Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

Rothwind's exclamation hung in the air, charged with intensity as he stared at Alex.

His gaze itself was searching for answers.

The usual gruffness in his tone had given way to something raw and unguarded — disbelief.

Alex swallowed, forcing himself to meet the dwarf's penetrating stare without flinching.

"I told you."

Alex began, keeping his voice as steady as possible.

"I found it in some ancient ruins a while back. I didn't know what it was back then, and that fact still remains to this day."

He then glanced briefly at Mira, then back to Rothwind.

"I'm only bringing it out now because I thought you might know something about it, with all your centuries of experience."

Rothwind blinked, his brows furrowing in suspicion, though the intensity in his gaze didn't waver.

He studied Alex, even Mira a little bit, as if weighing his words, then shifted his focus back to the soul orb in his hand.

"Lad, ye say that as if this thing's just another bauble ye stumbled upon. But this… this is a Soul orb, a Variant class one at that. Even a single orb like this could upend small kingdoms. And ye say ye've just had it… lying around?"

He snorted, shaking his head.

"Ya truly have no idea what yer holdin' do ya?"

Alex suppressed the urge to smirk.

"A Soul orb?"

He questioned with as much sincerity as he could muster, leaning further into the oblivious persona he had adopted when he decided to perform this test on Rothwind.

But he was still inwardly shocked that Rothwind knew what it actually was!

He even called it by the right name, not one that a civilisation who didn't know its true potential might give to it, so he knew Rothwind was likely speaking the truth right now.

Alex's facade worked in his favour. The less he 'seemed' to know, the more Rothwind seemed to be willing to share and ease his suspicion.

"I've tried doing research, but I couldn't find anything. Up until just now, I didn't even know its name! No records, no references — nothing. It's like nobody in either the Federation nor the human settlements in the Primordial Expanse knows about its existence…"

This time, Alex told the truth.

Or was it a half truth?

Ah, whatever… the important thing is that he really did try to do such research on the origins of soul orbs, just that he left out the fact that he knew about their purpose and such beforehand.

Rothwind let out a low, guttural chuckle, but there was no humour in it.

"Aye, that's cus they don't, lad. The human race is still a baby in terms of universal history, so it's no wonder they haven't come into contact with such precious objects yet. Especially because they haven't yet satisfied the criteria to learn about their existence, let alone create them… Well, except for that one crazy guy in your federation, that is."

Rothwind paused, his expression darkening.

"These soul orbs are only known to those Ancient, higher class races."

"Ancient?"

For some reason, Mira repeated this word.

She felt that Rothwind might have put more emphasis on it than the others in the sentence he just spoke, but she couldn't quite judge why, so she spoke it out loud.

And as she did so, a small but subtle smile found its way onto Rothwind's lips.

"Aye lass, one of the most basic criteria for a race to learn about Soul orbs is to first produce an Ancient class being of their own."

Mira and Alex both reeled back in shock and bemusement.

"All that just to learn about them!? What kind of criteria does it take to produce them??"

Mira asked with curiosity and a little bit of scepticism mixed in.

"I'm afraid that's something I'm not privy to. Only those Ancient class races know about that."

Alex and Mira both took a moment to think after this, their minds practically spinning from all this new information they were taking in.

It was all quite a lot for them to handle, especially considering they knew more than they let on to Rothwind.

But they had also learned indirectly from Rothwind's explanation that even races were split up into classes.

Alex couldn't even guess where the human race was on this spectrum — but if he were to throw a shot in the dark, he'd have to say at best somewhere between Mutant and Variant class, so he couldn't even imagine how impossibly, terrifyingly strong an Ancient class race might be…

He didn't even know what qualified a race to be in such a class.

Was it the overall strength of the race? Surely not, right?

If that was the case, would that not mean that the average strength of the race was Ancient class…?

And if they were populated at the same scale as the human race…

Alex couldn't even begin to imagine that kind of power scale, or how such a society would even work.

Quintillions of Ancient class beings…

From what he knew about the system, it surely wouldn't allow such a ridiculous thing to happen.

Hopefully…

"So what you're saying is, this 'Soul orb' I'm holding onto happens to be a supremely precious treasure from an Ancient class race, that lower class kingdoms and even some whole races would go to war for?"

Of course, he had to ask Rothwind the most serious and pertinent question on his mind from all of the things he had learned today.

"That's right. You're lucky, lad. If I hadn't taken such a likin' to ya over these last few days, I might have snatched it for myself!"

Rothwind let out a chuckle like he normally did after this, but for some reason Alex felt he was only half joking in what he said…

'It's a good thing I didn't reveal them in public before this then, or else I might have really brought certain destruction and perhaps even extinction to the Federation, maybe even the human race as a whole…'

"So what do I do with it then…"