'Ugh, my head…'
Alex woke up feeling like he had a concussion. He had a constant throbbing pain in his head the moment he regained consciousness.
'Wait, where am I?'
'Right, I remember I just returned from the beast examination hall to get treated at the hospital. But that's where my memories stop?'
Alex sat up from his position and noticed that he was lying on a bed in what looked like a hospital ward with the sun shining brightly through the window, only making his headache worse.
Alex looked around himself in confusion until he heard the door to his room be unlocked.
A nurse walked in with a clipboard like it was her usual routine, ready to assess Alex.
"Good, you're awake." She said when she noticed Alex looking at her.
"You're lucky to be alive you know, you lost quite a lot of blood. If you hadn't been lucky enough to have collapsed in the hospital reception area, you wouldn't have survived."
Alex felt cold shivers run down his spine when he heard just how lucky he was to live—he felt fine the whole time beforehand other than the pain in his chest and the occasional exhaustion.
"Thank you, truly. If it weren't for you guys I would be dead meat right now!"
"I don't know how I can repay you…"
Alex awkwardly expressed his gratitude towards the nurse as he didn't know who specifically saved him.
"Oh, trust me when I say you will find out soon how you can repay us." The nurse replied to him with a sly smile on her face.
Alex only shrugged off her response as he had more important things to focus on, such as recovering from the throbbing pain in his head.
His other injuries to his chest and his lack of blood had already been solved, now all he had was this annoying headache.
Alex had asked the nurse about getting some medicine to treat his headache, yet her response was:
"That's a side effect of the recovery potion we used to heal you. Because the level of your soul is so low, the influx of energy from the potion caused a strain on your core, which resides in your brain. That is the pain you are currently experiencing right now."
"Strains to your core are difficult to treat at low levels unless you are willing to spend a hefty sum. There is no need to worry though, it will go away on its own within a day or two."
Alex felt a little bit out of place when the nurse told him about all these terms he had never heard before.
However when he heard about how expensive it would be to treat his headache, that reminded him of something.
"How much did it cost for the treatment of my injuries?"
Normally, the nurse would have loved to sweet talk her patients—especially when the topic of money came up, but with Alex she remained neutral.
Naturally this was because sometimes she could swindle a few gold coins out of them as tips and gratitude for her service.
But looking at Alex in his normal set of clothes, and seeing how he frowned when he asked about how much his fee was, she knew he was just another pauper.
"Let me see here, a charge of 50 gold or half an F rank beast core for the care of three nurses, one overnight stay—that will be another 50 gold or a whole F rank beast core for the two charges together. Finally you used 1 F+ rank recovery potion due to the extent of your injuries, that's 2 F rank beast cores right there."
"So in total, it comes down to 3 F rank beast cores. You can opt to pay in gold instead of the cores, it's your choice."
Alex became crestfallen when he heard the total sum he owed to the hospital.
'Three of my hard earned beast cores are gone already!'
The nurse looked on at Alex weirdly, she would have thought he was sobbing if it weren't for the lack of tears!
If Alex hadn't been compensated by the adventurer association due to the mis ranking of his mission, he would be in debt already.
Naturally, this was also considered by the association when they heard about the extent of his injuries, and they calculated how much he would have to spend just to heal.
They only gave him just enough F rank cores to afford the treatment with a little extra to spare, meaning he would be back to completing missions in the mission hall sooner to earn more money and increase his soul tier.
"So, now that you are all fit and fine, how would you like to pay?"
A smile was on the face of the nurse this time as she knew Alex was dreading every moment of this.
"I'll pay in beast cores."
***
Only 10 minutes later Alex left the hospital with his pockets much lighter and his mood much more depressed.
His head still throbbed from the recovery potion but he did his best to ignore it.
Instead of sulking about the loss of his money, Alex instead decided to focus on something else.
Specifically the usage of beast cores.
He knew they were the main way Adventurers and Awakened increased the tier of their soul core, he just didn't know how they turned something composed of matter into energy that they could absorb.
In the normal universe, he knew it was theoretically possible because science said all matter was composed of energy, but from the little amount of research Alex had done on the topic it required a substantial amount of power and energy to convert matter to energy.
However his internal struggle on how to absorb his core was shot down by the first Adventurer he came across on the street and asked about it.
"What? You don't know how to absorb beast cores? What kind of adventurer doesn't know how to do that!?"
"Ah nevermind, what does it matter to me anyway. You just hold it in your hand and think about absorbing the beast core, and then bam, you've absorbed it!"
Alex felt like a total idiot.
He was in the Primordial Expanse, of course the common sense of his own universe wouldn't apply to this magical realm.
He should have thought of such a simple solution sooner.