After a few hours of sleep Rex woke up. He was feeling a bit conflicted regarding his actions in the village, but notably less distraught than before as conditioning the Echlisiarchy as the bad guys was helping him to come to terns with his actions.Today would be his first dungeon trip. Since it was ranked D by guild and Rex had noticed that the clerk lady with whom he was dealing in the guild the previous day was also D rank, as was stated on her staff card, he could more or less estimate the dungeons starting difficulty reading the clerks energy levels. He could tell that D ranks would be easy for him to deal with. He had killed monsters with twice the energy amounts as the lady.

The inn lady got startled a bit when he noticed Rex's demon eyes whne he left his romm to get breakfast, but she calmed soon after "My apologies" she said "Its rare to see true archons, and your eyes looked ordinary yesterday. I apologize if i have offended you." she continued now more cautious and timid as if afraid of him lashing out. "Its not a problem, is me being here an issue?" Rex responded, lightly inspecting the inkeepers reactions. She shook her head indicating that his stay was not unwelcome one and relaxed visibly now that she was aware there would be no altrecations. "True archon? Havent heard that term before. what does that mean?" Rex asked."Had the misfortune to grow up in the Eclisiarchy, they dont seem to like my kind there" he added, knowing that such knowledge didnt affect him negatively, and it might spring the inkeeper into providing him information that could help a great deal and without charge. "Lords have mercy!" the lady exclaimed "bunch of savages those people are. So deeply rooted in their hatred, they would murder infants for their scriptures. It mush have been a horrible life, whatever you experienced. But you are lucky young man to be alive hailing from there." Seeing the inkeeper straying too far of topic Rex inquired about archons once again. Lady then explained rex that "The forsaken" as Eclisiarchy woul call them are commonly adressed as archons in other states, and more often than not only single eye would take in the irregular looks. ones with both eyes being transformed were called true archons as their abilities were stronger and could have extra special properties as oposed to archon with the same type of eye, but single. She then told him some random trivia about the city while he was eating his breakfast as there were no other patrons in the lobby/dining room. A few rummors were trown in here and there as well. Th most interesting bit of information that he aquired from her was knowlege of slavery magic. As inkeeper put it, the wery best slaves were marked by the slavery contract magic and were bound through it to their owner. They could not betray their masters, would have to follow orders or their mark would induce terrible pain. And while generaly such slavery mages were quite difficult to hire to mark ones slaves it was a triving profession in the cities of Zharr. It was still incredibly difficult to become and aprentice of such a mage, as they took only the best of talents and guarded their secrets with life. Proper mages that could sling firebolts and other elemental magic were quite rare, and poached by aristocracy and other nobles or adventurers guild, all promising quite the boons for the mages employment. Once done with his breakfast rex left the inn, and headed to the dungeon.

Dungoens entrance was located at the industrial floor level of the city on its outskirts. A few meters high wall made of bricks was constructed around it. higher elevation towers stood set distance one from another, and there were a few guards on a tower with a bell. Seems they were stationed to rimg the alarm bell should anything goes wrong. Reaching Crossing the gate Rex saw granite like stone slab at the base of which were stairs leading into the dungeon. From the looks of it some seven meters down the stairs was swirling mist indicating the beggining of the dungeons realm. In front of the stairs was a located a table, a few guild clerks sitting next to it with some books, probably for registering entering and leaving adventurers. Rex ignored the guilds people and advanced sraight for the dungeon. One of the guilds personell arrogantly called out to Rex "Boy, this is D ranked dungoen, show us your adventurers card, and if you are not at least D rank you will be penalised for diregarding guilds rules!". Slight smile rose on Rex's lips "not part of the guild, as such, your rules do not affect me." With that said Rex just went further to the dungeon and started to go down the stairs. Clerks were left there dumbfounded. Who in their right mind would think of adventuring and not joing the guild. The quality of life improvements were just too good to be passed up. rex reached the swirling mist, feeling some unexplained giddiness in his being. He did like to grind, and dungeons, combined with his unquie trait screamed of a perfect combination for a loong and proper grind. What he was not sure was how he could perhaps make is energy absorbtion faster and more efficient, if such a thing was possible.

