As Rex started to slowly ascend the mountain where his target was supposed to grow, he though back to his usage of space laws to solve the hunter issue back during the great hunt. And while quite cumbersome, with notable side effects that he felt for quite a while after the deed, he still considered that it was the best course of action. With the knowledge that he had now, maybe he would have acted differently, but seeing how coveted blood mages were in the other world, he was not very keen on repeating the same process he had back there. Plus he had quite a bit more limitations in his ability to grow, making him more cautious than before.
With his old, but trusty spear in hand and his attention focused on his surroundings, even going so far as to use mana sonar every now and then, depending on his natural mana recovery to stay toped off, he slowly advanced, looking for any signs of wolf activity or the telltale signs of silverweed tulip habitats. And after only twenty minute climb, Rex found the first few clues, indicating that the likelyhood of the plant being here was quite high. What he had stumbled upon, was a few pathes of wolfs fur, and one that looked recently lost as well, still maintaining the last traces of its sheen.
With a laser focus, Rex kept moving forward, his senses on high alert, untill just a few minutes later, he noticed the first wolf, peacefully snoozing on a rock. Due to being downwind from the beast, he had not yet been noticed, and it would remain so, as Rex slowly lifted his hand with the spear gripped tightly in it, pulled back slowly, yet silently, and after another breath, he infused mana in his muscles and launched the spear at the wolf.
With a whoosh, the spear flew across the air and only moment later, with a sickeningly sharp sound pierced the beasts hide, eliciting a pathetic whimper from it, leaving its slumped body on the same rocks, even if slightly more away from Rex now. In just as quiet of a manner, he aproached the fallen wolf, pulled out his spear and willed the creatures blood to obey his command. As if pulled by an invisible force, the blood was extracted through the spear wound, condensing into a ball or red liquid, swirling non stop. With a simple prompt of his mind, the blood started to solidify, becoming smaller and smaller in size, untill only a couple meter long chain was in Rex's hand.The tip of the chain had a rather nasty looking spear end, well suited for stabbing, possibly even cutting, if it was robust enought.
One end of the chain wraped around his bicep, near the armpit, Rex proceeded forward, leaving the dry meat, skin and bones as is, He would come by on his way back, where he would skin the creature, collecting its skin to later sell to the towns leaterworker. As he moved forward, he encountered more wolves, this time they were mot sleeping, and the moment he was noticed, a howl escaped the mouth of the one facing him, soon recieving respone from further up the mountain.
The trio of wolves rushed towards Rex, splitting up and trying to attack him from three different sides. Since there was a solid teamwork between the wolves, but it was not nearly perfect, each of the wolves being in a different condition, making each and every one to close the distance in different times, creating a second or two gfap between the lunges. Using the different speed of the rather simple aproach that the beasts attacking him were taking, he just barely moved out of the way of the first leap, at the same time wrapping his newly forged blood chain around the beasts neck, choking it out. Then in a similar matter he avoided the second leap, using his spear as a brace to end the third, stabbing it in the heart. A pained whimper escaped the muzzle of the last beast, as the first was strugging to breathe, its neck being choked out quite nicely, with only the second wolf runing forward for a few meters before turning and lunging at Rex again. Though, much like the last one, it too was impaled on a spear that appeared in front of its leap trajectory, ending its life too. With only the choking wolf remaining, Rex aproached it, and stabbed downwards, impaling its heart and ending its life, a muffled whimper escaping this ones muzzle, the choking chain having mostly dampened said whimper. Repeating the same blood drain as with his first victim on the mountain, his chain elongated to reachsix meters, a part of the fresh blood used to reinforce the chain.
Rex had barely dealt with the draining of his last three victims, enforcing his chain, when more of the beasts emerged from all around him, totaling a group of ten more wolves. Rex noticed that one of the beasts was slightly larger than the rest, its eyes exuding some slight amount of intelegence. As the rest of the beasts charged forward, creating similar gaps as the trio beforehand, the sheer number of them denied Rex the ability to repeat the same tactic he had used before. So, utilizing the extened lenght of his blood chain, he infused it with an extra umpf of mana, using its as whip to strike at most of the wolves, leaving only two to reach him, where he barely avoided the first, and stabbed the second, causing it a swift death, slaming the first in the side with the returning sharp end of the blood chain. And while unlike his spear, it did not finish the wolf off, it had suffered a deep stab would, eliciting a painfull howl, causing the blood to gush through the wound as Rex's chain was drawn back.
