Rex inhaled a large breath, enjoying the smell of the forest, tinged in monster blood as he tilted to side, avoiding yet another slash of extremely sharp claw, then swung Limitless, seperating said calw from its owner, eliciting a shriek of pain from the monster with one less extremity. To not have said monster suffer much, yet another swing of his blade ended its life as the head of the monster fell to the ground, shortly followed by its body as well. Rex did not have tiem to apreciate the smoothness of his move, or the precise cut he had performed, as he avoided a couple more claws and a chomping down set of jaws.

Right now Rex was in the middle of a veritable horde of monsters, enjoying a rather pleasant morning training, avoiding each and every attempt to wound him, while killing a monster or two every now and then when doing so would not expose him to one of the countless attacks dirrected his way. He was strong and fast enough to do so, as long as he was patient enough with his attack timings. Sure, he could reinforce his body with both aura and mana and then just ignore the attacks, slaughtering the monsters by the dozen each moment of this fight, but that would deefat the entire reason of his training.

During one of the morning meditation sessions Rex came upon a rather obvious question. How would he deal with an enemy who was on a similar power level as him. And the painfull truth was that he would most likely be outclassed. The fact that he had yet to encounter anything remotely close to his power was moot. He knew how much he had grwon, but at the same time he had spent too much time dealing with humans, thus skewing the samplesize too much in the dirrection of mediocraty. Sure, humans had the highest capacity when it came to power ceiling, but such individuals were far too rare. Dungeon monsters, on the other hand, grew stronger and stronger, thus providing him with both more powerfull oponents as well as better targets to drain, in turn speeding up his own growth process.

Rex had restarted his own dungeon diving once he dealt with the main army at Rahen and sent Soriana and her squad off to finish the purge of the remaining nobles. Innitially, he would spend a few hours a day at most, spending most of the time with his women, who were quite clingy and needy after his extended absence during the final battle, but once their cravings were satiated and their bodies were splayed on the beds, satisfied and exausted, he could once again spend more time doing the other of his favourite actions- grinding through the dungeons.

This was the first fight Rex was having on the thirty- seventh floor. His oponents were some sort of tiger men. To be precise, he counted a group of over hundred SS class entities. He had gone through the entirety of the Jurasic World, he asumed, what with the monster variety in the last few floors, including dinosaur like monsters that looked like stegosaurus, T-rex'es and any other dinosaur he had seen in both books and movies back in his previous life. Now though, it seemed he was finally done with the prehistoric world.

One of the more important differences he had sensed as he stepped on the thirty-seventh floor was the pressure his body experienced. Mana was so thick and rich in the air it served as an additional atmospheric pressure, making it harder to both move and act in the enviroment. That alone was quite the effective tool to speed up his training, but the monsters that had lived in such conditions for the entirety of their existance, as well as the bloodthirsty and savage nature of the tiger men, served as an addition dificulty step up. Still, due to his own personal power he could still perform way above the tiger men, even without infusing himself with mana and aura. And so, Rex used the special donditions that the dungeon had provided him with to train and grind. He could only thank whoever had come up with the design, if there was such a person.

What better way to train ones own precision and controll, if not with additional weight on their body and countless enemies that relentlessly attack you, trying their damn hardest to end your life. It was only through the difference in their speed and stamina, as well as the patience that Rex exhibited, he could so reliably cut through the numerous tigermen, while maintaing his own health. And due to the savage nature of the attackers, even with their numbers being reduced time and time again, there was no call or any other action to force the tigermen to retreat, preserving whatever numbers remained of their group.

And that was the one flaw of this training of his. His enemies were feral, acting on instincts more than anything, thus taking away the cunning and any possible weapon mastery that a rational and properly sentient enemy could utilize to gain an advantage. Still, it was much better than anything else he could get his hands on at the given time, so he would take that over anything else he could procure from both home as well as Rahen. plus the pure quanity of the SS class enemies alone was more than enough to work as a subsitute for a properly trained and disciplined opponent. The current setup worked wonders on his controll, patience and stamina, as the relentless asault of the tigermen just continiued on and on.

It took Rex another couple of hours to finally take care of the group of tigermen, cutting down each and every one of them. Not one had tried to stop their mindless assault, fighting to the last breath of theirs. As a result, Rex now stood in the middle of a rather large field of corpses, the blood flowing from them all in the same dirrection, creating a proper pool of blood at the lowest point of the field he was in. With a quick few flares of both his mana and aura, Rex checked the surroundings and when he was sure there was no other danger around, he finally checked out the corpses of the monsters, looking for anything that could be usefull for both him and his people.

