All alone on the twenty ninth floor, Rex readjusted his mindset. he had been holding himself back quite a bit during the hunt with Summer Wind and Victor. Rex was sure that he always had to keep a part of his total might concealed. In a dog eats dog world where personal might was the absolute pinnacle, it was of utmost importance for others to not know entire set of skills. Now he could go wild, and grind to his hearts content, and since he didnt reaaly need to sleep, nightly predators of the thirty floor and further were not a problem for him. As such Rex advanced, engaging in quite extensive grinding session on his path to floor thirty.

What followed, was a few days of non stop battles, as Rex cut down every monster that he came across, while avoiding the rare few parties that he sensed on the floor. The twenty-ninth was an expansive floor, wast grasslands, huge forests with abundant mountains. A world on its own. And, besides the wildlife that consisted of mana infused animals and different types of monsters, there were two major competing creatures here. The orcs and lizardmen. From what Victor had told Rex, there are two supertribes of sorts one for orcs and one for lizardmen, situated somewhat in the corners of this floor, and then there were all the other smaller tribes that were roaming around, of whom then many different raiding parties, hunter squads etc have been dispatched to do their various things. These smaller parties were what rex and the group had been murdering, since tribe camps would consist of thousands of creatures, and while weaker individualy then the A rankers, the sheer volume of them was enough to be boged down and exausted to death.

Rex, being alone however, didnt have that problem as his drain would keep him topped up and ready to keep going as long as he kept killing. And now he could finaly develop the skill, that the worked on during the week Eredar was working on aquiring him a mansion, to full functionallity, and perfect it. Ever since he first branded his first slave, and how those blood-like chains that were part of the spell, seemed liek an extension of his body, rex had tried to create similar chains of mana, in an effort to have extra apendages to use drain with. During his week long seclusion in the basement of his then temporary guest house, he was working on a mana construct, with little effort, however seeing Andrew, the wind mage of the a rank party, in action, he learned quite a bit about mana movement and deployment. He was keenly observing the wind mage and the energy movement within the man, trying to percieve the subttle differences in his mana and lifeforce whne he was not casting anything, and when the man was casting.

In no small part thanks to his unique eyes Rex was able to gain quite a few insights on mana usage outside ones body. He had also asked a few questions to the man regarding his methods of casting and mana circulation, and sice Rex was a blood mage with ties to the city lord, Andrew was helping out quite a bit with his answers. Rex also used the oportunity, to attain some common knowledge regarding the taboos of questions regarding magic. Things that would be frowned upon, if asked to another mage. That was a rather akward conversation untill Andrew learned Rex has spent most of his life as a hermit, and as such he had no idea of the common sense of ordinary people. Rex was sharp and aware, but not the high society ball person, so to say. He would manage to offend everyone there within minutes if he were to try and mingle.

Common sense aside, he was wery focused and listened with great interest as Andrew explained different concepts regarding magic and how they are used. And while the wind mage coudnt help out with practical training, and advanced knowledge of the wind element, since those were his masters secrets to divulge, Rex learned a lot. And now, all alone, Rex was putting that newly acquired knowledge to test. There was enough theoretical knowledge aquired to attempt a mana construct creations. All Rex needed was a proper understanding of what he wanted to create, how it would work, move and so on. It took Rex half a day to create the first construct, but the first step was always the hardest part. As soon as the construct was made, Rex found a few monsters to test his new creation on. He quickly killed the beast, summoned the chain he had recently created and controlled it to make contact with the corpse. As soon as the chain touched the corpse, Rex attempted to use drain. After a few unsucsessfull atempts he finaly felt a response.

It was a weird feeling. It felt as if it was a limb he had broken, and it had been locked down for a long while to heal, and the muscles had atrofied to a frightening degree. Rex understood that the only way to get better at this was to constantly working the limb. And while his speed adn efficiency would slow down in hunting in the short term, the potential of the chains was immense. He would no longer have to drain targets one by one, increasing his grind speed significantly. The following few days while he was searching for the path to the thirtiest floor, his speed had plumeted, but he was making a solid progress in his blood chain use. Rex reasoned that he needed a few more weeks of active hunting and training before he could say he is super comfortable with the usage of his chains, but he felt deep down that there was a way to improve the ability. He wasnt sure how just yet, but he left that there was a clear way to advance the techinque. And so another day passed, and he finaly found the path to floor thirty.

