Chapter 478

Ajax didn’t notice it, his focus on controlling the mana well enough to unleash the spell with even a general intent was too much for him to pick up on something that seemed natural, the lightning disaster he had unleashed had behaved a lot more like natural lightning than a lightning spell. Including a thunderous thunderclap that left most of the people next to him with bleeding ears and serious balance issues.

Ajax’s focus was on the smoking sphere of charred flesh that was dropping out of the sky, despite that Ajax didn’t believe for a second that it was dead. If the creature he was fighting wasn’t a Floor Boss he might have questioned if it could have survived but instead he was already pulling back his first arrow ready to release it as soon as he was in range.

“That staff is a menace.” one of the squad members commented as he took in what was happening. “If it could do that with their mana what could it do when powered by ten Mind focused mages. I doubt it was correctly evaluated.” 

“I'm with you on that,” another nodded. “It focused the mana into the spell much better than I would have expected, I bet the dwarven enchanters would shave off their beards to study them. The lack of control is somewhat troubling, his lightning spells don’t produce a thunderclap, that this one went so far out of his control while still remaining a focused spell in terms of mana means friendly fire is more than just possible when using that thing to its full potential, it's likely.” 

“You [Sense Mana] is better than mine, you’ll keep an eye out for it right?” the first one asked as he narrowed his eyes towards the beholder. “Wind magic is a really bad one when it could turn to kill the rest of them at a moment’s notice. Doesn’t help that they are all out of Mana, Stamina and because of the thunderclap have the balance of a newborn fawn.” 

“I got it.” The mage nodded as they both turned their attention towards the fight that was starting back up now that Ajax was in range and the beholder slowed its fall as it started to fly once more. 

The first arrow Ajax fired was loaded with Vibration Mana. From the way the beholder’s skin blackened he was sure that following it up with a powerful shockwave was sure to crack it like an egg and offer plenty of weak spots he could poke arrows into and unleash his other elements.

Ajax was not the only one to attack however. While a number of the beholder’s eyes glowed bright green as it used its Wind mana to help its innate flight abilities four pupils one next to the other glowed a sickly deep dark green before a focused beam of magic shot towards Ajax.

“Fuck” Ajax had no hesitation in blasting himself with a bit of wind mana to help ensure he dodged the beam in time. He cleared the attack by a good ten feet by the time it reached him but that did nothing to ease his worries.

Ajax recognised the affinity concentrated in the beam. But even if he hadn’t recognised it would be obvious what the affinity was from the way the jungle reacted in the wake of the attack that missed. 

“Wind and Decay.” Lexi muttered as she took in the line of dead plants that were decomposing in front of her eyes. The healing enchantments on her gear worked to help with the small amount of damage the thunderclap did. “Both are bad but at least they don’t pair well together.

Seeing the beholder’s Decay beam just reinforced Ajax’s decision to keep his distance for now. His [Mana Syphon] had weakened the beam of Decay energy but it moved so fast it barely had any time to work on it.

Much like the Lightning strike the arrow also hit the wind wall surrounding the beholder, but with the amount of mana Ajax infused in the arrow that hardly mattered as the shockwave from the release on impact hit the beholder perfectly causing the burnt outer skin to crack and leak a viscous dark blue substance Ajax believed to be the creature’s blood, more grotesque however were the two eyeballs that burst from the impact of the shockwave.

Following the second hit Ajax wasted no time lining up his next shot, he had no intention of letting the beholder recover to line up another one of those Decay beams. Despite the high amount of mana he had felt infused into it Ajax knew this fight wouldn’t come down to an empty mana pool. 

The beholder had also adapted to Ajax’s fighting style. Rather than using a wind wall he swapped to form an ice wall to stop the following arrows. The mana used up to create repeated ice walls  would quickly add up since they would just drop out of the sky as soon as they stopped an arrow or two. 

“That’s the third element” Anna called out as she spectated the fight. 

