This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

After being stared at hungrily like a piece of meat for nearly a full minute, Kain and the others were finally allowed to leave the stage and head back to their seats. However, Kain was still able to feel the intense stares coming from the people around him, which he futilely tried to ignore.

When the orientation was adjourned a short while later Kain and the others had an hour break before their first actual lesson.

Thankfully, Beast-tamer courses were on Mondays and Wednesdays, while Planner courses were on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays are always off to give students an opportunity to complete missions or tasks they may have. Therefore, he only had one boring orientation to attend today. The Planner orientation and first day of classes began tomorrow.

To pass the time, they decided to go to the mission hall to see what kind of missions were available to students.

When they arrived at the mission hall, it was already bustling with activity.

At the center of the hall were three giant electronic boards. The title of each board was titled with Bronze, Silver, and Gold, mimicking the rankings used for describing spiritual creature quality. However, here they were likely a measure of the difficulty of the mission.

The Bronze missions rewarded between 1 and 10 credits and were relatively simple for even the lower ranked first-year students, much less the upper-years. The tasks largely consisted of hunting orange-grade and lower spiritual creatures. Some also were escort missions or to collect a specific spiritual plant from a known location.

The Silver Board gave rewards between 10 and 50 credits each. It consisted of missions where it was recommended to have the strength to take down a yellow-grade spiritual creature. There were also missions to find specific materials that were more rare, located in dangerous areas, or didn't have as detailed information about where to find them, causing students to waste more time looking.

The Gold Board had missions worth more than 50 credits, that would be considered challenging for even 4-star beast-tamers. They also seemed to have more difficult completion requirements. For example, one such mission was to hunt an Infernaut. A gold-quality species that is usually yellow-grade by adulthood.

It was a humanoid creature whose skin was in a constant flux shifting between solid rock and flowing lava, making it rather difficult among those of a similar grade to kill. However, the reason it was a Gold mission and not Silver was because they lived deep within lava, and rarely left.

Most students would not have a contract suitable to dive into the lava and kill a creature that already has outstanding combat power.

There was also something else unique about the Gold Board. Unlike the other boards that had all missions clearly displayed and the number of credits obtained upon completion, some of the Gold missions were blacked out to obscure any details.

"What are those black missions?" Kain asked nobody in particular.

All of the first-years around him shrugged. Even Addison and Aiden didn't know the answer.

"The Black missions are those whose details can only be disclosed to the recipient of the mission. This is often to avoid unnecessary security risks to the student or for the target to become unnecessarily cautious."

"Target?" How would a spiritual creature even become aware that it was a mission target? It seems like an unnecessary concern.

"The Black missions are usually some combination of assassination and/or intelligence gathering. Since humans are more tricky opponents, and some of the targets may even be prominent and influential figures, a higher number of credits is rewarded to reflect this difficulty. Not only excellent combat strength would be needed for these missions but also resourcefulness and cunning."

"If you have no information on the mission though before completing it, then how can you even know if you're qualified?" Kain asked in confusion.

"Well when you go over there to select the mission you'd like, if you select a Black Mission then you will be brought to a questionnaire.

Depending on your responses to the questionnaire, if you are suitable for a mission you will be allowed to accept it and the details will be disclosed to you." The staff member clarified while point to an area with large touch screens sectioned off by privacy curtains to keep more specific mission details only available to those accepting the mission.

"Want to try and accept one now? We could take a group task as our first mission." Aiden asked. Kain and the others nodded.

They all went to a screened off area and began to look at the tasks on the screen. As they went behind the screen, Kain realized he was no longer able to hear the bustling in the mission hall. He realized that the screens were equipped with a variety of sigils to prevent eavesdropping.

"Greetings students!" A female robotic voice suddenly sounded in the space. "It is detected that 7 individuals are in the vicinity. Please keep in mind that you are unable to accept individual missions in the presence of others. Therefore, only missions suitable for parties of 7 will be shown.

If you would like to look at the individual missions please do so once the other 6 individuals in the vicinity have left."

They all nodded, and then the long list of tasks suitable for groups appeared along with their difficulty rating, and the credits to be obtained. For group tasks, the number of credits listed would is what each individual in the mission would receive, rather than the total amount to be split amongst everyone.

However, because of the assistance groups can provide to one another, the profit from group missions is a lot lower than individual ones.

"Hmmm… for the bronze-grade tasks we could accept the mission to clear out the Desolaphids. They are only white-grade spiritual creatures, I'm surprised they are even rewarding 5 credits each for it, that's more than the usual for white-grade creatures." Finn suggested.

Aiden shook his head, "The reason it is offering so much despite it being a white-grade species is because a Desolaphid infestation of a farm would involve potentially hundreds of thousands of the bugs. We'd need to eliminate every last one otherwise if even one escapes the infestation could start all over again.

Also, the task description even says that they infested a spiritual plant farm and we need to preserve the plants, so it's not like we can even burn the field to the ground. And for all of that hard work, we'd only have 5 credits each. Can we even exchange that for anything?"

It might be difficult for others, but Kain could easily solve it within minutes with a Bea-covered mist.

"We can accept it." Kain said, and didn't elaborate.

The others looked at him in surprise. But Bridge, having ventured into the wilderness with Kain before, likely guessed the method Kain would use and nodded his head.

Although they seemed a little hesitant, Kain's first-placed ranking in the entrance exam did have some sway and they still nodded in agreement.

"Although it is a little wasteful to go all that way just for 5 credits. Look at the Silver and Gold missions to see if there are any other missions in that area we can accept and finish while we're there." Kain suggested. Thankfully they all seemed to agree.