As the squad moved through the city, the atmosphere grew increasingly tense. Seeing the previously bustling streets now resemble a ghost town as all of the citizens huddled at home with their loved ones was eerie.
Especially, when the quiet was broken by the occasional roar of a beast in the distance outside the city wall. Kain glanced around, taking in the sight of the heavily fortified walls.
Thankfully (?), Dark Moon City suffered from beast tides more frequently than other cities. Therefore, all of the city guards were relatively calm. There was the odd nervous looking newbie that flinched whenever they heard a roar, but they were few and far between.
Ezra led the group forward calmly to their assigned post. After coordinating with one of the captains of the guards, their squad of 20 was settled at a location several meters to the right of the main gate.
Thankfully, they were not far from a group of professors from the university. They didn’t just throw them to the wolves.
How could they? After all, they were currently the individuals that would be representing the school if they don’t lose their place in the re-ranking.
At the main gate, Kain could see the full scale of the preparations. Sigils carved into the walls of the city began to glow. A massive transparent barrier flickered into existence above the city to prevent aerial attacks.
All of the beast-tamers that will be defending the city, stood on the city walls.
“Alright,” Ezra said. “Remember, stay in constant communication and keep an eye on the status of your peers. If one of you becomes too injured to get yourself to safety, too a healer, or even to use the elixir by yourself, then you’ll need each other. Understood?”
Jade, with her green hair tied back in a high ponytail, gave a casual salute, her light-hearted demeanor standing out in the heavy atmosphere. Meanwhile Oscar seemed preoccupied with removing a stubborn piece of hangnail and didn’t seem to be listening to Ezra at all.
“Son of a bit—” He muttered as he tried to bite the stubborn piece of skin off the side of his nail.
Compared to the other seniors that were the epitome of professionalism, they somehow got assigned to these two weirdos.
‘They’re supposed to be babysitting us… why do I feel like we may end up babysitting them?’
As Kain stood in his assigned position, he could feel the tension building as the distant roars grew closer. He could see the silhouettes of the creatures in the distance, their menacing forms becoming more distinct as they approached.
Kain’s heart raced as he saw the dense crowd of spiritual creatures. Their population was so dense that he couldn’t even see the floor beneath the tens of thousands of moving bodies rushing towards the city—towards him.
He could feel the entire city wall vibrating due to the force of thousands of creatures trampling the earth.
The vision was intimidating due to the sheer number of the creatures, but the actual level of strength of the creatures in the initial wave didn’t even exceed red-grade. They were cannon-fodder.
Kain released a mist beneath his portion of the city walls and nothing that approached lasted longer than a few seconds. After so easily dealing with this first wave he calmed down.
He could see the other students glancing at him, as well as at each other. However, he was doing the same; scoping out potential threats to his rank within his year, and also curiously investigating the standard of strength for his seniors who had consistently defended their own rankings.
Time seemed to stretch as the battle raged on. Bea must have killed hundreds of red and white-grade spiritual creatures by this point—ushering in probably her biggest spike in spiritual power since he’d first contracted her.
Although the beast tide was a grave threat, it was an amazing opportunity for a creature like Bea who improves her strength through killing.
Kain diverted his attention to watch some of his opponents. Based on what they showed now, during classes, and rumours from their performance during the field assessment, he tried to gauge their threat level to him.
Although people don’t just stupidly share their affinities because it can make it easier to plot against them once you’ve narrowed down the limits of what creatures they can contract, after looking at their contracts, some of the requirements of their affinity can usually be guessed.
From the S-ranked awakened each year, majority, if not all of them, enter the top 5 colleges, and then usually occupy the top 5 student placements of each university.
Except for the First Celestial Academy. Addison had told him previously that apparently 10 S-ranked students had entered the first-ranked college this year. Therefore, the competition to enter the top 5 over there is definitely the steepest.
However, affinity rankings at the end of the day are really just an aggregate measure of how many types of creatures one can bind and the strengths of said contracts.
In theory, someone with a D-ranked affinity to mouse-type creatures, that manages to contract an exceptionally powerful mouse-type spiritual creature could still do great things. Although, Kain had never heard of any mouse-type spiritual creatures above gold-quality…
Therefore, it isn’t unheard of for S-ranked students, intoxicated on their highly rated affinity and high ranking at the start of year, to lose their place to A-rated and B-rated hard workers with exception gifts, contracts, and/or fortuitous encounters.
Two such examples are the current rank 4 and 5 of their year, who had slightly edged out the performance of the 6th placed examinee, who apparently was the 4th S-rated affinity admitted to their school. The other ones being Soren, Kain, and Serena.
Kain examined the boy with black hair and eyes who was the current rank 5 among the first-year—Kairos Umbrae. He apparently comes from an old beast taming family.
Although their history is not as illustrious as some of the founding noble families that have had 8-star and 9-star beast tamers among their ancestors, each generation of the Umbrae family manages to produce at least one 6-star beast-tamer.
Members of the Umbrae family usually have an affinity for dark-attribute spiritual creatures. Both of Kairos’ contracts, are quite unique—cursed constructs. A rare type of spiritual creature formed from inanimate objects that were imbued with dark energy and gained consciousness. Their skills are usually extremely unusual and unique amongst spiritual creatures.
Additionally, they are usually one-of-a-kind existences since they are not a naturally born species, but rather their births occur by chance. The skills they develop are also usually closely tied to their forms. Therefore, there may be huge differences in the strengths and abilities between two cursed constructs.
A can-opener that develops consciousness may only have skills related to efficiently opening even the hardest to open cans, while Kain has heard of cursed constructs with legendary effects, such as an hourglass with the rare time-attribute.
Kain was unsure if Kairos’ binding of dark-attribute cursed constructs was a personal choice, or a limitation of his affinity. If it was the latter, then he could cross out the majority of the known dark-attribute spiritual creatures he’d read about as Kairos’ future contracts.
Kairos’ first contract was a creepy looking cloth puppet with a wide smile on its face and a needle in its chubby hand. Every time it would focus on a spiritual creature and jab the needle into its head, the head of a spiritual creature would also be strangely pierced through. The attack method seemed extremely difficult to guard against.
Although, Kain was confident it shouldn’t be able to effect Bea, its threat to him and the Vespirae was very real.
Kairos’ second contract was a floating book with sigils carved into its black cover. The pages of the book would flip to a different page and release a dark-attribute spell at the beast-tide.
Whenever an attack approached Kairos or the puppet, the cursed book would also release a shield to protect them. It was a well-rounded contract adept at attack, defense, and support. However, Kain could see many pages in the book.
He was unsure if most of them were empty pages to leave room for the acquisition of skills in the future, or if each of those pages actually currently possessed a different skill. Kain really hoped it was the former and not the latter.