This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

The next few weeks flashed by quickly as Kain rushed between classes, meeting with Barret and Collin for the business, and completing as many Evolutionary Planner requests as possible to get enough funds for the business.

Strangely, after finding out that Kain had quite a high fee for a first-year student who hadn't even graduated yet, the people directed to him by the Ashenclaws seemed to have even more faith in his abilities.

In fact, despite charging more than many official planners, Kain's skills were even more in demand. In combination with his mysterious 'gift' and his request for orange-grade 'offerings,' Kain's reputation actually grew greatly as his image in the eyes of others became shrouded in mystique. Maybe he could even increase his fee again…

During this time the Lumifins that Kain had ordered had all successfully evolved into Gilded Serafins with a 100% success rate, and are being kept in an artificial pond on his property.

With the assistance of Vera and the lab notebook provided by the System, Kain put together the research report needed for the patent application and was just waiting for the validation process to be initiated, in which they will visit Kain in person and attempt to independently recreate his results using his research notes.

However, Kain was certain that he'd eventually have his patent approved, and so in preparation, he had invested heavily in several companies that specialized in breeding and capturing water-type, and particularly fish-type, spiritual creatures. Also as an investor he'd also given them a tip to begin capturing Lumifins and collecting any Opal Glow Lotuses they see by the way.

Thankfully, with his crazy running around to complete planner requests, he'd made enough to support both business ventures.

Currently, he was very tight on funds, and if food for him was not provided by the university, he may be forced to live off of cheap bread for the rest of the month.

However, money, or lack thereof, is not what Kain's mind needed to be focused on right now. Currently, he was standing amongst all of his peers at one of the college's large stadiums as they listened to the lecture being delivered to them by Professor Flint, their instructor for Wilderness Survival.

Today would be the beginning of the first re-ranking of Kain's career, and one could practically feel the palpable tension humming through the air.

Due to constantly being on the move, Kain hadn't yet had the opportunity to set multiple days aside to focus on breaking through to 3-stars.

Although, based on the number of leave requests being granted leading up to the re-ranking, Kain was certain that at least 10 of his classmates, including the twins Addison and Aiden, had attempted to breakthrough and were likely successful given that nobody had returned to classes looking ill.

However, despite not being at 3-stars, Bea had successfully broken through to orange-grade. Meaning that the strength of Kain's contracts was not inferior, and may even be superior, to many official 3-star beast-tamers.

He'd gone on some hunting missions in his limited free time to familiarize both of his contracts with each other's skills and different battle strategies.

However, those few missions were still not enough. If he did not have the newly provided Training Arena from the System to practice battling against known spiritual creatures owned by his classmates or practice honing their skills, he would be feeling a lot more unprepared.

"Your first re-ranking today is of particular importance because it will determine the order in which you will have access to the Enchanted Spring. As I am sure you all know, entering the spring increases the likelihood of manifesting a gift and might slightly improve the strengths of gifts in those that already possess one."

"However, the magical properties of this pool are limited in effectiveness and the order for entering the pool is based on your rankings, with the top 5 students of each year being granted first access, followed by those ranked 6 to 20, and so forth.

With the magical properties of this pool being limited in effectiveness, there may not be much of an effect remaining by the time those of you at the bottom of the rankings enter."

"Therefore, I hope you all will put your best efforts into improving your rankings as the gap between you and your higher-ranked peers will only continue to increase due to the differences in resources provided. For those of you in the top 20, and even top 5, we will see today which of you have relaxed during your time as students and are destined to be surpassed."

"I will now be revealing the matchup results for your first re-ranking battle."

The format of the Re-ranking Tournament is as follows:

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Phase 1: The Group Stage

Of the 53 students that were originally in their year, 4 students had died during the first field assessment, and one of the two that lost a contract during the beast-tide was unable to recover from the trauma and grief and dropped out. Therefore, there were 48 names shown on the screen above.

Likely due to there being 48 students, they sorted the top 8 students into separate groups as seeds and then randomly assigned the remaining students into groups 1 to 8 to form even groups of 6.

Each group of 6 will compete against one another in a round-robin format to form a within-group ranking of 1 to 6.

Phase 2: The Ranking Stage

All students with the same within-group ranking will then compete against the others with the same rankings from their respective groups in a round-robin format.

That means the first place of each group will compete against one another to determine ranks 1 to 8. The second place of each group will determine ranks 9-16. The third place of each group will determine ranks 17-24, and so forth until every student has determined their final ranking.

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As one of the seeded candidates, Kain wasn't too worried about anyone that would be in his group for Phase 1. In fact, aside from Serena, he wasn't too worried about the strength of any of his peers.

And looking at his group, Kain's feelings of confidence were re-affirmed. There was nobody he thought would force him to show any major cards before Phase 2. He was grouped with ranks 10 (newly crowned after the death of the previous rank 10), 23, 31, 35, and 42. None of which were any individuals he was particularly close to.

In fact, the only one he'd even spoken with previously was Riley at rank 35 who was one of the two survivors in the group that enraged the Glacial Leviathan during the Wilderness Survival field assessment.

He was more anxious about Bridge's assigned group.

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