Having climbed to the top of a hill with his team, Alex took a look in the direction of the thousands of normal humans cowering behind them, relying on this ragtag crew of adventurers to secure their lives.
The front man leading the charge, Wildblade, soon collided with one of the few bipedal monsters in the horde. With the upper body of a human, the lower body of a horse and the head of a goat, its presence was vastly different from that of the other mindless beasts charging into battle. This one clearly had some semblance of intelligence.
An even more striking difference though was that this beast wielded a weapon!
It was holding a crude looking mace and swinging it wildly at Wildblade.
No one could withstand the force of a blow from its mace. Not even Wildblade.
Alex happened to see it swing the mace at a nearby adventurer who strayed from his team and watched him get splattered across the plains.
"How is this creature so strong?" Alex was shocked as he thought out loud.
The person it had just effortlessly killed was one of the strongest E+ rank adventurers among their army!
The monster continued pushing forwards and ran, killing a few more helpless adventurers in a flash. Not a single one was able to fight back and could only helplessly cry out as they got slaughtered.
It's rampage was only stopped when Wildblade appeared in front of it and blocked it's mace with his broadsword, while the other two D ranks stood to either side and launched their own attacks at the beast.
One of them activated some sort of talent that caused the beast to falter in its tracks with its movements becoming noticeably more sluggish.
The trio of D ranks were expecting to trap the goat-minotaur like creature, and it seemed to be working so far.
However just as the three of them were about to descend down on it with their weapons, the beast let out a thunderous cry as its eyes reddened, veins bulged and muscles hardened.
With this new development, even with the sluggish effect imposed on it, it still managed to overpower the encirclement of the three.
The creature charged madly, waving the mace and leaving screams and corpses behind. It only took moments for it to charge directly past the siege of adventurers towards the city.
"Fuck! It's heading for the mortals!" Wildblade furiously screamed as he summoned all his power to his feet, turning into a blur as he chased close behind with his broadsword in hand.
Alex learned something new that day. Natives of the Primordial Expanse call the unawakened 'mortals'.
When they saw his speed, the other two D ranks were shocked.
The one who imposed his talent on the beast exclaimed, "He's on the verge of reaching C- rank!"
They soon joined force with Wildblade in chase of the madly charging beast, and they soon left Alex's sight.
'Soon enough I'll reach that level of strength.'
He shook his head as he felt pity for the terrified unawakened merchants and normal people who the beast was currently charging towards.
But there was nothing he could do to help them. The most he could do was hope that Wildblade and the other two were able to catch up and kill it before it could deal too much damage.
The entire exchange between the D rank humans and that strange looking beast only took less than a minute.
In that time his team had only made a little headway towards a group of beasts that had yet to attack any adventurers yet.
After 5 minutes of descending the hill they stood upon, they were met at the bottom by 2 E- rank beasts and 10 beasts of varying levels in F rank.
The beasts had the numbers advantage on Alex and his team.
Unlike the exchange between that powerful minotaur like beast and the three, this confrontation was much slower and more tame.
The E rank team leader readied his fists as he charged up ahead of the other 9.
"You guys take down the F ranks, I can hold these two off for now! Once the F ranks are down we'll easily be able to kill these two as well!"
Everyone understood his intentions as they quickly chose a target, with Alex facing two F+ rank beasts on his own. There weren't enough F+ rank humans in his team to go around so he was forced to take both of them on at the same time.
But this didn't seem to be much of an issue for Alex however.
Through his constant mental forging, along with the boosts in power provided by the Soul orbs he had absorbed up to this point, he was superior in power to even the weakest of E- rank Evolvers.
With his strength alone, he could copy his leader and hold the two beasts off until another F+ rank could come along and help him take them down.
But Alex wasn't satisfied with just that.
'Time to try something new!'
An orange glow suddenly permeated the surroundings around Alex, as flames surrounded his dagger.
'It works! Tsk, I knew the price of this dagger was too good to be true.'
His plan to use his flames for a use other than to aimlessly spurt flames from his hands had worked.
However with the added stress and heat on his dagger, cracks had started to appear on it.
With not long left before his dagger completely crumbled, he performed a quick slash across the air towards both the F+ rank beasts, slicing an orange, flaming curve across the air until they met the legs of the two beasts.
In just that moment, the beasts had gone from being four legged beasts, to no legged beasts.
With no more limbs left to defend themselves with, they were helplessly put out of their misery by Alex.
A smile bloomed across Alex's face.
'Loot!'
That wasn't the end though, as he also heard the familiar voice of the Primordial Expanse.