This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Chapter 104: Chapter 104: The Principles of Evolution

At the exchange hall, similar to the mission hall, there were sectioned-off large electronic screens separated by privacy screens, that would allow students to search for what they need a lot more efficiently than browsing shelves of items.

Kain looked at the armours and weapons to get a judgement of how much school credits were worth in comparison to Celestial Dollars.

2-star armours and weapons would usually cost between 300,000 and 1 million CD, depending on its material, effects and number of sigils.

However, at the exchange hall they could be exchanged for 300 to 500 credits. Therefore, Kain concluded that school credits were each worth around 1000 CD.

Finally, having an idea of their value, Kain went to the section labelled as evolutionary materials.

As silver-quality creatures, Eve and the Vespirae would not reach much of a bottleneck when advancing to orange-grade. However, Bea, after absorbing a lot of spiritual power on their recent missions, was quickly approaching her limit. Kain needed to start planning for her evolution. Fortunately, he wouldn't waste the materials in vain with the Simulator provided by the System.

During his first few lectures as an Evolutionary Planner they focused on identifying the necessary components of an evolution plan and even had an assignment related to it.

Therefore, in contrast to when he threw together random materials to hope for a successful evolution in the Simulator, Kain now at least had some theory to support him.

The first component was the Spiritual Power Source, during the process of evolution, contracts are not able to absorb spiritual power from the surroundings to support the evolution.

Therefore, one of the materials provided must have a sufficient amount of energy to allow them to upgrade to a higher quality. If there is not enough energy then the evolution will fail, or an unfavorable evolution not higher in quality will occur; like what happened during Kain's evolution of Lumifin to Gloomtail.

The best such energy source was the spiritual power orb obtained from yellow-grade and higher spiritual creatures. However, the use of such a high quality orb was often considered wasteful at lower levels, therefore the empire had managed to produce artificial spiritual power orbs to support the evolutions of Black-iron, Bronze, and Silver quality creatures.

However, since Kain already had a yellow-grade orb, he figured he might as well use it. Bea deserved the best.

The next component is the Evolutionary Catalyst. It is what destabilizes the genetics of a spiritual creature enough to allow evolution to take place. They may be magical elixirs produced by pharmacists or a natural material.

However, the level of the elixir must increase with the quality of the contract you hope to upgrade. Therefore, very few pharmacists in the empire are at a high enough level to allow the evolution of contracts past Gold-quality.

However, as a top 5 college Dark Moon College naturally has access to the top pharmacists in the empire to support their students' contracts' evolutions well beyond Gold-quality.

However, after a certain point obtaining a high enough level elixir will be so rare that another option such as ancient artifacts or powerful natural substances will be usually used as a catalyst.

The final component needed is the Evolutionary Base Material.

This is the material that actually serves as the basis for the final evolutionary form and there may be more than one in an evolution plan.

However, care must be taken to make sure they do not impede one another otherwise the evolution may fail and lead to the materials being wasted, or worse a disadvantageous evolution.

The base material often depends on the spiritual creature. For example, spiritual creatures such as elemental sprites, which are energy forms, usually rely on elemental crystals.

Most beast-type spiritual creatures usually rely on the core body parts of much more powerful spiritual creatures.

These 3 components are the minimum three requirements to have even a sliver of hope of evolving.

However, some evolutions may also have environmental requirements, needing the evolution to occur in areas with high enough elemental energy to be supplied during the process.

Kain currently needs a catalyst and base material.

However, thankfully as a student of a top 5 college, catalysts will be supplied for each contract for free once he can prove that he his contract has reached the limit of its potential and he has an evolutionary plan signed by a planner.

Thankfully, as a student of the Planner major he can easily get a professor to sign off on his own plan.

In fact, beast-tamer students in the Planner major are strongly encouraged to come up with plans for their own contracts.

Therefore, all Kain needs is a suitable base material.

Scrolling through the base materials available, Kain could see that majority were mostly for the most common elemental attributes such as fire, water, and wind-attributes.

Which is understandable because most of the more common creatures hunted to obtain these materials were probably of elemental attributes.

After applying a filter only for mental-attribute materials, there were only 7 materials available. At least among what Kain had access to. He was sure that the school had materials with a higher level that could only be exchanged by students after making extraordinary contributions.

One such exchange opportunity was apparently given depending on their performance at the National Competition.

The five available materials were:

Psionic Crystal - A rare crystal imbued with concentrated psychic energy from an orange-grade creature, enhancing intellectual and telepathic abilities during evolution.

Neural Fiber - Extracted from a highly intelligent mental-attribute an orange-grade spiritual creature, this material aids in the development of advancing intelligence during evolution.

Eye of Illusion - A gem-like eye derived from a yellow-grade spiritual creature skilled in weaving illusions. It enhances a creature's ability to create and perceive illusions, making it ideal for evolution focused on illusionary skills.

Dreamweaver's Silk Core- The core of an orange-grade dreamweaving spiders' silk-spinning organs, enhancing a creature's ability to enter and manipulate dreams.

Subliminal Orb – An orb obtained from an orange-grade spiritual creature skilled at subtly altering the perceptions and subconscious of those nearby, enhancing the creature's ability to subtly influence and manipulate others.

Mindleech Vine – A rare yellow-grade spiritual plant vine who feeds via its tendrils ensnaring passing prey and then consuming their memories. All those caught by Mindleech Vines become permanently amnesic at best and brain-dead at worst.

Cerebral Core - The central nervous system component of a powerful yellow-grade mental creature, providing a solid foundation and increasing the chances of success during evolution for those with a mental-attribute.