Under the cover of night Rex advanced to the eight level. His vision was nowhere near as sharp as in day, but taking into account that he had eagle like sharpness to his eyes it was too much to expect the same performance in the range of vision in the darkness of the night. The fact that there was no moon but some sort of an aurora that provided lesser amount of light that clear sky of the night in outside world didnt help either. Having a proper vision for what looked like some five hundred meters was still impresive. In addition his ability to percieve mana and life energy offset and disadvantages of darkness, on the contary, one could say that since almost all creatures suffered in the darkness of the night the same inhibitions as Rex and their baseline was nowhere near as good as Rex's he had a definitive advantage in hunting during the night.
He advances rather carefully, stalking the planes and woods of the level. Aproximately ten minutes later he found his first pey. Three orcs were sitting around a campfire, cooking some piece of meat, that Rex had to admit, emmited rather mouthwatering scent. Drain did cover all his needs for food but it added no great taste to the process, and as such it left him hanging in certain areas. But Drain had an impressive advantage over regular eating as well, and tha was in the form of utility. afterr all if there is no non mystycal food intake there is no food waste outpust. and for a solo grinding enthusiast to be imposible to be caught with his pants down was quite the blessing. Observing and evaluating the orcs Rex calculated the danger level of each or, and planned the order of elimination. He had more experiments to conduct regarding drain. and he also wanted to try and awaken the warlords mark.
He sneaked closer and then he sensed the fourth orc a bit further off, hiding in a tree. It seemed a scout of sorts, and so Rex decided to take that one first. A few minutes or carefull sneaking later he pounced on the scout, tacked him while covering its mouth and piercing its throat with his blade. The orc struggled a moment and died very soon after. Rex took a hatchet from the scout, left the tree, got a git closer to the trio around campfire and lunged to the back of his first target burying thejust now taken hatchet in his targets skull. Blood splattered everywhere ending the orcs life, then he dashed towards the next target as the remaining two were scrambling to get up and take out the threat. Rex slashed with great strenght cutting the second orc in half leaving the last one alive. Rex stood there and waited for it the get up and prepeare for combat.It was time for sold fashioned experiments. Create a hypothesis, and then ask questions and perform field tests to prove your thesis correct. or fail and try again.
The orc was slover and physically weaker than Rex so overpowering it woudnt be too hard, but that was not Rex intention. He had already tested drain on half dead kobolds and it work just fine, if not ever better that fine as seemed that drain took all the remaining lifeforce. Energy that was a combination of mana, life and what Rex could only asume to be will. Rex hypothesized that it is unlikely that he is draining the soul itself. He was starting to asume that soul was a kind of vessel, and the life we lead store some sort of mystical energy in soul, and that after death our sould use it for something. And drain does take a slight bit of that energy to strenghten himself. Life energy and mana healed and recovered his physical body while this mystical energry, he decided to call Soulforce strenghtened him, breaking past his limits with each drained enemy. When the orc lunged at him Rex parried orcs strike holding his sword with one hand and reached his other hand for the orc, grabing its wrist and activating drain. orc fell to its knees and started spasming, and was howing in pain. rex imediatly stopped, as he realized that as long as he was stonger he could drain his enemies, and that attemping to drain soulforce would inflict immense pain on the target, as the orc was convulsing for some thirty seconds untill it stilled. I wasnt dead yet, but it was unconscious. Next Rex tried to pull only at orcs mana. At first , orcs mana barely fluctuated, but there was a slight reaction, and as such Rex zoned in on the feeling and experimented for some fifteen minutes un till he finaly sucseeded. HE repeated the same process with file drain, and he felt the mental exaustion receding visibly. and he also saw how the orc has growing weaker and apparently older at a rather fast pace. Rex stopped and contemplated for a moment. His drain was an incredible asset. Growth, disabling enemies, recovery. It provided such incredible range of usage. If developed and mastered even further, the potential for other strategical uses like torture was also a posible avenue. He was sure that one day it might be a necessary skill. But not today, he reasoned. And while he was not into torturing animals, or in this case his prey, since orcs couldnt be classified as simple animals, he still needed to leaen another wery important metric of his drain. What was the difference of drain efficiency on a dead target versus a living one. To learn that though Rex needed two specimens with extremely simmilar readings of power but with his vision that wouldnt be too much of a problem.
