Chapter 482

The following morning Ajax, Lexi and Xavier were sharing a carriage as they headed towards Lessis. Ajax expected that the manor of his estate would have at least a section of it finished so his family would move in and that they would continue the work while he would also start finishing up all the secret passages. For now however he had something else to focus on.

[Sense Mana], [Expel Mana], [Mana Skin], [Mana Augmentation] and [Inspector’s Eye] were all waiting for him to make his selection on their threshold bonuses. For [Sense Mana] and [Expel Mana] they were even more important since this would be the only threshold bonus they would have, though Ajax did suspect there would be another when they capped out at level one hundred and fifty.

His first few choices had been easy. All of his Mana skills were a simple selection of increased mana potency, the same selection he had made for his Rare mana affinities something that was just cemented as a correct choice during his fight with the beholder and realizing how important the potency of mana was for a spell.  

[Mana Skin] was the first one he focused on. He had three different options.

[MANA SKIN] ADVANCEMENT OPTIONS : 

Upfront payment : Allows up to one thousand mana to be stored into [Mana Skin], skill will remain active until the skill is broken. Upon breaking the skill will become unavailable for one hour.

Filtration : Allows filtration of harmful substances. (Filtering out harmful substances will cause damage to the skin based on the potency of the substance costing mana to uphold.) 

Vigilance(tied to skill [Danger Sense]): while unconscious skill will activate in reflex to [Danger Sense].

All three options had something going for them. Upfront payment allowed Ajax to save one thousand mana before heading into a fight and use it all to power [Mana Skin]. This wasn’t the most efficient use considering the skill’s efficiency but it was a lot of mana, the value would only increase as the skill got stronger and its efficiency increased. Though losing access to a Skill wasn’t something he had known was possible.

Filtration would give Ajax a way to deal with airborne poisons, more than that it could also prove useful in his alchemy. His only worry was how would the filtration work? Would it be based on his knowledge allowing him to select what was filtered out, would it be reactive filtering out anything harmful. The second option presented a quick way to drain his own mana depending on how hard the skill would be hampered by anything extremely potent.

Vigilance was the option that looked most favorable to Ajax. It wouldn’t affect the way the skill currently worked in his style but it did come with a powerful addition of protecting him even when he wasn’t conscious. Being tied to only an Uncommon skill did have its drawbacks as powerful and high leveled assassination skills would bypass it but if it could even buy him a moment that might be enough.

In the end Ajax went with Vigilance. There were many other ways he could prepare before a fight that would be more efficient than Upfront payment and Filtration was too big of an unknown to take a chance on. With his decision made he moved on to [Mana Augmentation]

[MANA AUGMENTATION] ADVANCEMENT OPTIONS : 

Preservation : lowers damage to infused objects by half.

Brawler : allows augmentation of your own body. (harmful affinities will cause damage to your own body) 

Matched augmentation : increases potency of augmentation when channeled through a mana gem of matching affinity.

Delayed increase : allows to increase the mana infused in an augmentation up to double until the point of use.

Unlike [Mana Skin] it was easy for Ajax to remove two of the choices. Both Preservation and Brawler were not all that useful for him. He had already been focusing on a different work around that was better than Preservation and brawler could almost be replicated by simply augmenting his armor.

Matched augmentation seemed perfect for his plans. He was already going to focus on matching large mana gems with specific weapons to better bring out his affinities. That only left Delayed increase to consider. 

The final option would steer Ajax away from his current fighting style by focusing on his bow and arrows a lot more. Unlike his melee weapons where Ajax could always increase the power since he was in contact his arrows didn’t have that option and missing was a real possibility. This would have been the clear choice should getting his hands on mana gems been an issue.

With Matched augmentation selected Ajax moved on to [Expel Mana].

[EXPEL MANA] ADVANCEMENT OPTIONS : 

Size control : allows better control of large Mana released.

Overcharge : allows larger amounts of Mana to be released at once.