As soon as he descended he could feel a stark difference in the air. Mana was much thicker here, indicating that the creatures here had so muhc more to passivly absorb, making them stronger. That would explain the presence of those superior predators Victor mentioned. Rex at least didnt have to worry much about other adventurers running into him, disrupting his tempo. It would be easy to notice a raid. Bunch of humans in a relatively small proximity was easily noticable. Rex was also exited. In the last few days while perfecting his controll over his blood chains, he finaly hit the soft cap for the lizardmen as well. Draining them now gave as noneexistant strenghtening as orcs, unless he drained a champion or its equivalent. Rex also didnt get lucky enough to run into any the the roaming small tribes, nor was he close enough to any of the big ones. So, He would farm the floor thirty right now, untill he feels confident enough in himself to go deeper.

Victor also told him that starting with floor thirty, the dungeon comes into its own, and starts producing unique treasures, that can be found only in the specific dungeon, and if you are incredibly lucky. That is the greatest allure for adventurers to cooperate and form raids. Those treasures are artifacts, formed by the imagination and subconsiousness of the populus in a rather large area around the dungeon. To a lesser degree champion greatsword is the first example of dungeons reality warping power. Once an orc reaches the level of a champion, dungeon has the champion somewhat stumble upon their greatsword, and once aquired, that individual can be truly classified as a champion. Similar thing happens with lizardmen and their berserkers, and other ruler class specimen.

Starting with floor thirty however, such treasures can possibly be found when not in posession of an elite monster. Treasure chests. Rex remembered smiling widely under his mask and hood, when Victor told him of the chests. Treasure rooms and trap rooms. One cant have a proper fantasy world with adventurers guild and dungeons, and not have the aforementioned two. As such, rex started his hunt once again, now expecting to encounter much stronger oponents. His firts encounter was with a pack of wolves. Seven specimen the size of a horse, with very solid cooperation. As one lunged at Rex, and got avoided narrowly, the next one was already in jump, almost as if predicting Rex trajectory when avoiding the first one. To negate the second lunge Rex had to deploy his greatsword, severing its leg and cutting deep in its neck. Blood spluttered on the ground and on Rex, but the wolves didnt back off, then became even more ferocious and intensified the attacks. Losing one of the pack would weaken their hunting power, and their adversity was a lone creature. The dance of lunges, dodges swings of a greatsword ensued for a few more minutes, with Rex expertly avoiding the wolves desparate tries to take him down. Rex had noticed this a while ago but dungeon monsters did indeed had this weird fixation on fights to death. Once encountered, they would not back down untill their target was dead, or they were. A few more minutes of rather hectic lunges and more and more desperate bites from the side of wolves, Rex finaly managed to end them all. He actually managed to work up a sweat here. By no means was he exausted but he had to admit that even just these wolves were at the level of orc champions. And while a singe one would be easy to take down, a group of coordinated attacks was a whole another deal. Rex also came to a conclusion that his one handed sword he kept with him as an offhand, would no longer provide any value as a weapon, since the fur of thse wolves was as hard as steel, and while the greatsword still cut skin, fesh and even bone, Rex had to put considerably more strenght into his swings to achieve such results.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

But with hard work comes great rewards, and the feeling of draining the wolves was so much greather that champions. It was definetly because of the abundant mana circulating in the air. A great harvest indeed, but it also made Rex more cautious in his search for prey, as if even a single pack of wolves managed to get him to get somewhat serious, Just how strong would be the great sabertooths, or night prowlers. The entire day Rex was sneaking around, carefully choosing his targets, not engaging paks of monsters greater than ten. As Rex grew stronger, fight after fight, and his controll over blood chains developed, he sensed that something withing him was starting to come closer to understanding. An instinctual feeling of an aproaching epifany. Rex didnt know when, why or how, but he knew he would gain a deeper understanding of his own abilities, and soon. All he had to do was to continiue his grind and drain his victims.

And in such a manner the night arrived. An unlike the previous twenty-nine floors, where in the night the life on the floor had and unspoken agreement of ceasfire, here it just changed its gears. From powerfull fast and ferocious beasts, out came silent and deadly predators, increadibly well camouflaged herbivores. Unluckily for them, Rex's eyes displaying the flow om mana and energy itself, meant that camouflage of any sorf was meaningless in front of him. And because of such and advantage, while seeing shorter distances that in the day, Rex was even better equiped than most predators to hunt in the night, and so Rex did.

