As Rex walked down the tunnel, observing the change in his surroundings, he also picked up a slight rise in mana density in the air, unlike the dungeon that he delved back in Vixiera town's vicinity with Light Oak's party. Then again, from what little he knew of the dungeon, it was much older and classified as a much higher tier. To be precise, it was both of a higher tier and class as the one he was exploring beforehand.
Vixiera's dungeon was what they called 'a locked dungeon'. Such dungeons came into existance in two ways. First, the dungeon formed in mana scarce location, not capable of developing to its full potential, possesing a defective core. Why such dungeons even formed, no one knew, but they were there, rare as they are. The second, and more common case was the destruction of a dungeon's core. Sure, such a thing was quite the achievement, but if a new dungeon was discovered in a timely manner and experienced and powerfull party, or a raid group, could pull such a feat off, leaving behind a forever crippled dungeon that does not grow any further, while maintaining its current state- monster spawning and all.
The dungeon, and the capital itself in turn, was the other type- 'Infinite dungeon'. And, as the name suggests, they could go on forever, or so the scholars assumed, since once the core is reached and destroyed, the growth of the dungeon stops, making it change its class, while retaining the tier designed to it. Tier was basically the level of monsters one can expect to encounter at the deepest floors of said dungeon. Solendiel's dungeon was classified as S plus class, since its core had not been reached and even famous and incredubly powerfull A class parties had reached their limits trying to delve the very depths of the dungeon, never even getting a whiff of its core. Thankfully, the monsters within such dungeons had some sort of rules they followed, sticking to the depths, plus minus a level to their general habitat, as such, making the upper floors relatively safe once cleared for the city established, much like Solendiel had been.
As for the other thought that crossed Rex's mind, it was the same old 'Did i do this right?' question, regarding his aproach to displaying quite a bit of his skills. And as always, he came to the same conclusion. He would have manhandled the cocky dual dagger wielder Grey as he had, simply due to his low tolerance of arrogant fools who could not back up their boasts, or lacked the foresight, or judgement ability, to know in whose presence to shut up. And, due to that simple, near guaranteed result, there was little point in trying to lay really low, coming to his current situation. 'Well, you lay in the bad you made for yourself, I suppose.' Rex thought, having analyzed his decisions. Hearing some movement noices just around the corner, he came out of his musings, refocusing on the task at hand. He still had quite a few hours to burn, grinding through the monsters here, before he would need to turn around and backtrack his steps to return to the 'surface'.
Soon enough, the monsters of this new dungeon 'floor' came into Rex's sight. "Sheesh. Now those are some overgrown bugs alright!" Rex exclaimed at the sight of a group of three, horse sized spiders. The main part to note here was that it was their torso that was the size of a horse, the legs not included. The monstrosities had ant like, chitin armor, eight shiny dark legs, covered in the same chitin like armor. Twelve, beady red eyes on their heads and a rather nasty set of sharp, double mandibles that seemed powerfull enough to crush human skulls, and likely armour as well. No fluffy and soft hair anywhere in sight. "Well, that explains why those two groups were not very keen on coming here. I doubt with their skill level they could take something like this on." Rex grinned, his sword already in his hand as he shot towards the monster group.
As soon as Rex was upon the monster group, he noted yet another advantage he had as a solo against these monsters. Due to the difference in their size, he could easily engage them one at a time, all by smartly positioning himself between and under one of the spider legs. Their lareg size prevented others from properly joining in to gank up on him, and by the time he had slashed enough of said legs for the unlucky monster to fall to the ground, half chirping, half schreeching, immobilized and waiting for its inevitable demise, he could move on to the next one, once again dodging and weaving between their legs as the monster in question was trying its damn hardest to stab Rex with said legs.
As Rex weaved between each desperate strike from the spider, his sword finding purchase in yet another leg at the joint connection point, neatly slicing it off and earnng another schreech from his prey, its desperate atte,pts to stab Rex redoubling, as far as it was posible with less and less limbs at its disposal. Untill, yet again, just like the spider before it, enough of the legs were cut off, forcing it to fall to the ground, helpless just like the one before it, allowing Rex to move on to the next one- the last of this group.
