"Good job" says Richard after Tina and Oliver's soulbounds exit the arena, leaving behind the corpse of the Dire Bear. "Now because the slain Dire Bear was not caught by the two of you and was caught by us instructors, you wont be able to claim the bounty for the carcass. Though I will award you both with five gold for such an impressive victory. I have to admit that I gave the Dire Bear to you Oliver because I wanted to try and catch a glimpse of just how strong your Shadow Weasel is, and I have to say that I am impressed and feel as though I still haven't seen the depth of your soulbounds capabilities." Richard continues.
Loki yips in reply to Richards compliment further improving the Shadow Weasels impression of the instructor as well as inflating Loki's already big head.
It seems that all it takes to get on Loki's good side is to throw him a couple of compliments and feed him your dessert at dinner, Oliver thinks to himself as he shakes his head at Loki's inflated ego.
Loki was already at level five when Oliver bound him to his soul. Killing the Dire Bear which was a full five levels higher than him gained him a level. He must've already been close to level six because splitting that kill between the four of them, Tina, the Plant Sprite, Oliver and finally Loki would not have earned him a full level.
Oliver looked at his own xp bar and saw that killing the Dire Bear had almost given him a full level since he was still level one. As far as levels go Oliver is by far one of the most under leveled person at the training camp. It was bad luck getting conscripted the day after turning eighteen.
Brutus was already level seven. Which makes sense since his dad, as the leader of the guards forced him to patrol with the guards back in Shadow Glades.
Tina is level six. She leveled up so fast even though her birthday wasn't that long ago because shes a healer and healers are in high demand in all parts of the country but especially in Shadow Glades. Ideally Albert as the leader of the guards would prefer to send each patrol out with a healer but Shadow Glades only has the shaman class stone providing them with healers. With the shaman class stone being an abnormal class it requires you to have a plant affinity to even become a healer via the class. Albert could only send the few healers he had to patrol the most dangerous places. Which is why Tina has such a high level. Practically the moment she chose the shaman class while having a plant affinity, she was scooped up by Albert and thrust into patrol duty. That's also why she has such a rare soulbound because Albert acquired it for her as a way to keep her safe while being out in the wilderness.
Now Shadow Glades healer problem wasn't as bad as most cities because Oliver's family paid for a number of citizens to acquire the cleric class from the Adventures Guild, plus they had the shaman healers to fill their ranks. Its just that shaman healers were found to be a better option for patrols that were going deeper into the wilderness because their Entangling Roots spell was to potent of a control spell when a beast jumps on you from somewhere unexpected, which happened more frequently the further from Shadow Glades you go.
To send a Cleric into the wilderness it required the cleric to obtain a good control soulbound that would enable the party to deal with those unexpected occurrences that popped up. Or for the party to have itself built around the cleric, this was a viable solution and was put into affect in the higher level parties but it became less viable at the lower levels because they're limited to one soulbound, at the higher levels you will have multiple soulbounds which allows the patrol party to have more soulbounds with control skills to accommodate the Clerics lack of control.
Most of Shadow Glades lower leveled Clerics stay behind the walls. While the lower leveled healer shamans were sent to do the more dangerous jobs. Now Clerics really showed their worth on the walls where their buff abilities really display their strength and utility. If Shadow Glades didn't make sure to keep so many Clerics around then the casualty rate from the last beast tide would've been a lot worse.
Trevor was level four and that's only because he only turned eighteen not to long ago and he had just gotten onto a patrol pretty much right before getting conscripted. Before he got in a actual patrol which would leave Shadow Glades to make sure that no large population of beasts decided to make the outskirts of Shadow Glades their home. When that happens if neglected it has the potential of becoming a beast tide. That's because there's only so much territory to be had around Shadow Glade and most of it was already occupied by other large beast clans which know to stay away from Shadow Glade. If the citizens of Shadow Glades allowed another large beast tribe to move in and throw off the balance that has been struck in the territories around the city eventually a previously established beast tribe would fight with the newcomers which would cause one of them to lose and end up fleeing and possibly running to Shadow Glades to escape the persecution of the other beasts because Shadow Glade was seen as a safer passage to freedom compared to heading deeper into the wilderness and having to contest with Beast Kings. This is what would happen if the citizens of Shadow Glades allowed beasts to reproduce and thrive within the territory they had claimed for themselves. Beast Kings handled things the same way which is probably how Shadow Glades came to know about it.
