The moment Alex's eyes caught sight of the glowing yellow rock, he knew he had struck gold.
'It actually had one! A Mutant E rank beast core!'
It was unquestionable that this was the biggest boon he had ever had the pleasure of finding, and he had earned it all through his own hard work.
He continued to inspect this peculiar looking rock, trying to decipher what made it different to every other beast core he had come across so far, but apart from its distinctively yellow colour, there was nothing different he found in comparison to Ordinary beast cores.
'Well, here goes nothing.'
Since his inspections hadn't borne any fruit, he decided to absorb the core on the spot.
Alex held the Mutant core in his hand and sat down in a meditative position, a habit he had picked up from a while back. He started thinking deeply about absorbing the core, like he had always done with every other beast core and soul orb so far.
But this time, instead of dissolving into dust particles, the yellow rock stayed intact.
'Ugh, this is going to take hours!'
Alex knew as soon as he felt the energy pouring into himself and raging across his body that this experience wasn't going to be a comfortable one. The energy from this Mutant beast core was hundreds of times more concentrated than any Ordinary beast core he had absorbed. It was even miles ahead of the concentration of any soul orb he had absorbed as well!
He had to keep his mind focused on absorbing the Mutant beast core for the next 4 hours straight before it finally lost its glow and crumbled into dust.
Alex leaned back onto the wolf's corpse and exhaled an exhausted sigh.
If he compared himself before and after he absorbed the core, he felt much more invigorated and stronger now that he had absorbed his first Mutant beast core.
But he couldn't be sure unless he checked his details to see what progress he had made.
[Details]
Name: [Alex]
Age: [17]
Talents: [Soulforge], [Flame(D+)], [Inferior teleportation(F-)]
Trait: [Enlightened]
Trait Description: [You've learned the truth of the world, realising that you are just an ant in the face of the true powerhouses of both your universe, and the Primordial Expanse.]
Trait Effect: Learning speed increased by 1%
Rank: [Evolver]
Soul core: [E- 6%]
Soul Classification: [Ordinary - 20%]
The only noticeable changes were to that of his soul core and soul classification, which had both increased in his progress towards the next rank.
'So if I find and absorb 4 more Mutant E rank beast cores like that, then I will officially upgrade my classification to Mutant?'
Such a prospect made him excited for the future. It even made him want to run out into the wilderness right at the moment and start going on a beast killing spree.
But he couldn't.
He was still stuck in this weird cave until he managed to find a way out for himself.
***
Over the next half a day, Alex spent most of his time searching all throughout the cave, only he had made much more progress than he had the day before due to him no longer being starved, exhausted and low on energy.
He had cut off some of the wolf's pelt and used it as a rope, tying it to the huge wolf's corpse and dragged it along with him wherever he went.
This would be his food source for the foreseeable future.
Thankfully one good thing about beasts over normal animals was that their meat didn't spoil or rot due to their magical nature, so Alex didn't need to worry about losing the majority of the wolf meat to the effects of time.
However regardless of all of this, he had made no progress in finding anything like an exit. In fact he hadn't even come across another wall to the cave yet, signifying that it was much larger than he first initially thought.
Alex had just been lucky to be dropped close to one of the walls.
He hadn't been counting but at the pace he walked over the last half a day, he had made at least 100 kilometres of progress. This was an astonishing figure considering this was all underground, in complete darkness the whole time!
But it seemed his bad luck had run out, as only a few hours later he heard the sound of something moving nearby.
'The smell of the wolf corpse must have drawn something over to me!'
Alex kept his senses on high alert, ready to make a move whenever he felt something even step within 10 metres of himself.
He didn't need to be so conservative with his energy anymore — he kept his spatial awareness on permanently, scanning anything that came within a 10 metre radius of himself.
His first thought was that something had come over looking for food, just like he had done when he first encountered this place.
But when he moved forwards another couple hundred metres or so, something caught his eye.
Something he hadn't expected to find down in this vast, empty place.
A source of light actually existed far in front, lighting up an area ahead.
When he moved closer, his eyes widened.
'Is that a house?'
For the first time since he had entered this region of the Primordial Expanse, he finally found signs of human existence. Alex was unsure what to think of this new development, as no sane human would ever willingly choose to live down in a place like this.
But before he could get a proper grip on things, he noticed the door on the front of the house opening, and a human child walked out!
'A kid? In this place, really?'
His gut told him something wasn't right about this, why would a kid be in somewhere like this? Was this a trap trying to use his sympathy to lure him in or something?
'I don't like this one bit.'
Alex didn't move from his position, staying far back and observing the child, seeing what he would do next.
But what he hadn't expected was that it, or rather he, started walking towards him!
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