Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

"Ughh, I'm still alive I guess…"

Alex's consciousness swam up from the deep abyss it felt like he had fallen into during the final moments of his fight against the beast, his mind sluggish and heavy.

A pounding headache greeted him as he slowly awoke, feeling as if his skull was about to split into two.

He groaned, trying to lift his head, but his muscles felt weak, almost weightless.

'Where… where am I?'

His vision was a blur, only able to make out vague shapes and shadows. For a moment, he felt a panic rise in his chest, but he forced himself to breathe slowly, letting his energy core stabilise in his body.

Gradually, his vision began to clear. He looked around, expecting to see the battlefield, the soldiers, the mercenaries and even the beast.

But there was nothing, just darkness.

Complete, enveloping darkness.

'Is this?'

He tried to move, and his body felt strangely light, almost as if he was floating. A sudden realisation struck him, and he tried to focus his eyes on a few principles of light in the far off distance.

'Stars? I'm in space?'

Alex's heart raced. How was he alive? How was he breathing?

But then it hit him.

He wasn't breathing at all.

Alex thought he was taking deep breaths earlier to calm himself, but in reality all that happened was that he opened and closed his mouth, decompressing his lungs.

Normally this would kill a person outright, if the near absolute zero temperatures of space didn't kill them already.

He remembered the fight, the desperation, and his final commands he issued to his body.

He had thrown everything he had at the beast, using his body as a projectile, and then… nothing.

Alex couldn't remember anything after that, rightfully so as he had practically been in a coma from that point onwards.

But that begged the question, how the hell was he in space?

Even more urgent was how the hell he was still alive.

He should have died hours ago from the lack of oxygen alone…

'How did I survive?'

His energy core hummed softly within him, a beacon of life in the void. It had regulated his body's energy consumption, keeping his body alive despite the lack of oxygen. But his brain wasn't privy to this.

Realistically, he should be deader than dead right now, instead of alive and confused, floating in the void of space.

Even stranger though, was that there was nothing in sight around him!

He was at the edge of Ceres-9's atmosphere, so if he had propelled himself out of it with his last attack on the beast, then he should at least be seeing a very, very large planet floating in the void alongside him.

But there was nothing there.

Only the distant stars in the perpetual night sky.

He tried to activate anything, even his Inferior Teleportation, but his energy reserves were still dangerously low.

The little bits of energy that had regenerated were all sucked away by his energy core to sustain his body's function.

He could still feel some faint Phoenix flames, on a scale so small not even he could see them, simmering within him, keeping his body just warm enough to survive this cold void.

He would have been turned into a popsicle otherwise.

'Think, Alex. think.'

He closed his eyes, trying to think of a solution to his completely unexpected predicament.

'My communicator!'

Thankfully, he remembered that he still had his communicator strapped to his wrist right before he passed out.

'Oh…'

But then he remembered how easily it was melted away by his Phoenix flames.

He had planned on using the communicator's locator function to find out where he was, or possibly how he had even got there.

But that small hope was snuffed out just as quickly as it came.

His mind was blank, void of any other options.

Even though his brain hadn't died yet, somehow, that didn't mean it wouldn't die soon.

He could feel his thoughts slowly becoming sluggish as the minutes passed by.

At the rate his mind was degenerating, he would only have around 2 hours before he was fully toast.

'I must have been in some sort of hibernation or stasis for my brain to survive before this…'

That was the only reasonable answer he could think of.

But then he felt like he had another brainwave.

'How about… the Primordial Expanse?'

Since he was helplessly floating in space, supposedly out of reach of any civilization, this was the best option he could think of.

'Yeah, I can just enter the Primordial Expanse and recuperate there!'

A plan slowly started to formulate in his mind.

He would enter the Primordial Expanse, find the nearest human settlement, and find some outsiders to trade with.

He wanted to buy a communicator from one of them.

They wouldn't work in the Primordial Expanse due to the restriction on his universe's technology there, but that didn't mean they couldn't be brought back and forth, so long as it was attached to someone's body or in a spatial storage device.

With a communicator in his possession, all he needed to do was turn on the locator function to find out where he was, and turn on the emergency transponder.

Any nearby ships could pick up his signal and come over to his location after the transponder was activated.

Though Alex doubted any of the civilian freighters or transporter ships would stop for him — the companies running these shipping routes were too stingy to expend a little bit of fuel to go off route and pick him up.

His only chance of getting saved was if there was a federal ship passing through the transponder's signal range, as they were obligated by law to stop for any emergency signals.

'Alright, here I go then! I wonder if I'll be transported to a completely different place again like last time…'

Shortly after, Alex expressed his will to enter the Primordial Expanse, and just like the last time he had entered, the prompt popped up before his eyes.

[Would you like to enter the Primordial Expanse?]

Alex naturally chose yes, not wasting the little amount of time he had left.