After a night on light exercises together with Irina, and a few hours of sleep Rex got out of bed, took a quick bath, since it was still rather early, and prepeared for the planned expedition. They had agreed with Victor, that they would collect a few A class adventurers for combat purposes and quite a number of scouts to ensure a timely discovery of the champions. After all, the sooner they secure the featured slaves, the sooner they can start with their plan. Aina was doing her own thing, and had informed Rex she would liek to introduce someone to him at alater date, as her preparations were still in process.
Rex dressed in a new outfit, secured and delivered to him by Victor. Since Rex wanted to keep his face and status off public knowledge, Victor atained magically enchantedgear that would obscure his existance even more than his mana coating already did. Something Rex want aware he was doing subconsciously, but once he knew of the fact, it didnt feel suprising to him. He had lived in the wilds most of his youth, and had surely developed ways to hide his presence from predators. Those instincs had worked overtime back then.
So hidden by his disguise, he left for the adventurers guild. The trio, since already awake, had been given orders regarding their tasks during his absence, so everything was set for extended dungeon dive. Ariving at the adventurers guild, rex entered it, glanced around and not seeing Victor around advanced to the counter. A few moments later, as it was still early for the big activity burst, he had reached the counter and asked the clerk
"Did City lord visit this morning already or has he not shown himself yet?" He asked, and after a few minutes of back and forth with a clerk, who seemed oddly sure Rex had nothing to do with the lord, Rex felt Victors aproach to the building
"You are wasting my time." Rex spoke with a cold tone, turned around and went in Victors direction. As soon as Vicor noticed Rex he hastened his tempo, and arrived next to him very soon afterwards
"You are here a bit early." Victor spoke in a rather happy voice. THne they both arrived at guild clerk, and as indicated by Rex they avoided the self important one that interfered with Rex. The pompous clerk, was hoping he would be forgotten soon by the actual aquintance of the Lord, and dissapeared in the back of the guilds building. Vith the authority and prestige of the city lord, Victor and Rex quickly got brought to a rather decorated and luxurious room, and soon after guild master of this branch arived personaly, to conduct whatever business the lord had in mind. Victor requested a party of five A class adventurers, who could be capable of holding back the entourage of an orc champion, pointing out that the champion would be dealt with by the clients side. And that the adventurers would not interfere with that part of the event. Securing the few dozen gold coins per adventurer, and paying the guild their fee, the request was displayed rather quickly, The request was displayed in the urgent part of the board, and since it was the start of the week, guild was very sure the request would be taken wery soon. Adventurers just had to start popping up, and wgike having breakfast, Rex abd Victor recieved news that there was a party ready to take their task on. Quickly finishing their breakfast both noved to the room prepared for their strategy meeting.
The party taking on the request was called Summer Wind. The part consisted of one tanker named Jim, one healer by the name of Helena, their ranger Evans, fighter Dwait and finaly a wind mage by the name of Andrew. The party asked a few questions to specify the specifics of the job, and other miscelaneous questions, necesary for the job, and Victor in returned asked a bit about their strategy in encounters and negotiated loot distribution, which would be those who took part in the killiings would get part of the loot for the most part. Soon after the main topics were covered Rex spoke a few words
"They are strong enough. They will do." Victor nodded, shook hands with Andrew the mage, who was groups leader, and the group departed from the guild to get their mission over. To ensure a relatively fast hunt, it was decided that they would hunt in twenty fifth floor, but since Rex handt been deeper than twentyeth, they had to go from there. Reaching the dungeon Summer wind was suprised noticing the twenty something scouts waiting there for them, and once inquired about, they learned that they had three groups to hunt down as such to ensure afficient tracking scouts would be necesary in such numbers. Adventurer party had nothing to complain about, such number of scouts would ensure they would never be ambushed, and their search range would be many times bigger saving on time as well. What they were rather interested in was what was the purpose on hnting for the champions, and they were having a private duscussion regarding just that. What they came up with was some sort of a dignitary might be visiting and champion swords were considered to be rather exquisite gift.
Once gathered, one from the scouts stood in the middle of the group, pulled out a sphere crafted with runes over it, and activeted the item. One activated, the group went through the gate, and appeared inside the dungeon, at the floor number twenty. The deepest floor Rex had reached so far, and as such the bottleneck for party. A party could travel only as deep with instant travel as deep the weakest of the party had reached. The group spent the next two days advancing to twenty fifth floor, slaughtering quite the number of lizardmen in their wake. there were parties of orcs in their way quite a few times, but they werent lucky enough to encounter any champions.They traveled during day and rested during night, well all of them exept Rex. Nights were his time to let loose, and most of his grind he achieved in that timeframe 'sun down till sun up'.
