Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

Chapter 88  Monty Town

Alex had seen enough to know what type of town this was. If the guards who protected it were so corrupt, then he couldn't expect any better from the management either. He had no plans to interact with any of the higher ups while he was here, all he wanted was to collect some information, get some well needed rest and a hot shower, before leaving.

Out of curiosity, he had tried to open the portal back to his own universe a few times while was bored and had nothing to do, but nothing had worked so far. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

And with no indication of how or when he could open the portal, he could only give up and move on to his other most important task.

Hunting beasts!

Based on the directions he had received from the guards before he left, he came before the market and couldn't help but feel a little nostalgic.

This place reminded him of his childhood, running through the hectic streets back on the ARC colony trying to peddle whatever wares he could.

Alex directly ignored all the useless stuff like trinkets, food etc and went straight for the section that sold weapons.

When he arrived, he only saw one merchant covering three stalls of weapons, prompting a look of surprise from Alex.

'Only one weapon merchant in this whole town… A little disappointing but expected for such a small town on the outskirts of the empire.'

The merchant saw Alex walk over and put his book down. "Anything spark your interest?" He asked, but he wasn't expecting to actually sell anything.

People in this town rarely bought weapons, as only the guards had any real use for them, but they had their weapons supplied directly by the Mayor himself.

Alex looked around the stalls, but most of what he saw were normal weapons, not even suitable for the weakest awakened.

"Can you tell me a little about this one?" Alex came to a stop in front of a curved sword. It didn't have any special appearance, but he could tell that it was one of the stronger weapons in this selection.

The merchant's eyes perked up when he saw the sword Alex was interested in, and quickly spoke, "Of course sir! This is actually a weapon for warriors! It's an F- rank curved saber type weapon, capable of withstanding attack from strong F- rank beasts! All for a low price of 300 gold or 3 F- rank beast cores!"

The merchant enthusiastically pitched the saber to Alex, but Alex couldn't help but scrunch his eyebrows when he heard the price.

He couldn't even find anything above F- rank, and even those F- rank weapons were egregiously overpriced.

'3 F- rank beast cores for 1 weapon, yeah how about screw yourself instead.'

Alex wouldn't even take such a deal even if he was desperate. This was just a case of the demand being higher than the supply, allowing the merchant to overprice his weapons due to the lack of any competition in town.

"Never mind, I'd rather not get ripped off thanks." Alex turned away from the stall the instant he heard the price for the saber. Not even Morlock sold F- rank weapons for such a steep price.

The merchant tried his best to regain Alex's favor, but after he didn't even bother to turn back around he knew it was useless.

"Tsk, if you can't afford anything then don't even bother asking, brat." He displayed his dissatisfaction, not even trying to hide it and spoke loud enough for Alex to hear.

But Alex took no notice, in fact it was more like he didn't care to even listen to the merchant's very accurate diss of calling him poor.

Alex's next location of choice was the inn.

***

"Huff… Huff." Mira exhaled two puffs of air as she dug her sword out of a disgusting insect beast's corpse.

Ever since she scavenged through the city, she eventually got lucky and found a sword hidden under some rubble. She was overjoyed when she found it, as it was an E+ rank sword! The highest rank weapon she had seen yet.

It had been 7 days since that day, and she had made much more progress on her goal than the first few days she spent in this place.

She had found a map containing the locations of the nearby cities and towns from within a still relatively intact building near the centre of the city, and she made full use of the thing to plan out her next actions.

Instead of choosing to go towards the nearest city, like most people would, she decided to head over to the farthest city depicted on the map, Windrush city.

It would take her over 10 days of travel to reach it, even at her speed. But she was satisfied with the plan nevertheless.

She didn't plan on spending too much time in cities during this period in the Primordial Expanse, as she only wanted to use them as rest stops to resupply and get some sleep, shower etc before she set out again.

With 3 days left before she reached Windrush city, she had already amassed a small fortune in terms of beast cores.

She had encountered a wide variety of beasts the further she got from the ruined city, even with the F tier beasts becoming scarcer and E tier beasts becoming more common.

Mira avoided fighting any E+ rank beasts or any beast she felt was a decent threat to her life. But she wasn't able to avoid every encounter, and she was forced to escape from an E+ rank beast that was far too powerful for her to handle.

It was clear that it wasn't an Ordinary class beast, but Mira was unable to tell which class it was.

Her speed was no match for the thing, and she was forced to use her talent, [Call of the Void] for the first time despite the risks involved.

In the end, she completely disappeared from the face of the Earth right in front of the confused E+ rank gorilla beast.

It was from this that she discovered just how terrifyingly powerful her new talent really was…

There was no process like opening up a portal and stepping through it like there was with the travel back and forth with the Primordial Expanse and the universe.

Instead, she was there one second and poof!, she was gone.

The place she entered, The Void, was completely unlike what she imagined it to be. She thought it would look like an endless expanse of darkness, but surprisingly it wasn't!

The moment Mira appeared in The Void, the first thing she noticed was that she was in the exact same spot she had left from.

Only there was no beast chasing her…

And there was no colour. The whole dimension was a mirror of her current location, coloured in black and white.

She was scared, the emptiness and lack of any living thing in this place creeped her out and she only stayed for 10 minutes, waiting this long only as a precaution due to the E+ rank gorilla chasing her.

Thankfully, there was nothing complicated about returning back to the normal dimension, and she appeared back in her original spot without any fuss, and the gorilla had already left.

Overall, it was the wildest 30 minutes she had ever experienced…

But even with this detour she had slayed over 15 E- rank beasts and 3 E rank beasts on the journey over. While only coming across 2 F+ rank beasts.

In total, she had gained 8 E- rank beast cores and 2 E rank beast cores, with no luck with the F+ rank beasts.

Thankfully, she had checked the exchange prices for beast cores online before she entered the Primordial Expanse, so she knew that she wasn't even 10% of the way towards her goal.

'I wonder how Alex is doing…'

Thinking about her own progress only made her mind wander to Alex's.

'He's probably doing much better than me, since he's so much stronger.'

But she had no idea…