Crossing the mist didnt take long. just a few steps in the fog and he was on the other side. What came in his wiew was and endless expanse of fields. It felt like he was on a mountaintopand as far as he could see there were fields, jagged rocks at the sides, and then narrow winding paths further down to the next field. rex asumed those fields were levels of sorts, the further platform one reaches deeper they get and monsters become stronger and more numerous. It was said that depending on dungeon, on certain floors there were japaneese tori like structures with the swirling mist, that once crossed would instantly bring adventurers back to the surface. As such adventurer parties would ussually plan their trips so that once they reach a floor with a returm gate tha tis the closest to their skill level, they would hunt there untill their bags are full of loot and then leave through one such gate. As for monster corpses and the like that acventurers didnt collect, if it was left laying on the floor, and there were no non dungeon intelegent life forms all such material would be dissovled and be absorbed by the dungeon. Efficiency at its finest. Rex wnted to hunt, to figure out how fast he could absorg dungeon monsters energy, as they were made of the purest mana, and how much would such creatures strenghten him. He also wanted to maybee glimpse some inspiration and understanding regarding his absorbtion, and its limits.

Looking at part of the first plateau that Rex could observe he noticed a few parties of adventurers fighting against packs of dog like creatures walking on two legs, covered in dirty and unkempt fur. The monsters were using extremely crude weapons that seemed to barely holding together. There seemed to be three parties in his vision on this plateau and Rex asumed that they had also just arived in the morning to start nice and early. All parties consisted of five members. While differently clothed, it seemed that every party had two members more heavily armored that Rex asumed to be front liners. a single person in robes, probably and alchemist or some sort of a healer. And while proper spell slinging mages were few and far between, from what Aron had told him, mainly because humans were not that gifted in magic, that didnt include healing, as that particular school needed more of a spiritual atunement. Contracts with water, earth, life and light elementals gave quite the potency to even the most basic of healing magics, and such creatures were all too eager to experience the world of the living by forming contracts. the last two members of the respective parties were lightly armored wielding either daggers or bows. Rex asumed those were scouts or rogues. rex had no interest in interacting with the adventurers, so he chose a path that wouldnt intersect with either of the parties and went to have a go at the dungeons monsters.

With his sharp senses it didnt take long for him to find his first prey. A pack of creatures that he now recognized as kobolds, the same mangy monsters the parties were battling against. He saw 3 kobolds armed with crude maces 2 with axes and one with what seemed like a sling. observing the monsters for a minute or so, positioned himself better, and when he wsa in a prime position to take out the slinger he lunged, suprising the group of kobolds. in a blink of an eye Rex was in front of the slinger kobold, with his sword in a hand, and slashed it throat not giving the monster a chance to react. then he dashed towards next target while kobolds were coming to and roaring in anger, in a moment another two kobolds had their throats slashed, leaving theremaining two go in a frenzy and madly charging at him. It seemed that the monsters had lost any sense with the exeption of bloodlust as they lunged at Rex, even somehow getting in one anothers way. Rex adeptly dodged the chargin duo and made a couple more slashes to decapitate them. Then Rex extended his hand and drained the first kobold of energy and noticed that in doing so, all but the monsters bones were scattered like dust and absorbed. While the power up itself wasnt much what was unexpected was that rex could feel that the little bit of fatigue he had aquired dealing with the monsters washed away, almost as if the drain restored his mana and stamina bars, if this was happening in a game. This discovery meant Rex could possibly spend days, maybee weeks or longer grinding away and growing stronger. After draining the rest of the kobolds and leaving behind their bones and scrap equipment Rex went further looking for more kobolds to slay to grow stronger and advance to lower floors.

