The moment Rowan mentioned looting the corpses of all the beasts they had killed so far, Alex was reminded of all the soul orbs he must have gathered in his inventory.
Sure enough, when he checked there were 4 new shining orbs sitting there. Two F+ ranks, one E- rank and another E rank soul orb.
'I can reach E- rank any time I want.' Alex was ecstatic to say the least. Upgrading his Soul core to E tier would allow him the option to travel back to the universe, in the Federation!
However he had to postpone his upgrade until he was away from this battlefield and in the safety of the city.
After all, people need beast cores to upgrade their ranks. What would people think when they saw Alex reaching E tier without actually absorbing any beast cores?
Alex wasn't willing to test it and find out, so he waited.
"Shall we check how lucky we got?" Rowan spoke to Alex when the two approached the corpse of the dead bear once again.
"How are we going to split the loot if there's a beast cor-" Alex was about to ask Rowan the most important question before he was rudely interrupted by some other adventurer.
"Back off, this corpse belongs to the Crimson gang now." A burly man who looked to be in his thirties stepped in front of Alex and Rowan, with five other intimidating looking men standing behind him, staring at the duo intensely.
Rowan didn't look surprised at all when someone came over to try and take their loot for themselves.
"Pffff, that's a funny joke. 1 E- rank, with 5 F+ ranks are trying to steal our kill… I suggest you run along somewhere else before things get messy." Rowan wasn't having any of it, he even pointed out each of the men's ranks, insinuating that he was stronger than them since he could sense their levels.
Alex just stood on the side and mimicked the intense stare the men were giving him, after all he knew the outcome of this situation before it even started.
'The fact they call themselves a gang tells me they do this pretty often.'
Immediately, Rowan released his E rank aura for all the Crimson gang to feel.
Their faces soured momentarily but quickly went back to their sinister look a short instant later.
"Leader, this man is no ordinary E rank. I can feel he's even closing in on E+ rank power!" One of the members behind Crimson, the gang leader, whispered as he still wore a worried look on his face.
However Crimson ignored his man's plea and instead spoke to Rowan.
"Wow, it seems you have some Power! Congratulations, but we will still be taking this corpse." Crimson held his ground. In his mind how strong Rowan was didn't matter to him — he believed that if he and his whole gang attacked then he wouldn't be able to withstand the six of them.
"Is this your final decision? You just resigned yourself and your men to death. Alex-" Rowan wasn't at all impressed or intimidated by these guys.
As soon as the conversation ended, he called Alex and without hesitation, Alex drew the sword from his back and handed it to Rowan.
As soon as they saw the milky white glow surrounding the sword, even crimson started to sweat a little, but his eyes just lit up with even more greed. His men however had dropped all pretences and were visibly shaking by now.
Unfortunately for them, they hadn't noticed the sword till now as Alex kept it hidden on his back the whole time.
'It doesn't matter how many of my men die… If I kill him and get that sword, it'll all be worth it!'
But it seemed Rowan wasn't in the mood for playing around and chatting any longer, the more they talked and stalled, the higher the chances were of other people stealing loot from his other kills.
Without hesitation, he leaped right in front of Crimson and slashed his sword horizontally, attempting to bisect the annoying man.
But it seemed like Crimson had a few tricks of his own as some sort of barrier managed to block Rowan's attack.
"Attack!" Crimson called for his gang to join in the fight against Rowan, making it 6 vs 1.
Alex just held back and stood there all nonchalant.
After going through the war against the beasts from start to end with Rowan, he had some idea of his power and he knew he could wipe the floor with these guys alone.
Alex even knew that Rowan didn't need his help when going up against the E rank bear, he was just testing Alex's strength by having him deal the damaging blows.
He didn't know why Rowan did all that, but his cooperation with him thus far had been far better than it had ever been with Raymond, so he would just ask about it later.
But it seemed Rowan's testing of Alex hadn't ended just yet, as he shouted at Alex from the front lines of the fight.
"Alex! You deal with these F+ ranks." Crimson scoffed when he heard Rowan ask a lone F+ rank to deal with 5 people on the same level, but he wasn't going to stop him.
If anything this act of stupidity would just make things easier for him, Alex was next on the chopping block anyway after they killed Rowan so this was just speeding things up.
But contrary to his thoughts, things did not go as easy as he thought.
With annoyance clear on his face, Alex walked at a leisurely pace towards the fight and confronted the 5 F+ ranks who had already switched their attention from Rowan to Alex.
"You're dead meat, kid. Haha, let's get him boys!" One of the men laughed as he imagined the 'easy' fight they had ahead of themselves.
But their faces whitened when a flame appeared in Alex's hand.
Even Crimson diverted his attention to Alex in shock when he felt the heat and aura radiating off of Alex.
But he was powerless to help as Rowan kept him in check with a smile on his face as he watched what Alex was about to do.
BOOOM!
Immediately 50% of Alex's energy was gone in an instant, but the shockwave sent the five men flying backwards, some with charred skin, and some with their clothes completely burnt away, left completely naked.
'Huh, some of these guys are stronger than they look!'
Alex was just surprised that they didn't die from the attack like Joanne did.