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2.99% Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent! / Chapter 16: Compensation

Chapter 16: Compensation

The young man looked at Alex as if he was stupid.

'Which idiot would try to swindle the adventurer association in such a stupid way?'

Alex was amused when he heard the words of the young man though. He felt a sense of pride in his accomplishment and the reaction of the young man only proved to him how impressive it was.

"This is the beast my mission required me to kill. I was just as surprised as you are when I found out that the information on its rank was wrong."

The young man looked shocked when he heard Alex's statement. He performed a sudden bow to Alex out of nowhere.

"I am truly sorry for our adventurer association's lack of judgement regarding this mission. If you excuse me, I have to report this incident to my superior."

With that, the young man left.

Alex was left at the table with his half dissected beast, feeling awkward.

'Is this truly such a big deal?'

However when he thought deeper into it, he realised how unlucky he was to have chosen a mission the adventurer association had misjudged.

Incidents like this didn't happen often, and when they did they almost always ended in tragedy for the adventurer who was assigned to it.

Few people were able to fight beasts a minor level above their own like Alex had.

Yet, Alex has done that twice now.

'Am I really just incredibly lucky or is there something about me that I'm not understanding?'

'Wait… Maybe my talent could be the reason? After all, I still know next to nothing about it. Just one of those purple orbs from that huge rabbit was enough to push me from F- to F rank. I still haven't got my hands on a beast core yet so I can't properly judge, but I bet they are nowhere near as effective as one of those orbs.'

Alex stood there in thought for a while until another worker came up to him, this one looking a lot more professional and serious than the enthusiastic young man.

"Good afternoon Mr Alex, I am the supervisor for this beast examination branch, you can just call me Dorian."

Alex nodded at Dorian and signed for him to carry on.

"I'm afraid that circumstances like these are very complicated. Normally, the adventurers who take on these wrongly ranked missions all end up dead."

Just as Alex thought, situations like this didn't come often.

"In such cases, the previous mission will be cancelled and upgraded to match the new information we have about the beast, which another adventurer matching the rank of the mission can then decide to take."

Dorian continued as he noticed Alex didn't look surprised by anything he said so far.

"However, in cases such as yours where you actually manage to kill the beast, we are required to compensate you for our own inadequacy."

Dorian finished speaking as he handed over a weighty sack to Alex before promptly leaving.

Alex wasn't bothered about the man's sudden departure, supervisors were busy people so it was understandable that Dorian couldn't stick around too long.

"Now that we have your compensation out of the way, shall we finally get down to dissecting your beast? Who knows, maybe you might even be lucky enough to earn another beast core through this! My name's Graniel by the way, I was too excited earlier so I forgot to introduce myself."

Alex eyed Graniel up with curiosity as he noticed something he said.

'Another beast core? But I haven't even earned one before, what is he talking about?'

Alex looked down at the sack he had just received with some expectation and excitement now.

The moment he opened it, his mind went blank!

'Five whole beast cores! That's worth as much as 25 F rank missions, not even counting the rewards from the missions themselves…'

This compensation seemed a little bit too much for Alex, after all not even F+ rank missions offered such valuable rewards, so why had he earned so much just for killing one F+ rank creature?

It simply didn't make sense to Alex.

But when looking at it from the adventurer associations point of view, it was worth the cost to compensate him.

Was it an almost unreasonable amount of money to give as compensation for a botched F rank mission? Sure it was. But adventurers who could fight above their own level were rare. 

Rare enough that the association was willing to fork out such compensation for him. In their eyes it was seen as an investment betting on the future. It was quite simple really. Their plan could be laid out as simple as this.

Alex shows potential by killing an F+ rank beast while at the F rank.

The association notices this and invests in him in the form of 'compensation'.

Alex appreciates how much the association values their adventurers, shows more loyalty to the association.

Alex advances and becomes strong in the future, helping the association complete stronger missions, bringing in a much higher return on their investment.

Alex didn't know about the association's plans for him, and it seemed they were working so far as his appreciation and respect for them indeed did rise.

However it wasn't as if it was a bad thing, both the association and Alex would benefit from this in the long term.

***

Alex left the beast examination hall and immediately made his way towards the nearest hospital with glee plastered all over his face.

'I'm rich now!'

The reason was obvious.

He was now 10 gold and 5 F rank beast cores richer than before he entered the association.

Sadly, he hadn't been lucky enough to find an F+ rank beast core inside the Sleeper.

Before he left, Graniel advised him to visit the hospital before his injuries worsened or infection settled in and Alex took his words very seriously.

Alex looked at the huge building in front of him adorning the universal logo all hospitals used.

Many eyes looked at him the moment he stepped foot in there. His clothes were torn, his face was covered in dirt and scratches and blood occasionally leaked from his chest in various places.