Ice and Wind were a good combination, unfortunately for the beholder the combination wasn’t particularly useful against Ajax. As Arianwyn found out during her duel with Ajax, maintaining a blizzard against [Mana Syphon] was not only difficult but also not all that rewarding. Even now the beholder’s fallen ice walls were being drained of their mana to feed Ajax’s Legendary skill.

Realising that the distance between them was a problem the beholder started to fly straight towards Ajax as fast as it could but Ajax was quick to react as he quickly started to back away from the beholder while maintaining his barrage of arrows.

This game of cat and mouse continued for another two minutes as more and more arrows started to find their mark into the beholder’s flesh. Not even the use of the beholder’s forth magic was enough to bridge the gap between them. Fire, if anything, was less useful than the beholder’s other options. 

The two times the beholder tried to use fire the flames were simply too slow to reach their mark, more than that their loss of power meant that Ajax had an easy time defending against them with a wall of ice of his own.

“It’s odd.” Lexi said as she watched the fight. “It feels like [Mana Syphon] isn’t working as well as it should.” 

“Beholders are known for having increased mana potency.” Anna replied with a frown as she took in the battle. “But that shouldn’t make a difference for [Mana Syphon] it’s almost like the spells are a little resistant to his attempt at breaking them down, it’s like a lesser version of…” 

Anna trailed off as she was aware of everyone now paying attention to their conversation, she didn’t want to reveal her Legendary skill so openly, especially when there was no need for it as Lexi picked up exactly what she meant. Since getting her Legendary skill her flames had become a lot more resilient against [Mana Syphon], while the beholder’s spells didn’t have quite the same resistance it applied to all its affinities. 

“Maybe there is something we overlooked about beholders.” Lexi agreed as she watched with a smile as Ajax’s Shadow infused arrow snuck its way past the beholder’s defences to perfectly pierce one of the eyeballs that dotted the charred sphere of flesh.

“It doesn’t look like it will last much longer.” Benedict pointed out as the beholder’s flight started to become more and more unsteady, slowing down in its chase of Ajax as it swayed side to side. 

It was on one of those swings that the Floor Boss stopped focusing on Ajax and picked up speed once again as it headed straight for the group of gathered low level targets. It had taken the creature a while to realize it but after chasing Ajax around for the better part of three minutes with nothing to show for it other than the arrows that now impaled it the creature picked up on the fact that Ajax was trying to lead it away from the group.

“Damn it.” Ajax cursed as he stopped retreating and charged straight after the creature as he continued to fire arrows. 

As he saw it Ajax had no more leeway to keep his distance, now that the beholder figured out where the weak prey was he had to close the distance and put it down quickly before it got in range to fire a Decay beam. 

With [Mana Syphon] working at full power Ajax was now a lot faster, easily outpacing the beholder and catching up to it long before it got in range to hit the rest of the group. From the uneasy way the creature still swayed and the weak and predictable attacks it launched towards hit Ajax was sure he had the upper hand. 

“Noooo!” Ajax barely had time to register Lexi’s scream before all of the eyes the beholder had facing him suddenly glowed bright silver.

Ajax didn’t even have time to curse as he realized his mistake. In his haste to catch up with the creature he had overlooked the fact that while the beholder had already shown four different affinities it had yet to use one that was of Legendary standing. 

Ajax could feel it all around him as an invisible force wrapped him up mid air following his jump from a tree branch. [Telekinesis], a skill that had no records of being used by any humanoid mage. There were plenty of records of monsters using it but no humanoid had managed to learn it. Part of that was because of how versatile the magic was, it didn’t fit with runecasting or chanting, it worked best with channeling but that took too long to set up. 

Ajax didn’t have time to worry about the history of the skill however. He was much more concerned with the fact that he was lifted into the air away from any point of contact that he could use to reposition himself as the beholder prepared to fire a Decay beam towards him.