The meat of the tigermen looked rather bad. It was suspiciously pale gray, as well as incredibly tough. And it did smell rather unpleasant as well, completly making Rex not even willing to try cooking said meat. The skin of the beasts looked a much better prospect, but that too had its own issues. Rex had not bothered to use finesse and extreme precision when slaughtering the monsters, resulting in most, if not all, skins to be ruined due to the indiscriminate sword swings that had ended the monster lives. Quite a few experiments and an hour later, Rex finally found something that had quite a few uses in the field of alchemy.

The tigermen heart was equivalent to the heart of any other feline monster of the SS class, even better in most cases. Such an ingridient was quite valuable, since there were few groups villing to hunt for monsters of such power, as well as the dificulty fo actually tracking them down, let alone hunting them. Needless to say, it would fetch quite the price, expanding his ever growing business avenues even more. As it was now, the auction brought in more than enough money for him and his people to live without wory for years, then add the rather large amount of cash he earned from selling the earth grade meat on top of that, and the result is rather obvious. His vaults were getting fuller and fuller as time passed, so he did not actually have any need to earn more. Still, he had a few ideas on how to utilize this new rare recourse he has his hands on now.

With his ever growing proficiency over both mana and aura controll, it was quite easy to manipulate multiple sharp blades to accurately and precisely cut the hearts out and place them in a seperate storage tool. He would use them to exchange for other rare materials used in alchemy. He had a couple of his girls learning said art, so he was more than happy to provide them with more ingridients to practice their craft with. Aina and Leyfia in particular had found the subject to be quite fascinating, spending most of their free time pursuing the art. They had also formed quite the friendship with Dryana, the caretaker of Elysion's vegetation. The dryad was a natural born herbalist, both extremely knowledgeable about plans and their properties, as well as a skilled gardener, ensuring that countless rare and precious species of herbs could grow with quite the unparalelled speed in his world shards vast gardens. Rex had given her free reign when it came to changing and adapting the enviroment of the world shard outside of the main city complex to ensure that as many rare herbs as possible could grow in this pocked dimension of his. And his enthusiastic dryad had gone above and beyond with the task. As a result, the remaining shard world was now a world of plants, with as much fauna to ensure that the biome would be balanced, but in a way that favoured whatever herbs were grown any area. Such specialized treatment did come with quite the positive consequences- the herbs showed incredible growth speed and rate of expansion. In a couple more years he would be the owner of quite the enviable medicinal herb mega gardens.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Of course herbs alone did not cover all the bases of the alchemy ingridients. Just as important were various parts of monsters and certain minerals, all depending on what the alchemist wanted to achieve and what kind of potion would be brewed. And unlike the herb part, this side of the alchemy was much more expensive. There were countless alchemists and specialized gardeners all over the world, each focusing on either one single specific herb of a biome. All you needed was a stable climate and the right condition, and you could have quite the stable income from selling such herbs. Add to that a rather large organization or a noble house as a backer and protector, for a small percentage of their profit, and you have a healthy and rather competetive industry.

The monster parts however, was alltogether a differnt beast. Not only was there inherent danger associated with the monsters themselves, but the nature of the creatures did not allow for a proper domestication and rearing in heavily controlled enviroments. No, the best case scenario was to find a dengeon that had the monsters part of its inhabitants, and then to form groups that would regularily hunt them down, properly harvesting whatever part of their bodies was neccesary for the alchemists, or any other craft masters. And there was quite the industry around it as well, with countless adventurers doing just that.

But, unlike the plants, the rarer and more dangerous monster species were not regularily hunted, purely due to the danger they presented to any potential hunters. That and the relatively low number of SS class and above individuals across the continets. With such a limited pool of possible hunters, it was only natural that such resources were quite rare adn expensive, whenever they appeared. The fact that often such ingridients would have to be hunted in the raid tier of the dungeons made it even harder to find people willing to do so. It was much more difficult to actually gather up a reliable and capable raid to tackle the deep floors. nobody would like to place their life in the hands of unreliable and unknown induviduals, and only the most reckless and desperate would rarely do it.

As Rex was harvesting the hearts, he also used a couple of his cosmic ravens to drain the tigermen tha thad been relieved of their hearts, leaving behind only a sight of bloody ground, littered with puddles of said metalic dark crimson liquid. Luckaly, this part of his hunt took relatively little time, all thanks to his enourmous mana and aura reserves as well as his exquisite controll over them. With almost a hundred SS class tigermen hearts in his inventory and a bloodied, empty field behind him, Rex moved on towarsd his next encounter, still hoping to grind off a few more hours before returning home. he was wondering what else was there to find on this level. Where there were predators, there must be prey, and he was quite sure that these tigermen were not the pinacle of this floors meat eaters. There must be something more impressive, Rex reasoned.

