BXBX NOVEL Chapter 137: Ring! Ring!
Those were real lives that were lost.
Alex felt like a dark void was growing in his chest, constricting on his heart, muscles and organs with all their power.
He knew what this dark void was though.
Guilt.
Regret.
Alex was full of these emotions, and he couldn't do anything to rid himself of them.
Nor did he want to.
***
Time passed.
Alex had been walking continuously for an unknown amount of time, as he wasn't even keeping track anymore.
He just felt so exhausted.
He hadn't been to sleep once since he had come back from the Primordial Expanse.
In fact, he hadn't been to sleep for a whole week before that as well, as he had been too focused on stopping the Count.
And well…
It all turned out to be for nothing in the end.
Hours passed, and Alex's mind had never stopped ticking.
He was constantly thinking about things.
At some point, he remembered that he had to eat to stay alive. But he discovered that he wasn't even hungry.
'Probably a side effect of reaching D tier.'
But Alex didn't even care.
"You look like shit, kid."
Alex would usually at least engage in a conversation with someone who spoke to him.
But he didn't even bother and just carried on walking.
"Hey, I'm talking to you!"
He just kept walking.
Alex didn't answer.
A moment later, a raggedly dressed man appeared in Alex's vision, and he looked up to see him smiling down at him with interest.
"That's a nice earring you got there. Oh, and the sword too."
Alex kept on walking.
But the man stopped him.
"Don't make me say it a third time."
The homeless guy issued a threat to Alex, trying to scare him into actually acknowledging him.
"Piss off."
His plan half worked, as Alex finally responded.
But he continued to ignore him.
Seeing this, the homeless guy drew out a crude blade made from a piece of broken metal.
"I warned you kid. Hand over that pretty little earring, and the sword."
This time, Alex stopped out of his own will for the first time and gave the man a good look.
And before the guy could react, Alex delivered a swift chop to the back of his neck with his hand.
His goal wasn't to kill him, but to incapacitate him.
The guy was trying to rob him, but that wasn't reason enough to kill him outright.
He was just trying to make enough money to survive another day.
***
More time passed, and Alex still hadn't stopped walking.
He had been walking in a straight line the whole time, and he could even see the sight of the space port he had returned to when he came back from the Primordial Expanse.
Only he was seeing it from the other side.
He had walked in a straight line across the whole planet, and was nearing back to where he started again…
Ring! Ring!
Suddenly, out of nowhere, his watch started to ring.
He let it run through at first, just ignoring it.
Ring! Ring!
But it just started to ring again.
A small feeling appeared in his mind, urging him to check his watch even though the rest of his brain kept screaming at him to just destroy it then and there so that it couldn't annoy him again.
Alex chose to listen to the small feeling instead of the rest of his screaming brain.
He tried checking the name, but his eyes just seemed so unfocused that he couldn't even read it properly.
It was probably from the lack of any sleep at all.
Instead, he just answered the call and let whoever it was through.
"Alex! Thank god I was thinking you'd lost your communicator for a second there! Where are you? We have to be on the next flight out of here by tomorrow at the latest or we'll miss the entrance ceremony!"
A flood of emotions returned back to Alex as a voice he hadn't heard in so long, one that he had subconsciously missed so dearly over the past few months, spoke from the other end of the call.
'Mira.'
He recognised her voice immediately.
"Alex?"
All of a sudden he felt so choked up with emotion that he couldn't even get the words out to answer her.
"I-"
He attempted to get the words out of his mouth, but he just couldn't and cut the call short.
Instead, he rushed over towards the space port at full speed.
He was over 200 kilometres away, but with his new status as a D tier, that wasn't much of a problem at all.
He arrived there in minutes.
***
"What the hell…?"
Mira quietly whispered to herself as she speechlessly looked at the 'call ended' on her communicator.
'Why did he do that?'
Immediately doubt started to sprout in her mind.
Maybe Alex had changed over the last few months in the Primordial Expanse?
Maybe he'd forgotten about her completely…
All sorts of depressing reasons for Alex to hang up so suddenly started to take place in Mira's mind, and she couldn't help but start to get nervous.
However, before they could root even deeper into her mind, she heard a commotion coming from nearby.
"Do you see that? I think someone powerful is running over this way. At that speed they have to be at least C- rank to be running so fast!"
Conversations started between strangers as they watched a cloud of dust come closer and closer to the spaceport from far off into the distance.
A few seconds later, a sonic boom echoed across the plains as the speed of the approaching figure increased past the speed of sound.
At this point, the local security forces had to get involved as the commotion had become too big to ignore.
But Mira knew exactly who was causing such a ruckus the moment she laid eyes on the figure.
"Alex!"