A few hours later, Alex finally made it out of the forest after that tiring night he spent in there.
The conclusion to the events with the mercenaries had been quite uneventful in the end.
Everyone but Carter and that veteran turned out to be smart and obedient little puppies and surrendered themselves to Alex.
Such a scene might be funny to any passer-by's, if there were any, as the scene of 50 powerful, awakened men all submitting themselves to one lone teenager with looks of fear on their faces would make for quite the funny scene.
Though of course, if they looked a little closer and saw the blood splattered randomly around, and the dead body on the ground, things would become much less funny.
In the end, every mercenary gave Alex his beast cores back, but they had to give up one of their fingers in exchange for being so greedy in the first place.
At least Alex gave them the courtesy of choosing which finger they'd lose.
As for Carter, for his act of trying to kill him, Alex lopped off his left hand entirely. This left the man with a right hand but no thumb, and no left hand at all.
'Serves you right, idiot.'
Just thinking of the looks on the guard's faces when they see 50 mercenaries returning back to the city with one missing finger each almost made Alex want to witness it personally.
But he had to act in moderation at this point.
The Count clearly already knew of Alex's presence in the area, so security around the city would be ramped up quite a lot.
'I can lie low for a few days before I try anything. I can just disguise myself and bribe a merchant to let me in with them during the hustle and bustle of the morning period.'
Right now, Alex had much more pressing things to attend to, which required his immediate attention.
He knew already that the Count was a powerful Mutant D+ rank awakened, and he was probably like Alex — able to fight above his rank, so he maybe had C- rank combat strength.
Meanwhile, Alex was a Mutant E rank, with around D rank combat power, slightly pushing D+ rank if he pulled off another suicidal move like the flaming shockwave that rendered a 1 kilometre radius of the forest charcoal.
So the solution was simple — Alex had to rank himself up to match the Count's combat power.
And, Alex just happened to have everything he needed for that.
After using two (and a half…) of them, he still had 15 Mutant Soul orbs remaining.
These ones weren't the weakest of the batch like the previous three he had absorbed.
No!
The weakest of this lot was E+ rank! And there were only two of them!
The rest were all D tier, with two of them being D rank, and the remaining 11 being D- rank.
If this wasn't enough to push Alex towards D tier, then who knows how he'd cope with ranking up so slowly in the future…
***
"Did you complete the task?" A cold and deep voice asked.
"Yes sir." Mike, the only mercenary who hadn't lost a finger, answered.
The Count leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful look on his face. He drummed his fingers on the desk, considering his next move.
"Do you think he fell for it? Do you think it worked?" The Count asked Mike again.
On the other side of the study, Mike no longer looked as nervous as he did when facing Alex's cold, unemotional stare.
In front of the Count, he looked dignified.
"I think the plan worked flawlessly sir, in fact it seems like he's actually solved the problem of our nuisance beasts for us. All the while, he didn't suspect a thing." Mike answered with absolute confidence in his tone.
Naturally, the topic of the conversation revolved around Alex.
"That's good, your efforts have bought me a valuable few days of time. Thanks to you, the main plan can go ahead without any interruption from such vermin like that Alex. In just a few more days, everything will be ready and we can begin action. Inform the other Barons and the Viscount as well."
Mike nodded to the Count and exited the study, leaving the Count to think by himself.
'In the end, you're still a child Alex. Such a simple scheme and yet you still fell for it. There never were any plans for me to venture out and take care of some pesky beasts. The fact that you even believed the words of those mercenaries I planted in the tavern proves just how naïve you are.'
With that, the Count stood up from his chair and tidied up his suit a little.
'It's time to get started. Things are going to get a lot more busy in the coming days.'
***
'One E+ rank soul core done. Time to check the progress.'
Alex sat on a damp rock near a waterfall he had found, in deep thought and meditation.
He had been holding a Soul orb in his left hand until just a moment ago.
'Let's see here, I was on roughly 20% progress towards E+ rank the last time I checked.'
[Details]
Name: [Alex]
Age: [17]
Talents: [Soulforge(Soul+)], [Flame(C-)], [Inferior teleportation(E-)]
Trait: [Warrior]
Trait description: [After learning about the truth of the world, you've started venturing upon this path yourself. You can now be considered a fletchling elite. You still have a long way to go, but you are already considered a part of the top 5%.]
Trait effect: [Healing speed increased by 5%]
Soul core: [E - 49%]
Soul Classification: [Mutant - 0%]
Alex brought up his details and had no reaction to what he saw.
His soul classification had finally come back out of the negatives, but that was a given since he had absorbed so many Mutant soul orbs already.
However his progress in his Soul core had gone up by 29%, 7 of this came from his partially absorbed soul orb which had sadly dissipated into thin air when he couldn't keep up the absorption any longer, making him lose out on that 40% remaining energy inside of it.
'So I've gained 22% from that E+ rank soul orb… Hmm I guess this might be good enough to take me to D- rank then!'