Kain spent the next week catching up with Bridge and the others and sharing their respective experiences. By far he received the highest amount of credits, but then again he was also at a much more dangerous location.
Students were once again allowed to take on missions that required them to leave the city since the wild spiritual creatures were no longer so aggressive. They should have enough to eat for a while considering the drastic reduction in their populations and that they'd essentially cleared out all of the spiritual plants within the city that were not on the college campus.
In fact, many of the ordinary plants civilians had grown for food had also been taken away.
Instead, now it was the civilians of Dark Moon City that had a food shortage issue. It'd take a long while before all of the plants in the city could be regrown and until then many civilians were relying on the meat of ordinary animals raised locally, which were thankfully left untouched during the beast-tide.
Unfortunately, the amount of ordinary livestock raised locally was hardly enough to support a whole city switching to a carnivorous diet, especially since most middle-class and above civilians had previously chosen to eat the meat of spiritual creatures brought back from hunters.
However, since the wild spiritual beast population had momentarily declined, they were now unable to even hunt as much as they could previously.
In response, the college had been opening its doors and allowing the public to purchase a limited amount of ingredients from their stocks with the amount allowed for purchase being determined by the number of individuals on the family register.
However, this is not a long-term solution. Kain could sense that even the college was feeling the strain and that the quality of food in their dorms had begun to decline.
During this past week, Kain had also had some of the orange-grade juvenile plants he'd obtained reach full maturity and Queen and her guards had enthusiastically gotten to making honey of a higher quality.
And today Kain finally received the long-awaited notification that the System update had been completed.
With anticipation, Kain entered the house, which was really a shack, that existed on the property he had purchased.
It was still old and shabby-looking but Kain had added some furniture and décor to make it a little more comfortable to rest in while Eve, Queen and the guards were busy taking care of the garden and making honey.
'Once I have some more money saved up I should consider tearing this house down and making a nicer one…'
The instant Kain opened the System window he immediately noticed the difference.
Previously on the main screen there were only options to look at the profiles and stats of himself and his contracts, the System Shop, the Laboratory, the Mission Board, and the Celestial Planetarium—which he had still been making sure to enter to cultivate every day since it increased his efficiency by 2.5x after the last upgrade.
However, now on the home screen there was an additional icon for a Training Arena. Kain selected that icon and suddenly appeared in what looked like an extremely large and empty room.
He couldn't see anything noteworthy.
"Sigh… System please explain to me the functions of the Training Arena."
*The Training Arena has two different functions*
*The first function is the Battlefield. The Host can simulate a large range of environmental conditions and generate spiritual creatures as enemies to practice against. The condition being that the Host must have seen the proposed enemy in person.*
Two boxes appeared one with different environments such as in a northern icefield, the middle of the ocean, inside an active volcano, and more.
The other box had an extensive list of every spiritual creature Kain had ever come into contact with. Including many of his classmates' contracts.
'This will be extremely useful when preparing for the re-ranking.' Kain thought, now filled with a lot more confidence at his chances of securing first place.
'You said 2 functions, what's the other?'
*The second function is the Skill Optimizer.*
*You can select a contracted spiritual creature and its skill. A specialized training plan will be developed in order to increase your contract's proficiency in that skill. Once the proficiency increases to a high enough level it may be upgraded to a higher level skill or two skills that your contract has Mastery over may be combined to create a new skill.*
"Not bad… let's give it a try now" Considering that Eve and the Vespirae were all currently busy in the spiritual plant fields, Kain decided to have Bea try the Skill Optimizer on her Brain Infection skill.
This skill was currently Bea's main source of offensive power. If it can be improved it may increase her killing speed or maybe even increase the level of the spiritual creatures she can successfully kill.
Additionally, although he does plan to have Bea evolve soon and her set of skills will likely change, skill proficiency doesn't just disappear into thin air. The skills derived from Brain Infection after evolution may end up being at a higher level and she'd have better proficiency over the new skills from the beginning.
However, once Kain made his selection, his heart couldn't help but skip a beat. For the first time since binding Bea, he had lost all contact with her and was completely unable to sense her. He knew rationally that this was likely due to the System, but this was an extremely disconcerting feeling.
*Do not worry Host. The Brain-Eating Amoeba has been transferred to a training field most suitable for the training of the selected skill. If the Host at any point is in danger, he can withdraw her from the Training Arena instantly.*
After receiving that reassurance, his racing heart calmed down. Although, he probably won't be completely relieved until contact with her is re-established, but he restrained his impulse to withdraw her immediately and let her continue training.
"What are some of the other changes following this System upgrade?"