Alex was due to return to the battlefield in a few hours time.
But his feat of taking out the Red Demon's Planet Buster solo hadn't gone unnoticed.
Colonel Margit had already reported Alex's incredible act further up the military food chain, reaching all the way to the ears of Admiral Olgierd.
When Admiral Olgierd first heard the news, a small smile blossomed on his face as he recognised Alex's name instantly from the report.
'I knew there was something incredible about this boy...'
While he couldn't quite put a finger on what made Alex so special, his gut instincts told him so.
And Alex only proved that he was special as more and more time passed and he accomplished nearly impossible feats over and over again, each time coming out alive, where others would almost 100% die.
But while Admiral Olgierd was glad to have Alex supporting the war in the Shen Wu system, his actions had also alerted to something critical.
The Red Demon's cunning drive to do what it takes to come out on top.
It was clear through their secret scheme that they weren't exactly going to play nice, and thanks to Alex, Admiral Olgierd alerted all of the other commanders in each and every star system where wars were taking place to look out for any suspicious Red Demon movement, as they would likely be trying something similar with more Planet Busters.
Especially in systems where most of the battles took place Planetside like they do in the Shen Wu system.
But of course, Alex's feats weren't just spread amongst the military.
News of his acts in the Shen Wu system were also used as a propaganda tool by the federation, spreading word of how he had taken down an entire Red Demon base solo amongst the populace of the human race who were currently terrified for their own lives, not knowing whether they would wake up the next morning to their planet in ruins.
But all of this was just background noise to Alex.
He had far more important things on his mind than his own fame increasing once again.
***
'I'm still too slow...'
But when he acquired talents like his previous Flames, which had upgraded to Phoenix Flames, and his Inferior Teleportation, which was of the space element, he thought that he would have satisfied the requirement by the time he could have ranked up.
But he couldn't have been more wrong.
It seemed he hadn't even achieved basic control over any of them yet...
'Just what the fuck do I need to do to satisfy this requirement!??'
'It says 'Basic control' as well... Surely I've achieved basic control over my Phoenix Flames at least, with how much I use them??'
Alex was truly stuck with what to do at this point.
He was at the point where he could have a major breakthrough, but this one requirement was stopping him.
His only route of progress without it was to upgrade his class to Variant class, but his progress in that was also slow.
Even when he absorbed the C tier Variant class orbs dropped by Selithia, he had only gained around 13% progress towards Variant class.
This left him at a measly 61% progress towards Variant class.
He would need to kill many more Elite Red Demons if he wanted to upgrade his class.
And there wasn't even a guarantee that they would drop Soul orbs.
'What exactly entails Basic control?'
Hence, while he sat in his pilot seat, watching over the green and blue planet below, he began to ruminate.
[Hint: You are much closer to achieving it with your space element than your Phoenix Flames element.]
But when he proposed the question, he wasn't expecting an answer from the system.
Although, it wasn't really a proper answer either.
It had only given him a hint.