After getting a full stomach and a good night's rest. Kain woke up happily the next morning. Surprisingly, Bridge wasn't in the bed next to him. 'Huh, I thought he's stopped working at the farm for now to prepare for the entrance tests. That lazy guy never gets up early on a weekend otherwise.'
However, soon the loud shouts coming from the yard answered Kain's question. "How's training Lady going?" Kain asked once he joined Bridge outside.
"Not bad! She's a hard worker and we've managed to graduate from Beginner to Practiced proficiency for one of her moves in only a few days."
That reminded Kain. He should also work on Bea's proficiency. As the proficiency of her skills increases maybe it won't take as long to take down enemies in the future, they may also unlock new effects or graduate to a higher skill grade. However, most of Bea's skills are not easy or safe to practice in the city. He will need to go back out into the wild. It'll also give him an opportunity to collect more GP and upgrade the system.
With that in mind, Kain headed back upstairs to write down his plan of action for the next 5 weeks until the entrance exam at Dark Moon.
After confirming what his affinity was, Kain was faced with a problem. Given that his affinity, as far as he is aware, is completely unheard of, he would not be able to rely on the expertise of an experienced Evolutionary Planner to help him. He also wasn't sure if he wanted to ever disclose his affinity to others, it'd make it a lot easier to target his shortcomings.
Therefore, despite still preparing for the beast-tamer admissions exams in 5 weeks time, he also planned to take the academic exam in a month to enter the Evolutionary Planning major. Although double majors are rare, they are not unheard of. And given Kain's unique circumstances he needed the resources of the beast-taming major to increase his strength, but he also needed the knowledge of a Planner to figure out an evolution for Bea, and any of his other future contracts.
'This is going to be a real tiring month' Kain thought. After all, he is attempting to enter the two most competitive majors at a top 5 college. He will need to be among the top applicants in both combat and academics to have even a shot at achieving his goals.
'I'm pretty confident in my academic performance, and have consistently scored within the top 1% in the nation for previous mock exams. The most urgent thing is to increase Bea's strength. Bea's major short comings are her limited methods of being able to enter a host, needing to have contaminated water enter their nose, eyes, mouth, or wounds. No water, no infection. However, I don't see any immediate method of being able to overcome this shortcoming by the time of the exam, so I will focus on Bea's second weakness: the speed at which she can kill a host. If the Dark Moon entrance exam is in fact a beast tide, I can't exactly wait 5-10 minutes as I'm overrun with beasts for Bea's split to stop them. The time from infection to incapacitation must be brought down to a few seconds.'
As Kain looked at Bea's status window, he noticed something else of interest.
'System, what was Bea's Spiritual Power immediately after we formed a contract?'
*Answering Host, it was 232 SP*
'What about before we fell asleep last night?'
*It was 245 SP*
Kain turned to look at Bea's current level of spiritual power and suddenly had a headache. It was exactly 245 SP. Completely unchanged after a night of rest in the star space.
After entering the star space, the absorption of spiritual power should be much higher than when outside. The contract being mutually beneficial for both parties in increasing the rate at which the spiritual power rises. This is why a contract with high potential is so important, as it can greatly impact the speed of the beast-tamer's growth.
Typically, a beast with high potential will have an increase of 10 SP a day, even without active absorption, just by staying in the star space. A contract with average potential would absorb around 5 SP a day passively. However, after an entire night of rest, Bea's spiritual power did not increase by even 1 SP.
But, in the time between forming the contract and going to bed, Bea's SP increased by 13, at the level of those with the highest levels of talent.
'So what happened between the time of the contract and going to sleep?'
Staring contemplatively at Bea's status window, Kain was suddenly drawn to the species name, 'Brain-eating amoeba.'
'Don't tell me that the nutritional source Bea needs for growth are brains?' Kain thought, feeling nauseous.
*Host is correct. The fresher the better*