This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

*Contribute to Dark Moon College increasing in ranking—mission in progress, reward variable based on the final ranking of Dark Moon College*

Kain looked at the final mission regarding the National Tournament that could possibly give him rewards. However, likely because the final results of Phase Two were not yet out, the rewards couldn't be issued since Dark Moon College having an increase in ranking wasn't official yet.

After playing around and celebrating with the majority of the other Dark Moon students who no longer needed to compete in the tournament, they went to bed.

However, it would be a long night for the top 5 students with the strongest combat ability across the entire school who were assigned to represent the school in Phase Two.

The first of which, was the undisputed strongest student from Dark Moon and the Captain of the representative team—Ezra Vauss. Kain hadn't seen his contracts since the beast-tide, and at that time he'd only revealed 5 despite being a newly upgraded 6-star beast-tamer.

Based on the most recent information he had shared with the college so that the staff could to create suitable strategies, he now had 6 spiritual creatures at a level strong enough to be used in battle.

At the time of the beast-tide, 2 of his 5 contracts were green-grade, however after a long period of intensive training, all of his contracts now had blue-grade spiritual power.

However, unfortunately, none of his contracts had made the leap to having indigo-spiritual power.

Although it only seems like a difference of one grade from blue to indigo, or from 6-stars to 7-stars, this is a blockade that has prevented thousands of beast-tamers and their contracts from advancing.

There is a reason that 6-star beast tamers with blue spiritual power are only considered middle-level, while those 7-star ones with indigo spiritual power are considered high-level beast-tamers.

The difference in strength with that one step between both levels was greater than the sum of all previous levels combined. As was the difficulty in breaking through to that level. The breakthrough to indigo-grade is also the first time when a failed breakthrough can directly result in death, rather than just injury or even crippling.

Therefore, while it was common for fourth, and even third-year students, within the top colleges to reach blue-grade spiritual power, an indigo-grade contract hadn't been seen in decades within the college tournament.

In addition to Captain Ezra, the second strongest Vice Captain Ravi was also an undisputed representative for the school, with 4 blue-grade spiritual creatures and 1 green-grade contract already known to Kain and the others.

He had advanced to being a 6-star beast-tamer around the time of the beast-tide, however Kain didn't know if he'd found a suitable sixth contract yet. At least no sixth contract was ever revealed in the training.

However, considering the importance the college attaches to this competition, it was certain that they wouldn't spare any effort in finding him an additional contract that perfectly suited his needs—that was the benefit of being a highly-valued member of the team representing the school.

Ravi has an extremely versatile affinity to insect-type spiritual creatures. Therefore, it wouldn't be difficult for the school to find him a spiritual creature with high potential that he could form a contract with. The only question would be if it was currently at a high enough level and had enough tacit understanding with Ravi to make a beneficial addition to his lineup.

Surprisingly, the third strongest individual within the school is considered to be the third-year Jade. Despite only being in her third-year, was infinitely close to breaking through to the 6-stars, and also 4 of her 5 contracts were all blue-grade.

Originally, Kain had doubted her ranking so high as a third year, but after witnessing her fight first hand during the beast-tide and the team training that they'd participated in for the past couple of months, Kain had to acknowledge that she was as talented as she was annoying.

At one point Kain had thought that her incessant ability to chatter and ask invasive questions was related to some kind of mental-attribute gift she had. But it is actually just her personality.

Her ability was actually quite powerful and useful in battle. Similar to her younger green-haired sibling who is only in his second year and one of the top student healers in the school due to possessing a healing gift and several contracts with a healing-ability, Jade's gift allows her to provide a powerful regenerative effect to her contracts.

Kain had witnessed for himself how her contracts were practically no different from the undead during training, capable of regrowing limbs, healing severe wounds within moments.

Heck, in battle with her the others have grown so accustomed to not pulling their punches that they regularly used killing moves during the training. In one memorable spar, Ezra's contract had actually damaged the head of one of Jade's contracts so severely that its brain matter was seen splattering on the floor and one two-thirds of its head was missing.

However, while it took a little longer, even an injury that severe was recovered from within a couple of minutes. From what Kain heard the only side-effect seeming to be some memory loss due to the lost brain matter.

Clearly, due to her gift not only is conversing with her exhausting but even fighting with her was extremely tiring…

More annoying for the opponent is that this seemingly overpowered skill doesn't even seem to use much of her spiritual power.

Likely as a consequence of this powerful gift, most of her contracts are not naturally defensively strong and instead focus on having powerful offensive abilities. Considering that an damage would be recovered in a few moments time, and killing them would practically require destroying their entire body at once, the choice to choose contracts that neglect defense in favor of offensive is somewhat understandable.

Although Kain wasn't sure about the exact details of her affinity, he did know that every single one of her contracts involved some kind of big cat—lions, tigers, jaguars. Under the influence of her gift, they all had a tendency to attack with great ferocity, not caring about any potential damage to themselves.