The wilderness patrol's job was to thin the surrounding beasts population down to give the city a buffer zone and declare it as their territory even if it was in the wilderness. Because the wilderness patrols were so dangerous and scouts were often away from their patrol group scouting ahead and looking for tracks and what not, Albert required his scouts to at least be level four. Albert did this so they could put those stat points into their agility which would make them considerably faster and able to get back to their patrol groups quickly if something unexpected happened. Now those levels may seem paltry in the grand scheme of things but three stat points in agility would make a scout fifty percent faster than they were at level one. Also low level patrols only ventured a little ways into the wilderness to catch any beasts that the higher level patrols missed during their sweeps, this made these low level patrols a good way for lower levels to level up as well as earn a living. Trevor had just made it into one of the lower level patrols before he got conscripted.
To gain the level required to join a patrol Trevor had been on wall duty culling the random stray beasts that made it past the patrols.
"Okay lets start the next match and have Vincent's party take on the next beast." Richard says. "Lets have Vincent step forward with your Cleric Paul." Richard says.
Vincent and Paul release their soul bounds into the arena. Paul's soulbound is a Day Break Hawk which is a hybrid of support and DPS, that's because a Day Break Hawk has a skill that produces a shield of fast moving wind currents which can deflect attacks as well as do damage, If an attack or creature is able to penetrate the wind currents then they take damage from said wind currents, this is because the shield is not a dome which you can penetrate and bypass, the wind currents come from the target of the skill so anyone attacking the shield has to make it all the way to the center of the shield in order to attack the target of the shield, all the while the fast moving air currents do continuous damage to the attacker and the shield doesn't break even If the attacker reaches the target. It is a channeled ability so it can stay active as long as the Hawk has mana to fuel it. The Day Break Hawk uses this shield as a battering ram as it fly's into its target, forcing them to enter the shield and take damage. When this skill is paired with a hawks fast diving speed it can prove quite formidable in the right situations.
Once both Vincent and Paul's soulbounds are in the arena the gate on the other side of the arena begins to open and out comes two Terror Birds. They would tower a few feet over an averaged sized human. They were covered in a thick layer of feathers which were moderately good at taking damage though nowhere near as sturdy as the Dire Bears fur. Terror birds were known for their high Agility which allowed them to move a lot faster than their size would have you believe and their steel like beaks that could damage even the toughest of defenses. Both of the Terror Birds were level five. This was going to be a tough fight for the duo of soulbounds.
By the end of the fight which took nearly ten minutes Vincents Land Raptor was covered in injuries and was barely holding on to its life. If the fight had gone on for any longer the instructors would've had to step in and save the Land Raptor. The real mvp of the match was Pauls Day Break Hawk which used hit and run tactics to dive down on the helpless Terror Birds while using its wind barrier to do massive damage since the speed of the hawks dive not only caused the Terror Bird to take damage from the Hawks razor sharp talons but also pushed the wind barrier all the way into the Terror Bird which caused it to take quite a lot of damage from the raging wind currents. The Day Break Hawk had not a single wound on it because it would immediately fly back up for another dive as soon as it completed one. The Hawk always targeted the Terror Birds heads so that the impact of it claws would cause the Terror Birds head to shoot back and leave a small window for the Hawk to rise back into the air before the Terror Bird could retaliate.
Now from Oliver's point of view their strategy was not a good one. Instead of leaving Vincent's Land Raptor to tank all the damage and occupying the Terror Birds attention while the Day Break Hawk uses its Wind Shield to cause more damage with its dive, they should've had the Hawk cast the Wind Barrier on the Land Raptor because with the Raptor being the only viable target for the Terror birds aggression the Terror birds who constantly attacked the Raptor would continuously do damage to themselves while fighting through the wind barrier, so not only would the Terror Birds be taking constant damage from the wind barrier every time they attacked but the wind barrier would've protected the Land Raptor causing it to not be let in a half dead state by the time they killed the Terror Birds. The Hawk could've still done its dive attack and used the same strategy of targeting the Birds head to give it a window of escape and avoid taking damage. Now the Day Break Hawk wouldn't be doing as much damage while no longer having the Wind Shield active on itself but that damage would've been made up for and possibly even surpassed by the constant damage the Terror birds were taking every time they attacked the Land Raptor or when the land raptor attacked them and caused them to be stuck in the middle of the Wind Shield with the Land Raptor as the Raptor used the strength of its strong jaw to do damage to them. This was possible because the Land Raptor could use its dash skill to push the wind barrier deep into the Terror Birds while also using the dash to cause significant damage with its sharp fangs.