An unknown amount of time flew by before Jason woke up inside the large and soft bed that was placed in his small, but comfortable room.
He felt still exhausted and Jason knew that this sensation wouldn't disappear within the next few days.
This was because his whole soul amplification had been nullified by the race specific weakening curse!
Jason's eyes weren't hurting anymore and he could take a look around, trying to figure out where his masters were.
Getting out of the bed he noticed the dried blood below his eyes, thus he washed up and changed into a clean set of clothes.
'I can sense that the petrification curse has set its roots within my eyes, while my soul world core seems to harbor the race specific weakening curse...but what did the soul world core do with 10,000 units of my soul energy?'
Even if he was still exhausted and felt like he could sleep for several days, getting to know what exactly was going on with his body was important.
Looking inside the mirror, Jason noticed that nothing about his eyes or appearance seemed to have changed.
However, what was different from before was that his eyesight seemed to have improved again.
Other than that, he couldn't help but feel the desire to test out the petrification curse he had inherited from the unhatched petrification serpent that was completely silent.
From the look of it, Jason could compare this state similar to human behavior of denying a traumatic event before one would have to accept it slowly.
This assumption might as well be wrong but it was not really important right now because Artemis, Scorpio, and even Solaris were next to the egg, consoling the petrification serpent.
They weren't next to him to demand carcasses but were taking care of their new member of their family!
As such, Jason could take care of his own things for now and he was about to leave the soul world when he noticed the changes about his soul world core.
Approaching it, he was unable to tell what the change of his soul world core was aiming at.
There were two new, larger runes carved onto the soul world core that was already filled with all kinds of mysterious runes and carvings.
Yet, what made those two carvings special was the fact that the race specific weakening curse had been transferred within those runes.
Lifting his hand he touched them lightly with the tip of his fingers as a stream of information flooded his mind.
It was as if he received incomplete notes about how to use those two runes properly.
The only issue was that these notes were 'incomplete' and lots of information were missing.
Apparently, his soul world core absorbed 10,000 soul energy units, when the petrification serpent's weakening curse had been inherited to the core, recording everything that happened afterwards to the smallest detail.
This astonished Jason and he couldn't help but think that his soul world core was amazing as he began to skim through the memories which the notes transplanted to him.
From what he understood, the two runes were similar to a deceive that regulated specific things.
It was as if those two runes were a controller with two possible settings.
One rune was currently glowing in a faint, dark green almost black color while the other new rune had neither the curse transferred from the soul world core nor was it glowing!
However, this was something he had already expected after he digested the recorded information within the notes.
Only one set could be activated at a time and the number of possible settings was unknown to Jason.
It felt like those two runes representing the possible sections were only the bare minimum, while he had yet to configure the second, empty rune!
Jason was not sure how he could configure the second rune but that was not something he had to find out within the next few minutes.
After he found out that his soul world's amplification didn't have to remain nullified, Jason was relieved.
He had already imagined the worst of the worst and thought that he had made a huge mistake.
However, the curse he had inherited was a race specific weakening curse that didn't have the constant decreasement which he had noticed when the petrification serpent had cursed him before.
This allowed him to stay calm from the beginning.
It would be weird if the curse changed substantially after he inherited it!
Furthermore, from what Isga told him, a soul world amplification curse was stagnant.
Yet, Jason knew that he was different! He was neither a human nor from the Celestia race but a halfling!
This was probably why he had been so confident that he wouldn't receive the petrification serpent's full curse.
That his soul world core was able to hold against all kinds of curses that targeted the soul world amplification even before binding a cursed beast to his soul, allowed him to be confident enough that the soul world core would be able to negate the curse for a short period.
With that thought in mind, he was fine with training how to manually negate the amplification curse to a certain extent, which was fortunately not necessary.
His soul world core made it much easier for him to handle everything, and the only thing he had to do was to fill the second rune with the desired characteristics of the race specific weakening curse and select his choice.
In that sense, Jason began to wonder how often he would be able to change the settings or if that was something he could do whenever he wanted.
However, after he perceived something else about his soul world core that had changed, Jason knew that the latter was not something he could do.
The weakening curse within the soul world core was surrounded by a small translucent marble with one small, faint glowing rune engraved in it
This rune was slowly enlarging and the glow was becoming more vibrant, but from what Jason perceived with his great eyesight, the pace was negligible.
From the looks of it, this marble was what the two runes controlled which meant that the curse that was currently stored within the small marble was activated as Jason had already noted.
'Does that mean I need to wait until the rune engraved on the marble has stored enough energy to enlarge itself again? Only then will I be able to use a different setting? Isn't that a little bit too harsh.will this pace even accelerate if I become stronger or is the period the same until the day I die??'
Jason couldn't help but feel that he had been conned, which stemmed mainly from the fact that it should take half a year before he would be able to use a different setting.
This meant that he had to wait half a year to change from his nullified amplification state to a different one.
'At least I can absorb mana much faster now...the difference between having a mana core size of a lowest Lique stage or a mana core size of an average 4th Master is enormous! My combat prowess might have decreased drastically, but who said that I have to fight someone in the next few months?'
Telling this to himself, Jason decided that he would use the next six months to break through as many levels as possible while continuing to practice the body refining technique, Netherworld's fort!
Thinking about the things he wanted to do, he suddenly recalled the splitting mind technique.
Thus, he rushed outside his room, not minding the exhaustion that weakened his body further.
He searched for his masters to tell them everything that had happened to him before he wanted to ask them if they had been able to procure a brain-protection treasure as they promised.
Furthermore, there were also other things he was curious about, like what had happened to Canir and if the big clans were really going to wage war against the foreign races that infiltrated Canir with a much higher number than they normally did.
Jason was not sure how smart this was because the Shadow Walker and their allied forces were likely to have formed a soul contract with other big families that would have to start fighting against the other big clans in the worst-case scenario.
Other than that, there was also his worry that the Shadow Walker sent out their forces to take care of mankind!
If the basic instruction within the Terra-grade manuals Jason possessed was already talking about the four stages, Mortal, Lique, Prismar, and Ascendion as if they were nothing special, for an extinct race at that, he didn't want to find out what kind of combat prowess races like the Shadow Walker's warriors could attain!