Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

Time passed slowly and by now, three full days had gone by.

Alex still stood silently in the middle of the Archive, studying one piece of text after another in an endless frenzy.

Despite his disposition as a Higher life form, the constant use of his concentration and energy took a toll on him, as his eyes glowed faintly with strain.

But his expression still remained focused.

Even now, after three days without rest, he moved like a machine made for one purpose: to find answers.

Reluun, sitting cross-legged atop a precarious stack of scrolls nearby, tossed a crumpled piece of dried fruit into his mouth with a crunch. "You know, most people would've collapsed by now. Or gone mad. Or both."

Alex didn't respond.

He'd long since stopped engaging in idle chatter. Every ounce of his concentration was lazer focused on absorbing information, filtering, cross referencing, discarding, and compiling.

And from his findings… there was nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a single word or letter related to Mikhail at all.

By this point, Alex was beginning to become worried – anxious that he'd find nothing in the archive at all related to Mikhail.

All of his effort and time over the past few days would have been wasted if this were the case.

However, even if the worst did come to be, he wouldn't give up so easily – he wouldn't even entertain the idea of it.

He'd been searching for a while already, and he wouldn't be put down by one small setback like this.

Besides, he still had a lot more information to cover.

So far, he was only just about to be done with the papers and information related to the parameters he had set.

Once he was done with those, he'd move on to the rest of the archive.

Even if he found nothing in the information narrowed down by his parameters, that didn't mean there was nothing to be found at all.

After all, he could just be looking in the wrong places.

He still didn't even know what he was looking for exactly; right now he was just looking for any connection to Mikhail in general.

Finally, once he was done with the narrowed down information, he moved onto what the rest of the archive had to offer.

And over the following seven days… he actually had some progress this time!

There were results! Albeit mere fragments, but results they were! A myth here. A witness account there. A scrap of parchment, unfortunately too charred or ruined to read, since the archive wasn't exactly well cared for other than the moisture aspect.

Most of the stories were conflicting, and questionable on whether they were even related to Mikhail at all… But a picture was beginning to emerge.

A picture of Mikhail being active in other realms!

This in itself was the biggest news and piece of information Alex had deduced ever since his hunt for the forge had begun.

After all, his belief that Mikhail's forge must be in another realm was an educated guess – it wasn't grounded in real facts – until now.

From the stories Alex had found, even though none of them named the figure in question specifically – though it was obvious to Alex that it was Mikhail, Mikhail was seen differently in the other realms he had visited than he was in the Federation's realm.

His status as a smith was more toned down, and instead he was seen more like something along the lines of a… seeker?

Like he had crossed a threshold no other human – or Solari – had ever dared to. One account referred to him as "The First Man to Shape Flame with Thought," whatever that meant. Another account as "The Stranger from Another Realm with Secrets Deeper than the Universe Itself."

All poetic nonsense to Alex, but he could at least read between the lines.

'Mikhail had done something. Created something. Something that nobody, ever, had done before…'

Then… disappeared.

Alex held a particularly worn piece of parchment in his hand. Its ink was nearly illegible, but his enhanced senses allowed him to pick out the faded characters. The writing was ancient, older than any Federation or Solari dialect. He didn't recognise it, but thanks to the System's handy universal translation features, he could understand it.

Of course, Alex wouldn't usually take the time to pick up a piece of paper since simply reading them in his mind through his Spatial Perception was much, much faster.

But this piece of parchment stood out too much to handle with such little care.

Reluun leaned in from behind. It was clear to him that Alex was finally roused out of his downtrodden state of a complete lack of information.

"You've been staring at that one for half an hour."

"It's not Solari," Alex muttered.

"Half right," Reluun confirmed. "That's Pre-Expanse dialect. Practically a dead language. Even most Solari can't read it unless they're, like, insufferably academic."

Alex squinted at the script, scrutinising the script closely. It wasn't a surprise to him that the Solari kept relics from before they were even initiated into the System and the Primordial Expanse, since the Federation did the same.

He was just surprised that… this parchment had survived that long, and questioned why it had been stored in the Primordial Expanse rather than the outside universe.

However, considering the parchment's significance, he questioned the truthfulness of Reluun's words himself.

After all, if this was a Pre-Primordial Expanse piece of text, then wouldn't that mean that Mikhail… wasn't a native of the Primordial Expanse after all!?

The thought pained him to think about since it introduced a whole new set of parameters he had failed to consider from the very beginning.

Back when he first heard of Mikhail's name and feats as a legendary smith, he was still under the belief that the Federation and its roots back on Earth before becoming a spacefaring race were the origin of humanity.

And since Mikhail's time was before the Federation even came to be and wayyy before the Primordial Expanse was introduced to them, he assumed he must just be a native of the Primordial Expanse.

But what if he wasn't?