The building looked quite worn down, but its entrance was rather large. So much so, that a person of two and a half meter lenght could easily walk through, their back straight and head held high. In the second room, behind a small corner bend a hole leading to what should be abasement came into their view. Just like with the entrance, the hole was equaly large, making the girls to become more carefull and alert. Whatever was waiting for them down there, was leagues above the kobolds they had been dealing with so far.

"You sure its a good idea?" Ria asked, clutching her staff with worry.

"Its fine. You got me here. Besides, I do believe that whatever risk we are taking right now is warranted, especially with your conundrum." came the reply from Rex, his voice low, clearly an attempt to minimize the chance of them being heard before time. A minute or so later, they started to hear low growls further down the tunnel, causing the girls to raise their alert levels even higher. Son after, they turned yet another corner, coming into view of their opposition.

"A kobold champion!" exclaimed the dark haired archer, Veena, as the party finally saw their adversary. On a large stone chair, a crude copy of some throne the kobold had seen somewhere, sat the two and a half meter sized menace. Dark gray fur covering its body. Black, beady eyes locked on Rex, who was at the very front of the group. A rather large size axe stood by the side of the throne, one of the champions paws holding it tight. Its body was covered in some rather simple chainmail and on its head, a rather funny looking kettle helm was placed, a single spike extending upwards from its center. Further behind it, a large pile of gold and other valuables could be seen, just waiting for its new owners to arrive. Two normal sized kobolds lounged on both sides. Both with ordinary brown fur, wearing similar armor to teh champion, if a little more worn down. Unlike the chief though, both had rather simple spears at hand, something both quickly grabbed and stammered on their feet, snarling and barking at Rex and the ladies.

"i will keep the big bastard busy. Take care of the guards first and once done, help me with ranged attacks to immobilize and take down the champion." Rex spoke, moving forward even more so.

"Will do!" Exclaimed Samanta, lodging an arrow into her bow and releasing it towards one of the two guards. In a blink of an eye, Veena followed suit, doing the same with teh second guard, both of whom had already started their mad dash towards the group. Rex in turn, charged forward as well, followed by Meru a decent distacne away.As the champion rose from its seat. Rex reached the charging duo, skillfully deflecting one of the spears coming for his torso, causing its wielder to stumble forward while moving out of the strike zone of the second one, pasing both and continiuing his charge towards the last, largest enemy in the expanded room.

Meru reached the two, one of whom was scurrying back to its feet. Two more arrows flew in their dirrection, striking the chainmail of the fallen one, eliciting and small yelp, followed by two angry growls, coming from both guards. The arrows had barely struck through the chainmail the guards were wearing. Despite its poor visual condition, it seemed they were still quite capable of stopping attacks against them.

Neither Meru, nor Alurial was slacking off either. The fighter girl had closed the distance and was using her sword to slash the upright standing kobold, aiming towards irs less armored body parts. Its spear thrust already deflected by herself, efficiently her shield. Sure, Rex was much better at fighting than she was, but that did not mean she could not, or would not fullfill her role in their party. She had been doing this thing for months already. Besides, she had teh assistance of two archers, a mage and a healer to boot, should she make a mistake or whatnot. Keeping a certain count in her head, and having reached the correct number, she swiftly retreated, yet another pair of arrows flying, distracting the two guards from her just long enough for another source of light to fly the kobold way. Alurial had thrown her fireball, causing an explosion to rock the cave they were currently in. The two kobolds were not having a great time, both had their hides nicely burnt, their skin singed in multiple places. Even their chainmails started to feel rather uncomfortable, the heated metal rings creating quite the discomfort for the two kobolds. With a battle cry leaving her lips, Meru went in once again, her muscles tensed and strained as she engaged the two kobold guards, trying to end their own battle in hopes to join Rex to end the champions life as well. It took another minute or so, as well as another fireball for the two kobold guards to finally be taken down, freeing the party to asist Rex.

Rex meanwhile was holding his own quite commendably, having bolted straight towards the rising champion, ignoring the two guards. He was confident enough in his parties ability to take care of the two, allowing him to fully focus on the target in front of him. With unexpected speed, the champion lashed out, his battle axe creating a swooshing sound as it was flung towards Rex's head, in an attempt to split him in two in one swift strike. Unfortunately, Rex was prepeared, lowering and sidestepping just enough for the strike to go just past him, while at the same time inflicting a small cut on one of the champions arms, earning himself a low growl from the kobold in return.

As soon as the axe collided with the stone floor, cutting deep into it, the kobold struck out with his leg, trying to send Rex flying. Once again, a swift yet precise sidestep, followed by yet another cut on the extended extremity of the creature, earning yet another growl, slightly louder than before. With the kick also being a bust, kobold champion howled, making a sweep with his tail and ensuring Rex does not close in on its back, while it put more force into its legs and dislodged its massive axe from the stone floor.

