Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

60  Swamp

Alex had taken a look at his inventory and noticed nothing new.

And this was exactly the problem.

[You have killed a beast, Yellow Fox.]

He checked his notifications from the system again.

He had clearly just killed that F+ rank yellow fox, but there was no soul orb dropped from it.

Apart from the first time he killed that Rabid Rabbit back when he first entered the Primordial Expanse, every other soul orb he had obtained past that point went straight to his inventory.

He speculated the reason why the rabbit's dropped to the ground was due to him not having access to the inventory yet, but that wasn't the main point.

The problem was the lack of soul orbs!

'I hope this is some special scenario specific to the Floodgates…'

With no clues to go off, he could only put the matter to the side. He didn't want to look too suspicious to Mira either.

While the two of them had grown quite close over the previous month, his Soulforge talent wasn't something he was ready to reveal to anyone other than himself yet. If ever.

'At least I still have 3 E- rank and 2 F+ rank soul orbs left from my battle against the beast horde.'

Not all hope for loot was lost though — Alex dug his fist through the severed neck of the fox and felt around for anything hard.

Thud!

'Lucky!'

With recent developments he wasn't actually expecting to find anything, but there actually was a beast core!

"Look what I found! We got quite lucky." He called Mira over to take a look and she was just as excited to see the glowing white F+ rank beast core in Alex's hand.

Alex stashed the core away in his backpack before cutting off some meat from the fox's corpse, and storing that away too.

"Let's move. We need to stay ahead of the other applicants." The excitement around the beast core had already died down. Alex and Mira continued on even deeper into the forest, looking for some more beasts to slash down and add to their point count.

***

A few hours later, the duo encountered their first change in environment.

It was a huge and endless swampland, covered by a canopy of huge, tall trees. Most of the sunlight was filtered out by the huge canopy hundreds of metres above them, so barely any sunlight reached the swamp floor.

'Shit, this'll slow us down drastically.'

Alex gnashed his teeth as he thought about the time it would take them to filter through this swamp to another environment.

Not to mention the fact that the darkness would allow any beast daring enough to sneak attack them.

Alex looked down at his watch in contemplation.

'10 points… We really need to find some more powerful beasts.'

Ever since the duo had killed their first F+ rank beast, they had only encountered one more beast of the same strength.

There was no way for him to check the ranking while the trial was in progress, but he was sure there would already be many students ahead of him and Mira in the rankings.

"We have to push through! It's too late to turn back now." Alex relayed to Mira as he took the first few steps forward into the swamp, feeling the muddy water engulfing his legs all the way up to his knees.

Even with his enhanced strength and speed, he was severely restricted while walking through this swamp.

Mira, following behind him, was in the same situation.

The slow walk through the swamp continued on for another 10 minutes — the duo constantly keeping an eye out for any movements.

While their goal was to find and kill as many beasts as possible, they at least wanted to do it in an environment that was advantageous to them.

If they were attacked in the swamp where their vision and speed was reduced to a minimum, then they were in a much more dangerous situation than normal.

If they sustained any serious injuries then they were essentially out of the test as a whole from that point onwards, as every fight after that point would become impossible to win while managing those injuries.

Huff

Huff

"Do you see an end to the swamp yet?" Mira asked Alex while taking deep breaths. The extra pressure and weight from the muddy water required more physical exertion to walk through, especially at the speeds they were moving.

Alex focused his gaze on the dark horizon ahead of him. All that filled his vision was the same tall trees that were around them on all sides, up until a point where it was just too dark to see anything further past that point.

"Nothing. Let's just carry on, this swamp can't carry on forever."

Although their speed was drastically reduced, they were still moving at around 10 m/s. They had travelled over 6 kilometres in the 10 minutes that passed.

Suddenly, Alex narrowed his eyes as he felt something briefly brush past his leg under the murky waters.

"Shhh." He put his finger up to his mouth and moved his other hand behind him, signalling for Mira to stop.

He looked back at Mira, met her gaze, and pointed at the swamp waters directly below them, while mouthing the word 'Movement'.

Mira understood what he meant and slowly withdrew her combat knife from her belt and held it at the ready.

Alex did the same.

Slowly, and making as little noise as possible, Alex reached for his backpack and took out the slab of meat he had taken from the yellow fox earlier.

He held it in his hand and started moving it through the water between him and Mira, before throwing the slab of meat at the base of one of the trees a few metres away from him.

The area at the base of each tree was covered with dirt and roots above the muddy water, so Alex could still see the meat.

"..."

There was nothing but silence, until…

Splash! n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Something leaped out of the water, right where Alex threw the fox meat!