Having climbed to the top of a hill with his team, Alex took a look in the direction of the thousands of normal humans cowering behind them, relying on this ragtag crew of adventurers to secure their lives.
The front man leading the charge, Wildblade, soon collided with one of the few bipedal monsters in the horde. With the upper body of a human, the lower body of a horse and the head of a goat, its presence was vastly different from that of the other mindless beasts charging into battle. This one clearly had some semblance of intelligence.
An even more striking difference though was that this beast wielded a weapon!
It was holding a crude looking mace and swinging it wildly at Wildblade.
No one could withstand the force of a blow from its mace. Not even Wildblade.
Alex happened to see it swing the mace at a nearby adventurer who strayed from his team and watched him get splattered across the plains.
"How is this creature so strong?" Alex was shocked as he thought out loud.
The person it had just effortlessly killed was one of the strongest E+ rank adventurers among their army!
The monster continued pushing forwards and ran, killing a few more helpless adventurers in a flash. Not a single one was able to fight back and could only helplessly cry out as they got slaughtered.
It's rampage was only stopped when Wildblade appeared in front of it and blocked it's mace with his broadsword, while the other two D ranks stood to either side and launched their own attacks at the beast.
One of them activated some sort of talent that caused the beast to falter in its tracks with its movements becoming noticeably more sluggish.
The trio of D ranks were expecting to trap the goat-minotaur like creature, and it seemed to be working so far.
However just as the three of them were about to descend down on it with their weapons, the beast let out a thunderous cry as its eyes reddened, veins bulged and muscles hardened.
With this new development, even with the sluggish effect imposed on it, it still managed to overpower the encirclement of the three.
The creature charged madly, waving the mace and leaving screams and corpses behind. It only took moments for it to charge directly past the siege of adventurers towards the city.
"Fuck! It's heading for the mortals!" Wildblade furiously screamed as he summoned all his power to his feet, turning into a blur as he chased close behind with his broadsword in hand.
Alex learned something new that day. Natives of the Primordial Expanse call the unawakened 'mortals'.
When they saw his speed, the other two D ranks were shocked.
The one who imposed his talent on the beast exclaimed, "He's on the verge of reaching C- rank!"
They soon joined force with Wildblade in chase of the madly charging beast, and they soon left Alex's sight.
'Soon enough I'll reach that level of strength.'
He shook his head as he felt pity for the terrified unawakened merchants and normal people who the beast was currently charging towards.
But there was nothing he could do to help them. The most he could do was hope that Wildblade and the other two were able to catch up and kill it before it could deal too much damage.
The entire exchange between the D rank humans and that strange looking beast only took less than a minute.
In that time his team had only made a little headway towards a group of beasts that had yet to attack any adventurers yet.
After 5 minutes of descending the hill they stood upon, they were met at the bottom by 2 E- rank beasts and 10 beasts of varying levels in F rank.
The beasts had the numbers advantage on Alex and his team.
Unlike the exchange between that powerful minotaur like beast and the three, this confrontation was much slower and more tame.
The E rank team leader readied his fists as he charged up ahead of the other 9.
"You guys take down the F ranks, I can hold these two off for now! Once the F ranks are down we'll easily be able to kill these two as well!"
Everyone understood his intentions as they quickly chose a target, with Alex facing two F+ rank beasts on his own. There weren't enough F+ rank humans in his team to go around so he was forced to take both of them on at the same time.
But this didn't seem to be much of an issue for Alex however.
Through his constant mental forging, along with the boosts in power provided by the Soul orbs he had absorbed up to this point, he was superior in power to even the weakest of E- rank Evolvers.
With his strength alone, he could copy his leader and hold the two beasts off until another F+ rank could come along and help him take them down.
But Alex wasn't satisfied with just that.
'Time to try something new!'
An orange glow suddenly permeated the surroundings around Alex, as flames surrounded his dagger.
'It works! Tsk, I knew the price of this dagger was too good to be true.'
His plan to use his flames for a use other than to aimlessly spurt flames from his hands had worked.
However with the added stress and heat on his dagger, cracks had started to appear on it.
With not long left before his dagger completely crumbled, he performed a quick slash across the air towards both the F+ rank beasts, slicing an orange, flaming curve across the air until they met the legs of the two beasts.
In just that moment, the beasts had gone from being four legged beasts, to no legged beasts.
With no more limbs left to defend themselves with, they were helplessly put out of their misery by Alex.
A smile bloomed across Alex's face.
'Loot!'
That wasn't the end though, as he also heard the familiar voice of the Primordial Expanse.