Just like the first two, this one fared no better. Its dungeon monster brain not capable of logical thought, demanding it to try and devour Rex- something the monster tried with its entire being. And yet, a short while later, it was on the ground as well, the chirp like schreehing leaving its mouth. The other two were still barely alive, quite a bit of their green, blood like inner liquid pooled at the end of their stumps that were once their limbs. With a simple mental command, and a bit of mana, Rex called out to the liquid of life on the ground, and, like a loyal and over eager servant, ever happy to be of use to its master, it answered, floating towards him. Whether it counted as blood back on earth, he could not remember, his chloo times long since past, but here, at least conceptually it was blood, and as such, did and counted for everything it should in mammals, birds and so on. And, since the monsters were stronger than ductrops, their blood also provided more of a strenghtening factor to his sword in return. And, unlike ductrops, these monsters did not have poison Rex had to consider, nor were there audience, allowing him to utilize the special situation he was in currently.
With the monsters on the ground, he moved in closer to one of them, but, instead of finishing it off, he slashed his sword a few more times, delivering precise and calculated slashes, creating new wounds on its larger body, resulting in yet another schreech and a rather notable stream of the life sustaining liquid. "Sorry for that, little monsters, but I need to get as much as I can from you before you die and the dungeon does its thing, scattering your body into fine mana dust, leaving me with nothing else but your core and maybee some other drop." As he spoke, he repeated the same procedure on the other two, the combined blood flowing towards his weapon. With the size of the monsters, he was quite sure it would be quite the harvest today. And, once the stream of blood started to slow down, the bodies scattered into fine mana dust, leaving only the cores behind, just as Rex had said before. "Thank you for your sacrifice. I apreciate it." He said, looking to the place where the three corpses had just been and turned to move forward, deeper still into the tunnels. He had quite a bit more time, and no doubt a boatload of monsters willing to hand themselves on the platter, thus, Rex returned to the task at hand- to grind, grind and grind a bit more. 'Who knows, I might just spend the entire night here.' Rex thought, a rather creepy grin on his face as he moved on.
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'I wonder, if all the spiders I killed today... Today? Hmm, does not sound right. Ahh, yes. This session. Yep. That fits. I wonder, if all the spiders I killed this session would not scatter into mana dust and were to be placed in a single place, attempting to create a mountain of sorts, how high would it reach?' Rex thought as he walked back, having spent hours upon hours on the glorious grind. He was slightly tired, yet happy with the results.
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Firstly, he managed to test his endurance and recovery rate, something that was incredibly important. Sure, he could pull untold amounts of mana from his surroundings, were he not strenghtening his body all the time, and he could use some of said mana to force recover his body, but there were still hard limits to that. And since his drain worked like a passive empowerment system, always there, strengtening him with every kill, he could not use it to drain still living beings, recovering his energy. Regardless, he was now aware of his ability to last for a dozen hours at least, expending his energy in constant battles, with a caveat that there were some downtime. What little he recovered during said downtime had to be noted after all. It was for this precise reason he had had to stop in the middle of his delving, waiting in one place for an extra couple of hours or so, recovering, before he decided to call it a day and return.
Secondly, he got quite a bit further in regards to the completion of his first sword. Sure, he would need to empower it further, preferably using blood of even higher quality, but for the time being, so long as he does not delve much deeper, Rex would start his work on the next weapon to fill out his arsenal. He was still not sure whether he wanted another sword, or would shield serve a better purpose. A question he would come back to at a later time. The main conclusion he had reached was the same. Another weapon would soon start taking shape.
Yet another thing Rex learned during this little excursion of his was the 'respawn rate' of the monsters in the dungeon. Just as the monsters were disintegrated after their demise, new ones were formed to fill out the now empty place. Each dungeon, depending on the floor and many other factors, had its own set timer to do precisely that. It took whatever mana it needed, and formed a new monster, based on gods only know what parameters and what not. The two biomes Rex passed through had the respawn timer of six and three hours, with three being for ductrops, and six for the shelled spiders, as such, he had to clear out a few more ductrop groups as he was returning. It seemed that this particular tunnel was not all too popular among the adventurers. Rex assumed it was both due to the poisonous nature of ductrops and the general disadvantage of groups when encountering the shelled spiders.
Eventually, Rex could notice the first signs of daylight, off into the distance, more than hundred meters of straight tunnel path later, something that took him a minute or two to cross. "Hello dear sun, how I missed you so." he spoke lightly, enjoying the slight warmth on his skin as he basked in it for another minute, standing just outside the tunnel entrance. The fort's gates to reach the gondola a few dozen meters away, open and awaiting him, as if inviting him in. And sure, he was well aware that he was technically still inside a dungeon, and that he was not actually basking in the rays of sun. It felt close enough, or maybee the dungeon actually allowed the sunlight to pass through, but Rex did not care enough to find out. All he wanted to do was grind untill his Empowerment crystal was auctioned off, hopefully find some party that does quests outside of dungeons and allows him to join, and then be off, leaving this place behind. Not like he had anything anchoring him down. Free as a bird and all that.