Right as he was about to check himself in, he collapsed.


Chapter 17: The usage of beast cores

'Ugh, my head…'

Alex woke up feeling like he had a concussion. He had a constant throbbing pain in his head the moment he regained consciousness.

'Wait, where am I?'

'Right, I remember I just returned from the beast examination hall to get treated at the hospital. But that's where my memories stop?'

Alex sat up from his position and noticed that he was lying on a bed in what looked like a hospital ward with the sun shining brightly through the window, only making his headache worse.

Alex looked around himself in confusion until he heard the door to his room be unlocked.

A nurse walked in with a clipboard like it was her usual routine, ready to assess Alex.

"Good, you're awake." She said when she noticed Alex looking at her.

"You're lucky to be alive you know, you lost quite a lot of blood. If you hadn't been lucky enough to have collapsed in the hospital reception area, you wouldn't have survived."

Alex felt cold shivers run down his spine when he heard just how lucky he was to live—he felt fine the whole time beforehand other than the pain in his chest and the occasional exhaustion.

"Thank you, truly. If it weren't for you guys I would be dead meat right now!"

"I don't know how I can repay you…"

Alex awkwardly expressed his gratitude towards the nurse as he didn't know who specifically saved him.

"Oh, trust me when I say you will find out soon how you can repay us." The nurse replied to him with a sly smile on her face.

Alex only shrugged off her response as he had more important things to focus on, such as recovering from the throbbing pain in his head.

His other injuries to his chest and his lack of blood had already been solved, now all he had was this annoying headache.

Alex had asked the nurse about getting some medicine to treat his headache, yet her response was:

"That's a side effect of the recovery potion we used to heal you. Because the level of your soul is so low, the influx of energy from the potion caused a strain on your core, which resides in your brain. That is the pain you are currently experiencing right now."

"Strains to your core are difficult to treat at low levels unless you are willing to spend a hefty sum. There is no need to worry though, it will go away on its own within a day or two."

Alex felt a little bit out of place when the nurse told him about all these terms he had never heard before.

However when he heard about how expensive it would be to treat his headache, that reminded him of something.

"How much did it cost for the treatment of my injuries?"

Normally, the nurse would have loved to sweet talk her patients—especially when the topic of money came up, but with Alex she remained neutral.

Naturally this was because sometimes she could swindle a few gold coins out of them as tips and gratitude for her service.

But looking at Alex in his normal set of clothes, and seeing how he frowned when he asked about how much his fee was, she knew he was just another pauper.

"Let me see here, a charge of 50 gold or half an F rank beast core for the care of three nurses, one overnight stay—that will be another 50 gold or a whole F rank beast core for the two charges together. Finally you used 1 F+ rank recovery potion due to the extent of your injuries, that's 2 F rank beast cores right there."

"So in total, it comes down to 3 F rank beast cores. You can opt to pay in gold instead of the cores, it's your choice."

Alex became crestfallen when he heard the total sum he owed to the hospital.

'Three of my hard earned beast cores are gone already!'

The nurse looked on at Alex weirdly, she would have thought he was sobbing if it weren't for the lack of tears!

If Alex hadn't been compensated by the adventurer association due to the mis ranking of his mission, he would be in debt already.

Naturally, this was also considered by the association when they heard about the extent of his injuries, and they calculated how much he would have to spend just to heal.

They only gave him just enough F rank cores to afford the treatment with a little extra to spare, meaning he would be back to completing missions in the mission hall sooner to earn more money and increase his soul tier.

"So, now that you are all fit and fine, how would you like to pay?"

A smile was on the face of the nurse this time as she knew Alex was dreading every moment of this.

"I'll pay in beast cores."

***

Only 10 minutes later Alex left the hospital with his pockets much lighter and his mood much more depressed.

His head still throbbed from the recovery potion but he did his best to ignore it.

Instead of sulking about the loss of his money, Alex instead decided to focus on something else.

Specifically the usage of beast cores.

He knew they were the main way Adventurers and Awakened increased the tier of their soul core, he just didn't know how they turned something composed of matter into energy that they could absorb.

In the normal universe, he knew it was theoretically possible because science said all matter was composed of energy, but from the little amount of research Alex had done on the topic it required a substantial amount of power and energy to convert matter to energy.

However his internal struggle on how to absorb his core was shot down by the first Adventurer he came across on the street and asked about it.

"What? You don't know how to absorb beast cores? What kind of adventurer doesn't know how to do that!?"

"Ah nevermind, what does it matter to me anyway. You just hold it in your hand and think about absorbing the beast core, and then bam, you've absorbed it!"

Alex felt like a total idiot.

He was in the Primordial Expanse, of course the common sense of his own universe wouldn't apply to this magical realm.

He should have thought of such a simple solution sooner.


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