Exiting the room Kain and the others had already decided to meet up at a café on campus for lunch.
“So what flavour did everybody get? Mine was disgustingly bitter.” Elias said. His face even looked paler than usual, likely due to whatever flavour he obtained.
‘Nice to know I wasn’t the only one to suffer for the exam’
“Mine was sour. It could have been worse. But I definitely got the worst smell available”
“Me too!” Yelled Leonara. “Jar number 3, right?”
Kain nodded in agreement.
“Was number 3 all of the bad ones? The super bitter cracker was also in box number 3.”
“My luck wasn’t so bad. I got scent number 4, which smelled like lavender. And the number 1 cracker which honestly tasted delicious.” Kain couldn’t help but glare at Finn. This guy hadn’t had to suffer at all?! The test probably felt like a tea party in a flower garden for him.
“What are all these numbers you guys are talking about?” Bridge interrupted.
“Dude…the numbers that were on the jar and box for the test?” As Aiden answered, everyone turned to see clear confusion on Bridge’s face.
“Please tell me that you are kidding me, Bridge. You did write down the numbers on the jar and box on the test paper, right?” Kain implored.
“No… were we supposed to?”
Everyone at the table couldn’t help but burst into laughter. Aiden shook his head in disbelief, while Kain facepalmed, trying to suppress his chuckles. The other students around them snickered, some barely containing their amusement as they glanced at Bridge’s puzzled expression.
Bridge looked around, his face flushed with embarrassment as he realized the gravity of his mistake. “Wait a minute,” he said, his voice faltering, “you’re telling me I won’t get any of those marks because I didn’t put down the numbers for the jars and boxes? That’s 3 out of 5 questions that I’ve failed!” His eyes widened as the realization sank in.
“Yeah,” Aiden replied, trying to hold back his laughter. “Without those numbers, the teacher can’t even tell which jar or box you were answering about. It’s like you left the answers completely blank.”
Kain patted Bridge on the back in comfort, “It’s just the beginning of the year and there will definitely be more opportunities to bring your grade up to the minimum B.”
After the assessment, they continued to their Advanced Knowledge for Beast-Tamer’s course. The main topic for the last few weeks has been focused on understanding attribute interactions and their applications.
Kain was especially interested in these lectures due to the mist he creates being an example of the fusion of two attributes—water and wind.
The lecturer went into depth about how the different attributes interact can create a synergistic effect greater than the sum of their parts. For instance, combining light and healing skills to create powerful restorative spells or integrating water and earth skills to create mud and change the terrain for strategic purposes.
Due to beast-tamers being responsible for multiple contracts, it is a waste to think of them independently. Therefore, if Kain wanted to ensure his success in the re-ranking, or even at the national tournament, he must begin to explore how the different skills of his contracts may enhance one another.
Thankfully, this course gave him some brilliant ideas. The professor went into depth analyzing historical cases where the combinations of attributes and skills have played a critical role in legendary battles or the creation of revolutionary inventions.
For example, in the absence of a creature like the Desolaphid that destroys crops, famines are now extremely rare due to the creation of artifacts that combine earth, wind, and water attribute sigils to manipulate soil and weather conditions in a small area.
He also went into detail about historical examples of failed attribute fusions with unintended disastrous consequences.
The most famous example was the Eclipse of Serenis. Before the establishment of the empire, beast attacks were more common on city-states. Therefore beast-tamers of one city-state, Serenis, wished to combine the dark and light attributes to create an all-encompassing shield that could protect an entire city. They believed that the balance of light and darkness would result in an impenetrable barrier.
And if done correctly, the perfect fusion of opposing attributes can be incredibly powerful. Unfortunately, they were not precise enough in the techniques. Instead of a balanced shield, the clash between the opposing energies created an unstable vortex that began to absorb everything in its vicinity.
The city was engulfed by this vortex, which drew in both light and matter, causing widespread destruction and leaving the city in ruins. Survivors reported the area becoming a barren wasteland with severe elemental anomalies.
Naturally, Kain doesn’t plan to do anything as ambitious as forming a shield over a city. But the current attributes he has access to—water, mental, wind, and life—may be able to exert an effect of 1 + 1 is greater than 2, if he uses them correctly.
Therefore, in addition to increasing his contracts’ raw strength, he will need to focus on improving their teamwork as well. Heck, when he goes on the upcoming group mission, it may also be an opportunity to experiment with the combination of skills between his contracts and Bridge and the others’.
Speaking of, after finishing up the remainder of the week, Friday morning Kain left with Bridge and the others to Moonvale village, the location of their first mission. The village’s main source of income was the spiritual plants that the villagers grew, which is precisely why this infestation was so devastating.
Unfortunately, because the roads there were not paved and required driving through dense parts of the forest, using a much faster motor vehicle was not possible.
However, the college also occasionally bought spiritual plants from that village, and a group of workers will be travelling there that morning.
After paying 1000 CD each in order to hitch a ride along, they all boarded the spiritual beast carriages and headed on their way to the village.