Once the remainder of the mock battles had completed, Rachel led the class to the east wing, where they came to a pristine white hall. Students of other classes shuffled through it hurriedly, and the cries of beasts could be heard from within its rooms.
"This is the medical ward. You will get your beasts treated here after each training session to ensure they stay in peak physical condition," Rachel explained. "And these," she continued, opening the door to a large examination room, "are your fellow students who will be helping you with that."
The door opened to reveal a swathe of students standing within, each dressed in medical attire with rubber gloves and cloth masks. A recognizable student stood at the front, her blue hair tied up professionally with the mask doing little to disguise her beauty.
"These are the first year students of this year's breeding division," Rachel continued. "As part of their practice to learn about the different types of spirit beasts and their treatment, they will be assisting you this semester. Get healed up, then you can go home for the day."
The students spread out, some being brought to separate rooms, and summoned their beasts for treatment. Those with exceptionally large beasts were led to an outdoor care area. Aurelia happily skipped up to Kanan, waving her arm.
"Kannann!" she yelled. "I'll treat you! Did poor little Poppy get hurt?"
Some of her classmates looked at her in shock, evidently unused to her current attitude. In response to her words, Kanan shook his head.
"No, Poppy's ok. I'm going to need you to take a look at Twilight, though, he took a pretty nasty electric shock."
Saying so, he summoned Twilight out. The little squirrel was still radiating gloom.
"Oh no! Twilight!" Aurelia cried out. "Poor little thing. I'll get you fixed up."
She examined Twilight carefully, checking around its body for any injuries. Verifying its condition, she took out some ingredients and began to mix them, her hands moving delicately and with practiced precision.
After a couple minutes of concocting, she produced two vials, one red and healthy-looking and the other with a shimmering yellow liquid.
"Alright, here we are Twilight! One health potion and one paralysis potion! Truthfully speaking, hastily made potions like these are no better than the ones you can find on the market, but they want use to produce our own instead of using those in order to practice," the girl explained.
Twilight grabbed the vials and quickly downed the health potion, moving for the paralysis potion before Aurelia called out.
"Oh! Be careful, drink that one slowly, OK? It's extremely bitter."
Twilight cast her a disdainful look, and downed the whole thing in one go. His face briefly flashed with surprise and discomfort, but he quickly masked it and went back to his usual impassive expression.
He couldn't hide his feelings from Kanan, though. Feelings of disgust, regret, and suffering flooded their mental connection. The boy shook his head at the squirrel's stubbornness and gave Twilight a knowing smile, who turned his head away in embarrassment.
"Good job Twilight," Aurelia complimented. "You'll be back to normal in no time, just rest for a couple hours before you do anything else."
Seeing that they were wrapping up, Ivan swaggered over to them, his eyes fixed on Aurelia.
"Aurelia, can you take a look at my beast as well?"
Aurelia put on a polite, tight-lipped smile. "I'm sorry, but each student is to pair up with one other student. Otherwise some of us in the breeding division might not get to practice. If your beast is injured then please find someone who hasn't paired up yet."
Having no response to the girl's logical argument, Ivan gave Kanan a sulky glare and retreated.
"Tch, fine."
His Sun Crow wasn't badly hurt, but for the sake of his pride he went to find another student to get it looked at.
Making sure that he was gone, Aurelia let out a sigh, her mask breaking once more.
"So how did your matches go?" She asked.
Kanan explained what happened, talking about the results of the two matches and venting his frustrations at not being prepared enough for the second one.
"Basically what you're saying is that you need moves that are able to let Twilight fight even when crowd control skills don't work, huh? Have you considered posting a mission?"
Kanan was stumped at the unexpected question. "A mission? For what?"
"Missions aren't only for battling or solving problems. You can post a mission asking for a spirit beast that knows a specific skill to teach it to Twilight, as long as the conditions are right. It's a little pricey though, you usually pay by the hour."
Kanan considered Aurelia's words. A mission, huh. It's true, that did seem like the best way to solve his problem. The money might be an issue, but that was solvable.
Thanking her for the advice, Kanan headed back to the lab for the day, eager to begin researching skills for Twilight to learn.
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back at home, Kanan and Twilight scrolled through listings for skill tutoring. Kanan had his eye on the Shadow Sphere skill, a dark attack that shot out a ball of darkness energy to strike the opponent. A powerful ranged attack that would compliment the utility of Twilight's Darkness.
Unfortunately, given the relative rarity of the dark type, skill tutors for its skills were expensive. The listings started at 200 credits per hour. Kanan would need to complete a mission of similar value to the one where he had met Twilight, or several smaller missions in order to be able to afford the fee.
Twilight, seeing the fee, became nervous and began to fidget. Feelings of worry and uncertainty were transmitted to Kanan through their mental connection.
Kanan, knowing what was wrong, gave Twilight a comforting smile.
"Don't worry, this much is nothing, OK? We'll take on some missions and we'll have you learning the skill in no time."
His words comforted Twilight, who nodded gratefully and settled down.
Switching to the acceptable missions section on the terminal, the two began to browse missions that they could complete to get some funds.
[Tier 2 Task - Heal My Son's Toyger]
Reward: 5,000 Credits
Requirements: Pet Breeding Knowledge
Task: My son's pet Toyger has been listless, unwilling to move or eat. Please find out the reason! Applicants should contact me first at building 12-8 in the residential district.
The task stood out. Tasks related to healing pet illnesses started at Tier 2 by default, and they were priced accordingly. Completing this single task would allow Kanan to cover 25 hours of training for Twilight.
Kanan was confident enough in his breeding knowledge, learned during his time under Argana's tutelage. He might not have worked with a Toyger before but it was a common enough beast, with plenty of public resources and information available on it.
The one downside to this sort of commission was the risk. There was no guarantee that Kanan would be able to solve the issue, so the chances of wasting his time and walking away with nothing were high. Despite that, it seemed worth it. 5,000 credits was roughly 5x what he would make from the Tier 1 mission, and he wasn't yet prepared to handle most Tier 2 combat missions. Without an evolved beast they were still too dangerous.
Done deciding, he accepted the mission and headed to the address listed in the task info.
Upon arriving, he was met by a professional-looking businesswoman, dressed to a tee with her hair pulled back into a standard ponytail. She looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes, but upon hearing that Kanan was there for the mission she introduced herself as Annette and invited him in.
"My family and I moved here from Deiter Village two months ago," she explained. "I got a job working at a subsidiary of Silverlight, you see. The offer was beyond anything we could have imagined — our quality of life has risen dramatically since then. It's a lot of work, but it's a better life for me and my family."
"Despite that though, ever since we moved my son's Toyger has had something wrong with it. It's listless and immobile, sometimes even refusing to eat for days on end. It's wasting away. We thought it was sick, that there was something wrong with it, so we brought it to the Association's beast healing center but they said there was nothing they could do."
"My son himself has been fine, though he's worried sick over the Toyger. I haven't gotten to spend as much time with him since the move but he's handled it like a champ, I'm so grateful for him. With the salary from this new job, we should even be able to send him to the Academy starting next year!" she bragged.
Her words made Kanan question just how much money Argana had sent Professor Quartz for his tuition. He hadn't expected it to be that much, so he hadn't asked, but perhaps the Academy was more prestigious than he had given it credit for?
He turned his attention back to Annette. "Alright, first things first, let's meet this Toyger and take a look."