It wasn’t all that surprising to see he had so little choice when it came to [Expel Mana], it was an Uncommon skill that he used as a basis for his other skills. It was simply a choice of if he wanted to have better control over his larger spells or even larger spells.

Ajax asked Lexi for her input on the matter since the choice wasn’t clear. 

“It’s more a question of what you want to focus on.” Lexi answered. “You can make up for the other choice with training. You can eventually increase how much mana you can output and you can also work on your control of large mana amounts. I would suggest going for Overcharge since you can work on your control with the help of the staff. That way you won’t constantly be using up your own Mana just to unleash large spells to push your limits.” 

Ajax found himself agreeing with Lexi’s logic. More than that however while both options were good until he had gained his staff control had never been that big of a problem for him, spell size limit however had come back to bite him a time or two. Even if Size control could help him to better use the ettin’s staff in the short term Oversize was simply the better choice.

[Sense Mana]’s choices weren’t even close.

[SENSE MANA] ADVANCEMENT OPTIONS : 

Radial increase: increases the range of the skill

Focused detail : increases the focus of the skill allowing to better sense the form and affinity of the Mana.

Ajax selected Focused detail without hesitation. As much as he would have liked Radial increase, especially now that he was fighting stronger and stronger opponents the range limit on his [Sense Mana] did leave him open to surprise attacks from long ranged focused opponents it simply didn’t compare with Focused detail. 

Focused detail would first and foremost help Ajax with analyzing other Mana types. Increased detail would help him better mimic them with his own Mana control to recreate them and hopefully gain the affinities. That wasn’t saying anything of how much it would help with his alchemy, especially now that he was starting to use more mana dense ingredients that didn’t have perfect instruction due to how often substitutes needed to be used in recipes due to availability of ingredients, this often left it to the alchemists skill to balance everything and mana was one of the hardest things to balance.

Ajax’s final skill was [Inspector’s Eye]. 

[INSPECTOR’S EYE] ADVANCEMENT OPTIONS : 

Piercing glare : increases potency to better pierce privacy Skills.

Natural breakdown(Synergises with [Alchemist's Examination]) : increases detail in regards to natural makeup of objects and being as well as their use regarding [Alchemy]

Predator’s focus (Synegises with [Judge Threat] and [Spot Weakness]) : increases insight regarding strength and weaknesses of an opponent.

Unlike his other skills each of [Inspector’s Eye]’s options went towards a different part of his life. Piercing glare would be ideal for politics allowing him to bypass privacy skills and get a better grasp of who he is dealing with. 

Natural breakdown would be the perfect choice for his alchemy. With the increased need to work with what you have rather than hoping for exact reagents this would save him a lot of time and reagents by letting him see and glaring issues with certain combinations.

Predator’s focus was the natural combat selection and the choice Ajax was leaning towards. It didn;t have so much to do with [Judge Threat] as he rarely picked his opponent but the synergy with [Spot Weakness] was temptin, especially since a Legendary skill would almost certainly allow him to find out about any affinity the opponent was weak against. 

“You’re not going to like this.” Xavier said when he asked both him and Lexi for their input on the choice. “But I think you should go with Piercing glare.” 

Ajax instinctively turned towards Lexi when he heard Xavier’s opinion only to find her biting her lower lip. “I’m sorry but I agree.” she said. 

“Why?” Ajax asked, he couldn’t see the logic. 

“Because you already have skills for both combat and alchemy.” Lexi explained. “It might take a while but when your other skills reach their thresholds there’ll almost certainly be options to mimic the use you want. You have no other way of increasing your ability to pierce privacy skills, more than that you are extremely unlikely to gain supporting skills for it since you have a Legendary one you rely on.” 

As much as he didn’t like it Ajax could see their point. More than that his ability to bypass a privacy skill was about to become much more important as it would be a great tool in weeding out the spies that were surely going to try and infiltrate his retainers. With a sigh Ajax made his last selection before stretching out to take a nap.