And as he had asumed, not long after he had left the bloodied batlefield, he encountered some elephant sized wild pigs with mana crystals adorning their backs, as well as a large rhino like horn on their foreheads. The way the monster beast carried itself indicated that there were few predators capable of hunting it. Though the fact that the monster beast herd was ratehr small, no more than a few dozen, spoke volumes of the falsety of the beasts behaviour. Were it trully the overlord of the floor, beeing a herbivore, or even omnivore, their numbers would have risen to incredible heights, forcing the dungeon to respond with a predator that was capable of keeping the beast numbers in check.

And rather soon after, just like he had asumed, he found one such a scenario. One of the crystal backed boars was alone, seperated from the pack, when a rather sizable group of hunters, a few dozen in numbers, appeared. And this group piqued Rex's interest quite a bit. Each and every one of them was peak S class, with two leaders being early SS class entities. Clothed in a rather simple leather clothes and armed with just as simple yet dangerous looking bows and spears, the hunters aproached the boar ratehr stealthily, no not stealthily enough to escape Rex keen eyes and powerfull mana and aura senses.

The group consisted of mostly males, though there were a couple females mixed in as well, the fairer sex mostly being the bow hunters. Rex could easily tell that they were not human, the green scales covering their arms, as well as part of their cheekbones. The reptilian tails did just as much in forming that decision of his as well. Though unlike the lizardmen that populated the latter part of the x-teen fllors, these people were quite human like in the rest of their appearences. It would be much more correct to say that they looked human, with the addition of the reptilian scales and tails and draconic horns on their heads. And if his eyesight was not decieving him, sometimes a small pair of wings on their backs, though he doubted they had any practical use, what with the size and lack of mana channels through them.

'A callback to their ancestor bloodline?' Rex wondered in his head as he kept his distance, keenly observing the groups actions. A rather well worked out synergy and group tactics were displayed before his eyes, as the group surrounded the boar and after a few signals exchanged between the two leaders, quite the number of arrows flew through the air, creating a whistling sound, alerting the boar, but much too late to change the following events. A dozen arrows piercied the boars hide, earning a painfull shriek from the beast, quickly followed by the second volley. After that a couple of the more muscular men with spears moved into position, employing the moment of distraction, the sharp pain had caused, and witha practiced motion they flung their spears, piercing much deeper into the beasts sides. Rex saw that these spears had quite the peculiar sharp edges, as well as ropes attached to the tail end.

With the spears lodged into the beasts side, and the ropes anchored down, no matter how much the beast trashed and tried to run away, it was locked in the area. With the bleeding from its wounds, as well as the remaining hunters with spears emerging all around it, and using every opportunity to stab it with their rather long spears as well, it did not take long for the boar to fall to the ground, eventually succumbing to its wounds. Rex stayed in his place, observing further. He saw as the group quickly gutted the beast and then, from nowhere withdrew quite the large saw of sorts. Then in the next few minutes they split the boar in two, each of the two SS class leaders aproaching one half of the boar. Just a moment later, there was no boar in sight, its entrails and blood the only evidence of the monsters death.

'So they do have space storage equipment, though not too large in capacity.' Rex mused as he continiued his observation. Due to the distance between him and the group, he could not hear what they were talking about, but from what he could see, he did catch a few phrases. 'Thank you.' and 'Move out.' were the couple he percieved, but that was enough for him to know what language they were speaking in.

"Thank you, most of the people speak common here. Best idea ever, whoever is responsible for it." Rex spoke in a low, but clear and audible voice. His thanks obviously dirrected towards his constant observer. A dead silent moment, as if replying with a 'you are welcome' followed, bringing a slight smile to Rex's lips. his regular mana flares did detect something aproaching the group of hunters. Something large, and decidedly snake like. And this specimen was undoubtedly much more dangerous than the boar. The boar, with its lenght of around six meters and height of around three meters, was nothing before the ten meters long, and almost two meters high snakes body. Whats more, said reptilian monster was moving with quite the speed, dirrectly towards the group of hunters.

In just a few minutes, as the group of hunters began to move away, Rex noticed a panick in the group, a rather heavily panthing bow hunter hurriedly shouting at the rest of the group. Aware of the probable cause of the panic, yet interested in the decision and action of the group, Rex moved closer, using his mana and aura to conceal himself even more than he already was. When he was close enough, he suddenly heard a yell from one of the two leaders.

"SHIT! SPLIT UP AND RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

What followed was a panicked group splitting to every direction as they dispersed, hoping that the incoming snake would decide to aim for someone else besides them.

"Decisions, decions." Rex, spoke to himself. having a couple of choices before him.