After 30 minutes, the class was half way done, but many of the students started to get bored.
'When will this be over...'
'Can I just drop out of here pleaseeee...'
'Why do we need to know all of this?'
Most of the class were bored out of their minds, but a select few of them, like Alex and the big chested girl, were still fully focused.
It was students like Alex and the big chested girl that were the reason why Dr Zoric even accepted the job of teaching here.
The Soul studies community may be small, but it was hugely appreciated by the awakened community, especially the higher life forms among the awakened.
And without inquisitive and interested students like Alex and the big chested girl, this research topic would very quickly die off when people like Dr Zoric retire or die.
As for Alex, he was deep in thought at the moment.
'Energy... Souls... what do these two have in common that makes them linked...'
Dr Zoric had explained a little bit about the research that he and a few other elite researchers on the subject had conducted, but he didn't go into enough depth for Alex to get any sudden epiphanies or anything like that.
'Maybe our soul cores are actual, physical entities somewhere inside our bodies like the energy core I created when I perfected the Heart of the Phoenix technique in one go? Maybe-'
Speaking of epiphanies, it seemed like Alex had just found one.
His eyes bloomed open as the other students around him looked at him strangely as he looked off into the open air at nothing in particular, with such an enlightened and gleeful look on his face.
But in reality, Alex was looking at a spew of system messages that were pouring in.
[Congratulations, you've actually learned something from this class. How smart you are!]
The first message was the system's usual sarcastic quip towards Alex.
Alex didn't know what to think.
He had gained more comprehension into souls, but the same stupid 'Find out the rest for yourself' was still there on the description of his second layer...
However, he had a sudden realisation.
What if the system meant to find out through actually absorbing a beast's remnant soul, not through gaining comprehension...
'Fuckkkk, I am so stupid!'
Alex felt like an idiot for not even considering this until AFTER he had come up with the plan to systematically learn more about souls through the Soul studies class.
But he also realised that it was still a very good decision regardless.
It led him to unlock the third layer of his Soulforge talent, and might even enable him to unlock more layers, if they existed, further down the line as he attended more lectures.
Speaking of new layers, Alex inspected the third layer and his whole attitude flipped when he read through it.
'This is fucking amazing! Maybe I really do have the strongest talent!'
The fact that he could now refine lower class energy into higher class energy was simply unheard of!
It didn't matter if the energy he would gain from only gave him decimals towards his progress towards Variant class.
With enough Mutant class soul orbs, those decimals would add up very quickly.
Not to mention the fact that there were A LOT more Mutant beasts than Variant beasts.
The only Variant beast he had ever come across wasn't even through natural methods, but from a summoning.
Meanwhile, he occasionally met Mutant Class beasts every few days while hunting in the Primordial Expanse.
This made it so that even if he didn't find a single Variant class beast when he went out on missions to Floodgates, he could still gain some progress towards Variant class, so it wouldn't exactly be a waste of time.