As Rex stepped through the portal he immediatly noticed a wast difference in the atmosphere. The most apt desciption would be deep dungeon level of mana rich air. He took a few deep breaths as his mana pinged and mapped out his surroundings. He could sense loads of living entities less than a few killometers away, and part of them were on course towards him. Their speed was also increasing quite notably.

Rex stretched his arms and drew Limitless from his storage ring, and prepeared for the imminent combat. He also summoned his cosmic crows that took to the sky, ready for draining, cleaning teh battlefield and providing him with birds eye view of his surroundings, and advancing monsters. Using the crows he saw all manner of monsters rushing towards him in some sort of a frenzied mob. They mostly ignored one another, as if their common enemy was Rex, and only once he is eliminated could they return to the nattural state of their ecosystem.

Rex saw multitude of minotaurs, centaurs, ogres and even trolls rushing towards him. A huge grin appeared on his face, realizing the magnificent grind he was about to embark on. He once again got to reinforce his established belief- Only the dungeons could provide the ultimate thrill and challenge as well as true danger when it came to pure combat. The civil lands however, would provide dangers of different kind. Backstabbing and treatchery. Those were the bread and butter of humanity and many other highly advanced species, and if not for his notable issues with trusting people and brands, he was sure as hell that his back would be adorned with at least a few daggers by now.

Clearing his mind from the unneccessary distracting thoughts, he focused on the task at hand- to grind to his hearts content for as long as the test lasts, or untill he manages to wipe most, if not all creatures who are stupid enough to asume he is the prey, not the hunter. With a huge grin on his face he lowered his body, bending his knees and prepearing for a lunge of sorts, and once the clostest monster group was no more than fifty meters away, he dashed in its dirrection. In just a few moments he was in front of the first minotaur, and catching it off guard in its mad rush towards the meat, he sliced it clean in half with Limitless, then he used pure mana as a way of propulsion, kicking himself a few steps back, avoiding the mass of tumbling bodies, who tried to slow down to attempt a swing of a club, or any other primitive weapon the creatures were holding. Then utilising the pile of bodies taht was squirming and kicking to get up on their feet, Rex started his murder spree, splitting apart any unfortunate monster that closed in on him as they rushed around the pile that was akwardly untangling.

In less than a few minutes the unfortunate pile of monsters had mostly got up, and the few more unfortunate ones that happened to be the first in line had several extremities broken from the abrupt stop and subsequent crashes and pile on. Rex was not standing idle either during the untangling, as there were now a few new piles that consisted of corpses that Rex had created. He had enough strenght, speed and awareness of his surroundings that he could controll the tempo and flow of the slaughter that was happening here, adn the strategic corpse piels slowed and limited the the endless stream of monsters tha twas pouring in. Rex could see in real time from birds eye view everything that was happening, calmly analyze it all and then plan and act out said plans with deadly precision.

Minotaurs, ogres and centaurs were killed in a very fast manner, ussually splitting them in half. Trolls were more of a problem, since the pure numbers of incoming horde prevented Rex from slicing and dicing the trolls in small and solid meat strips to kill the creatures, so he ussually cut offtheir legs, and moved to another position, near one of the corpse piles he had created. He was immensly thankfull for his luck,since it would me so much more annoying if he did not have Limitless with him. The sword sliced all his enemies as a hot knife through butter. It did not matter whether an arm, a leg or some random thick skull got in the trajectory of the balde, everything was sliced perfectly, leaving a trail of blood and carnage behind in his tracks.

Rex had been going at it for a few hours, when he noticed a new type of enemy appearing in the distance. Both giants and cyclops started to to exist the giant trees in the distance. They were slowly lumbering towards Rex. Six to eight meters high monstrosities were slowly approaching, and the cyclops stopped a few hundred meters away from Rex, then, a spell circle materialized beneath each one of them, and the ground regurgitaded a rock half the size of a car, then the boulders were lifted with both hands by the cyclops, and in an akward shot put launch motion, the boulders were flung towards Rex position. Thanks to his many eyes and calculating abilities, he could predict each and every boulders trajectory, efficiently moving and avoiding the impact areas of the monstrous artillery shots.

Then Rex made it his mission to ensure that all those cyclops had the chance to have a swift and intimate session with his sword. As he charged in the dirrection of the artillery, while leaving a trail or corpses adn carnage behind him, some of his ravens came down from the sky and drained a pile or two of the corpes, restoring the spent mana and stamina, giving Rex the freedom to keep blasting in full steam non stop. He could see now why the SS class fighter from the sect was killed relatively quickly. The sheer amount of the A classs monsters that were swarming him would overwelm and exaust almost every single challenger. No matter how pwoerfull you are, once there is not an ounce of energy left in your body, you will fall prey to even weak enemy.

