In a flash of light Theo returned to his original appearance, now with a much more disgruntled appearance.
As the night wore on, the game eventually wound down. The seniors seemed to have shed their desire to maintain a sense of distance from them until the re-rankings. They chatted casually with the first-years, discussed their experiences and offered advice on the upcoming re-ranking and the challenges they might face.
Everyone had a turn at Truth or Challenge, some even two, but before Kairos had an opportunity to target Kain, Ezra returned and then ordered them all to bed.
Despite their being some moments where they were intentionally teased by their seniors, Kain would consider the “team bonding” to be a success. They definitely felt much closer to the older students than they did before.
The exhaustion from the long day quickly caught up with him and it didn’t take long before he sunk into dreamland.
Ding Ding Ding
“Everyone get up and ready!” After closing his for what only felt like a moment, Kain was awoken by the loud ringing of a bell and the captain’s voice. It was still dim out, as they were awoken before the sun had even fully risen.
After using getting a simple breakfast of porridge and bread, they headed back to their same area of the wall as yesterday to relieve the night-shift guards.
Looking down, Kain could see that the vast majority of the spiritual creatures were now red-grade, the white-grade ones all likely already killed. With orange-grade spiritual creatures being a lot more common than yesterday and even yellow-grade spiritual creatures being occasionally seen.
However, despite the level of the attacking beasts increasing, they still had no hope of actually breaking through the walls. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of spiritual creatures had probably died between the start of the attack and now, but the walls showed no sign of being breached.
“What’s the point of this?” Kain asked nobody in particular. “Surely, they know that the chances of breaking through the city walls is almost impossible. Not to mention, even if they do break through there’s still the high-level beast-tamers in the school who haven’t yet taken action.”
Jade was the one to answer. “The high-level ones have enough sense to know that. The low-level ones don’t have that much intelligence. They’re starving and desperate, so when their leaders tell them that they can obtain the food they need for themselves and their children behind these walls, they don’t question it and attack desperately.
The high-level ones in turn use us to drastically cut down the population of spiritual creatures in the wilderness to a level that can be sustained for a longer period of time. Not to mention, many of the creatures we kill do end up becoming food for the survivors.”
“This kind of population control is practically an unwritten agreement between the leaders of the city and the high-level spiritual beasts out there. They don’t really have any intention of breaking through our walls. Even when some blue-grade spiritual creatures appear later, it’d probably just be for show to give the low-level ones some motivation and make them more fearless.
The actual damage they cause is minimal compared to the damage they could cause at their levels of they actually tried.”
Kain nodded slowly as he absorbed Jade’s explanation. It made sense; the high-level spiritual creatures were using the current chaos to control the population of lower-grade creatures. It was cruel, but a necessary process to ensure the long-term sustainability of their ecosystem.
However, Kain also wondered if they would truly not try to expand their territory into the city in desperation if that dead zone in the wilderness continues to expand…
Kain fought back a yawn, as his body was bathed in the warm light of the rising sun. As the morning wore on, the steady stream of spiritual creatures continued. Kain continued his steady operation of Bea being responsible for killing the red-grade spiritual creatures, and impeding the movements of those orange-grade and above while the Vespirae Guards landed the final blows.
Due to the higher grade, Kain and the others ran out of spiritual power even earlier than they did yesterday, despite consciously only sticking to attacks and strategies that would conserve their energy.
Boom
Kain had just worked together with Kairos to kill his fourth yellow-grade spiritual creature today. Thankfully, Kain had managed to land the finishing blows for 3 of the 4 and was able to add their deaths to the completion of one of his missions.
It’s just so unfortunate that due to the dense bodies beneath him there would be absolutely no way for him to retrieve the bodies to extract the materials. If the materials collected from all of the red, orange, and yellow-grade spiritual creatures could be sold, Kain would have made a fortune.
Unfortunately, he’d have to wait until the beast tide was over to see if any of the dead bodies he’d contributed were intact enough to salvage anything of value.
However, Kain had seen some of his seniors that had managed to take down green-grade spiritual creatures send some flying contracts to retrieve the corpses. The materials from a creature at that level made the risk worth it, not to mention most of their contracts were at a strength where they could break into the horde for a few seconds without much danger.
Kain and the other first-years had no such ability.
Bam!
One of the contracts of a guard, a orange-grade spiritual creature that resembled a hawk, was slammed into the city wall and eviscerated by the claws of a wild yellow-grade Griffin.
“Aaaahhhhhhh!” The contractor of the hawk was easy to spot as he doubled over in intense pain from the backlash of a broken contract. As he screamed while gripping his head, another guard had to forcefully pick him up and remove him from the walls so that he would not be killed while incapacitated from the pain.
Kain’s heart couldn’t help but skip a beat. He’d heard that the backlash from a broken contract was devastating, but this was the first time he’d witnessed it. Not to mention that after the pain to the soul gradually subsides, the emotional pain at having lost a valued partner will become more prominent. Thankfully, both of Kain’s contracts weren’t so easy to kill.