The young man looked at Alex as if he was stupid.
'Which idiot would try to swindle the adventurer association in such a stupid way?'
Alex was amused when he heard the words of the young man though. He felt a sense of pride in his accomplishment and the reaction of the young man only proved to him how impressive it was.
"This is the beast my mission required me to kill. I was just as surprised as you are when I found out that the information on its rank was wrong."
The young man looked shocked when he heard Alex's statement. He performed a sudden bow to Alex out of nowhere.
"I am truly sorry for our adventurer association's lack of judgement regarding this mission. If you excuse me, I have to report this incident to my superior."
With that, the young man left.
Alex was left at the table with his half dissected beast, feeling awkward.
'Is this truly such a big deal?'
However when he thought deeper into it, he realised how unlucky he was to have chosen a mission the adventurer association had misjudged.
Incidents like this didn't happen often, and when they did they almost always ended in tragedy for the adventurer who was assigned to it.
Few people were able to fight beasts a minor level above their own like Alex had.
Yet, Alex has done that twice now.
'Am I really just incredibly lucky or is there something about me that I'm not understanding?'
'Wait… Maybe my talent could be the reason? After all, I still know next to nothing about it. Just one of those purple orbs from that huge rabbit was enough to push me from F- to F rank. I still haven't got my hands on a beast core yet so I can't properly judge, but I bet they are nowhere near as effective as one of those orbs.'
Alex stood there in thought for a while until another worker came up to him, this one looking a lot more professional and serious than the enthusiastic young man.
"Good afternoon Mr Alex, I am the supervisor for this beast examination branch, you can just call me Dorian."
Alex nodded at Dorian and signed for him to carry on.
"I'm afraid that circumstances like these are very complicated. Normally, the adventurers who take on these wrongly ranked missions all end up dead."
Just as Alex thought, situations like this didn't come often.
"In such cases, the previous mission will be cancelled and upgraded to match the new information we have about the beast, which another adventurer matching the rank of the mission can then decide to take."
Dorian continued as he noticed Alex didn't look surprised by anything he said so far.
"However, in cases such as yours where you actually manage to kill the beast, we are required to compensate you for our own inadequacy."
Dorian finished speaking as he handed over a weighty sack to Alex before promptly leaving.
Alex wasn't bothered about the man's sudden departure, supervisors were busy people so it was understandable that Dorian couldn't stick around too long.
"Now that we have your compensation out of the way, shall we finally get down to dissecting your beast? Who knows, maybe you might even be lucky enough to earn another beast core through this! My name's Graniel by the way, I was too excited earlier so I forgot to introduce myself."
Alex eyed Graniel up with curiosity as he noticed something he said.
'Another beast core? But I haven't even earned one before, what is he talking about?'
Alex looked down at the sack he had just received with some expectation and excitement now.
The moment he opened it, his mind went blank!
'Five whole beast cores! That's worth as much as 25 F rank missions, not even counting the rewards from the missions themselves…'
This compensation seemed a little bit too much for Alex, after all not even F+ rank missions offered such valuable rewards, so why had he earned so much just for killing one F+ rank creature?
It simply didn't make sense to Alex.
But when looking at it from the adventurer associations point of view, it was worth the cost to compensate him.
Was it an almost unreasonable amount of money to give as compensation for a botched F rank mission? Sure it was. But adventurers who could fight above their own level were rare.
Rare enough that the association was willing to fork out such compensation for him. In their eyes it was seen as an investment betting on the future. It was quite simple really. Their plan could be laid out as simple as this.
Alex shows potential by killing an F+ rank beast while at the F rank.
The association notices this and invests in him in the form of 'compensation'.
Alex appreciates how much the association values their adventurers, shows more loyalty to the association.
Alex advances and becomes strong in the future, helping the association complete stronger missions, bringing in a much higher return on their investment.
Alex didn't know about the association's plans for him, and it seemed they were working so far as his appreciation and respect for them indeed did rise.
However it wasn't as if it was a bad thing, both the association and Alex would benefit from this in the long term.
***
Alex left the beast examination hall and immediately made his way towards the nearest hospital with glee plastered all over his face.
'I'm rich now!'
The reason was obvious.
He was now 10 gold and 5 F rank beast cores richer than before he entered the association.
Sadly, he hadn't been lucky enough to find an F+ rank beast core inside the Sleeper.
Before he left, Graniel advised him to visit the hospital before his injuries worsened or infection settled in and Alex took his words very seriously.
Alex looked at the huge building in front of him adorning the universal logo all hospitals used.
Many eyes looked at him the moment he stepped foot in there. His clothes were torn, his face was covered in dirt and scratches and blood occasionally leaked from his chest in various places.
Right as he was about to check himself in, he collapsed.