Even after going to bed and waking up the next morning all that Kain could think about was the re-ranking 3 months after school started.
He did everything from eating breakfast, going to the college registration office, and booking the train tickets with the demeanour of a mindless zombie. He was in a complete daze.
Bridge finally couldn't take it anymore when Kain almost wandered straight onto the train tracks in front of an incoming train.
Grabbing Kain back by the collar he shook him. "What is going on with you?!"
"Ah! Sorry Bridge, I've just been a little distracted"
"A little distracted?! I overlooked when your fork kept missing your mouth as you tried to eat this morning. I also didn't think it was a big deal when you almost walked straight into a streetlight on the way here. But just now you almost got hit by a train due to your carelessness! Not even a 2-star beast-tamer can withstand a train. Snap out of it!"
Kain was embarrassed. Instead of worrying about getting beaten up by his fellow students in a few months, his carelessness may cause him to die before then.
Kain could now form a contract with a second spiritual creature.
But it would need to be one that could actually put up a fight in a frontal duel.
Bea was powerful, but her strength relied a lot on environmental advantages and the opponent not being able to attack her, while Kain often just avoided the attacks.
Kain wasn't sure if they'd be allowed to attack him in the arena. But even if they couldn't attack him or spot Bea, without water Bea could do nothing to them either.
The result would probably be a stunningly boring duel consisting of the opponent's contract pacing around trying to find Kain's contract while Kain could do nothing.
He needed a contract that could take the initiative to fight and not just lay a trap waiting for the opponent to fall into it.
However, he currently had no leads for such a contract.
He had assumed that there was something he could bind within that dead egg, that also may have killed that pack of Shadow Leopards. However, no matter how much he inputted his spiritual power into the egg, he couldn't sense anything in there he could form a contract with.
Also whatever was in the egg seems to have fully died by this point as the already extremely faint pull was now completely gone.
He guessed that whatever was in the egg was a split similar to what Bea produces. He'd need to find the original microorganism to form a contract with it.
However, even if he does eventually find it, there's no guarantee it will have better frontal combat abilities than Bea.
Sigh
Once he was settled into his private room on the train, Kain flopped onto the bed distraught.
With a feeling of it being his final hope, Kain turned to the System. It was supposed to be his greatest cheat but hasn't demonstrated much value yet. He hoped that the Shop, which had refreshed twice by now would have something good.
He had successfully completed the following missions:
-Advancing to 2-stars (100 GP received).
-One spiritual contract advancing to red-grade (100 GP received).
-Entering the Beast-taming major at a college (Reward variable by college ranking: Entered a top 5 college and received 500 GP).
-Taking the academic admissions exam (Reward variable by placement: Scored within the top 10 in the empire with a perfect score and received 200 GP).
Meaning that he has collected 900 GP out of the 1000 GP required to upgrade the system. However, if something could increase his battle strength in a short time he wouldn't mind spending some of his GP and delaying the next System upgrade.
After all, with an increase in strength, he could better complete future missions. Even now, he could easily complete several of the missions to defeat red-grade spiritual creatures now that he and Bea had both upgraded.
Unfortunately, the beasts in the relic were not real and could not count towards his mission progress.
With a faint hope, Kain clicked on the System shop.
Exchangeable items available:
-A custom 2-star weapon (500 GP)
-A random silver-quality spiritual creature egg (500 GP)
-Basic Affinity Radar (200 GP)
Kain could exchange for a customizable 2-star weapon. Considering that he had lost his main weapon, this wouldn't be a bad option to increase his strength.
Not only will he get a 2-star enchanted weapon, but he'd even be able to customize the sigils imprinted into it. Therefore, he'd be able to produce the perfect weapon for himself that he may not be able to obtain in reality without the System.
Not to mention he was extremely curious about how this customization process occurs. Is there a list of available sigils and designs for him to choose from? Or is it completely up to his own imagination?
However, it does not solve his most pressing concern about filling his second star space with a contract suitable for 1 on 1 fights against other beast-tamers.
The silver-quality egg was even more useless. What hatches from it is completely random and while he doesn't know where a spiritual microbe like Bea originated, he seriously doubts it was from an egg.
So what hatches will most likely not even be suitable for his, or even Bridge's, affinity.
The only thing that may help him is the Basic Radar. According to the item description, when activated it will provide the user with the location of all spiritual creatures that meet his affinity requirements within range for 24 hours.
This was almost exactly what he needed.
In fact, it fit his needs so well that he was suspicious. When has his System ever been so generous?
What was the catch?
However, he really had no better alternative.
Resolutely he exchanged 200 GP for the Basic Radar