This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

The next day was extremely uneventful.

Despite being very different departments, the Beast-tamer and Planner orientations had almost identical content, the only difference being that instead of completing missions, Planner students are required to complete at least one evolution plan for a Beast-tamer per year, the quality of which will be assessed by the Professors of the department and assigned a grade.

The grade at the end of the year will reward a certain number of credits that can be exchanged for items from the school.

To maximize his income, Kain couldn't afford to slack off in either major.

Additionally, all of the professors for the Planner courses also decided to just spend the day giving long speeches.

'What a waste of a day. Couldn't they just send out an email with all this information?'

At least before his other classes pick up, he'd have an opportunity to continue focusing solely on his spiritual skills course.

However, during the night he received a System notification distracting him from practice.

After a moment of hesitation on whether or not he should stop practicing to check out the results of the upgrade, he eventually concluded that he wouldn't be able to focus from the curiosity and went to investigate.

'I'm short on time so summarize the results of the upgrade as soon as possible'

*Host's request confirmed. Preparing to summarize the results of the upgrade…*

*Host now has access to the laboratory*

Kain waited for more. However, after over a minute passed, no more information was provided. It looked like the System really chose to summarize the results of its upgrade as concisely as possible.

Sigh

'Please open the panel for the laboratory and summarize its function'

*Now bringing Host to the Laboratory*

Kain thought that the laboratory was just a new function in the System panel. However, similar to the Planetarium his consciousness was actually brought to a large mostly empty room with white tile floors and white walls.

'Shouldn't a laboratory have more stuff in it? This is pretty much empty'

*Additional equipment and functions will be added to the laboratory with system upgrades. However, the Host will not be disappointed by the current equipment available*

The only piece of equipment was a futuristic machine featuring a large, ultra-thin holographic screen with a nearly invisible metallic frame. Next to this screen was a glass cell, illuminated by internal lights.

Kain walked up to it but couldn't figure out its function.

'Please explain what this is for me'

*Answering Host. It is a Simulator. The machine allows the user to scan available materials and spiritual creatures to simulate evolution. Allowing the Host to accurately predict the evolutionary form and success rate without having the risk of wasted materials from an unsuccessful evolution or, even worse an unfavourably weak evolutionary form*

'Holy shit! I didn't know you had it in you' Kain was used to the System being quite mediocre as far as cheats go. However, this was the first time he'd actually been pleasantly surprised at the System's capabilities.

'How does it work? Can it only work on my contracts'

*The Simulator can be used with any spiritual creature you have made contact with, not only your contracts. It can also use any evolutionary materials you have made contact with to run a simulation. The Host can use the screen in front of you to select from the available database of spiritual creatures and materials to run a Simulation right now*

With anticipation Kain immediately turned to the screen, There were dozens of creatures in the database: ones seen at the breeding grounds, ones he's fought in the wild, contracts of others that he's met.

'Hmm…which should I pick?'

He selected the Lumifin, in all of the nights Kain spent in a tree above Bea infected river water, a few of her victims over the nights were this light and water dual attribute, Black-iron quality species. Kain looked at its image on the computer—It was quite good-looking, although it was extremely weak.

The Lumifin resembles a small, ethereal fish with translucent, shimmering fins that glow softly in various hues. About the size of a house cat, it has a streamlined, serpentine body and delicate, bioluminescent markings that change color according to its emotions. Its bioluminescent scales allow it to create flashes of light to provide temporary cover and disorientation.

However, such defensive measures against predators were useless against Bea.

It was usually caught as a decorative fish for the ponds of affluent families due to its beauty. But it had no combat power, and no known evolutionary form, therefore no beast-tamer would ever form a contract with it.

Although, it not being suitable contract likely played a role in no Planner researching it to find a decent evolutionary form, if it has one. If it can evolve, the form probably has unusual requirements not commonly met in nature, otherwise, there'd also be reported cases of it evolving in the wild.

After selecting the Lumifin, Kain was given the option to select up to 5 evolutionary materials.

Selecting 5 options randomly to try it out, the fish on the screen became obscured by the blinding light of evolution.

Gradually the light faded to reveal…a truly hideous creature. It has a bloated, misshapen body with uneven, ragged fins that barely glow. Its skin is a murky, mottled gray with patches of a sickly yellow, and it lacks the smooth, streamlined appearance of its successful ancestors. Its eyes are small and beady, giving it a perpetually disoriented look.

Kain then read the species description provided by the System. Based on the description it was a black-iron quality spiritual creature that had poorly developed abilities: its light manipulation was weak and unreliable, often producing dim, flickering glows or unwanted shadows.

In summary, it was a complete failure. Not only did the quality not go up. The few merits that Lumifin originally did have were completely gone with this evolution.

If he tried to sell this Gloomtail it'd probably be worth less than any one of the materials used in the evolution.

However, Kain was not surprised by such horrid results. He had not learned the necessary knowledge to plan an evolution from his Planner major.

Also, it's not like this simulation costs anything, he can continue to experiment whenever he has some free time.

*Actually Host, only the first Simulation is free as a test trial, every subsequent simulation will cost 100 GP*

'Damn it! Then tell me that beforehand! I would have taken this one more seriously.'