Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

94  Departing

First, he visited Martha and let her know of his intentions to leave, and that she would probably never see him again.

After that, he collected the remainder of the Shadow Wolf's corpse, which was about 25% of what it originally was, and took it to Martha to sell.

"This is an E+ rank Mutant beast, the Shadow Wolf. Only around 25% of it remains, as the rest of it I'm afraid was my source of food ever since I came to this place. I'm sure you know of its value, I'm just curious if you'll buy such an incomplete corpse off me."

Naturally, Martha's jaw fell to the floor when Alex explained to her what sort of beast she was dealing with.

But it quickly stiffened up as she started calculating the numbers.

'It still has most of its bones, save for a few leg bones. Around 20% of the meat is left, which is still as ripe as the day it was slain considering it's a beast…'

Her thoughts continued on for a few more minutes, with Alex waiting patiently by the side for her to finish.

"I have to say I didn't know you were this strong, killing such a formidable beast. To be truthful, I've never encountered such a strong beast in my life, whether out in the wild or in my time as a butcher. But my master, who happens to run the biggest butchery in the capital, has come across many beasts like this, so I can give you a price for the corpse." Martha revealed a little bit of her background, which surprised Alex a little bit as this was the first time she had revealed even a little bit of herself to Alex.

Both of them were quite reserved in what they spoke about with each other, with neither revealing any information about themselves except for the basics up until this point.

"I can give you 5 E+ rank ordinary beast cores for it. No negotiating." She finished off her explanation, finally giving Alex a price.

'It's about what I was expecting, considering most of the valuable parts of it have already been removed.'

Alex didn't hesitate in accepting the deal, as quite frankly the wolf would have ended up just being his food, with the bones scattered in a field somewhere if he couldn't sell it here.

Bidding his final goodbyes, Alex walked out of Martha's shop 5 E+ rank cores richer and made his way out of Monty town. His time here had been relatively boring, but quite fruitful in the end.

'Time to get my weapon!'

The travel time was 2 weeks, but that was estimated based on the other awakened who had ventured there before.

Alex was much stronger and faster than them, so it would only take him around 5 days to arrive.

'I wonder what my results would be if I took the strength, speed and reaction tests again with my power right now…'

In truth, Alex was much stronger than when he first exited the Primordial Expanse.

Although his actual soul core rank hadn't changed much, his other attributes had.

Ever since he had acquired the technique, Alex hadn't skipped out on any training of Phoenix fury, and by now his strength had been pushed up another couple hundred kilos. And that was only using the weakened training method… Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Not just his technique, but he had improved his knowledge and control over his strengths and talents over the past few months that it was astounding how much he had improved.

He didn't know the exact strength difference between Ordinary beasts and Mutant beasts, but just the fact that he could kill a Mutant E rank beast while still only being E- rank, not even a Mutant himself, showed his potential.

If Alex had to estimate, his strength right now, if he activated all his strongest trump cards, would roughly be equivalent to an Ordinary D- rank awakened, which was terrifying to think about!

If others in the Federation found out about this, they would call cheats! Such a thing shouldn't even be possible…

But Alex could push his strength even further. If he got his hands on the E+ rank fire attributed sword that was waiting for him in the ruins, then he might even be a match for an Ordinary D rank awakened.

Perhaps he'd even be able to take on E+ rank Mutant beasts by that point.

The only problem for him would be finding one…

***

4 more days had passed, and Alex was now deep into the wildlands.

His trip had been better than any of his hunting trips beforehand. But that was probably because he hadn't travelled so far from the town in any of those.

Unfortunately he still had no luck with opening a portal back to his own Universe, with each attempt ending in failure.

This worried him a little, as he still had no clues on the conditions required to open one in the first place.

He had killed a total of 8 E- rank beasts, 3 E rank beasts and 1 E+ rank beast on his way over. All of them Ordinary beasts.

With the sudden nerf he got for his Soulforge talent when he reached E- rank, he hadn't gotten a Soul orb for every beast like he would have hoped.

But he did accumulate 6 in total, which was a little over a 50% chance of gaining one.

It seemed the chances were higher, the higher the tier of the beast was.

This was a good sign for Alex, as it meant that his cultivation speed wouldn't decrease the stronger he grew!

But after absorbing all of the soul cores and soul orbs he had earned over the last week, his progress towards E rank had stagnated at 65%, with his progress towards Mutant still stuck at 20%, thanks to the scarcity of Mutant beasts.

Interestingly, the farther Alex travelled into the Wildlands, the darker the cave got.

The artificial sky and sun occasionally flickered, like it was about to fade out of existence.

But Alex figured it was just because he was slowly getting closer and closer to the Darkness, the place he had first entered when he fell into this damned cave.

Considering that was where he had encountered the Shadow Wolf, that was Alex's next destination after he obtained the sword from the ruins.

He'd see how his luck was with finding beasts in there, before heading towards a city.

Eventually, after a few more hours of walking through the dark, wet rainforest environment, he had arrived at his destination.

The ruins.

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