'It's… huff… finally done!'
After nearly a full 20 hours passed, Alex absorbed the last remaining bit of energy from the soul orb and watched as the faint red ball of light dissipated as there was no energy left to sustain its light.
He was expecting the process of absorbing a Variant class soul orb to be a little different than that of Mutant or Ordinary classes, but he didn't expect it to be this different.
At most, it would only take him a few hours to absorb a D+ rank Mutant soul orb.
But this D- rank Variant class soul orb took a whole 20 hours!
And that was with the sudden buff Alex had received near the start — if he didn't get that then it would have taken even longer, probably closer to 30 hours.
'That was so much hard work… I'm almost dreading having to do that for every soul orb I obtain from this point onwards…'
By choosing to absorb this Variant class soul orb, Alex was resigning himself to a much tougher future.