Alex kept walking absentmindedly.
For some reason, everything that had happened today seemed unreal. Yet his mind kept taking him back, and he knew all too well that it was real.
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.
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!"