Chapter 4: ICEMTB CH4 The Fate Of Card-Type Beast Tamers

Among the various type of Inner Space Powers, Card-Type powers were the lowest of the rung. This was because of the basic logic behind Beast Taming powers that belonged to the Inner Space type.

Unlike other tamers, whose Tamed Beast lived in the outside world, Tamed beasts of Inner Space type Beast Tamers lived in their mental spaces. For summoning and keeping them in the outside world, Inner Space-type Beast Tamers had to constantly use a small amount of mental energy. Therefore they only summoned the beasts out when the Tamed Beasts had to fight or the users needed to use the tamed beast's abilities.

Now, let's take a look at the growth process of a tamed beast. A tamed beast and its tamer grow through mutual feedback that is generated by the beast absorbing the mental energies of the tamer and in return providing the tamer with its unique bio-energy. In the case of Inner Space type tamers, the tamed beast can do this process from the inner space without having to come out.

For this process, the main thing to note is that the beast must be awake during this process. Otherwise, it will neither be able to absorb the mental energies from the Tamer nor give its bio-energy as feedback.

This point was the main drawback in the case of Card Type tamers. For card-type tamers, the beast is sealed in a card using whatever type of cardholder that manifests in their mind space. It could be a book type, a box type, a pouch type, a floating deck, or many more.

But the core principle behind this is that the Beast is sealed in a card, therefore making it inert. To awaken the best, the tamer would have to summon it out. However, as the Card Type belongs to the Inner Space type, summoning the beasts would require a constant mental energy cost.

This creates a paradox for the card-type tamers if they want their tamed beasts to grow. They can't provide the beast with mental energy until it is awake. It can only be awake when it is summoned. Yet summoning it takes constant mental energy, making it difficult to provide even a little amount of mental energy for the beast to consume.

Some stubborn card-type tamers with high aptitude and mental comprehension of meditation techniques tried stockpiling large amounts of mental energies before summoning their beasts and providing them with energy.

However, it was found that despite their best efforts, the growth rate of their beasts was at least four times slower than even an average beast tamer of most other types. This was because a large amount of their energy was wasted in keeping the beast summoned as it consumes the mental energy, they provide it.

On the other hand, other tamers would easily be able to surpass them with the same amount of energy even if their talent was weaker. This was because their energy was not being wasted in keeping the beast summoned just to let it consume energy.

If even growing one beast was giving the best of Card-Type tamers at least four times slower results, then what about if they had two or three beasts?

Therefore, almost all card-type beast tamers had given up on raising their tamed beasts properly. Instead, they've now started to rely on the only benefit of their ability, which was being able to tame large amounts of beasts at once and carry them anywhere easily.

The basic fighting style of card-type beast tamers was growing into a process of contracting a bunch of low-grade beasts and using them as disposable suicide armies to kill even one or two stronger-grade beasts.

However, many tamers despised card-type tamers for this reason. The disposable suicide army tactic had left a large number of card-type tamers with no empathy for tamed beasts. They would often even endanger the beasts of other tamers, sometimes even the other tamers themselves, just to complete their goals.

On the other hand, none of the high-grade beasts ever contracted card tamers, as high-grade beasts had intelligence comparable to humans and they understood that they would be wasting their potential by contracting a card-type tamer.

Therefore, it was easiest to decide the ranking for a card-type tamer, as it was decided by the maximum number of cards they could have in their cardholder. The maximum possible rank for a card-type tamer was determined by the Awakening centre as B-Class and the minimum possible rank was an F-Class.

After getting over the shock of becoming a card-type tamer, Rudra decided to make the best of what he had now. He noticed that though he was a card-type tamer now, the amounts of slots in his cardholder was a very large amount. This meant that according to the evaluation rankings, he should be classified as B-Rank.

"B-Rank is not bad. It's the lowest threshold for entering university, but I won't receive any special resources. I will also have to pay from my pocket for any university-organized dungeon trips I want to join. The road will be tough, but let's see what happens in the future." Rudra consoled himself as he went out of the Awakening room and walked to the counter.

The drunk guy with the prosthetic arm was still there, cleaning up the counter as it was almost time to close the centre. On seeing Rudra he reeled back in surprise for a moment.

"Damn, boy!! You scared me!! You were still in the Awakening Room? The last kid went home half an hour ago. I almost locked you for the night here by mistake. I could have lost my job because of this." the drunk guy scolded Rudra.

"Sorry, I was just lost in thinking about my Beast Taming special ability." Rudra apologized.

"It's fine. Just give me your Base issued ID Card and tell me in detail the type of special ability you awakened. I will input the appropriate Beast Tamer Rank in your ID Card after that." the drunk guy grumbled.

Rudra gave him the ID Card and the drunk guy took it while gripping it between two fingers of his prosthetic arm. He inserted it into a machine and the machine hummed to life.

"What is your Beast Taming special power type?" the drunk guy asked while he started manipulating some settings in the machine with his one proper hand.

"I am a Card-Type Beast Tamer," Rudra said and the man froze for a second before immense hatred welled up in his eyes for a moment. But he hid it and continued adjusting the setting on the device, this time with slightly more urgency.

"As for the number of slots that will determine my rank, I have over 300 card slots. So I should have B-class" Rudra said.

"Is that so … hmm.." the man said in a non-committal tone. He finished working on Rudra's ID in the next few moments and handed the ID back to Rudra.

Rudra started reading his new information, "Name - Rudra, Gender - Male, Age - 14, Card Type Beast Tamer, D-Rank ….. D-Rank??"

"Excuse me, sir, there has been a mistake!!" Rudra told the drunken guy in a hurry, who had finished closing the counter by now and was about to leave.

"Really? What mistake?" the drunken guy asked with a barely hidden smug smile.

"I have over 300 card slots. So according to the rules, I should be receiving a B-class ranking for being a Card Type Beast Tamer."

"Oh, you were referring to that." the drunken guy said as he pretended to nod sagely while continuing in a gloating tone, "You see, there is another set of rules that you must not be familiar with."

"According to Awakening Center's Data Falsification Prevention rules, if I judge that you might be lying about the details of your Beast Tamer power, I am allowed to give you an average rank based on the maximum and minimum ranking possible for your power type."

"Since you are Card Type Beast Tamer, I have assigned you D-Class as the average rank. If you want to increase your rank, tame the required number of beasts for the rank. You said you should be B-Class, so tame 300 beasts, which is the threshold for qualifying into a B-Class."

"After all, no one can go into your mental space and check if you are saying the truth. it all depends on the results you achieve if we want to verify your claims. Due to these reasons, this set of rules was created."

"Once you have achieved that, you can come here and demonstrate the summoning of 300 tamed beasts in our training ground. I will happily change your ranking." the drunken guy said with a fake smile.

"But that will take me years!! I will miss my chance to enter a university by that point." Rudra said.

"I know. After all, I did this deliberately for that precise reason." the Drunken guy said with a mocking look on his face.

"Deliberately? ... But why?" Rudra was shocked at this revelation.

"Why? I will tell you why!! Because all of you Card Type Beast Tamers are ABSOLUTE SCUM!!!" the drunken man shouted at Rudra's face, a wild look full of hatred blazing on his face.