Rex used the method to tance around the wolves and control the numbers that could reach him, whittleing down their numbers one by one. As precise as he was, as carefull he dodged, he still recieved a few scratches here and there. While not a threat to his life, they could cause a simple lightheadedness, should he allow them to bleed. Good thing Rex was a blood mage, controlling his own blood to remain in his veins, not a single drop of his blood, besides whatever was on the claws that had cut his flesh, leaving his body. The technique was quite impressive, if he had to rate it himself, making one of the greatest dangers of wounds go away- the constant draining of the life maintaining liquid,making the fighter to tire much faster, or slowly go into shock, induced by blood loss.
His adversaries however, could not say the same, during the last fifteen minutes being reduced to only a couple in numbers. Of course, the alpha was still alive, how could it not? It was the beast that had caused all those shallow wound on Rex body after all. Both sides were breathing somewhat heavily. Rex had been expending quite a bit of energy and focus, moving both his body and the chain, while the alpha and the the other wolf had a few, light stab wounds on their bodies- courtesy of the blood chain. Rex was skilled with the use of chains after all, especially ones controlled with ones mind and mana. And while tired, and wounded, neither side was willing to give up. Rex needed to colect the silverweed tulips, and the wolfs would not rest untill their quarry is finished and they can gnaw of its bones for the damage it had caused their pack.
With one last snarl and angry howl, mirrored by its last mate, both wolfs lunged at Rex in a near perfect synchrony. In a quick response, Rex stirred the last reservoir of his mana, calling upon all the blood in his surroundings, forcing it to crystalize into spears of blood, shooting towards him, and just before the two wolves reached Rex, numerous blood spears skevered them from different positions. Rex placed his spear on the ground as one of his knees landed on the ground, exausted and with an empty mana pool, but victorious. With each kill, he could sense how a small few metaphorical drops fell into his own pool, enriching it and expanding its size, even if only just barely. That was his drain at work, slowly and just barely making him stronger every time he kills something. Exhaling heavily, a few minutes later he lifted himself off the ground, walking over to the alpha of the pack, drawing its blood to use whatever life essence was in to to heal his own minor injuries. As a master of blood, that was one of the easier techniques to pull off, especially with the amount of blood from the alpha at hand and the relatively shallow wound of his.
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Extracting the blood of alphas mate, adding it to his chain, he walked in the dirrection from which the pack had emerged, only a few more minutes later coming upon a small pond that was surrounded with patch after patch of the silverweed tulips. Rex carefully walked towards the first patch, observing the plants and collecting only the ones that were in the correct stage of its growth, with the stems that had flowers about to bloom. He ingonred the ones that had blossomed, as well as the ones with barely developed flower buds. Still, with the amount of plants present, he aquired quite the number of them, a small smile spreading on his face. 'A good harvest indeed. In another few weeks another one could be made.' Rex thought, as he slowly returned to the place he had slaughtered the main part of the wolf pack. Since he had quite a few test subjects, he decided to test the last improvement he did to his blood chain, forcing it to just barely vibrate with quite the frequency. The freshly added saw teeth on the chain looked sharp, though he would reinforce and compress his creation quite a few times to reach the desired effect.
With his mana mostly recovered, he did just that, heavily reducing the lenght of his chain, from the near ten meters he had when absorbing all the blood from blood spears he had used to impale alpha and its mate, to mere four once again, though now his creation no longer looked much like a chain, but a slighty thicker metalistic wire and when it was forced to vibrate, due to the reduced diameter of it, consumed notably less mana. Thus, he trained the usage of his chain on the bloodless wolves, using the vibrating chain to skin them. It took him six tries, destroying the skins of those wolves untill he managed to get the hang of it, only slightly cutting another two, though they would still be sellable. Beasts, unlike monsters, humanoids or not, did not have any bounties on them, so unless one was an avid hunter, collecting a part of the beast for his trophee case, they held no value in the eyes of the markets.
With the wolves skinned, flowers collected and the blood chain enhanced as much as possible, as well as his mana pool somewhat low, he descended the mountain, his path set back home, to the town of valrun, where his quest waited to be finished and a room in the inn had a cozy bed with his name on it. And while it was just past midday, he had at least half an hour descent , as well as a couple hour walk back home. This time, with an additional ten or so killograms from all the loot he had aquired. 'Damn, I need to expand my space storage asap.' he though as he descended. unfortunately, Rex did not have the funds to just sit around in town and focus on that neccesity. His rune engraved body needed nutrients to continiue its strenghtening, something that was more important at the moment. After all, once his body reaches a certain point, he could use his sword laws, making him capable of hunting much more dangerous game, hastening his passive growth due to the always active mini drain. He had so much possible power so close to his hands, yet at the same time it all seemed still so far off in the future. Though a part of him seemed to relish the fact a slight bit.