Well, Rex was slightly wrong there. He had spent almost four hours tracing down a proper duo for the experiment but he secseeded. He found a party of seven orcs camped in a similar fashion the the previous party. the difference was that all of them exept one sneaky night patroll guy were sleeping. Rex knocked the night watch out, while being extremely carrefull to not trigger any posible alarms that the party might have set uphe sneakily sliced the throats of all but two orcs, the scout not including. Then he sneaked back and tied scout with some ropes he found in the campsite and returned to the remaining two. Then he quickly sliced the throat of one of the remaing two. Test subject number one, Rex drained it the moment it died and noted the amount of soulforce recieved, then went to the second orc, his first encountered dungeon orc female specimen. then he tied her up and left in there. Returning to the scout, test subject number two, and used train on it. The second he started draining scout woke up from his manually induced involuntary sleep and released sould wrenching scream as if the wery sould of it was being torn open. Drain was nowhere near as fast or efficient in absorbing the energy from this one and Rex noted that the duration was rather long, screaming of the subject was quite unpleasent, and migrane inducing, and most importantly the amount aquired was noticably less than from a a fresh kill. He reasoned that living creatures had their souls inhabiting the physical form as such providing incredible resistance, where as fresh kills were only linked to souls as such alowing him to aquire the soulforce through the link without having to tear the soul open for it. and life and mana energy were free for the taking. The last orc of the camp had also been awakened by the screams of her companion, and was cursing Rex and grwoling at him. Rex had an inkilng, a fleeting suspicion that he had a general sense of what names the orc was using to call Rex, but he was not quite there. He reasoned, that since feral orcs are less intelegent and more focused of brutish side he would have to drain quite a few more feral orcs to learn their language. Since the orc female was not much to look at, Rex ended her in one swift movement, and drained all remaining bodies in the camp. Thats when Rex noticed another ineficiency in his current drain skill. It was single target melee ability. He reasoned that if he could see some mages in action and if he could manipulate his mana creating mana constructs to use as an extension of his body to drain multiple targets at once should be feasible.
Rex spent the remaining night rushing through the level killing all orcs in his path and draining them. Since the orcs were on the level of C rank adventurers, and Rex was at the low to mid ranks of A class taking on parties of ten to twenty orcs were no challenge at all. On his grind session he aslo trained more on mastery over his single drain abilities. Mana and life drain. His experiences proved that drainng mana was quite the easy task from all but single target - a shaman. That was the first orc caster of sorts he had encountered, and in that encounter hea learned that oponents who can manipulate mana can resist drain quite well, almost to the point of resisting it entirely. And the stronger the oponent the harder it is to drain life. Rex made another guess that if he learned to controll mana properly himself the mana drain would become much stronger. One has to have the proper knowledge and hands on experience to master chosen subjects.
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By the time the sky started to brighten, Rex had crossed over eight ninth and tenth level. Right now he as at the wery start of the eleventh floor. Rex wanted to find some sort of larger camp hoping to maybee find some valuable metals, maybee jewels there to have some loot to account for his time in the dungeon. Since this would be his second day in the dungeon, he still had one night in the inn reserved, then he would have to either extend this stay there or look for a new place of residence. And while he loved to just grind away he also understood that that cant be all that he should strive for in this new life of his. It was pointless to speculate how or why he got here, why he had this extraordinary body and so on. No truck-kuns, to initiate his reincarnation, no meeting with gods. No nothing. So he will just live the life he has as he sees fit. he did feel a bit sad for his brother and sister with whoom he had quite good relationship, and rather hoped they would just not know of his existance anymore than wory and grieve for him.
AS he was restaring his hunt and search of a larger camp, he noticed the activity of adventurer parties. He had passed a few camping ones during his night hunts but he was wise enough not to aproach or disturb them as it would be quite foolish to make contact at night. Now hea was trying to awaken his warlord mark, with rather pathetic results. This was a skill that we theoreticly should have, but since he had not seen it active and being used he only had a vague understanding of it, and how it worked. From what he was told one just had to dominate his target, to the point where its will is crushed and its will is broken. then have it aknowledge you as its master. And since Rex was stuck, what better way than to find a party farming for slaves and work out a favorable deal. Rex's musings were interrupted as he noticed someone in the distance. The person was staying away from him and keeping in the shadows of larger trees. Rex calculated that they were some five hundred meters away from him, and most likely cautios since he was alone. Innitially he paid no attention to the scout as he had not seen other solo adventurers like him around. he turned and went off on his way looking for other targets to farm. Some fifteen minutes later Rex stoped and kneeled as if to examine the ground. The scout he noticed previously was folowing him, keeping the distance. 'Pk'ers Rex though, as he doubted that it was profitable to hunt for adventurers to make them slaves, as they would have to have proper slavey or blood magic for such huts and both were too expensive to be used on C ranks, seeing that they were in such a level. Such expensive methods would only be eemployed on top end B ranks and above, and the expenses would be too high if one has to take into account that they are most likely hunting guild adventurers. Rex started to plan an effective strategy to lure the scout and whatever party he is a part of in an open confrontation, as it is not in Rex interests to be observed while he is hunting. He did not joing the guild of adventurers because he did not want to be forced to do quests he does not want and to be able to stay off their power strugles, because of course there would be. New true archon not afiliated with any established factions, strong one at that, jea no fucking way would he be left alone. Rex would have none of it.
