After spending the 2 weeks after his birthday tempering, helping his father with the village, and spending time with Luna. Cass had increased his mana capacity to [Mana: 145/145], and had stockpiled 2 gacha tickets.
Cass's progression was slightly faster than Elizabeth had expected, but considering he is, as Adeline had called him, 'a mutant selectively bred one in a trillion talent', a faster tempering speed isn't out of the ordinary.
He was still an early-stage neophyte, but after conversing with his mother, he discovered that to reach the level of adept, he needed to do 2 things. First, he needed to reach a capacity of 1000 mana, which is the mana limit of a peak neophyte. Second, he needed to form a mana pool.
A mana pool, for all intents and purposes, is a magical organ created with mana. It is a storage device for mana, and allows the body to keep far more than 1000 mana units inside, allowing an ordinary person to break through to the next rank, and continue to temper further.
As a mage progresses through tempering ranks, they need to continually reinforce and expand their mana pool, allowing them to store more and more mana inside. At higher levels, it becomes necessary to compress mana before assimilating it, allowing even more units of mana to be stored inside the mana pool.
The issue in Cass's case was that he was a combat mage. He would use his mana for both magic and physical skills. Therefore, body tempering is also necessary. Non-combatant types don't usually worry about tempering their body; they simply break through once they hit the necessary level, but for mages who use their body, breaking through without body tempering could be disastrous.
A system allows a mage to direct some of their mana pool into tempering the body, but a mana pool must be created first. So the steps for Cass are quite simple.
Step 1: Temper his mana to 1000 units with tempering and star-beast meat.
Step 2: Create the prerequisite mana pool
Step 3: Direct mana units into the body for tempering.
Step 4: Reintegrate the mana units used for body tempering.
This process takes longer than simply breaking through, but it ensures the mage's physical-based skills won't rip their own body apart when they are used.
To that end, Cass and Luna decided it would be a good idea to go together to the forest and try to hunt down some 1-star and 2-star beasts and gain some combat experience. Cass had only sparred with Marcus, and he had never had to engage in combat with 1-star beasts because Harric could one-shot them with a bow when they hunted.
After making the decision to start hunting in the forest, he received a notification from his system.
Ding!
[Host's interest in hunting star beasts has unlocked the slayer system...initiate tutorial Y/N]
Naturally, Cass accepted.
[Tutorial initiated.... Lesson 1: Slayer milestones. The host can check their progress anytime by thinking 'milestones'. Try it now.]
'Milestones'
A small window appeared, listing goals for killing star-beasts.
[Kill 10 1-star beasts - 0/10 - Reward: 2 gacha tickets, 50 system points]
[Kill 10 2-star beasts - 0/10 - Reward: 10 gacha tickets, 250 system points]
[?????]
Cass was once again impressed by the system's ability to surprise him. He was planning on killing star beasts anyway, but now the system was offering him extra rewards. He noticed that after 2-star beasts the other boxes were blank.
'Why do I only have goals for 1 and 2-star beasts?'
[Host has not yet seen any other level of beast. To unlock these milestones, you must encounter an appropriate star-beast, living or dead.]
That made sense. He had encountered 1-star beasts while learning to hunt with Horric, and Luna had hunted and fed him a 2-star beast, so they were unlocked. But he had never seen a 3-star beast or higher, so it wasn't on his milestone list. He continued with the tutorial
[Lesson 2: Slayer quests. The host can check their quest progress anytime by thinking 'quests'. Try it now.]
'Quests'
[Active quests - ....]
'No quests?'
Ding!
[Quest: Slay 10 1-star beasts ]
[Description: Kill 10 1-star beasts without being assisted]
[Reward: 1 gacha ticket, 50 system points, 10 free points, 1 green skill]
[Time Limit: 30 days ]
[Accept Quest Y/N]
Cass accepted the quest. 'System, do kills done during a quest count towards milestones?'
[Yes, host, they are not separate. kills from quests count towards milestones.]
Cass understood now that milestones and quests overlapped, and rewards stack. If he slayed 10 1-star beasts, he would receive in total: 3 gacha tickets, 100 system points, 10 free points, and a green skill. Incredible, Cass was now even more excited.
[Lesson 3: bountys. The host can check their quest progress anytime by thinking 'bountys'. Try it now.]
'Bountys'
[Kill 1-star beast - 10 system points]
[Kill 2-star beast - 50 system points]
[?????]
Now, Cass was simply astounded. 'This is a total cheat, I wonder if I will get system points just for killing them, regardless of quests or milestones? System, does this also stack?'
[Yes, host, this can also be combined with quests and milestones]
So now an additional 100 points on top of everything else, bringing the total to 200 system points for killing 10 1-star beasts. If Cass did not capitalize on this, he was a fool.
Another reason to do this would be the reward of gacha tickets. Completing this quest would leave him with 5 Gacha tickets total.
After exploring his system a little, Cass had noticed that if you rolled multiple tickets at once, there was a bonus available. 1 roll in the lowest tier in the skills section costs 1 ticket, but if you used 5 tickets to roll 5 at once, you would receive an additional roll for free. 6 skills for the price of 5.
The thought of watching the numbers go up on his system screen was too alluring. System points could upgrade his skills.
Better skills could kill more star beasts.
Killing star beasts gave him system points.
System points could upgrade his skills.
And on and on it went ina perpetual motion machine of martial ability. He ran off to find Luna!