Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

127  D- rank

"All done!"

Alex exclaimed with a relieved sigh as the days of constantly absorbing energy were over.

Now, the most important thing had to be done and he had to check his details to see if he had successfully reached D- rank or not.

But before he could even think of the word 'Details', a prompt flashed in front of his eyes on its own.

[Congratulations, You've successfully upgraded your Soul Core to D tier! You must be surprised to see this message from the system, like receiving a birthday card from God himself! But you're not so special, every being in the universe sees this message when they reach D tier.]

Alex saw the message and his heart rate instantly accelerated and adrenaline started pumping through his veins at record speed.

But when he actually read the first few lines of the message, his excitement quickly turned into annoyance.

However he suppressed any negative feelings for now and continued on.

'I always think it's weird when the system says every 'being', not every human.'

[… Now that you're a D tier, there are a few things you should know. First off, the usual method of upgrading your soul core won't work the same way anymore. There will be requirements you'll have to meet now if you want to even move between the ranks, let alone upgrade yourself further towards C tier.]

Alex skipped past the lines upon lines of useless text from the system, straight to the juicy bit of the message.

He sighed, but he knew this was coming.

Alex had already been told that in order to reach C tier, one needed to have control over an element.

Not complete control, only a basic control over one. Using Alex as an example, basic control over the fire element would enable him to shoot flames from his fist, or put a basic flame enchantment on his sword, but all without actually activating his flame talent.

But these requirements clearly weren't easy, otherwise there would be C, B or even A ranks running around everywhere given enough time had passed.

Which was probably why the system introduced these requirements in the first place — there would be a huge power imbalance in the universe if it were so easy for people to become so strong.

When he was young, Alex had seen live streamed footage of a rebellion against the federal government, the rebels took over a planet, killed all of the inhabitants that didn't agree with their ideals and staged a war against the federation using the stolen warships and technology.

But in the end, this rebellion was quelled by one single man.

The man just floated out in space and watched as the planet collapsed in on itself.

Alex didn't know what he was even seeing at the time, neither did every other unawakened person.

All the reports said the constant fighting and bombing the rebels had done on the planet had caused the core of the planet to collapse.

But for some reason the image of that man silently floating in space left a deep mark on 7 year old Alex's mind, and he checked those records once again when he returned from the Primordial Expanse, except this time the reports were different.

The stuff about bombs causing the planet to collapse in on itself were all a lie.

It turned out that the man who was so deeply ingrained in Alex's mind was an A+ rank awakened at the time, and his specialty just happened to be Earth element attacks.

What really happened to the planet was that the man destabilised the core himself.

Now, that man is the President of the Federation, but back then he was just an unknown face.

This memory was brought to light all of a sudden when Alex thought about the system's reason for requirements to increase one's strength further.

If everyone could become as strong as the man in his memory and shatter planets while they watched from the space above, then civilization as a whole would be wiped out within days.

Alex stopped letting his thoughts run wild and continued reading further.

[These requirements will be set according to your strength, and classification. Meaning any Mutants, Variants etc won't be able to cheat their way through them using brute force. And as I'm sure just like most of you who receive this message, you were hoping for a reward from the system when you saw the congratulatory message at the start. Well, you're in luck! A reward is given, but you'll have to find out what it is yourself.]

Alex was forced through a rollercoaster of emotions whenever he read one of these system messages. It seemed that whatever sadistic higher dimensional entity controlled this system loved to play with his emotions.

It always left him with a cliff hanger!

Of course, Alex was very interested in finding out what requirement the system had set for him to reach D rank.

But he could find that out later, along with whatever reward the system had supposedly given him.

Right now he had bigger things to focus on.

Now that he had reached D- rank, he was ready to take on the Count, at least he had the confidence to, so he immediately set out for Evermoor city.

He was only a few tens of kilometres away, and having gone up two whole ranks and even upgraded to the next tier, he could actually test out how fast he was now.

***

30 seconds later, Alex came to a stop.

'That's a bit extreme…'

He was already at the gates of Evermoor city…

Just his jogging speed was over a kilometre a second now, and he hadn't even been taking it seriously.

That was supposed to just be a warmup…

'Whatever, I can give myself a proper test when I fight the Count. More importantly, why are the guards at this gate smiling at me so arrogantly?'

Alex's focus quickly shifted to the actions of the guards at the gate.

Forgetting the fact that they had been switched out from the ones he usually saw at this place, he didn't like their expressions.

"You're too late. The Count's already started his plan, hahaha!" And from behind the guards came Kilian, whose entrance was quite anticlimactic considering he was being pushed in a wheelchair by his female accomplice. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

But Alex was too angry to focus on that.

'That fucker tricked me! He was playing me all along!'

Now Alex knew what was really going on.