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For the next few hours Rex kept advancing further and killing small packs of kobolds. The average pack consisted of five to seven kobolds, however Rex did encounter packs that had up to ten monsters. That however was not a problem as the monsters were barely capable of any coordinated movements and acted primarily in an agressive first come first serve manner charging ahead the moment they noticed anything that wasnt a kobold, with the only exception being the slingers, who didnt charge but used the sling with atrociously bad accuracy to try and take their target out. Things changed one Rex reached the first set of stairs to next level. Monsters on second level were more intelegent and were actually somewhat cooperating, charing at their target in a more orderly fashion, trying to somewhat encircle their target and slingers were slightly better at aiming. Rex continued on and by the time that the sky started to darken, indicating the advent of night, which Rex couldnt explain as to why or how a day night cycle was even a think in a seperate dungeon spaces, nor did he care to. What he knew was that he had no need to rest as he had drained all targets killed so far, he even experimented with drain on his way the this level seven of the dungeon. At fifth level packs reached sizes of fifteen to twenty kobolds, and they werent much sronger physicaly than at the first levels, but they had gotten much smarter and were roaming in greater packs. They even had some sort of shamans with them that could cast some sort of empower on the nearby monsters to speed them up and grant minor strenght increase. of course if you take the shaman out first not much changes in the way to deal with them and thats exactly what Rex was doing. On his way he had run into a few parties that knew these early levels fairly well and were moving much more efficiently to rech deeper floors, since kobolds were just an annoyance to deal with untill proper hunting could start from eight floor. There appeared orcs, the second staple of fantasy creatures after elves, the muscleheaded warrior creatures with their tribal communes and warrior culture. One could say that orcs could be considered a sentient race and not just monsters, and while outside of dungeons that was mostly the case the dungeon bred variety were savage, feral even. While sapient, they werent ones for conversation. If u were not an orc of their tribe you were either food or slave to be used and abused. Also what seperated lesser orcs, as was commonly reffered to dungeon orcs, was their susceptability towards the warlords mark. It was a lesser verion of slavery magic,that was derived from blood magic slave pacts. While blood magic only required the spell and for the caster to be stronger, or the binded to be willing, slave magic employed a lesser version that needed mark, rtiual circle and notably weakened subjects. Warlords mark was a unique magic in that it created a duel conditions allowed the oposing participants to do battle and the loser would be bound by the mark to obey the victor. And while near infallable once established, the warlord had to always be stronger than the servant, and its activation condition being a duel for domination that had to be willingly accepted, meant that it was usefull against only sentient monsters and overly proud fools. Nearly every B class adventurer who dove dungeons and dealt in slaves had warlords mark.It wasnt a matter of knowing where to buy, or being tought it, it was part of human birthright, and as such would awaken in adventurers who challenged monsters to pridefull duels and won attaining theie first servant. The other minus of warlords mark was that ones slaves aquired in such a way could only be sold once. since only master could use the command of "you now serve this man" or won=man once, where the mark enforces the command, and after it no longer recognizes the previous lord as master, and at the sime time locking out any further sale prospects, and while humans did eventually found a mini workaround to this by selling servants to slave traders with ordering them to obey the trader untill he brings them to the new master, the mark only enforced the servants to follow the trader, and nothing else besides maintaining their lives untill merchant imforms of the new master.

That is what rex learned from one of the parties he encountered as thanks for saving them. they hda run into a rather large party of a hundred or so kobolds, that had formed from three different packs chasing a herd of deer and runing in the said party. The confrontation had ended quite recently too, and from what the party said it wasnt all that rare of an occuranceon the seventh floor, after all the eight floor where orcs start to appear is considered the start of the C class levels for this dungeon.Rex stayed with the party untill they reached the stairs to the eight floor where there was a teleport to the entrance. Rex watched as the lightly wounded party left the dungeon having collected quite a few magic crystals and since they had overestimated themselevs by attempting to reach eight floor and almost dying in the process they had to regroup and rethink they approach to deep delving of dungeons. They didnt seem yet ready.

Rex had grown ever slightly stronger, yet the greatest gains he had was knowledge. He now had a dirrection in witch to take his drain ability to extend his reach and ability to drain multiple targets and possibly drain their energy while the target in not dead yet. he also saw body strenghtening with mana in real life, and that gave him an extra avenue in witch to improve his strenght. However the warlord mark was the most exciting discovery. Acsess to a relatively easy way to enslave dungeon races was more than just a pleasant suprise, it was a posible game changer. Rex had noticed that drain destroyed any chance for him to gather monster cores or monster parts for that matter, so the ability to aquire slaves did solve his posible money issues. Plus there were no doubt countless weirdo that would love to get their hands on some orc muscle momies to be snu snu to death. To each their own he supposed and made a stop near the stairs to the eight level.

For fifteen minutes rex considered whether he should just advance to the eith floor as should be try and hunt for the kobold king that roamed around this level. The thought of a field boss popped in Rex's mind when he heard of it's existance from the party, but now considering the size of each floor it could take hours of Rex's time to even try to find that thing and even if he were to find it what good it would do? he cant get any cores or body parts due to drain and it was imposible to resist the thought of draining new monster subtype to gain more strenght. At the same time he cold be shredding orcs, growing notably srtonger and awakening his warlord mark and enslaving musclemommies.And while his grinder side was screaming for the boss monter kill achievement, his rational minds urged him to go work to earn some money. In the end his logic won over the grinder part only due to logic suddenly gainingunexpected allies. While pondering and weighing the pros and cons he stumbled upon two questions that tipped the scales of balance. While thinking of awakening of warlords mark he found himself wondering about the taste of local protein drinks, and then he remembered that he has to catch them all. Once decided Rex rose to his feet and advanced to the stairs of the eight floor.