Learning from its mistake, it proceeded with large horizontal cleaves, avoiding any chance of burrying its weapon in the stone floor, allowing for continious and deadly strikes in succesion. AS such, for the next few minutes Rex could do little to actually damage the snarling opponent, managing to make a few additional small cuts on its extremities. The current stallmate was clearly getting on the monsters nerves, indicated by the ever growing growls and occasional howl of anger.

Rex was expecting for the champion to start switching its attention to the rest of his group soon, yet before its got that far, the cave was assaulted by a sligfht tremor, as well as an explosion. their mage had taken action. Due to the small window where the champion was distracted, Rex managed to slip past its reach and deliver a rather nice and deep cut behind one of its knees, heavily limiting the ability of his adversary to make agile and fast movements, mostly rooting it in place. He did have to half block the incoming axe strike moments after, causing him to be flung back due to the sheer forse he was too slow to fully redirect.

"TPHUuhh!" Rex spat out a mouthfull of salive and air, as he connected with the save extentions wall, air being knocked out of his lungs due to the impact, though he got back to his feet near instantly. He had enough battle sense not to stay on the ground and complain. "Got some spunk, dont you bastard." Rex grinned at the champion, raising both his shield and sword once again. He was aware of the likelyhood he had to parry the strike that flung him, and while he did everything as he had predicted, to mitigate the force he would have to take on, he had miscalculated the raw power of the creature he was facing. Not enough to make him incapable of continiuing, nor heavily wounded, but enough to knock the wind out of his lungs. Such mistakes were not acceptable, especially so since he was planning to get his own party eventually, which meant a responsibility for their lives and wellbeing.

"Round two!" Rex smiled a predatory smile as he bent his knees in preperation of yet another lunge towards the kobold who was on one of his knees as he could not use his other leg, courtesy of Rex's last successfull strike. But before he flung himself forward, another explosion occured, followed by a couple of last shrieks and the sound of aproaching bootsteps. And since kobolds did not have the right knowledge, nor the leg structure to use human feetwear, it was quite obvious who had finished with their task and were aproaching to assist Rex.

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"Wow, you took it down while we were taking care of the two guards?" Veena exclaimed as she oserved the scene before their eyes.

"Not quite. Immobilized is all I managed to do. I would suggest a few fireballs flung in his dirrection to soften him up enough for us to finish this in a timely manner. No melle before that either, since now is the moment the champion is the greatest threat to the life of anyone aproaching. After all, he cannot move properly and is no doubt aware of just how great a threat to its life we are."

"Understood." Samanta replied "Alurial, if you could?" she continiued, turning her attention to the parties mage.

"Yes!" the half elf exclaimed and started to coalesce mana into a single point above her palm. Once an appropriate amount om nana had been gathered and compressed. it was ignited and then launched in the dirrection of the champion, who in turn tried to shield itself with his large axe. A loud explosion followed, notably more powerfull than the last two. Alurial was trying to inflict greater damage to the kobold champion as fast as possible, well aware that they had limited amount of time before someone eles stumbles upon them and interferes, claiming rights to at part of their loot.

A Loud howl escaped the mouth of the champion, its attempt at blocking the explosion clearly a futile attempt, a rather powerfull smell of burnt fur and scorched flesh assaulting the parties noses. Noticing an opening, Rex lunged forward the moment the flames died down and just moment later, his spear, that he had switched to during the short pause, found its way int oteh champions brain, piercing its eye socket and skull.

"Fast and decisive." Meru nodded in aproval of Rex's action, clearly impresed with his performance so far. Rex tore out his spear from the now still corpes head of the champion, twhirling the spear in his hands and finisheing the action with a sharp swing downwards, freeing his spear blade from residual blood and brain matter that had stuck to it.

"Loot time." Rex spoke as he inclined his head toward the pile further ahead, not sensing any other danger in their immediate surroundings. "Good work everyone." he added, not holding back on the praise for a job well done. He even noted that the use of magic was well thought out and properly controlled, eliciting a slight smile from Alurial, who had been acting rather mature ever since they departed from the village.

What followed was a rather frantic and chaotic collection of their loot, stashing it all in what looked like some sort of cartoon burglar bags. According to Samanta, every adventurer party had their own emergency stash of these, specifically for the rare chance such as this falling into their laps. Sure, adventurers were serious people, often balancing on the knifes edge between life and death, but that in no way stopped them from believing in legeds passed down by their predecessors, both about legendary adventurers as well as ones about unreasonably powerfull monsters and untold treasures.