[Talent [Flame(D-)] upgraded to [Flame(D+). Trait [Adventurer] changed to [Rookie]
Along with two new soul orbs appearing in his inventory, it seemed his talent had somehow upgraded as well. He cast aside his questions about his new trait though as he was still in the midst of a battle. He could check these changes out later.
Unfortunately he hadn't received anything like that mysterious flame he obtained from the flaming lion. But he suspected those were rare enough already.
At the same time he concluded his battle with the two F+ rank beasts, a few of his stronger teammates had managed to slay their beasts too.
'Only one thing left for us to do now then!'
Naturally with no opponents left on the same rank as them, they went over and took care of the weaker F and F- rank beasts before dashing over to their team leader who had been holding the two E- rank beasts at bay this whole time.
They looked like two raccoons, but at the size of a human adult.
'Probably a beast couple.' Alex thought to himself. He wasn't too worried about facing these two beasts, as not only did he have Rowan, the E rank team leader to rely on, but his own strength was around average in the E- rank—if he used his Flame talent to his advantage he even had a chance to kill a relatively powerful E- rank beast in a one on one fight.
Of course the world was not fair or at all equal, so the strength and power people could exert at the same rank could vary largely.
The most common example of this is that someone with a Talent, even a weak one will almost always be stronger than someone without.
Alex, with his F+ tier soul core, had strength rivalling those at E- rank.
If any recruiters from the federation knew of his strength, they would probably think he was a prospective talent worth recruiting. If they knew of his Flame talent as well, they would think of him as a genius worth investing a lot of resources into.
So it was to be expected that when he entered the fight against the two E- rank raccoons, it was over very quickly. The other F+ and F ranks didn't even have a chance to contribute as Alex and Rowan completely dominated them in the fight, with Alex drawing the attention of one raccoon away from Rowan, releasing the pressure he had to defend from two different opponents at once.
With his E rank strength, Rowan's fight was over in less than a minute. While Alex had managed to deliver some serious injuries to the raccoon he was fighting, only sustaining some light injuries himself.
These raccoons were clearly some of the weaker E- rank beasts one could come across.
It had to be noted that Alex didn't even need to use his Flame talent during his fight. This raccoon was only a little stronger than the two F+ rank beasts he had killed just minutes earlier.
'Who knew hunting beasts could be so fun when your life isn't constantly at stake!'
Naturally Alex was having a much better time than all his other times fighting beasts during his time in the Primordial Expanse.
If he wanted to finish off the raccoon then he would have to utilise his Flame talent, but he didn't want to waste his energy as he knew that Rowan would come over and finish the job for him when he was done with his own.
And he did just that.
'Man it feels good when you don't have to constantly be wary of not only beasts, but your teammates too.'
With the pressure from the beasts and the barrier blocking entry into the city weighing down on all the humans outside the city, no matter their strength, there was little to no discord or infighting as everyone there had one common goal.
Kill all beasts!
'If only everyone could think this way during normal, peaceful times.' Alex sighed as he realised that this unity was only temporary, and everything would go back to normal when this beast tide was over and the B rank higher life form fight had been concluded.
'Ah whatever, that's something for future Alex to worry about. Right now our job isn't finished!'
The team may have just finished killing the small group of beasts that attacked them, with no casualties on their own side to boot, but there were still thousands more still alive and rushing towards them, giving them no time to recover.
"Follow me, this team looks like they are having a tough time!" Rowan, upon seeing how coordinated and powerful his team was, in particular how powerful Alex was, was reinvigorated and started to become more active in his role as their leader.
The team he pointed to consisted of 1 E- rank team leader 1 F+ rank and the rest being F rank weaklings.
The beasts besieging them were led by an E rank beast, with some F+ and F ranks making up the ranks. There were only 7 beasts compared to the 10 humans, but the rank disparity made up for that difference.
Beasts at D- rank and below had no intelligence or mind to call their own, so they just move towards the first living thing they see and prey upon them. So this team was just unlucky that these beasts saw them first.
"Me and Alex will help their leader deal with the E rank beast, while the rest of you go and kill those F+ rank weaklings and below!" Rowan knew everyone in his team's names but this was the first time he was addressing one of them by name.
It wasn't that he saw himself as above them out of arrogance or anything like that. It was just that this whole arrangement was just temporary and would all be over once the beast tide was dealt with. So he didn't see any worth in remembering the names of people he would never see again.
That was until he made an exception for Alex though.
'No one else may have noticed him use the flame element to kill those two beasts, but I did. I must recruit him to the university! Just thinking of the rewards I'll receive is already making me drool…'
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