me to receive tiered skills for movement, defense, attack, support, and so on without achieving a certain number of human glory points? I heard that schools give out missions and reward students with merit points.
I think they're called Lace point for the Vanguard-school... How can we obtain them? I need a movement technique as soon as possible to improve my strength!
"
Jason licked blood and he wanted to get stronger! Who cared about the big families with their wealth and prodigies from great backgrounds?
He didn´t and the only thing he wanted was to get stronger in order to live free without anyone obstructing him.
Furthermore, there was the hunch, that he might even be able to change something about humanity's current obnoxious society, that disgusted him.
While Jason was deep in thoughts, his teacher answered him, causing him to come back to his senses.
"Ohh.I probably forgot to tell everyone that each promoted class rank will give you guys 2 lace points while each win after a streak of 10 will give out 5 lace points.
Because you guys won against Class 54 which is 21 wins a row, 75 lace points will be added to your school profile.
Lace points can be exchanged with credits, while one Lace point is worth around 20.000 Credits, but I don't recommend you change them.
You can´t change credits into Lace points and in my opinion they are worth much more, if you take a look at the school shop later.
"
Sighing, their teacher added
"It's already a wonder that you guys came so far, but I think Class 53 will end the first-class battle for us.
Class 53 has some quite unique students, while their teacher is sly.
Nevertheless, everyone astonished me and it changed my view on Astrix top schools, quite a bit.
"
Getting to know that they already obtained some lace points and Jason was quite pleased.
Maybe he would be able to purchase a movement technique soon.
It was now time for the three of them to leave because their battle against Class 53 would start soon.
When Jason went into the combat arena, he could already see Class 53 with their teacher and the sight was quite shocking.
Out of 200 students, more than half of them looked like bulldozers to Jason.
Their sheer muscle mass was excessive and they didn't look like bodybuilders but rather mountains of muscles.
Jason questioned himself if they consumed steroids or other drugs to pump their muscles.
Looking at their mana core, he was astonished to see, that their mana core was only at the 1st or 2nd Adept rank, while the size was slightly larger, probably between the 2nd and 3rd Adept rank, while there was no transmuted mana, which indicated that they formed a soulbond with a physical beast.
Physical enhancing beasts amplify mana not as much as other beasts and seeing that their mana core size was two ranks above their initial rank, indicated that all of them formed contracts with evolved beasts.
Their strength was probably the same strength as Greg´s with his reinforced horned bull.
This shocked Jason but he wasn't the only one because his classmates were looking at the 1.8 meter tall human bulldozers like they were monsters.
He wondered how so many of the same kind could be together in a class and it was only later that he found out that initially these large groups of bulky youths were placed in different classes.
However, the teacher listened to their pleading and placed them together.
All of these bulky youths came from the same city and it was rare to see so many youths from the same school having roughly the same amount of soul energy.
To add another odd fact, they formed a contract with the exact same beast, that was a fierce mountain ape, an intermediate evolved beast.
Apes are considered the perfect beasts to share physical strength because they enhance every body-part, while other beasts focus their amplification on a certain area and Jason immediately got a bad premonition.
The battles started and the bulldozer youth´s eyes turned red as they entered some kind of berserk state, which was apparently an ability they inherited from their soulbond.
It didn't take long for Jason´s classmates to be defeated while only 90 students were left standing after a single minute.
Meanwhile, Jason fought with a water affinity user, that seemed to act rather defensively with a small shield around her.
Sometimes she shot water bullets, but their strength was rather weak.
Thanks to Jason´s exceptional eyesight he could avoid them very easily without much effort.
Jason wasn't concerned about his mana consumption while he pressured the female water practitioner whose mana core was extremely large compared to her physical strength.
It wasn´t rare to see someone utilizing the passive mana replenishing technique and Jason was aware of that fact.
As such he pressured his opponent even more and she had to concentrate on the fight against Jason fully in order to prevent getting overwhelmed within a second.
Losing focus for a short moment would decide over victory and lose, which the water practitioner noticed after fighting Jason for a short time.
Throwing knives would be easily deflected by a thin water-shield but she didn´t calculate her mana consumption into account which was a big mistake.
After Jason threw all of his knives, he was already at advantage.
He used a quarter of his mana to enhance his lower body and circled around her while stabbing and slashing with various angles and different velocities.
Jason could have ended the battle sooner but he acted to save when the female water user could not continue fighting after four minutes passed.
Coming out victorious, he left the combat arena, only to see that only slightly more than 40 classmates were left `alive`.
Because they could decide who to fight, Jason looked around to find some weaker students of class 53 and he found another water user with a 2nd Adept mana core rank while its size seemed slightly smaller compared to his previous opponent.
The female water user probably contracted a `better` soulbond which amplified more of her mana core size.
While fighting, Jason found out that his opponent was not playing defensive while operating his water, rather he attacked Jason frontally, with an axe in his hand.
Jason sneered, thinking about the stupidity of some students.
`Fighting a daggers-wielder with a heavy axe? Okay…`
Jason smiled on the inside as he predicted that the water affinity user would most likely try to prevent him from avoiding the axe with water bullets or some thin walls.
WIthout many surprises, Jason´s prediction was correct, as a thin water wall erupted next to him, while he was a frontal attack from two water-bullet.
His opponent was already about to turn to the left side, where he predicted Jason to jump to while pulling his axe back, as Jason did the exact opposite.
The water wall next to him was roughly two or three centimeters thick and not even stable enough to block frontal attacks...
It was only a bluff to pressure him and force Jason to make a sudden decision, causing him to jump straight into the attacking axe-wielder.
But Jason was aware of his opponent's scheme and additionally, that he most likely used up roughly half of his mana in order to erupt the water wall and shot 2 water bullets at the same time, which played into his hands, because the focus one had to use to do all of this at the same time was also not to be neglected.
In his mind, Jason praised his opponent.
However, that didn´t change his decision, as he sliced at the water wall before he jumped through it while getting a little bit wet.
Water entered his eyes but he forced them to stay open, as he could see the blurry outlines of his opponent who probably looked at him quite shocked, with his axe already raised high.
Throwing three knives in a row, the water user could deflect the first with another water bullet.
However, his focus was completely in disarray as he had to lower his axe as fast as possible to deflect the remaining two knives that flew straight towards him.
This gave Jason enough time to enhance his lower body and appear behind his opponent to `kill` him with ease, as he pierced into his neck which ended the whole battle.
However, Jason was dissatisfied with his own speed after he remembered what kind of acceleration the floating sky techniques provided even at the most initial proficiency.
Staring at Seron´s combat area he felt jealous.
Seron was already done and seeing Jason´s look, caused him to smile dryly as he figured out why Jason looked so sad.
In his opinion, it was completely understandable.
He would probably feel the same and he felt a little bit guilty after indirectly taking away a treasure right in front of Jason´s nose.
The third round was embarrassing as Jason was overwhelmed by a 3rd Adept rank with 5th Adept physique, while only eight students of Class 54 `survived` with one of them being Seron.
The first Class battles ended for their Class after the first week but their achievements were nothing to be ashamed off.