This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

"For one, they are known to eat almost exclusively spiritual plants that have also absorbed spiritual power from the stars," Finn began.

"They also, tend to not travel too far from large sources of water" Aria said. Thankfully, although she lacks some practical knowledge, her theoretical knowledge is up to standard.

Kain nodded in satisfaction.

"Does anyone know one of the most distinguishing characteristics used to track Astral Stags?" Kain asked.

Nobody replied after a while. However, he wasn't surprised, this was not knowledge taught in the lecture. They would have had to have taken it upon themselves to complete all of the optional supplementary reading material.

"Due to its strong star-attribute, some of the residual energy from the stars will remain in the hoofprints. Given that our empire's cultivation is strongly related to the stars, beast-tamers of the Celestial Empire with a sensitivity to spiritual power can usually distinguish the tracks of Astral Stags from other creatures by carefully sensing the energy in their prints.

If the prints are fresh, they may even have a faint glow at night."

"Therefore, we should begin with searching areas they are likely to frequent and then looking for their tracks."

"How do we know where to go though?" Aria said.

"We use our maps…the professor did say that you should always purchase a map before venturing into the wilderness. They will also usually have the hunting grounds of the most powerful creatures marked." Finn said in disbelief.

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'I take back any credit that I gave her. That was definitely taught in class, so she likely is just dense' Kain thought in exasperation.

Kain pulled out his own copy of a map of the woods surrounding the college. Every time he went out on another mission he also made sure to get it continuously updated to account for any changes.

Unfortunately, likely because the standards of power for those at the college were too high, it only had labels for the most threatening creatures with Green-grade spiritual power and higher. Therefore, there was no label for the Astral Stag.

"There is a lake only about an hour's walk from here, let's check there first. Everyone should summon their spiritual creatures out from now in case of any sudden attacks"

With those words, Kain released two only Vespirae to scout ahead, and the others also summoned their contracts. Unless absolutely necessary Kain hoped to only reveal the standard 2 Vespirae wasp guards. Although his teammates now, they will be his competitor in two months and he didn't want detailed information about his contracts spreading among the students.

They then began to set off.

Looking around Kain could see that their group was the last to leave the clearing the professor left them at It was likely because they had needed to waste time knocking some common sense into Aria.

However, not even 10 minutes into their journey, they were attacked by a lone red-grade spiritual creature.

Such a level of creature was no longer a challenge to Kain and he solved the attacking fire-attribute fox with a quick strike to the head with his spear, there was no need to use the either the wasps or Bea.

10 minutes later they had all been attacked at least once by red-grade spiritual creatures. However, all of them didn't even need to have their contracts solve it, instead killing them directly.

Due to the low grade of the beasts, none of them could even be bothered to extract materials. All of them had space rings, and I think they all unspoken agreed that wasting time and space for materials of only red-grade was not worth it.

"It's unusual for red-grade spiritual creatures to be attacking us so frequently. Usually, they'd run away once they saw a group as large as ours with contracts more powerful than them. This is completely outside of character" Finn said.

Kain nodded, "The beasts in this forest are much more aggressive than the ones I usually come across. However, their eyes and other behaviours are pretty normal, so I doubt that they are being manipulated or lost their intelligence. They're just desperate for some reason."

"Anyways their behaviour is not our problem, just focus on the mission." Liam said impatiently before taking the lead.

Kain wanted to criticize him for being short-sighted. After all, what if the more powerful creatures in the forest are also suddenly more aggressive and leave their typical hunting territories?

They continued to make their way towards the lake. However, suddenly one of the Vespirae guards said that she faintly sensed some spiritual plants up ahead.

Kain shared this information with the group and they decided to detour, after all their target also mostly eats spiritual plants.

Kain also had his own selfish reasons for wanting to do so. Less than 20% of honey that was originally transferred from the old nest to the new one remains. Kain had been taking up easy 1-3 credit missions to help with pollinating the spiritual plants owned by the school which has allowed the wasp colony to start producing more honey.

However, the spiritual plants they give students access to in these missions are all very low in quality and mostly of white-grade, with the occasional red-grade plant. It'd probably be a long while before they trusted him enough to have access to the plants of higher quality.

Although this level is okay for now, the spiritual power of Vespirae is almost fully saturated, and the queen and the rest of her colony will probably advance to orange-grade spiritual power within a week. At that point, plants of better quality will be needed.

Kain hoped to find some plants of decent quality from now. Even if he couldn't transplant them back to the school, they could be used to make reserves of higher-quality honey in advance to prepare for the colony's advancement.

The group followed the Vespirae to a small clearing full of spiritual plants—dead spiritual plants.

Aside from the odd plant that was holding onto its last breath, most were already shrivelled, dry, masses of leaves and petals.