Artemis´ Pride

Calming down, Greg gave Artemis a quick once over, before his gaze returned back to Jason rather confused.

"Jason, is this your soulbond? A snowflake owl…? Isn't that a bit too weak??…" Somehow Greg felt disappointed.

He had hoped that Jason would at least find a good one-star wild beast to form a contract with. Snowflake owls were weak in their overall combat strength, while their speed was exceptionally fast.

In comparison to other one-star wild beasts, they were probably the weakest without even considering their non-existent potential.

Jason understood Greg´s concern and was about to open his mouth to clarify the situation to him, when Artemis suddenly cried, visibly outraged, as she flapped her wings violently.

How dare this small fellow antagonize her strength and beauty(?)….

"Calm down Artemis...He doesn't mean it like that." Jason tried to pacify Artemis and it took him a few minutes before she relaxed and perched herself back on his shoulder.

Greg didn't care about Artemis' outrage but Malia who was standing quietly behind noticed something, which shocked her.

She couldn't help but ask curiously "Can she understand human language? That's not possible for one-star wild beasts!! Is her brain somehow mutated or something similar?"

Walking closer to the two youths, she even momentarily forgot to be wary of Jason as curiosity took the better of her.

Her family members were well-known beast merchants and they had also caught some beasts for other nobles in order to gain their favors, large sums of credits, or rare items, and it was important to know what kind of beasts were rare.

Furthermore, it was necessary to figure out ways to detect advantageous and adverse mutations of beasts in the wilderness with the help of the smallest details.

Potential was everything in this business and catching a beast with more potential would give them more credits, increasing their bounty.

While her parents were really good at finding potential beasts, she wasn't as good as her parents.

Malia was only 16 years old and was still learning a lot about beasts.

There was more than enough time for her to catch up with her parent's knowledge and seeing Jason´s soulbond, she was bound to grow curious.

Jason was astonished and looked at Artemis asking himself if she had learned human language.

But that shouldn't be the case as there weren't enough instances where Jason had talked to someone in her presence.

Artemis looked at Jason knowingly as she transmitted through the soulbond that she could understand the rough meaning of everything said because of their connection.

Without Jason hearing the conversation, she wouldn't understand anything at all

Turning his head to Malia, he answered her question while looking into her big brown eyes.

"She can't understand human language. Through  our shared connection, she can comprehend the meaning of Greg´s words."

Malia tensed up for a second when their eyes met but she noticed that his eyes weren't intimidating this time.

This caused her tension to loosen up slightly and she looked a little bit longer into Jason's eyes that looked somewhat gentle and full of warmth now.

`Beautiful`

Blushing, she turned away her head slightly and continued questioning in a shy voice.

"But she is still very intelligent and underwent an advantageous mutation, right?"

Jason was standing between Malia and Greg and the siblings looked at him with eager and hopeful eyes.

Malia was curious and the red color of her cheeks receded slowly to her normally fair skin as she looked eagerly at him while Greg also grew curious after listening to their conversation.

Looking at Greg, he began to defend Artemis with confidence, saying,

"First of all… Greg, you might be right about normal snowflake owls, but Artemis is special and not weak, okay?

Your control over mana should be precise enough to sense the strength of wild beasts and novice ranks, or am I wrong?

Shouldn't that be the first thing to do when you meet someone new?

And with that, you should have already known that Artemis is a two-star wild beast!"

Jason felt proud and at the same time like a teacher because neither Malia nor Greg had scanned Artemis' mana fluctuations. Both were sure about her being a weak one-star wild beast so they hadn't bothered to check her rank.

Both were instantly embarrassed because their parents had lectured them about the same thing before.

'Never underestimate anyone… never forget to find out who the person opposite you is and how strong he/she is...knowledge is power….never let your guard down when you are with people you don't trust 100%...and so on.'

But that was not the shocking part.

What confused them the most was Jason's last sentence. Both the siblings immediately released some of their mana in order to scan Artemis thoroughly.

"Huh? How?"

"Unbelievable"

They hadn't been so shocked to be proved wrong in their lives until now. Sensing Artemis mana fluctuations at the two-star wild beast rank caused both of them to look at Jason with their mouths wide open.

In his opinion, both looked extremely foolish, causing him to smile lightly.

Jason felt Artemis's confidence soar and her pride overwhelmed his feeling as his facial features mirrored her feeling of pride. 

