Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent! - Chapter 76

Chapter 76: Goodbye, for now.
A few days later, Planet Hortus.

Alex and Mira were stuck in a conundrum they hadn’t foreseen at all.

Their lack of money.

In fact, this wasn’t even something Alex had considered ever since he had come back from the Primordial Expanse.

He thought about his situation, and almost found it funny.

He was now a student of Capital Prime University, yet he was poorer than the majority of the federation.

Alex had nowhere to call home, his house on the mining colony had been taken back when he was no longer allowed on the depressing rock.

He had no money to his name, all of his earnings from when he was a miner went straight back into just surviving day to day.

Thinking back to his time in the Primordial Expanse, the only method of money making he had available was to accept missions in the adventurer association, but there was no such thing in the federation.

There were only such missions available in universities and the military, if an awakened unaffiliated with either of the two wanted to take on missions, they would have to do so in the Primordial Expanse.

‘How the hell am I going to scrounge up the funds to catch a ship to Capital Prime University in just 6 months?’

Alex looked at the communicator on his wrist. Capital Prime University was practically located on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy from Planet Hortus.

He looked at the prices of tickets to the solar system, where Capital Prime University was located, on what had originally been Mars, now terraformed into an Earth like planet.

‘500,000 credits for the cheapest option…’

This was an astronomical sum to Alex.

Even all of his years of mining only summed up to a meager 10,000 credits.

How the hell was he supposed to scrounge up 20x that amount in less than 6 months???

‘It looks like I have no choice. I’ll have to hunt some beasts in the Primordial Expanse.’

This was his only option.

He was all out of beast cores and soul orbs, so he had to stock up on them too.

The only possible way for him to amass this amount of money in such a short time was if he hunted beasts for their beast cores, and returned back to the federation to sell them off.

‘But can I even return to the federation when I want? I forgot to ask Professor Will about this.’

That’s right, Alex was unsure on whether he would even be able to return from the Primordial expanse in time to make the trip.

One had to consider that for such a long distance between him and Capital Prime, it would take 2 months of warp travel before he would arrive.

So in reality he only had at most 4 months to come up with 500,000 credits.

The only problem was whether or not there would be a condition for him to return from the Primordial Expanse like there was when he was first dragged there.

But it was his only option, so he had to take the risk.

Considering he now had a plan of action, he turned to Mira.

“I’m planning on heading back to the Primordial Expanse to farm some beasts for their beast cores. What about you? What are you going to do for these next 4 months or so?”

Mira considered Alex’s question for a few seconds, before she made a decision herself.

“I’m going to do the same. After all, it’s almost impossible for people like us to come up with such a sum without putting our Awakened powers to use in the Primordial Expanse.”

She continued.

“But, speaking of beast cores, why don’t we take a closer look at our reward for coming joint first?”

Alex felt a light go off in his head when Mira reminded him of this.

‘Of course, the Variant beast core!’

‘Wait…’

“We haven’t received our reward yet.”

Both of their faces fell.

Right.

How could they forget?

Professor Will said something about receiving their reward when they arrived at campus.

“Dammit! So we’ll not only miss out on university if we can’t come up with 500k each, but also our reward. Great! Just fucking great!”

Alex continued cursing the clearly biased system. The least the university could do for them was to arrange transport!

This system was clearly disadvantageous to the poor students entering university.

It naturally filtered out the students from the lower class who couldn’t afford university, with the richer students making up the majority of the entrants each year.

“Looks like we have no reason to stay here any longer then, huh.” After he calmed down, Alex shifted the topic back to their plan of entering the Primordial Expanse once again.

“Right…” Mira looked uncomfortable when she thought about this.

‘We won’t be able to see each other for a while…’

She had gotten used to Alex’s presence over the last month, and even adapted her fighting style to better coordinate herself with him.

It was extremely unlikely that they would be able to cross paths in the Primordial Expanse, considering the location they were dropped into when they first entered was random.

For all they knew, there could be millions of miles between them in the Primordial Expanse.

[Would you like to enter the Primordial Expanse?]

Alex was about to answer the system’s prompt when he felt a sudden pressure engulfing him.

“Wha-”

He tried to speak but was cut off.

“Promise me we’ll meet again.”

Mira asked, her arms wrapped tightly around him in a hug.

Alex was at first confused. But his emotions took over and instead he let out a hearty laugh.

“Hahaha, of course we will!”

Mira harrumphed when she heard his chuckling, unhappy that he was making fun of her.

But she couldn’t help herself from joining him in laughter.

“What’s up with them?”

“Idk, just some weird kids again. Just ignore them.”

The passerby looked at the unusual duo, laughing to themselves on the street while wrapped in a hug.

“Ahem…”

Alex coughed and separated from Mira, his cheeks slightly red from the gazes the onlookers were giving him.

“Well, I guess this is goodbye for now then.”

“Yeah…”