The next few hours rex traveled the forest avoiding and orc groups that had more than four members. groups of four or less he stalked for a while, waited for an oportune moment, striked from the shadows killing a member or two, then retreated and used agility and terrain to his advantage to outmanouver the remaining orcs so the scout following him would asume Rex is rogue or assasin type adventurer, and since orcs are not the most nimble of creatures, C ranked agility based adventurers would be able to deal with quite a few of them. His plan was to make it look liek he is a well trained high rank C adventurer. Somewhere closer to dusk Rex found a rather large clearing with a small pond in the middle. Since he had taken out quite a few smaller groups of orcs he decided to restnear the pond. he did feel a bit sad that he coudnt drain those orcs, but it was better not to give the stalkers more information than necesary. he was sure they were up to no good. He had looted the orcs of any gemstones or what little jewelary they had- some tooth necklaces,a rare silver braclet adn the like. His gains were small and that irked him, but he would be patient. near the pond was a single large tree that Rex made into his "camping site", he pulled a few things out of his small backpack and made it look as if hes staying there for the coming night. He still had a few more hours till dusk, but he had to wait. he doubted his new friends would be waiting much longer. After all they had stalked him for more than half a day, watched him fight and had not acted till now. They would most likely act now or wait for the cover of the night. Rex hoped for sooner rather than later as he still wanted to hunt more and the warlord mark was still waiting its turn.
A few hours later, when the sky started to dim, finaly, the stalker aproached. The scout had brought his entire party. eight of them in total. Rex had noticed that the C rank part of the dungeon was traversed by parties, larger than the initial five man groups he had encountered of the lower floors. He had started his delve to the dungeon in the middle of the week, and the deeper diving adventurers ussually started their delving at the start of the week . Easier to find new members if needed or to aquire new items since other groups would have done their delving and brought new goods up trade. As the party aproached Rex got up from his position, and took defensive stance, he had controlled compressed his won energy levels to look similar to C ranks he had seen so far, and since inspect abilities had close range in general cases he was quite sure that the stalker party was not aware of his full strenght. He seemed as any ather adventurer, on alert and in a defensive position since he was aproached by a party of eight and the break of dusk. With his improved vision and energy reading he could see that the party, while looking somewhat casual for untrained eye, were all primed and ready for attack. muscles tense, hands sneakily placed on weapons, and some sort of disgust apparent on the faces of the members further in the back.
With a slightly elevated voice Rex spoke to the newcomers "Do not come any closer." he placed a hand on his sword indicating his readiness to defend himself from the unwanted and rather rogueish advance of the party. It was common knowledge that even Rex was aware of that, unless its one of the dungeons safe zones, witch are indicated by runes in the rock like monoliths that form a circle, parties do not aproach other parties after dusk, unless of course there is a critical situation wthat would require assistance and the sort. The party slowly spread out keeping the three archers back , two tankers up front two rogues with dagger equiped at the flanks and a caster, healer of holy element based on the angel- like accessory and book she was holding in in each hand.
The priest, with pure scorn in his voice then spoke "O Lord, Show the way to salvation for that abomination, we shall set it free from its cursed form so you can embrace this lost soul and guide it on its new journey. " Once he was finished with his prayer, a sinister smirk appeared on his face "After we have taught it humility and pain it has caused with its mere presence in this world". Then Rex noticed the necklacce the priest was wearing. A crown with six angelic wings on a golden shield. The Eclisiarchys symbol. Rex rose from his crouching position, and spoke, no longer in the wary tone he had asumed earlier, but cold and grating "Fucking lunatics no matter where you go."