As Rex walked ever closer to the gates, he noticed the same pair of guards that had been here when he entered, causing him to rise one of his eyebrows. His arrival was not left unnoticed, the two guards dirrecting their gazes his way. What could have been a terrifying sight of a young man, covered in blood grime, due to cleaving through numerous monsters, was nowhere to bee seen, yet another advantage of Rex's controll over blood. Sure, he looked rather disheveled, having rolled around more than once during his encounters with the shelled spiders, but otherwise he was rather clean. A decent sized sack hung over his shoulder, the monster cores and a couple of other monster drops of his session inside. Rex had no desire to announce to the general population, he was either a space mage or equipped with an expensive space storage artifact. We was in no mood for carnage among civilised races.
"Sir, I dont think it wise to stay awake for such long periods of time, especially so in your age. Think of your children and grandchildren." Rex spoke up, slight concern played into his voice.
"Mind your own manner kid! When I was your age, I..." the old man cursed in retort, only to stop as the situation dawned on him. "Oi, kid. Did you spend the entire day inside?" he asked, his eyes squeezed and locked on Rex, judging him with those experienced eyes, then he added as Rex was still quietly aproaching. "And I am back from my rest. A few other shifts already having gone by."
"Hmm." Rex just nodded, noting the fact in his mind. Noticing the still locked squinted eyes on his persona, Rex shrugged his shoulders, the free hand rising in 'beats me' expression.
"You tell me. Dont have a clock on me, and the nature of the tunnel makes it hard to guess time gone by. I am tired though, so if you dont mind, I would like to get back home. Anything besides scanning my adventurers ID at the same machine as I leave?" he replied, not all that bothered by the situation.
"So you have then." the old man concluded. "Yes, just scan it there." he pointed to the other side of the aforementioned machine, painted in an entirely different colour.
Rex nodded in understanding, proceeding to do as told, scanning his adventurers ID, then turning to leave. "By the way , this gate does not look all that popular with adventurers, how comes?" he asked.
"None of the really valuable monsters unique to this place can be found on this path. Combine it with the poison attribute of ductrops, and the shelled spiders, it is no wonder. And by the time one has reached deep enough, it too dangerous for most parties, unless they are peak B rank or higher." explained the younger of the guards.
"Ohh? But there is something deeper on this path thats valuable then, right?" Rex asked further, the implication quite clear.
"Of course. Have you not bought the guide thats aviable on the dungeon?" the older man asked.
"No. I suppose I should do that then. Right after I turn in my gains, that is." Rex replied and started planning things out. It seems he might have to plan out his next few steps with more attention to details.
"One silver, and you can have this one." the older man quickly spoke up, pulling out slightly worn small book. "Saves you the trouble of looking for it, no?" a shrewd and slightly scheming look in his eyes.
"Sure, I would not mind that." Rex replied, his free hand dissapearing in his chest pocket, only to reappear with a silver coin in hand a few moments later.
"Pleasure doing business with you." the old man replied, quickly snatching the coin, as if Rex might change his mind at any moment, depositing the book in its place.
"And with you old man." Rex replied, light smile on his face. "Take care of your health." he added as he turned away, leaving the gates. A few moments later, the younger of the two spoke up, clearly not too happy with the older man.
"Sigh, why would even try to sell those old guides with such unreasonable price. It worth a few coppers at best. Are you not afraid to offend a potentially dangerous adventurer?"
With a similar sigh, though much more drawn out, as if shaking ones head at a dissaponting child or grandchild, he replied. "Its not the book that I am selling with that price. Its becoming ones aquintance that bears this price. You are too young to understand now. Maybee one day. Besides, each one of my own dungeon guides have my little comments and advice, as well as some personal wisdom written down, making it worth the rest, easily."
As for Rex, he was already well on his way, going straight to the adventurers guild's branch he had visited before. It was time for him to see just how much would E rank ductrop cores and the D ranked shelled spider cores fetch and, perhaps, earn some extra 'bulk sale' bonuses. All jokes aside, he was interested in the difference. For while it was possible to meet their needs, as far as their expenses went when delving in Vixiera dungeon, Rex was quite well aware that he did made their party more efficient and fast, skyrocketing said delving to a much higher level than the girls would have done without him.