47 Passive mana replenishing
A day passed and Jason woke up after having a refreshing night of peaceful sleep, while Artemis was happily flapping her wings gazing at Jason with expectations.
Her hunger was insatiable, and Jason had to feed her more and more incomplete wild beast cores every two to three days. He sometimes wondered if she had a limit, otherwise, the day wasn't far when he would turn bankrupt because her needs would be greater than what Jason could provide.
And there was also the question, what would happen when she absorbed more mana than she could digest... Was that even possible? Or would she just digest it and go into a long hibernation? Would she evolve or just break her limits?
Too many questions about Artemis were on Jason´s mind, along with some questions about himself including his soul and eyes, but he couldn't find satisfactory answers no matter how hard he thought about it.
One thing, however, that Jason had been very interested in, was answered two days ago when he was at the Fler mansion.
Jason's thirst for knowledge was unquenchable and he had hounded Gabriella and Mark Fler with many questions about mana, beasts, how mana influenced the environment and much more.
During that discussion, he felt enlightened many times and he found out something particular.
There were techniques in this world to passively replenish one's mana while doing regular and everyday activities such as breathing, walking, running, and so on.
While there were multiple stages with the possibility to even gather mana during sleep, it was extremely difficult as one's mind had to concentrate on doing multiple jobs at the same time.
But, Jason wanted to try it.
At least, the easiest stage was something Jason was confident to achieve in... somehow...probably?
Replenishing mana while walking around sounded cool to him
Greg and Malia could already do it, and they were also able to replenish their mana while running.
They also told him about the difficulties one would have to face in learning how to passively replenish one's mana.
First, you had to be able to 'split' your mind into different task fields or to say it simpler:
Learn how to multitask.
While that alone was already relatively difficult one also had to have a certain degree of control over mana which an average youth on Astrix would achieve after roughly 6 years.
This wasn't a problem for Jason as he had mastered control over his mana for almost 10 years while his control was extremely accurate since the beginning.
He wasn't sure if he could perform multi-tasking right off the bat but he could learn it.
And his advantage was his eyes.
Jason had the urge to walk right into a mana stream and stroll around inside to practice while walking and replenishing mana at the same time.
Jason had to acknowledge that he was definitely excited about it, but his mood was soured as he thought that Greg wasn't considered a prodigy.
Neither his mana sensitivity, mana core rank, or in Jason's opinion top-tier martial arts skills, proved to be enough to confer the title to his only friend. Rather his soul was the most unique aspect about Greg including his soulbond, and he could already replenish his mana even during some small spars.
`Could everyone do that? Or was Greg underestimating his own capability?` Jason thought with a sour facial expression.
If everyone was able to passively replenish his or her mana while running, Jason had to also do it to decrease the divide between him and his peers.
Jason's practice of the Heaven's Hell technique wasn't neglected and he felt that his soul was overjoyed every time he practiced this technique as his soul world increased with his soul world core.
This wasn't a common case, but some rare souls had the ability to grow to a certain degree.
That was because their mind couldn't handle the growing size of their soul world and the world had to adjust itself to prevent permanent injuries.
Jason's case however was different, but he was oblivious to that fact.
His soul energy had been extremely strong at the beginning, but it had been absorbed by his soul world before anyone could notice it except the old man who thought it was an illusion caused by his ambition.
Once his soul energy grows stronger, his soul world would also enlarge.
Jason shuddered as he was reminded about the pain he had to suffer during his soul awakening.
Walking around the camping area next to the one-star plains wild zone, Jason used up mana, so he could replenish it.
After throwing a few knives injected with mana into a thick tree trunk, Jason tried to feel the mana while walking around.
Because he was constantly on the move, it was definitely more difficult to feel the mana and his focus was sloppier but it was still not too difficult as his sensitivity to mana was excellent.
The first step was done, but the more difficult step was yet to come.
Jason was now supposed to absorb the mana into his body and lead it through his mana channels to complete a whole cycle in order to annex it into his mana core.
Only then would the mana be his and a part of his body.
It wasn't as easy as he had presumed it to be. Jason had to walk at a very slow pace to even start integrating the mana into his mana core.
He only walked subconsciously while focusing completely on the whole mana replenishing process which wasn't the correct way.
It should have been the other way around and Jason asked himself if he would be able to do it the right way, and more importantly, when.
He wasn't sure how long Greg and Malia had taken to do it but he didn't dare to ask them about it because knowing it could be more disheartening to him than not knowing it.
If they had needed a long time, Jason would become too lazy and consequently, if they had required a very short amount of time to perfect it, he would be discouraged.
Artemis was flying around, exhausting herself, while trying to do the same as Jason.
Commonly, beasts below the magical beast rank replenished their mana by eating other beast cores or eating plants with mana in them or just by resting while magical beasts used mana for almost everything and had to passively replenish their mana on an ongoing basis.
While Artemis flew around she didn´t forget to look at Jason curiously from time to time and what Jason did, looked very exciting to her.
Jason meanwhile drew lots of attention to himself as many youths questioned themselves as to why this black-dressed youth had been walking around in circles for hours without doing anything else.
Even some middle-school teachers who were out on the one-star plains wild zone with their students were seemingly clueless about Jason's odd behavior. They couldn't gauge that Jason tried to passively absorb mana without using too much of his attention on this particular field.
While some teachers instructed their students about Jason's tries, they also told them that it was extremely difficult to learn how to passively gather and replenish mana while walking, running, or even fighting.
There was one middle-school teacher who was extremely knowledgeable and he was holding a speech about the Mana gathering manual when Jason walked past them.
Jason´s pace slowed down by a notch and he overheard the teacher saying something about the difficulties of passive mana gathering and replenishing without the help of manuals and detailed descriptions.
He could have sought the answers to many difficult questions before he would have started learning how to passively gather mana. Jason asked himself why he didn't know about that before he was reminded that he wasn't able to attend the trip to the one-star wild zone last year because of his blindness and 'phenomenal' strength of a 1st Novice-rank without any combat prowess.
After listening to the teacher for a minute, Jason also understood why he hadn't heard anything about this manual. The eligibility criteria or ways to obtain the manual was attending a prestigious school, purchasing a copy with merit points, or being a noble.
Other than that, there was also the chance to get permission for the passive mana gathering manual would be doing great achievements for humanity, also called merit points.
For Jason, the easiest way would be purchasing a copy with merit points from his future school, but he had a premonition that it would be quite expensive. Thus, he decided to continue with his own trial and error method to learn how to passively gather and replenish his mana.