Rex had another weapon at hand, tha the could deploy to make it much easier on himself, if he decided to use it. He could easily brand a large number of monsters and then use said monsters to combat the wave in such a manner, but he could not take away the fun he was having right now. Sure, most of his adversaries were too weak to challenge him, but they made up for it in sheer numbers and relentlesness. Even if he could not be exausted physically, his mental fatigue could eventually get the better of him and cause him to start making mistakes that could endanger the integrity of his ass.

As he was closing in on the cyclops he could also see the giants advancing towards him in their slow gait, and he was not pleased with what his eyes had to suffer through. The huge, somewhat deformed human like beings wore no clothes, so their wrinkly, dirty and sometimes mouldy and muddy appearances elicited a rather disgusting feeling with Rex. It ddi not help that their oversized horse cocks sometimes hit some smaller monster as they stepped over it, creating even more disgust in Rex. Luckaly for Rex, and sadly for his sword, the slow movement of the ugly creatures gave Rex ample opportunities to amputate the gians, cutting of their legs at the knee height, shortening their gential lenght at the same time. And since Rex had prepeared beforehand by fortifying mana around his ears, the earshattering screams whenever the giants fell as their three legs got cut off did not affect him in the slightest. That could not be said for the poor monsters in dirrect vicinity of said act, as most of them fell to the ground, eardrums ruptured, causing them to either stumble, or outright go unconscious.

Another while later Rex had finnaly brought the fight to the artillery, and since the cyclops were on the same speed as the giants, Rex could employ similar strategy to dispose of them as well, and so he did. Dashing and slashing from one cyclops to the next, slicing off their legs, then dashing towards the next target. Once all the cyclops were on the ground, he made another circle around them, this time seperating the heads from the rest of their bodies. Once he was done with both the cyclops and giants, he returned his full focus to the lesser opponents of his.

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His rampage lasted for an entire day and a night, and by the noon of the second day of his trial there were no longer monsters advancing towards his position, exect for a single slow moving one. Rex used his crows to drain all cyclops and giants since they were S class entities, and would provide some sort of a boost to his already insane stats, since he never entertained the idea that there are not more powerfull and dangerous entities out there, in some tens or hundreds of thousands of years old dungeons. He kew those existed, so what kind of eldrich horrors awaited for him there? That question alone gave Rex enough of a reason to never stop his grind and enjoy everything he could ever think off in this life. He was quite sure that he will probably eventually die to some such eldritch horror as he would try to slay it. And while not desirable any time soon, in a few thousand years, once he had enjoyed everything this world had to offer, that would not be such a bad way to go, he reasoned.

As he stood in the field of his work, surrounded by hundreds of bodies he looked at the forest from where the countless monsters emerge. Right now he was thinking whether to go and explore the place or just wait here for the end of the test. He knew it would last for a few more days, enough time for teh Tyrant Dragon sect to innitiate the peace talks and possibly even end the war. He was quite certain they would not attempt any obvious trechery, but did not exclude the possibility of some sneaky assasination atempt or some sort of a backstab. That was the reason why he branded the five girls waiting for him outside. They would inform him immediatly if they were aproached and asked to do some shady shit that would endanger him or anything of the sort.

As he was standing there and pondering of his next course of action his mana sense picked up something approaching him in quite notable speed. What was the more important part of this discovery was the sheer size of the creature. If he was calculating the feedback correctly, the monster on its path towards Rex was as large as three story building. And soon enough he could see some of teh trees at the perifery of the forest to fall as the tank of a monster charged through. If he had to describe the monstrosity in front of him he would likely compare it to a stone plated silverback gorilla, with the head of a stone serpent. Thanks to his crows he could also see some spikes protruding from its back and a similar stone tail dragging behind it. Then, with a monstrous roar the creature charged at Rex once it noticed him. While it seemed as if covered with stone plate armor, it was suprisingly fast when it came to charging in a straight line, and its glowing red eyes were homing in on Rex.

Rex dodged as the monster soon reached his position, and had to use his mana discharge to readjust his position and trajectory midair, as the beast used its tail to try and swat Rex away one it realized its innitial attack had failed.Successfuly avoiding teh strike Rex landed and rushed after the beast to return the favour by slicing some part of it off, and while catching up to it, and even making a quite decent swing with his sword, to his suprise, the beast did not lose its hind leg. All that Rex achieved was a solid crevise in the beasts leg plate. THen, he just as quickly dodged the strike from said leg, and then followed by another dodge avoiding its tail.

