Till was as astonished as Jason, if not even more, as he knew old Drake since he was a small boy and he had never seen him being so scared.

But right now nobody could answer their questions as Till told Jason

"You did a good job here and according to your narration your combat prowess has probably increased quite a lot.. Congrats to your breakthrough! You're finally an Adept-rank and not far behind the others anymore."

Jason smiled lightly but his pride about the breakthrough into the Adept rank could wait for the time being.

Suddenly remembered his teacher's white golden striped wings and the Sanctuary they were inside.

There were too many secrets and Jason didnt know what was going on, as he only wanted to hand in the goblin corpses for lace points before he was abducted by his own teacher.

Questions tormented his mind and he could only hope that his teacher would answer them

"Mr.Greil can you maybe explain to me why you brought me here or maybe why you had wings on your back? Did you manifest them somehow or what are these? Whats the origin of this Valley? OR should I call it Sanctuary? Furthermore, I understand that Goblins are terrifying but are they so terrifying that not even Grandmagus ranked individuals are not capable of defeating them?

Till himself was not exactly sure why he had to bring Jason here at this secret valley and he could only assume things.

"I can't say for sure why I had to bring you here, but it's not like this valley is a secret among the higher authorities.

Maybe it's because the information you provided is extremely important to us because the situation with the Goblin King is going out of our hands. There is not really a different reason for me to bring you here because it doesn't benefit you or anyone else.

As for the sanctuary. It was established more than 100 years ago with a certain race that was about to be extinguished.

Apparently a Lesser fire Wyvern attacked the treants territory and incinerated a whole magical zone.

We are not sure why it did that but there could have been the appearance of a magical treasure, beneficial for it or something similar.

More importantly is that the sentient trees inside the forest uprooted themselves and left the magical zone, trying to survive

Upon uprooting, their strength began to diminish extremely fast and more and more beasts began to attack them, as they sensed a chance to increase their strength.

Apparently Old Drake found the almost dead treants, bound one to himself due to their innate sturdiness and healing ability that was beneficial for him.

In exchange he told the other treants to follow him.

They were brought to the valley and rooted themselves inside the soil.

Over the course of a century, more and more beasts began to seek asylum.

Now around 40 magical ranked beasts and two guardian ranked beasts are living here under the condition that they let their offsprings form a contracts with humans or give up other benefits in exchange for their protection.

Following that, the beasts were obviously enraged but they gave in under the pressure of being exiled.

The only thing they wanted to do, was to decide who would be allowed to form a contract with their offspring."

Jason listened carefully and roughly understood its meaning.

`It seems like the Sanctuary is a win-win situation for all hm?`

Old Drake probably lives until now because of the innate ability of the treants and as thanks, he let them life here.

As for the other beasts they have to give up a tribute to stay there.

Magical-ranked beasts were not as rare as Guardian-ranked beasts but on Asterix probably only a few tens of thousand have their habitats there while probably less than 100 Guardian-ranked beasts lived here.

In the end, the Beast Pagoda and other hunters didnt have many magical-ranked beasts while breeding them was extremely difficult because of their low fertility rate.

And only now did Jason understand the threat of the Goblin King. The chances for it to be at the Lord rank were extremely high and if that was the case, it was possible for many Magical and Guardian ranked goblins to follow their king, which would be devastating.

It was extremely important for Astrix survival to kill the Goblin King as soon as possible.

Continuing with his train of thoughts, he wondered why Cyro city accepted so many Guardian and Magical ranked beings, even though they themselves had to face a dangerous threat.

This question was easily answered by Till, who noticed Jasons complex expression

"In recent years, the new generations have better soul-awakenings than ever before and there are many youths and young men/women waiting for magical ranked beast cubs to form a contract with them.

The cause of this sanctuary is more a breeding ground than for asylum and Old Drake gave every beast the chance to either give him something in exchange for letting them live here until the incident with the Goblin King is over, or he demanded their next offspring in order to obtain another beast for a soulbond contract.

This might be cruel but during the last decade, some foreign races began to attack Canir, and we need to increase our quantity and quality of capable fighters, which includes better soulbonds.