On the third day they finaly reached the twenty fifth floor, and scouts dispersed immediatly in search for their objective. From this floor onwards was the territory of B ranks and up only. Not just packs of lesser orcs and lizardmen, entire warring tribes roaming around, trying to take out the oposing side. Champions were much more frequent sight from here on out and even some super scary monsters could be encountered. Wyverns, minotaurs and hellhounds, while rare on these floors, could be encountered if one was particularily unlucky.
Summer wind was performing wery well. Their teamwork was polished, with little wasted movement. They understood their individual sstrenghts and weaknesess wery well and worked to compensate for them with solid teamwork, and they managed to do so rather magnicently. And while victor and the scouts performed as expected of such high ranking noble and his personal scouts, what suprised them was the cloaked figure.
The mans was supposedly a mage, as Victor would adress him ar sir mage, and from the adress it was obvious mage was influential, but that was all they could gather. And what suprised them was the ease with witch the supposed mage was swinging his own personal champions blade. He was using the massive blade as a long single handed swords at times, then sometimes he would switch to the two handed style to deliver harder and more devastationg blows. The fact that the mage thanked the lord for his space ring only reinforced their thoughs that the mage was some sort unique existence.
After another one of such raiding camp encounters and the coming slaughter of the lizardmen, Rex asked Victor
"Do we only want orc champions or are there other equal apex fighters around these levels?" Thinking for a moment and then wit ha chuckle Victor responded
"Croc berserkers are similar in strenght to champions, but they go berserk during fights and cannot be controlled. Croc chieftains would be even better, but they are stronger than champions or berserkers. The equivalent would be orc warchief or king, but those are high A class. I would avoid them for now. Technicaly on floor thirty starts spawning some rather scary creatures. Night stalkers- huge three meter high( when on all four) dark skinned felines who prowl the night. Very fast and agile monsters those ones are, but wthat makes them even more terrifying is that they stalk their prey and hunt at night. Great sabertooths are the terror during the day. Up to three and a half meters high, even bigger than the night stalkers, very agressive and bloodthirsty beasts. Even deeper than that there lives all kind of reptilian monsters, lizards in sizes one is left in awe, and eaqualy terrifying predators. There is a reason why begining with floor thirty raids are formed to slay creatures there. Many parties join together to try and take down those dangers, but the materials and natural treasures spawned there are equally impressive."
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"Noted. We keep to orc champions then, unless we get some magical rare oportunity." Rex concluded. And they continiued as the had for a few more hours, untill finaly, one of the scouts returned with news of the first champion shighting. They moved rather fast in the direction, the champion was spotted, and arrived there quite soon.
A medium sized camp was located in a clearing, well positioned and defendable. By the estimates of the scouts, there were aproximately hundred orcs and the champion there. After a small startegy meting with the Summer Wind, a plan was hatched, and everyone prepared to execute their part, and once ready, it was started. Scouts shot precisely with their bows taking out the guards outside the wooden walls, erected around the orc camp, alerting the ones inside. Soon orcs rushed out and seeing their challengers on the oder side of the clearing they roared and charged at the human party. Rex, positioning himself quite a bit ahead of the rest pulled his greatsword from his storage ring, bent his knees and prepeared to charge, waiting for the orcs to draw closer. He would bulldoze through the grunts, cutting down dozens before entering the camp to take on the champion. The others here would keep the charging orc bussy and cull their numbers untill Rex was done with his part, and while Summer wind were not entirely sure what the mages job was, they were guranteed that the champion would become a non threat.
Once the orcs reached the desired range, Rex shot aheadswinging his sword once close enough to the orcs. The greatsword was swung, leaving guts gore and carnage in its wake. The lucky orcs were cut in half, dying shortly after, those less lucky, were either gutted, their innards spilling out of their bellies sending them to ground in crippling pain or lost arms and legs if they came across the blades trajectory. What made it even more terrifying was that the one swinging the blade moved too fast for orcs to even hope to lock him down and take on with sheer numbers. It was as if a demon was unleashed upon them enjoying the carnage. One rex had slaughtered more than twenty of them and cut path straight through their lines, he entered the camp, to face the champion. Not a single orc combatant followed suit. The fight inside would be among monsters, and as such they tried to refocus on the humans before them. While not nearly as terror inducing as Rex's display of savagery, the orcs were losing bad regardless. A class adventurers were no joke, and the supporting bow fire from the cover of trees didnt help orcs either. A few minutes later, a desperate scream was heard from the camp, and adventurers knew that was no a scream of a man. The champion had lost, they were sure of it and with renewed vigor they redoubled they efforts to end the remining champions guards. What they didnt expect was an orc champion dashing out of the enchampment, rushing into the orc group and starting to slaughter them, hastening the end of this encounter. As soon as the last of the orc guards fell, champion jumped back, to create a dispance between himself and the party, his greatsword getting sheaded behind his back. Then it tore off a piece of cloth from one of the fallen orcs, and wiped the middle of his chest removing the blood, removing the spilled blood so his brand point would be visible.