Rex was especialy fast in his part, filling up a couple of bags and then moving over to the corpses of the slain kobolds and, from the view point of his party, kneeled down and checked said corpses for any hidden treasure that they migth have carried on themselves- something that was not that much of a suprise when it came to kobolds. Unseen by the girls, Rex collected what blood was still kept in the unmoving bodies, compressing and crystalizing it. He was slowly creating his own source blood sword. A weapon that would be extremely versatile and sharp beyond anything he could hope to find anytime soon. But the most important aspect of his creation would be its ability to withstand the usage of laws, since the weapon itself would be built through their usage. Rex was slowly prepearing yet another trump card for himself, even if his body was still way off from the point of using said laws without wrecking himself in the process.

"Found anything?" Asked Samanta as she aproached Rex who was crouched near the body of the champion. And while not the primary reason, he had indeed checked the bodies for any suspicious trinket kept close to the flesh of their three victims. As it turned out, he did find something, and as such, he lifted his hand, showing his find to their group leader.

"Besides this? Nothing else, but it had to be worth something." Rex replied, adding "I can feel slight mana fluctuation from it. Most likely enchanted in some manner."

Samantas eyes suddenly locked onto the small medalion that hanged from Rex's lifed hand. Her eyes followed the small snake head that slowly swayed from one side to the other. And while she did not sense the mana fluctuations that Rex had spoken off, her intuition said that the item was no ordinary trinket.

"Jackpot!" she smiled a moment later "We have collected as much as we can, so I think its time to get out and head to the extraction point." she continiued.

Rex nodded in silent agreement, collecting his two bags, swingging them over his shoulder and following. As the group left the cave, Rex found himself carrying four bags, two he had filled up, and then the one of Samanta, as she fulfilled the scouts role, and the one of Ria, for obvious reasons. Since their group was noticably loaded with loot, they moved more slowly, stopping entirely whenever Samanta sensed the presence of kobolds. Then, once the loot was placed down, and under the protection of their long range fighters, as well as Meru, Rex took to the frontline to tank and disrupt the attackers lines and rythm, either by tripping or wounding the opposition that was then finished by either an arrow or a well placed sword strike from Meru. Ria and Alurial were contingencies for the time being, though Ria did cast some fatigue relief every now and then, allowing their group to continiue on without any proper breaks.

Alurial was the only one who did nothing of note during this part of their raid, though even Rex pointed out that it was a good sign, and that if she needed something to do, she could just focus on recovering and restoring her mana reserves, since they might find themselves in a situation where they could need the entirety of her mana pool. It was always better to have the party mage in their best condition.

Rex's comment did manage to draw a slightly smug expression to her face, though nothing else that could spoil his opinion of the loli half elf any further. As they advanced, they dealt with a few more kobold groups, untill eventually, aproximately two hours after they had breached the walls, they reached the point of extraction- the place that was deemed the destination for their raid, where all parties and soldiers would come to once they were done with their exploration.

They had followed a small crystal, pointing in a certain dirrection once they exited the champions cave, and now were in fron of the guildmaster Ross as he sat on a makeshift chair in the middle of a temporary camp. Quite a few adventurer parties could be seen already lazing around, clearly having finished their own hunts, indicated by their own burglar bags well within their reach. Noticing Rex and his group, Ross waved his hand and slowly stood up, indicating his desire to have a word with the new arrivals.

"Hey there!" Ross spoke once the party was closer to him. "So, how was your run?" he asked, one eyebrow raised and a slight smirk adorning his face. "Seems like a good haul, if the bags on your shoulders are anything to go by."

Rex poked Samanta with his leg, and once her eyes was locked on him, he inclined his head towards Ross, making his stance clear.

-You are the party leader. Deal with this.

Samanta just rolled her eyes,but returned her gaze to Ross and replied "Not bad at all. So, what did you wanted sir?"

"Cant the guild leader show his concern about his people, or express his happiness about their safe return?" With a grin and overly exagerated gesture of covering his heart with both hands, as if struck there, he replied, though quickly reverted back to his previous pose. "I have yet to hear about the presence of a higher grade kobold. Something should be leading this town after all."

"We did slay a kobold champion. Could it the what you are reffering to?" she asked, earning a raised brow from Ross, who suddenly paid more attention to every member of their group, his eyes getting squinted more and more.

"And is this the entirety of your group?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes. Why?"

"Whats your party rank?"

"F rank, but we are about to be promoted." replied Samanta.

"I find it hard to believe that the kobold champion did this little damage to your group, since they are considered high E class monsters."

"Blame that on me then." Rex spoke up, giving Samant the que to speak openly about their encounter, something she proceeded to do. Once finished, Ross just nodded his head in confirmation. Yet another proof that his hunch regarding Rex was correct.

"Okey then, find a spot to rest and wait for the remaining members of our raid. once gathered, we will return home, where the guild expects its cut."

"Roger that." Samanta replied, gesturing for her party to follow.