Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent! - Chapter 56

Chapter 56: Mira
“…”

“…”

Neither of the two spoke to each other as they just continued this strange staring contest.

The girl didn’t move her eyes from Alex’s chest once, while Alex didn’t move his gaze from the girl’s stern face once.

“…”

The silence continued for another minute before it was broken by the girl.

“You look different.”

‘???’

“Excuse me?”

Alex responded in confusion.

It had only been a week since she had last seen him. Frankly he was surprised she even remembered him at all.

“More muscle.”

The girl spoke again, pointing at his half exposed chest.

‘When did this happen?’

Alex looked down and saw that his shirt was half torn, covered in dirt and barely attached to his body at this point.

This was the same shirt he’d been wearing since before he even became an awakened.

“Huh, well you look the same.” He responded to her.

‘So awkward…’

The weird girl didn’t even change her expression once during the whole conversation.

It was like she was a robot.

“You took the tests too, right? What scores did you get?” Alex shifted the direction of the conversation to something more… normal.

At the mention of the tests, the girl finally had a reaction in her expression as a momentary state of excitement showed, but disappeared less than a second later.

‘So she does have emotions, that’s good to know.’

But despite her reaction she didn’t answer him.

“I see, you don’t trust me enough to reveal this. My mistake. How about we start from the beginning.” Alex apologised in case he offended her by asking intimate details about her strength. He straightened his gait and offered his hand out for a shake.

“The name’s Alex.”

The girl looked at Alex’s hand for a second, then at his face.

She didn’t accept the handshake but she answered:

“Mira.”

‘Not much of a conversationalist are you?’

“Well Mira, if you haven’t noticed already, everyone here seems to have already established their own cliques, while the two of us are all alone.” Alex put on a friendly smile as he spoke.

“I suspect the examiners for this test won’t prohibit teaming up, which will naturally be a problem for loners like us. I propose we team up, how about it?”

Mira took her time to consider this.

She never usually worked with others. It was hard for her to trust people she didn’t know, especially after what she went through growing up.

Even when she was summoned to the Primordial Expanse she only ever worked alone.

But when she looked at Alex, she felt drawn to him through some mysterious feeling.

If she were to put it into words, it was like he had a pure soul, while everyone else was tainted.

This was partly the reason why she approached him first.

She looked around at all the other participants with all their fancy clothes and arrogant smiles as they chatted and laughed at each other.

Then she looked at herself and Alex, they were two outcasts among this group.

Everyone here was applying for the most elite universities, people like these were usually elites themselves, with at least some backing.

But she knew Alex was just like her, born in the slums — forced to live a hard life since birth.

“Okay.” She responded to Alex, agreeing to his proposal.

Alex was dazed. He didn’t expect her to actually accept.

But this was even good!

“It’s official then, we’re a team! By the way, I applied for Capital Prime, which uni did you apply to.”

In truth Alex didn’t know the name of any of the other top five universities other than Capital Prime. He only asked her out of courtesy.

“I applied for Capital Prime too.”

Surprised, Alex raised a brow and took a second look at the petite girl and raised his evaluation of her.

‘She’s ambitious too, I like it!’

“I guess we have more in common than we thought then. How about this? As a sign of trust between partners in the test and future classmates, I’ll tell you what I got on my tests. After all, knowing your teammate’s strength will be beneficial when we come across a beast.”

Alex led her further away from the crowd, he didn’t want any prying ears listening in on his conversation.

“Don’t be too shocked to hear, but I actually scored E+ rank results in all physical tests but the speed test, but I’m still at the cusp of E+ rank on that. All this while I only just became an Evolver!”

Alex felt slightly prideful when he listed out his accomplishments like that. It felt good to show off.

But contrary to his expectations, Mira didn’t have much of a reaction.

“I scored E+ rank results too, on speed as well.”

She dropped a bombshell on Alex, and his face fluctuated from red and white.

He was both embarrassed at showing off to someone who was superior to him, as well as shocked that she could score higher than him even when he had strengthened himself with soul orbs!

‘She must have a strong talent as well, otherwise how can her results be explained…’

Alex suspected her of having a talent, but he wasn’t going to ask her about that.

That would be too far, information like that couldn’t just be shared openly like that.

But unexpectedly she dropped another bombshell on him.

“I have an A- rank talent too.”

‘…’

Alex’s mind went blank.

‘What the hell??? You were so hesitant to reveal your results earlier, and now you go and do this!?’

He recovered after a few seconds, but hurriedly stretched his hand to cover Mira’s mouth.

“What are you doing??? You can’t just share your details so openly like that! We’ve only just met! We’re still strangers, why would you tell me such private information!?”

Alex focused and looked around him.

Nobody was looking at them.

Everyone seemed too focused on their own conversations to listen in on the conversation between two slumrats.

“Good, seems nobody noticed.”

He sighed a breath of relief.

“But don’t speak about your talent or any of your details so openly like that again. If it were anyone else but me they could use this info against you — who knows what could happen to you after that.”

Mira frowned and bit her lip when she heard Alex strongly reprimanding her.

When she entered the Primordial Expanse nobody was kind enough to let her know of such common sense.

She wasn’t lucky like Alex.

“Thanks.”

Alex didn’t react.

She spoke so quietly he didn’t hear her.

He was too focused on checking if anyone was paying attention to them.