The mark on his chest was not glowing and was positioned in the middle. What made it easy to differentiate between brands and warlords mark was the position of the mark and its shape. Warlords mark was located on the left breast, above human heart, and it was glowing pale red color, while brands were of black color, and positioned in the middle of the chest right, traight down from throat and above breasts. The style of both brand and mark was similar, since warlords marks was created as an atempt to emulate blood magic.
The displayed brand eased Summer Wind's members minds, and now they understood they nature of their task. They had to keep the rabble away for the mage to brand the champion. And upon that realization they paled. Sure they knew almost nothing of blood mages, but the fact that the mage single handedly locked down a champion to even attempt branding was scary. They were in a presence of an S rank. That also explained why city lord was here and so friendly with the mage. They stood there for a few minutes, then began silenty talking among themselves, nervously joking about all the other parties they encountered on their way here, with were quite a few. Just imagining their faces if they knew they were in the presence of a blood mage, and a scary one at that. As time went on, they started to question why the mage had not come out. Then Andrew adressed Victor in a normal voice
"Sir mage is all right, he hasnt come out yet?" and before victor coudl respond because he was also getting a bit nervous the orc spoke in common
"Master sent me out to help end the orcs, said he will be looting, call you in when done. Rugal forgot." as soon as champion did so he went silent again and resumed guarding near the gate.
"You motherfucker!" Exclaimed Evans, Summer Winds ranger "Move your ass before he gets all the good stuff!" he continiued as he rushed in the camp. The others soon followed suit, and as soon as everyone went in, orc champion followed behind them. What followed was a n intense fifteen minutes or adventurers rummaging through orc belongings and curses now again at the mages shamelesness. A bit on anger and the last days of the mages nonchalance and zero shown arrogance, quickly removed any fear the party had of the mans possible wrath over ordinary adventurer banter. As soon as the looting was done, Rex transferred the ownership of the champion to Victor, making the lord of Blythe smile like a kid in a candy store.
What followed was a rather uneventfull week of slaughtering and searching for orc champions on their way to twenty ninth floor. The first of the floors where chieftains adn kings could be encountered. These levels were enourmos, it could take weeks to cross a single floor, and Return tori could be found in multiple places on the floor. They had been somewhat lucky with their search because now they had two champions following and reinforcing their party, which made the path much easier. The aquiring of the second champion was quite easy itself too. A party of A rank adventurers and a champion against grunts was not fair whatsoever, and as one could expect, when they finaly found the third camp of a champion, that was even more one sided slaughter.
Once Victor had the three champions, and their goal was reached, they spent a few more days untill they found a return tori. Their mission was complete, and as such they would return home. Summer Wind was also quite happy. The hunting they had done during these ten days had fattened up their stashes quite nicely with all sorts of precious metals and alchemical materials to be sold. The addition of three champions to the party power eased they job considerably.
Rex exchanged a few more words with Victor before everyone but the blood mage returned to the surface. Rex had his own plans now. While he trusted Victor to do his damn best to ensure the safety of his property, it was always better to also make one's own preparations against the greed and darkness of the human condition. Rex sometimes wondered, how a person of a modern and quite peacefull time could so easily adapt to such cruel and deadly world. While he could not deny that he had a few screws loose, it never made him much different from your average person. Just another person among the crowd. He had some ideas. Looking back in the history, didnt germans perform a genocide? Were those not ordinary people who turned savage on their fellow man? And all it took was for the leading aparatus label their targets something other than human. Something lesser. It is only logical then, that you would kill these lesser beings if they poisoned your society, your nation, your world.
Humans adapt, he concluded. And we can make ourselves ignore so much, do terrible things and not care, as long as it keeps us and those close to us safe and comfortable. And in a world with literal monsters and alien like beings being all around, it was all the more easy to revert to a somewhat tribalistic 'us against them' mentality. And while Rex wasnt ideologically driven zealot, who would attribute the sins of a single individual to an ettire group, he was also aware, that it was a thin line between he was threading. Keeping something of his humanity was neccesary, or he would turn into a monster like the ones he is hunting here. Pure insticnt to go on, slaughtering everything in his path. But for now, he could forget it all and relax in the pleasant feeling of grinding joy he gained as he grew stronger with drain.