It was the first time for Jason to be influenced by the emotions of his soulbond.

With pride it was fine, but what if this would happen with bloodlust or lust?

Jason wasn't sure how he could handle it, though it was definitely something nice to share positive emotions.

Opening his mouth to ask something, he turned to Malia.

"Your name was Malia, right? I hope you don't mind me calling you by your name. Now, to get back to your question about her having an advantageous mutation.

It's pretty obvious that she underwent a mutation or at least that she isn't an ordinary snowflake owl, but to be honest, she was labeled as an adverse mutated snowflake owl with a high chance of being born with a disease like blindness and so on which was the reason she wasn't noticed by others."

"But as you can see she is healthy and even stronger than normal snowflake owls as her problem was fortunately rather easily solved." `Except her gluttony` Jason sighed inwardly.

Greg listened to Jason quietly, thinking about something, while Malia was deep in thoughts scanning through Artemis as if she was a memory stick.

It made Artemis feel uncomfortable and she hid behind Jason.

Malia averted her gaze when she noticed that Jason had finished his speech.

Jason had called her by her first name which she didn't notice at first.

During the mana outbreak, many cultures appeared and vanished, while some traditions were mixed with others.

And one of society's unlisted laws was to speak politely to prodigies and nobles, which included calling someone by the family name.

After she finished her deep thoughts, she only began to truly understand that a man, except her brother, and father had called her by her first name which hadn't happened since her soul awakening and she was about to get angry when their eyes met.

Her rage subsided and she couldn't even think about becoming angry and she immediately changed her thoughts back to Artemis as a thought entered her mind.

`Well...it's fine…but wait!.`

"Why did you pick an adversely mutated one-star beast? I saw your soul awakening and your chances to get another beast with your soul energy were minuscule in the short term.

You might be lucky but wasn't that too risky?"

She was way too confused about the weird but good-looking youth in front of her, causing her to ask straightforwardly.

Greg had the same thought and he also exclaimed loudly, after hearing his sister talking about that.

"Yeah!! Why did you pick an adverse labeled beast as your soulbond?? Wasn't that too naive??"

He roared letting out his pent-up frustration.

"GREG!! You should be the last person to say something like that! Haven't I already talked about that with you!! You're the most foolish in our whole family…"

The rage just burst out of Malia as she noticed her brother talking about naivety while he himself had picked a verified weaker beast as his soulbond just because Jason told him so.

Luckily, the non-elemental bull calf had a hidden and sealed bloodline of a lesser minotaur race which was a strong bipedal beast.

Malia and her parents didn't believe that Jason knew about that and only thought of this as a lucky encounter, as they scolded Greg a lot.

Greg began to pout which looked extremely ugly and Jason thought that he would begin to sob any moment when Greg suddenly shouted,

"How can you say that?!?!? TAURUS IS MUCH BETTER THAN YOUR FIRST SOULBOND...YOU'RE JUST JEALOUS!!!!"

"GREG!!!" Malia turned red from rage.

Jason thought it was funny to see the siblings clashing with each other and it took them quite a while before they calmed down...

Malia and Greg had completely forgotten about Jason´s existence.

When they saw him smiling happily at them they felt embarrassed.

It had been a long time since he had been happy while being with others except for Artemis.

Thinking about the last time he had been with others, Jason noticed that he never had a friend except his mother.

`Are they my friends?`

Scratching his head awkwardly, Jason was also slightly embarrassed.

However, it would be more embarrassing if he asked them if they were his friends now so he avoided this question.

Jason didn't know what to say right now and the whole situation was awkward.

Clearing his throat, he asked "Where are your parents? I have to show them that I've accomplished my task."

He tried to change the topic with this and technically it was the only reason for him to come to the mansion.

Somehow they had been talking about random topics since the beginning, forgetting to talk about the main subject.

Malia regained her senses before Greg and sat up with a straight back before saying in all seriousness.

"They´re outside, catching a certain magical beast, but I'm not sure when they´ll be back.

My mom gave me the responsibility to look after your task.

I am only supposed to report your rank including soulbond and so on to them."

Before Jason could say anything else, Malia looked into his eyes, without being scared anymore, and asked seriously.

"Can you show me the five five-star corpses or the awakened beast corpse, please? My mom asked me to record everything to review it for herself."