Aside from the intense training, Kain also had another crucial aspect he needed to pay attention to in terms of strength improvement, and after several weeks of waiting, the Kain finally presented itself to him in the System’s store.
After becoming a 3-star beast-tamer, although extraordinary equipment for their level, both the armor and spear were no longer as useful to improving Kain’s strength.
Before the second re-ranking, Kain had already upgraded his armor and spear for ones at the 3-star level by exchanging his school credits. However, despite the high quality of the equipment provided by the school, they couldn’t at all compare to the custom spear provided by the System that Kain got accustomed to.
Even his armor, while not provided by the System, had been shaped using Bea’s spiritual power and was in a way a piece of custom equipment.
However, until now no opportunities to exchange either a custom armor or weapon were available for exchange from the System shop. That was until now, a mere 3 and a half weeks before the National Competition. Where Kain saw vouchers for both a custom weapon and armour available in the shop after the latest refresh.
The moment Kain saw the two vouchers available for exchange, tears couldn’t help but well up in his eyes.
‘Awww thank you System…maybe you really do care for me…’ He thought as a deeply moved expression fell across his face.
*The items available to the host through Shop are completely random and not subject to the System’s intervention*
‘Tsk…you could just accept the thanks without ruining the moment…’
The voucher for a custom 2-star weapon that Kain had previously exchanged for was 500 GP, now the amount of needed GP had more than doubled to 2500 GP.
Thankfully, much of the wilderness outside of the college had been restored in the months following the beast-tide and the control of the relic, allowing Kain to more frequently go hunting and obtain GP.
Additionally, Kain had also managed to receive GP after ranking second at the last re-ranking of the year, confirming his place on the team, and after completing a certain number evolutionary planner requests—which was a pleasant surprise to Kain.
Therefore, he had the required 5000 GP for both vouchers. However, he was still far from the amount required for the next System upgrade which required an overwhelming number of 100,000 GP. Unfortunately continuing the System’s pattern of needing 10x more GP at each level.
Kain decided to start with the armour since he hadn’t had an opportunity to create a custom armour previously and was therefore more curious about the process of creating a custom armor.
It is common for beast-tamers to receive feedback from their contracts to enhance certain aspects of themselves.
Kain wasn’t sure if it was because Bea was his first contract, or if it had more to do with the strength of the emotional connection between them, but Bea was by far responsible for majority of the feedback Kain received from his star space.
After Bea’s breakthrough, Kain resistance to mental-attribute attacks was no worse than when he had the mental attribute armour and his mental strength was also greater than those at the same level as him—which has greatly helped him keep up with his school work along with everything else he had to take care of.
Therefore, Kain didn’t plan to have his next two pieces of equipment so focused on the mental attribute.
Kain hasn’t really noticed much improvements to other aspects that may come from his other contracts such as an increase in the strength of his life energy or defense—but to test either of those out he’d probably have to get injured, possibly even repeatedly, and he had no plans to do so.
There were two main aspects that he felt he couple improve upon prior to the competition.
Since the beast-tamer must also enter the arena and if he’s too weak he may be eliminated due to injury to himself, even if his contracts overpower the enemy, he thought about focusing purely on improving his defensive abilities.
Aegis also acts as a defence for Kain but it is limiting for him to remain next to Kain the entire time of the competition and not attack at all.
Additionally, Kain can’t eliminate the possibility of attacks that can ignore earth-attribute defenses to attack Kain directly.
The other aspect that Kain felt as though he could strengthen has been made readily apparent to him during his battles with Serena and against the second-years—his amount of spiritual power and the ease with which he could manipulate it.
In raw power, Kain is not particularly threatened by Serena or the third-years especially not after receiving Aegis and Bea becoming more proficient in her skills. Even Eve has gradually become more proficient at manipulating life-attribute energy after improving the growth of the plants related to Kain’s business and can now exert a weak healing effect from afar even without the royal jelly.
However, Kain’s greatest disadvantage against Serena is her inexhaustible spiritual power. Even against the second-years, after the time when Kain provided a boost to Bea with the skill tome passed, he practically had none left.
Although once mastered Kain’s skill should allow him to improve his contracts abilities and restore their spiritual power by 50% if he uses 100% of his own spiritual power—an exchange ratio of 2 (used by Kain) to 1 (actually transmitted). It leaves him completely powerless afterwards.
Additionally, Kain has not yet mastered the technique and only has an exchange ratio that fluctuates between 4 and 3 to 1. Meaning that he typically only can improve his contract’s abilities by 25-33%.
It is rare to find any spirit skills that provide an all-round increase in abilities and restore spiritual power at the cost of the beast-tamer’s spiritual power at such a high exchange ratio—otherwise with Serena’s gift she’d be completely overpowering with such a skill.
Without such a skill, if a beast-tamer just tried to forcefully inject their spiritual power through the contract, it’d be lucky if 10-15% of it reached the contract and there also wouldn’t be an all-round boost to their abilities.
Therefore, Kain knew that if he could improve the ease with which he could use this skill and/or had a method to instantly replenish his spiritual power to use it on more than one contract, it would be like adding wings to a tiger. He may even be able to take the rank 1 placement at the next re-ranking.
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And fortunately, although rare, there just so happened to be sigils with such effects within the System’s customization window.