[ A/N: check out the auxiliary chapter Glossary, as it will give you general knowledge of the power structure :) ]
***
"Where are we camping?" John asked. "Personally, I want to camp at the border between Black Mist Woods and Moonveil Fen, slightly into this area's periphery."
"Hmmm, yeah, that's fine by me. The ground there should be solid and spacious."
John and Yuna summoned Alfred and Rayray while Pymon and Doku flew up alongside them with Starry and her baby eagles.
It was almost 3 a.m., and night monsters were roaming, especially in this area where there were more night monsters than day monsters.
Luminis Fairy was ultra rare here, born as Gold-rank, so there was no chance of them appearing, but its variant— Luminis Nightveil Fairy, which was born Silver-rank instead of Gold-rank—had a chance of appearing at night in this area. As such, John and Yuna planned to change their schedule by spending the night awake, exploring the area, and then sleeping during the day.
Max would join them in Moonveil Fen after finding the last resource needed for Blazeborn Stalker's evolution. He didn't want to keep Pyroshade Boar as his permanent pet. It was just temporarily tamed to increase his overall combat power and survival in the Scorched Grove area to capture the Blazeborn Stalker.
Since the Moonveil Fen area was very big and had a wide variety of monsters, he also wanted to capture a third monster from this area.
Unlike in Bronze rank, where Tamer had 2 soul pet spaces, ranking up to Silver and further ranks would only unlock one pet space per rank, and ranking up also becomes harder as one goes above, both for Tamers and Pet Monsters, with new additions of powers added each rank that needed to be trained and nurtured with resources.
Alfred had fought ten times more after reaching Silver rank, but his Genetic Potential only reached 24, and his Soul Crystal barely progressed past 150.
It was also due to a lack of Silver-rank Monsters' soul crystals, but even then, there were other things to do, like awakening his first Talent, training to nurture more Quirks, and also increasing the existing Quirk—Blood Mastery level 1—to the next level.
Quirks were absolutely required to be nurtured for Monsters to upgrade and evolve their skills and talents further.
There were some rare resources that could speed up Quirk's progression and nurture new ones, but as mentioned, they were very rare, pure elemental spiritual crystals that could only be found in certain Spirit Veins. And there wasn't even a guarantee for one to appear in a Spirit Vein.
There was even a chance to find a Spirit Vein in the Paladon Forest. It had happened in the past, and it made the student who discovered it rich, as the ruling sects would reward that student with 50% of all Spirit Crystals mined from it.
John's aim was precisely that. He wanted to find a Spirit Vein, and he felt like he could find it with his Inspect skill.
…
After two hours of slow traveling through the Moonveil Fen and heading towards the middle part of the border between the two areas, they fought over sixty Monsters and extracted their cores.
John didn't kill Monsters anymore unless it was for some tasty, meaty one, which they had to secure to eat food.
Moreover, they also encountered their first Silver-rank monster. As it was the 5th day, the Silver-rank Monsters would start to appear, and their number would increase every day.
John sacrificed Bronze-rank Cores to get Xhal Drops, but he fed the Silver-rank Crystal he extracted to Alfred, increasing his Soul Crystal to 167/500, increasing it by 9.
Bronze-rank cores no longer had any effect when fed to the Silver-rank Monsters after crossing 150, with the hard line being 160.
"Wow, we really built one hell of a camp, mostly you," Yuna said as she looked around the camp they rebuilt after dumping the logs, dismantling parts, and making it even better by procuring more wood and with John's magical additions by using Alfred's powers.
It took three hours to finish it with the help of Monsters, which was more considering the help, but that was because John did some training and experiments in the middle to make the camp better while learning some cool things.
Pymon and Doku used their sharp wings and skills to cut wood while Rayray, Starry, and the baby eagles transported them. Rayray could transport a lot of wood with her big, fluffy six tails.
Most importantly, John made use of Alfred's skill, Shattering Tail Smash, to acquire the crystals that would remain after slamming his tail, using them to make the camp better and more aesthetically pleasing.
On top of that, John trained Alfred to use his Blood Mastery level 1 more to explore it and discovered some cool usages.
Alfred could consume soul energy to produce Blood energy. John discovered two solid uses for it.
1. Blood could be hardened, making it like steel, but only while in control of Alfred. However, when hitting the hardened blood with a low-intensity Shader Blaze Beam, it turned into a solid and beautiful crimson glass after some experiments.
Shade Blaze Beam had Frostfire, Blood, and Darkness power in the mix. It was a pure offense-type skill. But after some training, Alfred could adjust the proportions of each attribute's power in the skill.
By increasing the proportion of Frostfire power in the Shader Blaze Beam, this skill managed to create this strange yet tough crimson glass from blood.
2. Blood could increase physical prowess temporarily and also heal wounds. John was surprised it could do that, but it made sense for the Blood attribute to do that.
There was no detailed information on what the various attributes could do in books at the kingdom's academy, which was one more reason to join a ruling sect that had hoarded all important information for themselves.
…
As the camp was ready and the sun was shining at 7 a.m., the duo cooked food and ate before sleeping.
Pet Monsters were energetic and could stay awake more with their heightened stats, so they lingered in and around the camp, guarding them.
Meanwhile, Azelis was overjoyed to find John arriving in the Moonveil Fen area.
When she saw them leaving Silver Hill Spring, she thought she wouldn't be able to observe him anymore, but seeing him camp in the Moonveil Fen area, which she just accessed after the exchange to look out for those bloodthirsty monsters, she was surprised and happy.
'Experimenting to discover more applications of Pet's power while also being so good at combat and hardworking to train…yep, I will take him to Ouroboros Hall, no matter what!'