After Professor Will finished explaining the classifications of beasts, humans and most importantly, beast cores, Kiara had an excited look on her face.
"So you're saying I'm getting a Mutant Beast core as my reward! Thank you so much Mr Wothers!" She couldn't quite keep herself contained with how jumpy she was.
She herself had come from quite a prominent background not only on Planet Hortus, but in the entire Luminous Star system, where Planet Hortus and all the ARC mining colonies were located.
But even she had never heard about anything even remotely like this.
It seemed even her own family kept a tight lid on this information until the youths proved themselves worthy of learning about it.
When Alex and Mira heard Kiara's excitement, their own minds started to wander and their heartbeats rose.
'She's getting an E- rank Mutant beast core for achieving third place… I almost can't wait to hear what kind of reward we'll be getting then!'
Alex thought to himself, realising that the reward he and Mira were expecting was most likely even better than Kiara's.
'I hope I'll be able to catch up to Alex with this reward…'
Mira on the other hand had some thoughts of her own.
She had realised a while ago that Alex wasn't normal in the slightest.
She could tell that even with her limited knowledge and experience of the world of the awakened.
His abnormally high regeneration speed, his seemingly underappreciated Flame talent, his quick thinking, Alex seemed to be unusually proficient in all of these even though he was only the same age as her, which made her doubt herself a little.
'Am I truly a genius like these people say I am?'
In Mira's mind, she was inferior to Alex even though her talent was A- rank.
When she was in her transformed state, she knew she could match up to Alex, but that was only temporarily while her transformation was active.
And once it deactivated, she would be in an even weaker state than normal.
Meanwhile, Alex's strength was permanent, and didn't have any obvious drawbacks like hers did.
Just as their anticipation reached a peak, Professor Will spoke up.
"I'll excuse your lack of manners for now, but in the future since you are now officially students of Capital Prime University, you must call me Professor. Not Mr Wothers, or sir, but Professor."
Kiara apologised, while Professor Will carried on.
"As for you two, your reward will naturally be better since you achieved first place. Each of you will receive 1 E rank Variant Beast core each. I'm sure all three of you will be very satisfied with your rewards when you receive them."
"Kiara, if you want to achieve the same heights as these two, then you must work harder to ensure a better future for yourself. You can all go now."
Professor Will left some parting words for Kiara and congratulated all three of them before he left the hall, leaving them behind to their own devices.
Alex and Mira looked at each other for a few seconds, their thoughts unknown.
Then Alex spoke up.
"What do we do now… He didn't even tell us how to get to Capital Prime University…" He seemed utterly helpless when he asked this.
Mira's face fell, also clueless.
"Basic information like that will be messaged to you on your communicators, I'm guessing you two just recently started using them?"
Kiara gave them a friendly piece of advice, before leaving the hall as well.
Alex and Mira thanked her, before heading to their own living quarters.
At least Alex was heading to his living quarters…
"What are you doing still following me? Shouldn't you get some sleep of your own?" He questioned Mira, who had followed him all the way back to his room.
"Take it out, I want to see what you got." She asked Alex in quite a demanding tone.
She looked directly into Alex's eyes with her own deep blue eyes, holding eye contact the whole time.
Mira slowly edged closer to Alex, close enough that he could feel her breath on his chest.
"W-what are you doing..? What do you mean you want to see them…" Alex stuttered, his cheeks flushed.
He had never felt this way before.
Only now had he realised that Mira seemed quite attractive.
"You know what I'm talking about. Take it out." She didn't even change her tone once, raising Alex's heartbeat even more.
'R-really!? Does she really want me to take it out!?'
Just as Alex was about to do something unthinkable, Mira continued again
"Why haven't you taken them out yet? I want to see what it is the tiger gave us."
Alex: "..."
Mira: "..."
When he heard what Mira said, Alex felt like crawling into a ball and dying on the spot.
He was so embarrassed!
'Thank god I didn't do anything stupid!'
Mira could tell Alex was acting weird, but she didn't think too much on the matter.
She was too focused on seeing those two silver orbs again to question him.
"Haha right, of course! The silver orbs…"
Of course, that was what Mira was on about the whole time…
Right?
Anyway…
"Let me take them out and have a look then." Alex forced himself to calm down, and summoned the two silver orbs.
The moment the two orbs appeared in front of their eyes, they were mesmerised by their stunning beauty.
They shimmered in a mix of silver and white, with a milky texture.
Yet strangely when they attempted to feel them with their hands, they shimmered in and out of reality, like they were trying to disappear.
"Let's see what the Primordial Expanse has to say about these."
Normally, Alex didn't use the Primordial Expanse to find out information on objects, because the method didn't work for anything related to his Soulforge talent for some reason.
But for objects like beast cores, he had learned that he could actually use the system to display some simple information about them.
And now he was attempting to do the same with these two orbs.
Focusing his entire attention on the orb in his hand, 10 seconds passed where nothing happened.
Sweat started appearing on his forehead, and he started to get a headache, but he persisted.
Finally, after 30 seconds of no results, he saw a familiar sight flash before his eyes.
[Fragment of Space]
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