The next day, there was a lot less snide comments among his classmates about his previous decision to not attend the re-ranking in person.
That day he fought his fourth match against Ranya, and likely due to their overfamiliarity with one another, it was an interesting battle to behold.
Even despite the gap in level between the two sides, Ranya managed to cause Kain quite a bit of trouble.
Unfortunately, for Ranya, in the end she had lost another match against Kain, largely due to Bea being mostly immune to illusions while also being able to restrain her spiritual contracts.
Now Ranya had had matches against the previously unknown Mira, Serena, Kairos, and Kain, all of which she had lost. It now seemed as though her removal from the top 5 was all but guaranteed.
Kain had to admit that, as the professors would sometimes joke under their breath, Kain's year really does seem to be a 'golden generation'.
One should note, that usually yellow-grade spiritual creatures are the dominant fighting force for second years, and it would be considered excellent for a top 5 member to have one or two.
Now, Serena, Kain, and Kairos both have at least 3. Soren had only revealed two of his contracts so far, and they were both green-grade. Even two individuals outside of the top 5—Dwayne and Mira—both have 2 green-grade spiritual creatures.
It's no wonder that Ranya who only had 1 green-grade spiritual contract and 3 yellow-grade contracts, which would have been considered excellent in any other year, has not been able to maintain her rank.
Finally, it was time for Kain's fifth match, and it was one he found himself looking forward to more than he'd expected.
Mira's ranking the previous year fluctuated between the mid-early thirties and the late twenties.
Her previous peak ranking was actually rank 26 in last year's second re-ranking, before she dropped to the thirties by the end of the year.
However, she was an incredibly hard worker, and after being reminded of who she was, Kain recalled her often staying behind to ask for questions and advice from professors after class, and she currently has the most amount of completed missions within their year. Although the level of difficulty of those missions varied widely and Kain doubted there were any Black Missions among them, it goes to show how much effort she put into improving her strength.
Unfortunately, although talent isn't everything, one's affinity certainly can play a devastating role in ruining someone's aspirations.
Mira, like Bridge, was one of the few B-rated affinities that were successfully admitted into Dark Moon.
Moreover, even among B-rated affinities, hers would probably be considered on the lower end—even bordering C-rated. At least Bridge's affinity, although limited to only wolves, allows him to contract many species with a variety of attributes that traditionally have strong potential—after all, there are several wolf-type spiritual creatures that reached the 9th level, or even beyond, such as the legendary wolf Fenrir that had long disappeared.
Meanwhile Mira's B-rate affinity was to small cats—hence the low rating.
Kain has met a few people in the college and national tournament with an affinity for felines or big cats in general, which would include a large variety of powerful lion, tiger, leopard, and jaguar species. Such affinities are almost all at least A-rated.
However, small cats don't have nearly as much potential. They include small and cute cat species traditionally kept in legacy households as pets, and some wild cats like bobcats, servals and lynxes. Most of which only have silver or gold-qualities, even after evolution.
Probably the most powerful of the felines included among the small cats would be pumas and cheetahs, where a few species can even reach diamond or platinum quality.
Unfortunately, whatever the more specific limitations of Mira's affinity are, she doesn't seem to have bound any cheetah or puma-type spiritual creatures—or perhaps she just hasn't wanted to.
Nevertheless, despite having one of the lowest rated affinities among those in Kain's year, she has managed to fall no lower than being in the 30s, with many A-rated affinities ranking after her.
Moreover, she's used the school credits from the many missions she's completed to continuously improve her own strength and the strength of her contracts.
Speaking of which, after finding out how many missions she's completed, Kain had thought that her sudden boost in strength was due to a fortuitous encounter during one of her missions.
However, while she may have obtained some valuable resources or opportunities while undertaking so many missions, the main cause for her sudden boost in strength was the awakening of her gift.
Mira was one of the few people in the mid-low rankings that managed to awaken an affinity last year, despite entering the Enchanted Spring much later than Kain and the others.
It seems like she finally managed to master the gift during the summer period and came back much stronger than before.
The specific details of her gift aren't known, but from what Kain could see, it seems to be some kind of resonance ability in which the collective strengths and injuries of all of her contracts can be redistributed at any time within a fraction of a second.
For example, if the strength of contract A is 20, B is 30, and C is 50, all together they would have a collective strength of 100.
Mira could choose to equally distribute this value, slightly boosting contracts A and B, at the expense of weakening C. Or Mira can pour everything into a single contract, giving one the collective strength of the entire group, and leaving the others drastically weakened, and this ratio can be adjusted continuously every second at the expense of Mira's spiritual power.
This also applies to injuries. If contract A is facing a powerful attack it can't carry, Mira can distribute the damage equally to all of her contracts or entirely to another contract with a much better defense.
All of this can occur in a fraction of a second, and this flexibility and sudden changes in strength are what can cause the tides to instantly turn in battle.
Imagine if all of a sudden an opponent you were evenly matched with suddenly triples or quadruples in strength for a fraction of a second right as they are launching an attack on you?
Or what if you go through a ton of tactical effort to finally injure the opponent greatly enough to remove them from the competition, but instead all of the damage is transmitted to one of its allies with a much hardier defense, leaving your target undamaged and its ally only slightly damaged.
Its infuriating! And its exactly what Kain will have to deal with next.