Since loosing his second weapon, purely because it could cut nothing at this level, Rex opted to wield his greatsword as it was intended- two handed style. As such, his cuts were more powerfull and faster, giving birth to a rather savage and ferocious style. Sneaking up to another pack of bufalo liek monsters the height of two and a half meters, Rex crouched and lunged at his targets. As soon as he arived next to his first victim, he sung the sword, decapitating the bufalo, then dashed to next, catching the beasts unavare, and swinging his blade in a similar fashion, ones he had reached his next target. He managed to kill a few more beasts before the small herd of some originaly twenty beasts, now cut down to aproximately thirteen, went into a chaotic rampage. As herbivores, they didnt need such great teamwork, to get their meal, and as such Rex had a much easier time cutting down this pack, and as always Rex basked in the peasure of the drain after the victory. His nonstop efforts had borne fruit, and his stats had risen quite a bit, the greatest benefit being to his perception adn physical strenght.

The night passed rather smoothly, with Rex earning a few scatches in a couple of encounters. He chose to engage slightly bigger packs at times feeling that the terrain was to his advantage, or when it looked liek the packs had recently had a scuffle with predators and were exausted, but otherwise Rex seemed to be pretty cautious. A few hours after the damn of day, Rex finaly encountered one of his main targets on this floor. A three and a half meters high Sabertooth tiger, with a some slight crystal protrusions from its back. It was not rex who chased and found the beast. Tiger had smelled the blood spilled during Rex's fights with packs of hebivores, and the tiger did not like competitors in his territory.

The monter charged straight at Rex ,and with its full speed and inertia it leaped for Rex, tring to pin the man to the ground so he could bite him in half. After all with its huge body the size of a school bus, one can only imagime the strenght of its jaw. And Rex, not having the desire to test out the beasts strenght empvered with extra speed and inertia, jumped to the side, barely avoidign the puncing beast. As soon as it landed, tiger swiped with its paw at the man who managed to dodge it, and rex used his sord to block the paw strike. Since the blade was wide enough, and the tiger sung with the back of its paw, there was no worries of its claws suddenly extendidng, piercing Rex's flesh, however the power was still immense, pushing Rex back a few meters. Rex was suprised by the monstrous strenght of the tiger. he expected it to be strong, but for it to have strenght equal to Rex or even a bit more, after he had drained the strenght of so many creatures, was baffling. And while even with its huge it had suprising dexterity and speed combined with its high power, its was still a beast, and its instincts coudnt overcome a superior intelect with ligher agility.

The tigers savage paw swipes, atempted bites were all in vain untill it managed to cut a pretty deep cut with its razor sharp claws in the tiny adversary, The cut was almost bone deep on one of the legs of the man, adn the beast, asured of the humans inability ot dodge, lunged for the man jaw wide open to devour its wounded prey. Moment before the tiger landed, Rex rolled forward, closer to the tiger, and positioned his blade straight up, and tiger failed to react in time, impaling itself on the blade. Both had been fighting for over an hour by this point, and were notably tired. Rex, feeling the tiger slump on his him, its body finaly going limp, breatehed a sigh of relief, finaly overcoming the threat. This monster had been his hardest fight yet, that pushed him to the limits. Deep dungeons were trully riddled with powerfull adversaries, but at the same time they held entodl treasures in their depths.

Not wasting much time Rex began to drain the tiger. His gains should be enourmos from such a powerfull beast, and Rex wasnt dissapointed one bit when he felt the rush of power he felt once the drain brought in the energy. Purer than anything he had felt before, concentrated and endless. he smiled and though that junkies probably felt similar to this when getting high. However, for all the bliis he felt whenever he absorged something so close to him in power, or slightly stronger, as soon as it was over, he never felt the desire to risk his ass for repeat of such a high. His mind was ruled by as master called 'calculated risk'. While willing to take moderate risks, that would provide huge benefits, he was not a man who liked to gamble, even more so when the price was his life. With his ability slow and steady wins the race.

Great sabertooths, rex had concluded that he wil have to hunt on this floor wor quite a while before he gets to claim a kitty for house protection. He was sure as hell he would have to kill dozens of the big cats before he woudl have the strenght to beat one down untill it would be in a proper position to be branded. rex also wandered how would a brand present itself on a monster covered in fluffy fur, but he would eventually see that.

He rested for a few hours. And while the drain had restored him to a top notch condition phisicaly, he needed to set his thoughts straight, plan his further hunt apropriatly and decide on the cat he wanted to brand for house protection. Sabertooths were the phisically more imposing choice, with greater strenght and speed adn power than night prowlers, from what Victor explained, but the prowlers were great ambushers with swift and deadly strikes. In the end Rex decided, that once he was strong enough, he would get a sabertooth for home protection. He needed the gatekeeper. An imposing presence to detract posible troublemakers with a visable threat, not deadly protectors in the shadows, at least not yet, as it would take a few months for word of Blythes blood mage to spread and for the auction to be organised.