Chapter 60 Swamp

60 Swamp

Alex had taken a look at his inventory and noticed nothing new.

And this was exactly the problem.

[You have killed a beast, Yellow Fox.]

He checked his notifications from the system again.

He had clearly just killed that F+ rank yellow fox, but there was no soul orb dropped from it.

Apart from the first time he killed that Rabid Rabbit back when he first entered the Primordial Expanse, every other soul orb he had obtained past that point went straight to his inventory.

He speculated the reason why the rabbit's dropped to the ground was due to him not having access to the inventory yet, but that wasn't the main point.

The problem was the lack of soul orbs!

'I hope this is some special scenario specific to the Floodgates...'

With no clues to go off, he could only put the matter to the side. He didn't want to look too suspicious to Mira either.

While the two of them had grown quite close over the previous month, his Soulforge talent wasn't something he was ready to reveal to anyone other than himself yet. If ever.

'At least I still have 3 E- rank and 2 F+ rank soul orbs left from my battle against the beast horde.'

Not all hope for loot was lost though — Alex dug his fist through the severed neck of the fox and felt around for anything hard.

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'Lucky!'

With recent developments he wasn't actually expecting to find anything, but there actually was a beast core!

"Look what I found! We got quite lucky." He called Mira over to take a look and she was just as excited to see the glowing white F+ rank beast core in Alex's hand.

Huff

Huff

"Do you see an end to the swamp yet?" Mira asked Alex while taking deep breaths. The extra pressure and weight from the muddy water required more physical exertion to walk through, especially at the speeds they were moving.

Alex focused his gaze on the dark horizon ahead of him. All that filled his vision was the same tall trees that were around them on all sides, up until a point where it was just too dark to see anything further past that point.

"Nothing. Let's just carry on, this swamp can't carry on forever."

Although their speed was drastically reduced, they were still moving at around 10 m/s. They had travelled over 6 kilometres in the 10 minutes that passed.

Suddenly, Alex narrowed his eyes as he felt something briefly brush past his leg under the murky waters.

"Shhh." He put his finger up to his mouth and moved his other hand behind him, signalling for Mira to stop.

He looked back at Mira, met her gaze, and pointed at the swamp waters directly below them, while mouthing the word 'Movement'.

Mira understood what he meant and slowly withdrew her combat knife from her belt and held it at the ready.

Alex did the same.

Slowly, and making as little noise as possible, Alex reached for his backpack and took out the slab of meat he had taken from the yellow fox earlier.

He held it in his hand and started moving it through the water between him and Mira, before throwing the slab of meat at the base of one of the trees a few metres away from him.

The area at the base of each tree was covered with dirt and roots above the muddy water, so Alex could still see the meat.

"..."

There was nothing but silence, until...

Splash!

Something leaped out of the water, right where Alex threw the fox meat!