Since their first opponent wasn’t considered to be challenging, the first debriefing session mostly consisted of common errors and rules to watch out for among first time competitors.
However, after being informed that he likely wouldn’t be seeing any action for the first few matches, Kain left the room in irritation. Especially after seeing the smug smile that Soren flashed his way, Kain practically felt like his stomach was burning in anger.
Thankfully, while Kain wouldn’t be facing any of the weaker opponents, they were given brief profiles of students from the other top 5 colleges to watch out for.
Kain reclined on his bed while leafing through the booklet provided with all of the opponents they would have to be even mildly concerned about.
Thankfully, since Serena was the only one in the empire to awaken independently in years, none of the other students their age were even remotely close to surpassing her in cultivation level. Therefore, all of their opponents were also 3-star beast-tamers with contracts no higher than yellow-grade.
With the exception of First Celestial Academy, who kept their students under tight wraps, and Frozen Sun College, which is geographically isolated, there was a decent amount of information about their potential opponents from Supernova College, Starfire College, and a few standout students from other colleges within the top 10.
Thankfully, based on the information in their files, none of them seemed particularly threatening.
Although there was one student from Starfire College in the south that made Kain very curious…
Kain had learned after entering college that the cultivation method of the Celestial Empire, which focuses on harnessing star-attribute spiritual power to condense “stars” within their own body, was not the only cultivation method that this world had.
Other cultivation methods are used by other nations. Unfortunately, due to genetic reasons, the cultivation method most people can use is already determined by their ancestors.
All the way back to when the Celestial Empire in the center of this continent didn’t exist and everyone still lived in city-states, and even the millennia before that, the cultivation method utilizing star-attribute spiritual power had been used by the ancestors of what eventually became the Celestial Empire and, via natural selection, now the bodies of all citizens are best suited for this cultivation method.
It’s not uncommon for those unable to awaken an affinity to try switching to the cultivation methods of other nations, however since their bodies are even less suited to those methods, the results are often disastrous.
To the south of the empire is a large desert area inhabited by loosely governed tribes. Due to the scarcity of resources and spiritual creatures in the barren landscape to the south, the cultivation method their ancestors had developed was completely different from the one developed by the ancestors of what eventually became the Celestial Empire.
Typically, they could only form a contract with one spiritual creature.
Fortunately, while few and far between, the spiritual creatures that do inhabit the southern deserts are often more hardy and powerful than those that live in the resource-rich wilderness of the Empire and can take on multiple at once.
Additionally, due to the harsh environment of the desert that favored the survival of the fittest, the percentage of individuals that can cultivate among the tribes is much higher than those within the Empire—almost 80%. Although since their population is much smaller it works out to around the same amount of beat-tamers as within the empire.
However, the upper limit of those among the tribes is higher, with most managing to become at least the equivalent of a 4-star beast tamer—a relatively rare level among citizens of the empire, and the highest level in Kain’s hometown, Brightstar City.
The cultivation method among southerners usually consists of a tattoo-like birthmark spontaneously manifesting somewhere on their bodies around the time of their 18th birthday. This tattoo will be in the form of a spiritual creature that they can form a contract with. Once the contract is formed the spiritual creature will reside within that tattoo.
The growth boost provided to their singular contract is much greater than what is provided by the star space, and the feedback provided to the contractor is so strong that it usually allows them to exhibit abilities and strength similar to the spiritual creature itself. Therefore, every Southerner can be considered a powerful spiritual creature in their own right.
Interestingly, it was determined after studying captured tribespeople that had tried invading the empire in the past, that the tribespeople carry remnant amounts of blood from spiritual creatures that manifested in the form of a tattoo.
The legends circulated among the tribes state that they “are blessed by the gods” and the form of the tattoo is in the shape of the “god” that has blessed them.
However, since some spiritual creatures at the highest levels can take on human forms, the empire’s researchers hypothesized that most, if not all, tribespeople have a powerful spiritual creature among their ancestors.
The reason Kain was remembering the lecture he’d had on the cultivation method among the tribes in the south, was because one of the students participating on behalf of Starfire College was noted to have had a conspicuous birthmark in the shape of a dark red scorpion manifest on his body a week before his 18thbirthday, despite no known ancestors being from the tribes.
“Tsk tsk…is this another instance of paternity fraud?”
Kain couldn’t help but recall his first client as an evolutionary planner, Yara, while reading about the Starfire College student’s profile.
Kain looked at the picture of a muscular young man with bronze skin, green eyes and what appeared to be a dark red scorpion tail coming up from beneath the collar of his shirt, over the side of his neck, and ending on his left cheek.
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Based on the size of just the tail, Kain was able to tell that the size of the entire scorpion shaped birthmark probably covered the majority of the guy’s chest.