The return back to Valrun was uneventfull, as Rex played with his recently created blood chain, that was now snuggly wrapped around his wrist. Then again, with all the crystalization and compression it had gone through, it looked more like a red thread of metal than anything related to blood. Then again, it was the crystalization of life, in a manner of speaking, no longer just simple blood. And with every creatures blood added to it, it would only become more and more powerfull. Rex had quite a few other ideas as to how he could utilize his dominion over blood path, making him just that much more dangerous of an opponent. There was just one slight issue with the usage of the path. One that he had little to no knowldege about, at least in this world. Something he decided to figure out as soon as he returned to town. As he walked the path towards it, he did lecture himself just about that. How he did not look for that information. Something that seems quite obvious now that he looks back to it.
Luckaly for him, Lisa was working the evening shift today, so he had a reliable and too nice of a person to ask about the topic, having made a profile of the girl in his mind. He also had no issues scheduling his monster bounty exchanges to ensure that the little bundle of joy would recieve a rather nice influx of bonuses. It was quite important to reward those that bring such light and joy to the world, yet get overlooked when it comes time to dole out its rewards. If the world does not step up, he will.
getting past the guards was quite easy, as all he had to do was to show his adventurers licence, and after a quick stop at the tanner, where he got rid of the wolf hides, recieving a few silvers in return, he continued on towards the guild building. As he stepped in, he quickly noticed the bundle of joy that he had planned to head to, yet was stopped by a somewhat familiar voice.
"Back already? Should have taken our generous offer in the morning. Maybee then you would have been able to fulfill your quest." Rex turned his head toward the voice that was clearly dirrected at him, seeing a rather smug loli with light green hair and pointy ears sitting at one of the tables. He saw another three figures sitting along side her, his gaze holding on the blonde busom beauty for a second longer than the rest, but noticing the lack of the hazed colored girl, he turned his head back towards the counter, noticing her interracting with another attendant.
Not seeing a need to respond, Rex ignored the pipsqueek and walked towards Lisa, hearing a rather loud scoff and what he assumed was a grinding of teeth. Just before he reached Lisa, the hazel haired leader of Light's oak finished her business and turned to leave, coming face to face with Rex.
"Yo." Rex lifted his hand and greeted her "I would advise to keep your pipsqueek on a tighter leash. That ones got a dirty mouth. Might get you into trouble, or worse." A slight wince appeared on her face as she smiled bitterly.
"Doing my best."
"Do better. You seem nice. Would hate anything bad happening to you. Anyways, see ya around." Rex waved her once again and walked pas, stopping in front of Lisa, who was free at the moment.
"Hello sunshine. How your day?" he asked the girl who was smiling from ear to ear as he aproached.
"Hello Rex. How was your first day as an adventurer? Did you take any quests?" Would you like a recomendation? she spoke her hand clapped together before her small chest.
"I am good. Thanks for asking. The day was nice and yes, I did indeed took a quest, finished it already as well. Wanted to turn it in actually."
"Splendid. Let me have a look. OW?" she exclaimed as she saw the quest registered on hisname. "With what party did you went on it?"
"Hmm? Its just an F rank quest. Why would I need a party?"
"Wait, you did it Solo?"
"Well, I am one, so what is wrong with that?"
"Nothing, care to show me the herbs?"
"Sure thing." Rex replied and pulled up a smaller bag he had taken with him. Then, he carefully opened it and Lisas eyes widened as she was the rather large number of silverweed tulip stems. Rex carefully took out ten of them and placed on the tray Lisa had placed before her. Ten pristine silverweed tulips were stacked on it, and Lisas eyebrows rose even higher, if that was even possible. She examined them quickly as well, raising her eyes to Rex with sparkles lighting up in them.
"Āre you perhaps an alchemist Rex? Those are pristine."
"Well, lets just say I know a thing or two about plants." he was not lying. With his cultivator memories, and alchemy being one of the mandatory things to master for a lone cultivators, he could tell a lot about plants just by examining them. Then spend a single plant that you destroy while profiling with mana, and you now almost everything there is to know about them. Add on top of it the blood path, if you believe that the juice from a plant is their blood, which is just that in a sense, and you can finalize cataloguing its properties. And with all that knowledge, it is a simple matter to figure out teh best way, age and state of the plant to harvest for a maximum benefit.
"NO WAY! Thats BULLSHIT!" Rex heard an exclamation not too far away, well aware of a loli that was probably fuming over his success.
"Thats great Rex. The alchemist will be in the clouds with this delivery." Lisa beamed, marking the quest as complete on his file, swiping his guild card on a special device. As she did that, Rex saw that under quests, near the F letter was now a number '1', while all other letters were extremely dim, with a '0' next to them.
"And with that, you have officially finished your first quest. how did you avoid the wolves though?"
"Thats a trade secret. Maybee I will tell you some other time." Rex winked at her while smiling and collecting the coins she placed on the counter. "By the way, I got a question I think you could be able to answer for me."