Alex felt triumphant, but the fight wasn't over yet.
He had dealt a serious injury to the wolf, but it wasn't dead yet and it was only angered even further.
Alex could also feel his energy rapidly depleting as the seconds ticked by, unable to do anything to control how his energy was used while he was in this state.
But even with its injuries, the wolf was on full alert against Alex, not taking its eyes off him once despite its struggle to stand up due to its missing leg.
Gathering his strength in his legs, Alex entered a stance very similar to how professional sprinters start, and launched himself off the ground towards the injured beast.
The wolf was determined not to let him land another attack like the previous one, and it readied itself to receive him. It also had a few tricks up its sleeve!
After a moment, Alex neared within 5 metres of the wolf, letting it feel the intense heat radiating off of his body.
But it didn't back down, energy started gathering near the rear of the beast, hidden away from Alex's eyes.
When Alex came within 3 metres of the wolf, it suddenly twisted its body at a weird angle and revealed its tail, along with a streaming black mass of energy!
Before Alex could react in time, it launched the black ball of energy right at him, flying through the air at a speed faster than a bullet.
When it hit, an explosion of black energy blasted out in all directions, sucking up any light from the surroundings to feed its ever expanding radius of destruction.
With how close it was to the source of the explosion, the wolf itself was affected by its own attack as it yelped and squirmed on the ground, with the entire side of its body that was facing the explosion of darkness being broken, most of the cells that came into contact with the energy were dismantled down to their most basic state.
The wolf gave the canine equivalent of a sigh of relief as it watched the dust recede, thinking it had rid itself of the threat that was Alex.
But caught unaware, and with its guard down, it received a sharp and piercing slash to its chest, right where its heart was located.
Shock streaked across its eyes as it flashed its neck around to catch sight of the culprit, and it was horrified to see Alex's orange, glowing arm stuck half way into its chest, clutching onto its heart with his searing hot fingers.
"Gotcha!" Alex exclaimed aloud, mocking the poor beast as he squeezed his hand into a fist, turning the wolf's heart into a paste as he did so.
His eyes didn't leave the wolf's once as he waited for the life to drain away from its face.
It was only after 10 more seconds passed that he received a notification from the Primordial Expanse, letting him know of the Wolf's demise for real.
"Hah… hah" Alex gasped for breath. He looked as if he had been swimming in a pool of blood. His face and body were covered with dried and evaporated blood.
He fell backwards, barely able to keep himself standing as his body returned to normal, and the adrenaline coursing through him receded.
At the very last moment, he made use of his Inferior Teleportation once again to dodge the incoming attack from the wolf, but was completely drained of energy afterwards. He only made it through the last attack with sheer willpower alone.
Alex felt a wave of pain rush through him as his injuries caught up to him. Three big gaping claw marks streaked across his back and his right hand completely shattered.
If he didn't get any medical attention soon, then he'd be toast, just like the wolf.
Clutching back to his last bits of consciousness, he used his last remaining arm to crawl over to the wolf's lifeless body, and dug his teeth into one of its legs.
Ignoring the sour taste in his mouth, he kept eating and eating until he couldn't anymore, and passed out shortly after.
***
Contrary to Alex, Mira's time in the Primordial Expanse had been relatively peaceful over the last few days since she had entered.
But that was the problem.
She didn't come back to this place just to take a nice vacation, she was there to specifically hunt beasts for their beast cores, to earn enough money for a ticket to Capital Prime.
Over the last few days, she killed every beast she came across, but she had yet to meet one above F+ rank, which was demotivating for her considering she wouldn't even be able to come up with 10% of the credits she needed if she only brought back F rank beast cores to sell.
And that was only considering she actually did find beast cores in any of the beasts she killed, which she had been unlucky to do so far.
Over the last few days, she had traversed through what remained of the city, with clear signs everywhere that this place was only recently destroyed.
Naturally, when she realised this she was sad at first, thinking about the lives that were lost in the destruction of this once bustling city.
But sadness never lasts in a world dominated by the survival of the fittest, and Mira's thoughts quickly drifted towards how she could take advantage of this situation.
With how recent this city was destroyed, there were bound to still be many valuables left behind by whatever destroyed it.
All she had to do was scavenge through the rubble and wreckage to get to anything worth her time.
But this idea quickly turned out to be nothing too good, as it seemed she wasn't the first to think of this as almost everywhere she looked was already looted.
All she had found of value so far were a few E- and E rank swords and daggers, but she only took the highest rank sword of the lot before leaving everything else.
She had been meaning to purchase herself a weapon for a while now, and this had come to her at the perfect time.
Unfortunately the rest of the weapons were too heavy for her to carry along with her the whole time she was in the Primordial Expanse, so she had to abandon them.
After a few days of scavenging and hunting weak beasts, she was finally ready to set off from this ruined place, to find somewhere with higher ranked beasts.