When Alex heard the man's words, he was only reminded once again at how weak he was in the grand scheme of things.
He could do nothing but smile bitterly at the man before he left with his documents to finally collect his Adventurer licence.
Inside the main hall where most of the adventurers congregated, Alex stood, looking plainly at one of the huge boards filled to the brim with all sorts of paper.
Naturally, these papers were missions put up either at the request of the city or any citizen with a problem who was willing to fork out the reward money.
The receptionist had told Alex of his duties that he had to uphold now that he was an adventurer.
There was only one main responsibility that every adventurer had to adhere to, no matter their status or rank.
This was that all adventurers had to complete at least 1 mission every 6 months, these missions could be at any rank as long as it was still within the capabilities of the adventurer. If a D rank adventurer wanted to take on a F rank mission, that was fine as long as they fulfilled their yearly quota. But F rank adventurers could not take on D rank missions, as that would just be a one way ticket to suicide.
There were also special cases where the Adventurer Association allowed adventurers to skip out on these mission quotas. Most of these cases applied to outsiders though, as they might not have been able to access the Primordial Expanse for years at a time due to certain reasons.
Alex sighed as he reminisced back to the scene he made earlier.
***
10 minutes earlier
Alex had asked about the missions in depth when he received his licence, to the annoyance of the receptionist who had to explain this to him.
The conversation flowed smoothly at first, at least Alex thought so, until the topic of the rewards came up...
"Rewards? Well rewards could be anything really, but the most popular and lucrative reward would easily be beast cores. Yep, those rewards alone are what is so attractive for adventurers to complete missions with the Adventurer Association. F rank missions mostly consist of hunting beasts of the same rank, which have very, very rare chances of dropping F rank beast cores. Hence the association rewards 1 F rank beast core for every 5 F rank missions completed."
Naturally, Alex's mind blanked from hearing the receptionist ramble on and on about the rewards using terms and words he didn't recognise.
'???'
His mind was essentially filled with question marks while listening to her.
"Beast cores? What are those?"
The receptionist and the surrounding adventurer's who heard his question looked at Alex strangely when he asked that.
'Did this kid really just ask that? How did this fool even get his licence...'
However the questioning gazes returned to a look of understanding when Alex turned around, revealing the marks on his face.
"You don't know about beast cores..? How could you have upgraded your soul core from F- to F if you don't even know what beast cores are..."
She didn't notice it, but Alex heard her mumblings.
The receptionist mumbled to herself, then continued.
"Beast cores are what allow us to upgrade our soul cores, obviously. How else would we become stronger if not with beast cores?"
Alex just nodded, asking what those beast cores looked like out of curiosity.
However his face blackened when he received the answer.
'She said F rank cores look like small white stones, located in the head of the beast if you were lucky enough to find one...'
'Fuck this Primordial Expanse! You hear me? Fuck you!'
Alex's anger was justified. He was angry at the world, at himself and at the federation.
If he had known such information earlier, he definitely wouldn't have discarded the small white stone he found inside the Huge rabbit when cooking it.
That thing was most likely an F rank beast core!
'Why is my luck always so shit??'
But thinking about how the receptionist said beast cores were the only way to upgrade your soul core, that only got him wondering just what those purple orbs he had received from the Huge rabbit were.
He knew they were somehow related to his talent, but that was it.
***
Back to the present.
'Not this one... nor this one...'
Alex scanned through the list of missions for nearly half an hour until he found one that he liked.
[Mission: Kill the Sleeper
Description: In the outskirts of the city, reports and cases of people dying in their sleep have popped up every so often over the last few weeks. It was only when an official's relative fell victim to this that an investigation was launched. The investigation team found that an F rank beast was found to be the culprit, nicknamed 'The Sleeper' for its method of killing.
Mission goal: Kill the Sleeper and present the corpse to the mission hall as evidence.
Reward: 10 gold]
This mission was just what Alex was looking for. Something suitable for his level, but not too dangerous.
He had survived the attack of the Galephant, twice at that, as well as killed the Huge rabbit, but that didn't suddenly make him an expert in combat. All of his achievements so far had only been achieved through his luck.
Alex had no combat experience, nor had he learned anything about strategy or how to deal with such beasts in his time at school.
The schools on the asteroid where Alex lived didn't teach anything related to the Primordial Expanse, their sole purpose was to teach kids about the mines and the proper techniques used for mining.
Hence all of his knowledge from before he came to the Primordial Expanse was essentially useless to him for the time being.
The moment he stepped foot in the place, Alex had to throw away everything he knew about the world and start again from the bottom.
Alex went through the list of missions one last time before he ripped off the paper detailing the Sleeper mission, and walked over to the reception area to accept it.