Chapter 492

With the perspective brought by Lexi, Ajax was more than ready to focus on refining his recent gains and pushing himself further. At least as much as his time would allow.

“Your recent show of strength was a really good move.” Tom praised Ajax. “It helps even more that you didn’t upstage Lexi at all. It makes people relate to you more since you were born a commoner and despite the level advantage and praise that you barely surpassed what is expected of a noble.” 

“Commoners know less about magic than I thought.” Lexi said with a shake of her head. “He upstaged me in everything but output. His spell was faster, quicker and used the same amount of mana that I did to achieve a better result.” 

“And the few people who know what to look for picked that up as well.” Elija said with a nod. “But commoners are more concerned with: a spell was cast and something happened.”

“What about the crafters?” Ajax asked as he looked towards the mountain of papers he knew were related to their school system. “Did you work out how to keep the potentially problematic ones from causing a mess?” 

“Initial placement for the cities is finished.” Aurora said with a smile. “Lancel’s list of… possible hurt egos helped to make sure every one of them is going to be kept under supervision. There shouldn’t be any issues.” 

“Uncle Ajax come play with us.” It was then that Ajax’s nephew Jake burst into the room, a few steps behind him, looking very guilty, are Jari and Nashara.

Jake was only a half beastkin, this meant that he took even fewer feline traits than Kate did, only the ears and tail showed his beastkin origins. The move to Lessis had had a big impact on Jake because he was so young and everything he had known had been the capital. For the first time in a while he was now in the presence of other beastkin children around his age and he very quickly befriended the former slaves Ajax had brought back with him from the Empire. 

“It’s not playing, it's training.” Ajax corrected Jake but the boy seemed to enjoy training as muchas Ajax did when he was at his age, though he didn’t push himself nearly as much as he had. “You should focus on the fundamentals first, I’ll come by in a little bit once you are all warmed up.”

Both Jari and Nashara took training much more seriously, in fact it was their influence that got Jake to start pushing himself past the point where he would first start getting tired. Nobody was doing much to interrupt their interactions since everyone was hoping Jake would learn to use magic, any previous attempts at helping him obtain Mana skills had failed but he was still young and already had [Sense Mana], maybe learning alongside other young people from scratch would help.

“Don’t take too long.” With that Jake went running towards the training grounds where other retainers were already training. Not that he paid all that much attention to them since he always found there was space for him to train regardless of how many other people there were.

Both Jari and Nashara followed after Jake but not before they each bowed politely to the members of House Hearthbound. Both of them were determined to take Ajax’s advice to heart and focus on the fundamentals, both of them had been chastised for the bad habits they had picked up in regards to their combat styles. Bad habits that formed from being self-taught and that they were working to break past.

“You have something important?” Tom asked. 

“Xavier is heading towards the lake.” Ajax mentioned. “I want to talk to him before he does.” 

“You’re not going with him?” Tom wasn’t the only one surprised, everyone had expected Ajax to be going with Xavier when anything happened regarding the seed the prince had in his possession. 

“He’s not going to plant it.” Ajax reassured them quickly when he saw them all looking at him with worry, like they thought something was very wrong. “He’s just going to look around and clear out the big tree that is right now in the middle of the small island on that lake.”

One of the things Ajax very much wanted to ask Xavier for was a well preserved piece of that tree, specifically a branch. Having grown with such an abundance of mana, Ajax was sure it would have some interesting uses and he wanted to graft a piece of it to see if anything came of it.

“He won’t be planting that seed for at least a month, and I’ll be there to watch it happen and help with my Life Mana, after all it's too important not to help it grow a little.” Ajax’s explanation had everyone nodding along.

WIth that Ajax had the rest of his day planned out. He would be talking to Xavier, helping his nephew and her friends for a bit with their training and then he would be teaching the alchemists of House Hearthbound about how to create cement powder from the rocks he had recently acquired from their quarry.

Lexi on the other hand joined Elija and Aurora at the table to look over the mountain of paperwork regarding their upcoming schools. As much as Ajax had pushed for the idea of widespread education Lexi was much more integrated into the day to day of the operation. Unlike Ajax she had experience with something similar from before they all joined the Academy and she wanted to ensure their people wouldn’t have to experience the same sort of environment that she did. 

“It’s a very fine line.” Elija said as he looked over everything. “Encouraging competition is the foundation of getting young people to progress. Doing so without allowing them to target others to better their chances is harder than I thought.” 

Lexi was determined not to allow their school to reflect what she had seen before, where the excellence of a student would have to be limited by their social standing. Her peers that could have reached for more, were forced to restrain themselves simply because they were the children of Barons. The waste of talent still bothered her a little.  

“Any recruiting we do will have to be kept quiet.” Aurora said. “More than that we need to wait until they at least finish with their first four years or it’ll cause issues with preferential treatment.” 

It was easy to say there would be no preferential treatment but none of them were oblivious to the fact that if they recruited someone before they finished their schooling the teachers would change their behaviour once news got out.

“We don’t have that much longer before we start preparation for opening the schools.” Silvia pointed out. “Ajax’s idea that opening school at the start of Death season is correct and  it will be widely well received, especially since we will provide a warm building. We need to finish the test we will be giving everyone.”  

The test was there not only for perceived exclusivity but also as a way to give teachers a starting point for evaluating each student and the progress they made once they started school. 

“So how was it?” Tom ask Warden Grievous. 

“Too good.” Grievous wasn’t in a joking mood, he had hoped to instill the proper attitude into the guards by having them witness Ajax’s progress first hand. Too many of them weren’t giving Ajax the respect he had earned along with his noble title. To them, at least in a more private setting, he was still the kid who had trained with the guard before being attacked by a vampire, last they had seen of him he had finished taking his first step on the path of an adventurer and was going to the capital to take the second. “A lot of our younger people are looking to join your House as retainers.” 

Ajax’s demonstration of power had done a lot more than instill a healthy respect for his power; it had truly awed them. “That’s not good, it’s also not going to happen.” Tom knew that recruiting from the existing guards was a quick way to cause bad blood with guards that weren’t recruited and would end up with bad blood between the guards that remained and those that were recruited. 

“I had hoped this could wait but I think it’s best if we come up with a system to have guards clearing the dungeon.” Grievous said. “With the extra presence of your House in Lessis, crime is sure to go down, we’ll be able to have people delve and progress more consistently.” 

“But guards aren’t trained for delving.” Tom quickly picked up where his former mentor was going. “You want some of our people to go with them and limit the fatality rate of delving. The idea certainly has merits, it’ll also give us a way to work out a system for transitioning combat focused students to adventurers once they turn fifteen and have spent their stats. According to Ajax and the nobles of the capital by that age the talented ones will be able to at least hold their own a little inside the first floor of the dungeon.”