Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

\'I see what the system meant by finding out for myself now.\' Alex thought to himself.

\'From these remnant memories, I can gain first hand experience without actually having to experience it myself.\'

\'I can already tell that my hunting abilities would see an improvement should I go out right now to hunt some animals. Being in that small wolf pup\'s body for its first hunt really provided me with some new perspectives.\'

Alex had finally realised why the system had kept this information from him instead of directly explaining to him the effects absorbing remnant souls could bring him.

If he had been told that he could gain experiences from these remnant memories, then sure, he would finally see the value in these remnant souls.

But experiencing it first hand was much more effective in making him see why they were so valuable.

Other awakened would spend years honing their craft, their techniques through their own experiences.

Yet Alex could gain the same amount of experience overnight by absorbing these remnant souls.

Of course, that was only in the case that the beast he had killed had that level of experience itself.

\'That makes me wonder, since it works on beasts, I wonder if it would ever work on sentient life forms?\'

Alex hadn\'t really considered this before, as the idea of specifically hunting humans for his own benefit hadn\'t really been something he was willing to do.

He had read on the internet already that such a thing like beast cores or soul cores never dropped from humans, but perhaps things could be different for him…

Alex had never received something like beast cores or soul orbs from the small number of humans he had killed, but that could just be because of his shit luck back then.

There was nothing in the description of his Soulforge talent that indicated Soul orbs were dropped exclusively by beasts…

\'I\'m not going to go out and massacre any random awakened I come across anyway. At worst, I will only kill humans who have it coming, or target me first.\'

Alex wasn\'t really the psychopathic type, but killing people who were out to harm him or others, he wasn\'t opposed to at all.

\'I can only test this theory out if I ever come across such awakened.\'

Opening his eyes, Alex checked his surroundings to check nothing had changed since he had absorbed the remnant soul.

When he found everything to be normal, he checked the time on his communicator to see how long he had been in that memory for.

And he was surprised to see that only a few seconds had passed!

\'I could\'ve sworn I spent hours in that memory…\'

Alex couldn\'t find an explanation for why these hours were only a few seconds in the real world, but that wasn\'t his primary concern at the moment anyway.

He still had another Mutant class soul orbs to absorb, so he got right to it.

***

A few hours later, Alex opened his eyes once again, feeling a little disappointed.

\'There were no more remnant souls in those ones.\'

It seemed like remnant souls were rarer than he originally thought, or he had just gotten unlucky.

He checked his progress towards D rank, and was even more vexed to find the percentage at 96%.

He was just a sliver of energy away from reaching D rank…

\'Let\'s hope this can push me over the edge!\'

It was finally time for him to test out the third layer of Soulforge that he had only recently unlocked.

He still had 7 Ordinary class soul orbs remaining in his inventory, which would have just gone to waste if he hadn\'t unlocked this third layer.

\'Let\'s see how this works then…\'

Alex took one of the orbs out, an Ordinary C- ranked orb, and held it in his hand.

It had been a while since he had absorbed one of these things as he had been a Mutant class for quite a while now.

But he followed the same process he was always used to, and started the absorption process just like every other time.

However the familiarity with the absorption process stopped there, as Alex felt two paths appear within him.

He knew what these paths were with just a glance.

\'Absorb it as is, or refine it into Mutant class energy.\'

Alex wasn\'t going to absorb the Ordinary class energy like an idiot and damage his own progress, so he naturally picked the second path.

Immediately, he felt the energy from the Soul orb start filtering towards his energy core.

When it reached the energy core, he could feel his \'heart\' start thumping at a much faster pace, like it was working overtime.

The effects of the refining process showed immediately, as Alex noticed some black gooey substance start to escape from the pores on his chest.

It reeked with a putrid smell, causing even Alex with his enhanced senses to wince when it reached his nose.

But he had to focus on absorbing the remaining energy from the soul orb, so he couldn\'t do anything about the smell for now.

Since it was only an Ordinary C- ranked orb, the process only took another 20 minutes before the energy from the orb was completely drained and it dissipated into thin air like always.

And Alex could finally see the results of this refinement.

\'96.8% progress towards D rank… So I only gained 0.8% Mutant class energy from that. It\'s honestly better than I thought. With the other 6 soul orbs, I\'m basically guaranteed to reach D rank, considering they\'re all higher ranked than the orb I just refined.\'

Alex was actually happy with the results from his first refined energy absorption. His expectations were already low, so he wasn\'t disappointed in the slightest.

But when considering the Orb was still a whole tier higher than Alex\'s own rank, he would practically gain next to nothing if he absorbed an Ordinary D- rank orb.

That just meant Alex would have to hunt higher ranked beasts more often though, which was no biggie for him.