Rex speed was supperior, however the beast sported exeptional defences as well as power, and its tail ensured that Rex would almost always have to do a double dodge whenever he was attacked. And seeing the level of agressivity of the monster it would be quite often, and as if on que, he dodged two strikes once again. The beast had turned and pounced on his location, and when he, as expected, avoided the lunge, a strike from the tail followed, once again making Rex change his trajectory midair.

What followed for teh next few hours was a game of cat and mouse, where the beast would use its one-two attack pattern to catch Rex, who in turn avoided both strikes and then used his speed advantage and often exposed position of the monster to deliver a precise and brutal strike on its tail. Every strike would be delivered on the same place deepening the crack that was developing on a single tail armor plate. REx also noticed how teh monster was slowly repairing the crack on the leg that Rex had inflicted earlier, and if not for his surgical precision and deliberate striking, he reasoned tha tthey would enter a sort of a stallmate. A point where one could not injure its opponent becasue it could not land a hit, and the other being in the same position since the damage he inflicted would be recovered in real time due to the low damage output. Rex was also limiting the power he used to create the broken armor since he needed the monster to asume Rex was using his full capacity.

Eventually, the moment came when Rex effort had borne fruit, and the first blood was drawn from the tail, eliciting a grunt of sorts from the monster, angering it even more, and causing it to attack even more restlessly. It must be growing restless, since it had been trying for a few hours already and failing to neutralize its target, and it was finaly recieving some actual damage. And after avoiding the next double strike, he swung with full force, not holding back, and blood spluttered in all directions as the tail was cut off. Wit ha loud thud the separated part fell to the ground and a ear shattering howl followed.

Rex quickly retreated as the monster started to flail and turn around, flattening the place in its immediate surroundings. Its stump of a tail was flailing along with it, sometimes hitting something, causing another howl. Blood was squirting in large quantities from the cut, but Rex did not expect for any effect to show regarding blood loss for quite some time if the beast were to keep loosing blood in the same rate for a while still, but that was to be expected- it would take quite some time for a fire hydrant to expel enough water so that the residents of teh three story building would start to notice the uncontrolled leak.

Now that Rex had prepeared a long term plan of the creatures demise, it was time to start and try inflicting some proper damage. Now that the beast had lost a rather important means of attack, Rex could go on the offensive. The pain it was experiencing also was an additional distraction that allowed Rex extra advantage, since it was notably harder for teh beast to focus and adapt to its cripped state. Now Rex could much more safely blade dance around the beasts extremities using its own size against it, since he could move freely now. As he was weaving between its four legs, avoiding the stomps and rare chomps that could have theoretickaly reach him, he was striking at the joint locations of the beast. While heaviliy armored, it still needed to maintain flexibility, and so its joints were much less pretected, adn only a few dozen slices were needed for him to start inflicting some solid damage on its joints.

Rex sixth sense flared, causing him to use a rather new ability he had finalized and tested a few times to ensure its functionality. The next moment he was few dozen meters away from the beast, and a powerfull blast was generated with the monster as its center. Cold sweat drop rolled down his forehead, as he realised how much damage he could have suffered had he not reacted in time. Thankfully, he had acted with caution the moment he sensed change in its energy flow that concentrated suddenly in a part of its stomack. Quickly evaluating the situation, and finding no immediate danger he charged back at the beast what was frantickaly looking under him to find the blasted annoyance.

Its search was interrupted when it felt another powerfull slash taking a deep bite out of its left hind legs joint, causing it to slump, since it leg could no longer support the weight it was carrying up untill now. With its movement now properly hindered, Rex redoubled his efforts in taking out its extremities, adn another thirty minutes later he had disabled all four. With the beast laying in the ground, incapable of offering any meaningfull resistance anymore, it nevertheless took Rex another hour and a half to finaly end the creatures life.

As Rex sat near the now corpse of the monstrosity, he activated the drain to get quite a solid boost and looked over the now empty battlefield. His crows had drained most of teh corpes of his previous carnage to restore his energy and strenghten him even a little since the adversary this time was real tough. Sure Rex did not take any heavy damage but he was pused quite hard to utilize most of his kit, that was not rendered useless due to the ehavy armor the monster was wearing. Less than an hour later, a weird looking bird landed near him, and moments later transformed in a lady of sorts.