As he arrived back at War Beast Sanctuary, Nick kept his gaze lowered and made sure not to look in the surrounding people's direction.
His wounds were mostly healed by now; even his internal bleeding had been repaired. All thanks to the life force his Soul
However, his attempt at staying lowkey didn't work in his favour, as it only drew more attention to himself, rather than deflecting it.
When people first enter the Beast Domain, whether it be fresh out of high school at the ripe age of 16, or any later point in life, they could always find a few friends among the other humans in their sanctuary to form a team of sorts and hunt beasts with.
But that was because most people had Soul Abilities that actually had some use, in fact even other Mundane Ranked Abilities actually had some versatility and usability to them. However when Nick's ability didn't even show a trace of being useful upon his awakening, which earned him the ridicule of everyone in the sanctuary.
Why was Nick's Ability deemed useless? Because even after three weeks of exploring the Beast Domain, not once had it displayed any sort of utility!
In fact, it was only until an hour ago when Nick killed the Awakened White Ox that it showed itself for the first time, but only Nick was aware of that.
It would be hard to find someone who didn't know of the 'Waste of Space' which had quickly become Nick's nickname in this place. In fact, it wasn't overboard to say that he was more famous than the leaders of the strongest forces in the War Beast Sanctuary!
…Only he was famous for the wrong reasons.
Even if people didn't know his face or name, they could still quickly figure out who he was just from the looks other people around would be giving him.
This partially contributed to why Nick's progress in the first level of the Beast Domain was so lackluster. Beasts also had a hierarchy in the Beast Domain, also ordered in terms of strength.
The weakest beasts were the Mundane beasts, much like the previous White Ox that Nick had hunted until they were no longer of any use to him. Above the Mundane Beasts came Awakened Beasts, above these came Mutant Beasts, and then finally the Radiant Beasts.
Having just killed his first Awakened beast, it was only natural that Nick felt excited and looked forward to his future, however that still only made him just another small fry in the Beast Domain.
The leaders of the strongest forces in War Beast Sanctuary each had their own Radiant Beast Armaments, even some of their deputies had such strong equipment. The leaders were special though, as they strive to be the very best, aiming to max out their Soul Core with Radiant Soul Seeds before ascending to the next level of the Beast Domain.
One might think this is easy, since it only takes 500 Soul Seeds before being given the option of ascending, which theoretically meant that if you were the luckiest person in history, you could kill 10 beasts and receive the maximum of 50 Soul Seeds from each one of them to ascend!
This could be done in a single day if one just focused on killing Mundane beasts.
But that was entirely backwards thinking.
People entered the Beast Domain to become stronger, to increase their lifespan, or for any number of reasons like simply earning money. If they chose to ascend after just accumulating 500 Mundane Soul Seeds, that would limit their future potential and essentially doom themselves to become some of the weakest people both in and out of the Beast Domain.
At the very least, most people tended to try their luck with ascending with a majority split of Awakened Soul Seeds. If Nick remembered correctly from his school days, those on the weaker end tended to ascend to the next level with a 30:70 split between their Mundane and Awakened Soul Seeds, meaning they would have 150 Mundane and 350 Awakened Soul Seeds upon their ascension.
Those on the stronger side tended to ascend with all Awakened Soul Seeds, some even having a small number of Mutant Soul Seeds to their name.
But of course, this is only talking about the majority of the Federation's population. Those who were actually strong would ascend with entirely Mutant Soul Seeds, while at the very top would do it with Radiant Soul Seeds.
There was a huge disparity in strength between each level of power as well, one that would be impossible to bridge after ascending. The chasm only got wider as one progressed higher.
There was a consensus among the Federation that one's time in the First level of the Beast Domain was the most important of all and would be the foundational stage for their future development.
Nick currently had little to no aspirations for reaching such a level as someone with Radiant Beast Armaments and Radiant Soul Seeds to their strength.
His status in War Beast Sanctuary reflected this, and it wasn't long before trouble found its way in front of Nick.
'Tsk, such unlucky timing. I was hoping to avoid such people on my way in.'
Nick scowled inwardly but didn't let it show on his face.
In front of the gates of the Sanctuary, a large group of several dozen people were all gathered together, looking like they were about to set out on an expedition of sorts.
Nick recognised these people with a glance — they were one of the two strongest forces in the Sanctuary. They called themselves the Radiant Slayers, with their name quite obviously coming from their ability to kill those mighty Radiant rank beasts.
The other force, who weren't present at that moment, called themselves the War Beasts, directly taking the name of the Sanctuary as the name of their force because they quite literally controlled the sanctuary.
It wasn't like it was a small place either, each sanctuary housed over 50,000 people at the very least, with some larger ones out there holding much more in the 6 digits.
Their status wasn't of any concern to Nick though, it was the fact that menacing and ridiculing smiles appeared on their faces when they spotted Nick approaching the Sanctuary with a beast corpse in tow.
"Well would you look at that! It seems like the Waste of Space has managed to survive another day, and he's even brought back some spoils!"
However some surprised looks appeared on the faces of the Radiant Slayers when they realised that the beast Nick was dragging was an Awakened beast.
…Some even had looks of greed cross their faces for a brief moment.
But Nick ignored the stares from those around the gate and directly walked past them.
There was an unofficial rule in the Beast Domain. Nobody could steal another's kill inside a Sanctuary.