Chapter 437

Xavier chose to lean into his hybrid fighting style for his fight while depriving the ents of their own. The prince and Aranor had deforested a large area before Xavier started his fight with a ranged attack after which he retreated. 

Without any trees to use for their magic the ent fell back on its reliable fighting style, the only issue was that without the option of using trees the ent’s fighting style was fairly linear, this made it a child's play for Xavier to use his Legendary fighting style to perfectly dodge every single attack thrown at him. The few times the ent did manage to connect an attack it was always a glancing blow that Xavier chose to take on his own terms without leaving himself open to any follow up. 

The fight ended up taking three times longer than Anna’s and Xavier was almost out of mana by the end, despite all this his victory was much cleaner and he had taken far less damage than Anna did.

The final person to clear the floor was Lexi and she wasn’t holding back. Her Disaster Domain was not ideal for fighting the ents seeing as they had both enough durability to survive her initial attacks and were physical based fighters which meant the fight was essentially over if they ever got in melee range or Lexi. 

Lexi learnt from Anna’s fight and ensured that she charred the outside of all the trees inside of her Domain before she engaged the ent. More than that she had done so by walking up to each tree individually and touching it to set it ablaze. This led the ent to a false sense of security that allowed Anna to finish her preparations. 

Lexi started the fight with a fire attack, the element was clearly the optimal option for fighting ents. Unlike Anna however her flames weren’t backed by a Legendary Skill so they were far less effective. This was easily offset by Lexi’s use of VIbration mana, every time the ent got within twenty paces of her it was blasted away by a strong shockwave.

It didn’t take long for the ent to die, about halfway between Anna’s and Xavier’s battle duration. What was surprising was that despite Lexi being almost out of mana by the end of the fight and having used a potion to empower her spells she had perfectly controlled the fight, to the point where she hadn’t taken a single hit. 

It took a while for Ajax to scour the floor but he did eventually find an ent that had flowers alongside leaves, and more importantly seeds.

“Do you expect anything to come of those?” Aranor asked him as he watched Ajax carefully collect the seeds.

“I doubt I’ll be able to actually grow ents.” Ajax admitted as he carefully collected as many seeds as he could. “But I am pretty sure I can get these seeds to take root and grow for a while before the small tree inevitably dies before the ent ever awakens.” 

“What would be the point?” Aranor asks. 

“Look at how these trees are affecting the soil here.” Ajax pointed all around. “It's harder to feel since the dungeon floods every element of the floor with mana but these trees seem to contain the mana into the ground. I am hoping they are the answer to speeding up the formation of a high mana infused soil from the fertilizer I have.” 

The following floor was a walk in the park for Ajax, Darkclaw and even Harold. Unlike everyone else from Gryndor Harold’s stat increases were a lot lower as a portion of his total stats so he was having an easier time adapting to them. 

For his final floor of the dungeon Ajax had turned out unlucky. While the dominant element for the floor was Earth Ajax hadn’t expected the monster to be Earth golems made of basic rocks. 

The fight against the level one hundred and twenty eight felt a bit disappointing to Ajax following on the heels of his battle with the hellhound and the ettin. The golem far surpassed Ajax in durability and sheer strength but it was simply not quick enough to keep up with Ajax. More than that the golem was particularly susceptible to Vibration Mana. By the end of the fight Ajax’s hammer had also crumbled from the amount of degradation it suffered from [Mana Augmentation] had pushed through it.

“Would one hundred gold coins be enough for the body?” Aranor asked once the fight was over.

One hundred gold was a little on the low end considering that the rocks were still infused with a level one hundred and twenty eight worth of mana, Ajax nevertheless was quick to accept the deal. Out here in the middle nowhere where the dungeon was located finding a buyer would have been nearly impossible, more than that he simply didn’t have the space to transport the rocks elsewhere so Aranor buying them up was essentially free money for him.

Since there were only five floors that had to be cleared the group hadn’t even needed to set up camp inside the dungeon, they had spent a good eighteen hours inside but they had finished the dungeon before fatigue got a chance to play a factor. Ajax was do so quickly in fact that he ended up coming out ahead of Arianwyn, Elara and Benedict.

Elara had really taken her time soaking in the feeling of the storm, the three of them had taken longer to exit the dungeon than the prince and Aranor took to clear the sixth floor. 

“How was it?” Aranor asked one the three exited the dungeon. 

“It was truly something else.” Elara beamed as she gushed about the experience. 

This was the first true storm Elara had experienced following gaining her Domain, the storm inside the dungeon dwarfed anything that had appeared in the last few milenia on the outside and more than that it was also infused with mana. This provided Elara with the perfect opportunity to learn about her Domain and where she should focus to improve over the next few years. 

“So this is goodbye.” Lexi said as she gave both Elara and Arianwyn a hug.

“Not for long.” Arianwyn assured her. “ We’ll be coming to Gryndor in half a year at most.” 

Despite only knowing each other for about half a year to everyone except the prince and Aranor it seemed like so much longer. Their delving circuit was something unheard of in living memory but it was looking like it will become the start of a new trend for nobility as they wrestle to keep their raw stat superiority over commoners following the widespread information of Ajax’s methods and the increased ability to delve and clear floors for regular adventurers that comes with it.

Following the dungeon the group was splitting up into three. Arianwyn, Elara and Aranor would head back towards Sylvanthal’s capital. Ajax along with everyone else from Gryndor will tag along with Alana and Silvia as they lead their merchant caravan back to Gryndor. Finally Darkclaw would join an escort that was sent to meet him here and head straight for the capital of the Republic.  

“Take a few days to relax.” The prince advised Ajax once they got back on the road. 

“What why?” Ajax was already eager to start his training. 

“Your stats give you the ability to push through the fatigue on very little rest and the immediacy of the next challenge pushed your mind to keep ready.” the prince explained. “Your next delve will be in the Empire but that journey alone would take almost three months. For the last half a year you’ve been traveling from dungeon to dungeon tackling them every few weeks. Before that you had the tournament and before that there was another round of fast delving. You need time to let yourself recover.” 

Ajax’s initial instinct was to reject the advice. His body was feeling better than it ever had, but he noticed that the instinct to reject the advice came from the mentality that he needed to push as far as he could in a short period of time in order to not lose out on an opportunity.

Ajax’s mind had been running on fumes for a while now kept on track by the immediacy of the next challenge. He accepted the prince’s advice and chose to take a few days to simply relax and catch up with his mother and Alana. This was a perfect chance for him to finally find out everything that had happened back in Gryndor over the last year.