Our life is on the line!! You are still not aware of the strength, these foreign races can exert, but even the weakest of them have a better control over mana than most Master ranked humans.

Our only advantage is that our population is large and we haven't seen any of the intelligent races attacking us with a hundred thousand or more soldiers.

If that was the case, I doubt that anyone would live in such peace as we do right now.

Maybe this is because the biggest threat of most foreign intelligent races are the other foreign intelligent races, or something else? Who knows.. " Mr.Greil shrugged and it was obvious that he didn't want to continue talking about the foreign intelligent races, as his eyes radiated cold killing intent, covering fear and sadness.

Jason didn't know much about these invading races, except that they were supposed to be extremely strong and they didnt seem to act in large groups.

It was only said that every individual of these races had to be kinda strong and innately tougher and more compatible with mana than humans.

The only real advantage Jason knew the humans had, was their soul awakening and their inextinguishable will to live.

Goblins were supposed to be tenacious and hazardous but humanity survived them as well.

Their sheer will to live alone caused them to increase their mana core rank to an unimaginable height within 300 years, without any former knowledge about anything about mana control and absorption at all.

But more importantly was the soul-awakening and its benefits. Not only could soulbonds be performed with every compatible living being but the amplified strength and shared affinity were also extremely helpful to strengthen humans combat prowess.

And with the awakening of the soul, humans could at least prevent the intruders from invading Canir and the Archipelagos around it.

The next thing Mr.Greil said opened a new world to Jason and he finally began to understand why soul awakenings are so important.

"Jason, have you ever heard something about [Fortified soul conjunctions]?"

Shaking his head, Jasons interest was picked up, upon hearing a new term.

"You might have noticed that the bond between you and your first soulbond is stronger compared to before, even if it is only by a small amount.

Emotions, thoughts and even pictures can be transmitted and that's not everything!

Due to the connections between beast and human, they share everything and once a certain threshold is crossed, they know what the other one will do or even think, before youre aware of it.

Some humans have formed a soulbond more than a hundred years ago and these humans and beasts have survived and experienced thousands of battles without dying.

The stronger a bond is the more in synchro are both contractor and soulbond.

[Fortified Soul conjunction] means in this case, that the bond between human and beast is consolidated and stable enough to sacrifice oneself for each other.

This doesnt mean the forced loyalty between contractor or soulbond but rather a sincere bond from both sites.

Most authorities consider this bond as thicker than blood and in my case, I would rather sacrifice myself than my radiant-star eagle or greater blessed wolf, which you already saw.

Forming such a stable and consolidated bond is a longterm process one can only create while treating your soulbond as a family member if not better.

There are some exceptions that can cause a Fortified soul conjunction, like sacrificing yourself for your soulbonds own good.

Raising your soulbond since it was born for example decreases the period to form a fortified soul conjunction for example and many more methods like that exist.

After having experienced hundreds of life and death battles you overcame together, you will notice the unstable connection between both of you becoming stabler and with more emotions transmitted to each other.

While your beast will receive a large enhancement in intelligence, while you already saw the benefits for us humans.

Youll notice that you have established a fortified soul conjunction once it happens.

Now back to your main question.

You asked if I manifested the radiant wings or what these were, right?

And to tell you the truth, the wings you saw were my radiant star eagles wings.

After having established a fortified soul conjunction with your beast, both your soulbonds and your soul have an unbreakable connection with each other and the soul will fuse together.

This means your soulbond and you are not two beings anymore but rather one being that can divide into two living forms!!

Both of you will remain individual but at the same time, youll fuse together!

This fusion can be quite painful in the beginning but once everything is over, you might be able to transform your body into bodyparts of your soulbond.

According to your soul amplification, you might be able to exert more strength than both individuals alone while being fused.

For example if I transform my hands into an eagle talon, my strength will increase by more than 10% which is extremely high, considering that my physique and mana core rank are much higher than my radiant eagles rank.

Furthermore, with my radiant-star eagle, I'm able to fly around after summoning its wings on my back, which shouldn't be possible at my rank."