Chapter 33 Fighting with ones life at a thread
Artemis was filled with adrenaline and couldn't feel the pain at the moment but that would change as soon as their fight ended.
They had to defeat the vulture as fast as possible so Jason could treat Artemis' injury.
Because of its inability to fly, the vulture´s actions were rather passive than aggressive which surprised Jason a little bit, forcing him to make the first move.
Running away wouldn´t be feasible because the vulture was probably still faster than Jason.
Trying it out would be suicidal.
The vulture was around 10 meters away from him and Jason went slowly closer until he reached the distance of four meters.
There he smoothly but exceptionally fast changed his stance, only to make a big stride forward, with his body leaning forward.
After making a single stride, Jason sidestepped to avoid the incoming swing of the vulture's uninjured wing while Artemis shrieked out from above.
She dived down and made a riot, causing the vulture to feel distracted from the white beast's shriek, as it turned its head upwards to welcome the diving beast.
Surprisingly the attack didn't come from above but from the front.
He delivered a quick but impactful punch onto the vulture's head.
While one mana enveloped fist punched out, the other hand tried to take the Jade iron dagger out of its wing in order to make the following process easier for them.
Unfortunately, the dagger didn't completely loosen up.
Shaking its head, the vulture was now injured as it could only see a blurry image.
Due to the injury, the vulture was enraged and seeing the blurry youth only a step away from it, the vulture tried to hit it with its claws.
Jason rolled away but he wasn't completely uninjured as his back was grazed by the razor-sharp claws.
Ignoring the pain Jason saw that the dagger began to loosen due to the vulture´s sudden movement and the additional gravity did its job, causing the dagger to fall out of the vulture's wing.
Seeing that, Jason first evaded the vulture's beak, before suicidal jumping straight forward towards the dagger.
The vulture didn't expect that and turned around but it was distracted due to Artemis´ second dive, straight at its back.
Her mana-infused talons weren't even able to pierce through the vulture's plumage.
The vulture was still annoying but it decided to treat Artemis as annoying Ant not worth its attention.
Focusing solely on Jason, however, was probably the vulture's biggest mistake.
While Jason reached his dagger, with the vulture pursuing him, Artemis used her wings to reach the vulture's head that wasn't covered by plumage.
Using her whole reserves of mana on her claws, she pierced out with them.
It wasn't enough to heavily injure the vulture or even kill it but it cried out in pain, causing it to shacke the whole body vigorously, which gave Jason enough time to pick up his dagger and stab out with it.
Piercing into the vulture's body, the plumage hindered the attack slightly but it still penetrated its defense and met fresh meat.
Upon piercing through it, a painful cry resounded throughout the area caused by the vulture.
Jason's ears ached and he was tempted to cover them with his hands.
Twisting the dagger the painful shriek became louder until it disappeared after a few moments.
Sensing the life force within the vulture disappearing and the following result, its death, Jason fell on his butt as he was way too exhausted to do even stand firmly on the ground.
The whole battle didn't take a long time, at most 2 minutes, starting from the vulture's surprise attack but his mind calculated hundreds of possibilities adding to the tension, Artemis injury and him being unarmed, exceeded Jason´s capabilities.
His body was still fine except for the small injury on his back and blood was still flowing out of it.
Getting up, Jason stored the vultures' corpse away when Artemis gliding to him with some difficulties.
After the battle, Artemis almost immediately felt the injury on her back, hindering her flying ability slightly.
Placing herself on Jason's shoulder and both left the wild-zone as fast as possible to avoid fighting anyone while being exhausted.
30 minutes later they entered the dome once again.
The sun was going down while a little bit of sunlight combined with the light from the mansion-sized tents brightened up the surrounding.
Many youths were sitting around a campfire talking to each other as Jason passed them without greeting anyone or even paying attention to them.
Unknowingly to him, Jason was the person the youths talked about after seeing him entering the dome.
His face looked beautiful, almost feminine if his detailed facial features wouldn´t say otherwise as the big golden eyes were illuminated by the surrounding lights, underlining Jason´s return.
Jason's black hair was disheveled and his clothes were tattered and dirty, giving him the appearance of a wild boy.
Sensing his and Artemis mana, they found out that he was extremely weak even compared to them, with Jason radiating the mana of a 5th Novice rank and Artemis was obviously a two-star wild beast.
The youths wondered if the golden-eyed boy looked like this because of a battle against a three-star wild beast and started laughing at him.
How could they know that a quasi 5th Novice rank mana fluctuations were in reality, a 3rd Novice rank that fought suicidal against 3 five-star wild beasts and killed them even if the whole fighting process was full of tricks and hidden assassinations.
These youths would only dare to do something like that when they reached the 8th or 9th Novice rank and even then only with superior weapons and armrors to protect themselves.
Most of them would still be accompanied by a guard or some other teammates to help them out if they end up in an disadvantage.
Entering his tent he put some medicine on Artemis and his wound while he bandaged his own wound he let Artemis' wound uncovered.
He wasn't exactly sure how deep the wound was but the area of her injury was at a bad spot.
As such he decided to give Artemis all the two-star cores he had accumulated in addition to the three five star wild beast cores he had left in order to accelerate the healing process of Artemis with the huge amount of mana she could digest.
She would probably sleep a few days but it was still fine.
Unfortunately, he had to kill another two five-star wild beasts until the day after tomorrow but he shouldn't force Artemis into a fight with an injury, which could end up in devastating result.
Artemis gulped down the cores before she went into the soul world to digest the overwhelming mana.
Meanwhile, Jason ate some meat, and afterward, he also went into the soul world to practice the Heaven's Hell technique before he washed up and slept.