Chapter 222: Gut feeling
But he wasn't just going on a killing spree — every beast corpse he came across succumbed to the same fate.
They were all burned to ash, and over time the battlefield was looking a lot less littered with beast corpses than it looked before Alex had arrived.
Of course, Alex left any human corpses he found untouched. He didn't particularly feel much emotion about seeing so much death — he had already accepted the reality of how things worked in this society.
Death was everywhere.
But he wasn't just going to disrespect their corpses by burning them to ash either. He didn't know what their wishes were regarding how their bodies were dealt with, so he wasn't going to involve himself where he didn't need to be involved.
But the beast corpses he couldn't give a shit about.
He received a few frowns here and there, probably from the awakened that had killed a beast, only for Alex to burn that beast's corpse to ashes a few minutes later.
But none of them said a thing to him.
It had already become clear to them that Alex was by far the strongest person on the battlefield.
Not to mention the fact that the huge piles of beast corpses were becoming eyesores to them as well, so he was doing them all a favour.
As for any beast cores that dropped, Alex collected any from the beasts he had killed himself, as for beast cores that dropped from beasts he had no involvement in other than the disposal of their corpse, he just left the beast core in the pile of ash.
The original owner could come over and collect it for themselves whenever they wished to.
Though it was far more likely they would get snatched up by some other awakened, especially the Mutant class ones.
These were far too valuable to be left alone, which was unfortunate for the awakened who killed the beast originally.
But again, Alex couldn't care less.
He was here for himself, and himself alone. What these other mercenaries and students thought, Alex didn't concern himself with.
'Am I not going to find any real action in this mission?'
Alex was visibly disappointed by the way this mission was progressing.
He hadn't expected that his power would be so overwhelming for these beasts.
His strength wasn't so unreasonable that each attack he unleashed dealt the equivalent of a Variant C- rank attack, like when the Principal tested him.
That time was when Alex went all out, with preparation and using the proper stances, techniques etc.
He still wasn't experienced enough, nor did he have enough training in how to actually maximise his power output in fights to reach such a level of power.
Variant C- rank power was only his theoretical limit when he put as much of his power into an attack as he could.
Of course, that was only taking into account his physical strength alone.
He didn't have a proper opponent to test it against yet, but Alex suspected his Phoenix flames might be even stronger than his theoretical limit…
And when the two combined…
He was like an unstoppable force on this battlefield.
'I should work on improving my teleportation talent as well. I'll add that to the list.'
Of course, there were still many drawbacks to Alex's powers.
Like the fact that the amount of energy his teleportation talent consumed was percentage based.
So no matter how high his energy capacity was, he would still lose 40% of his energy.
It was better than the 50% he would have lost when the talent was still F- rank, but Alex would have preferred it wasn't percentage based at all.
There was still one good thing about Alex's increased capacity though.
Due to the fact that the teleportation would be using a huge amount of his energy compared to before, he could now teleport much farther.
His range with it had matched that of his Spatial perception, reaching hundreds of metres.
But upgrading talents wasn't as easy as it seemed.
It all depended on how high his affinity was with the element attached to that particular talent.
For example if he had 100% affinity with the space element, then he could theoretically increase the talent to S tier, making it on par with Mira's spatial talent.
Though, there were far more things to consider when upgrading a talent to S tier than just affinity alone.
Such as some very, very rare resources that could barely be found across the entire federation or Primordial Expanse, and that others would be after his head for if they found out he possessed one of them.
It was either that, or to encounter a special case like Alex did with his Phoenix flames, where certain conditions had to be met before he was able to unlock an entirely new talent, or to upgrade an already existing one.
'Anyway, I should think about things like this for later. Right now, I have no need to use my teleportation.'
Alex would only even consider using it if he were in a desperate situation.
However while Alex was in thought, a sudden situation had encapsulated the battlefield outside the Floodgate in chaos.
"W-We did it!"
Shouts and cheers echoed across the battlefield, as thousands of awakened stood, exhausted and some even immobilised by their injuries.
But they were all celebrating regardless.
There were no more beasts standing on the battlefield.
And there were no more beasts filtering through the Floodgate anymore.
They were finally able to bring some peace to Ceres-9, after the constant onslaught of beasts had already claimed the lives of thousands of awakened, and millions of unawakened, normal civilians who were just going about their daily lives before this unfortunate incident occurred.
'Something doesn't feel right.'
But Alex still had a bad feeling in his gut.