Chapter 424

The tenth floor of the dungeon was a common hillside meant to make things as easy as possible for Anna, Lexi and Xavier, Benedict knew he didn’t stand a chance as he was now a full physical build like his simply didn’t have a way to deal enough damage at this much of a stat discrepancy while remaining safe.

“Why is everything getting bigger?” Ajax complained as he watched a mole the size of a bus get dispatched.

“Stats.” Aranor responded. “You see this less in humanoids but it gets pretty noticeable with the few physical champions, after a certain point physical stats need to increase your size to keep your power increasing in line with the numbers.” 

“If you ever find yourself past the borders into the Wildlands and you see anything that is above level two hundred and smaller than you know that it is very heavily focused on magic and can most likely wipe you from existence.” 

Anna’s battle against a falcon that was three times larger than her was very different from the quick match she had on the last floor. The bird was clearly heavily invested into wind mana and this made it less physically sturdy than the ogre had been but wind also provided a bit of a defense against Anna’s flames.

“I hate boosting these kinds of stat differences.” one of the rangers gripped. “You’re forced to fight aggressive creature because you’ll simply run out of resources against the defensive ones.” 

Anna’s only upside was that her new flames seemed to be able to consume the wind mana from the attack the falcon launched, this wasn’t the case with normal fire attacks and drew everyone’s attention.

In the end Anna was lucky she had managed to focus her flames on the birds eyes so that the creature's final dive missed her by a few feet and crashed straight into the ground where she was able to finish it off.

“Those flames of yours are really something.” Aranor congratulated her. “But I suggest you stop focusing on any other magic type outside of raw mana barriers, you need to come up with proper defenses for when your enemy is well suited to fighting you instead of you being their weakness.” 

Xavier was the next one to try their hand against a snake, unfortunately for him even with his Legendary skill he simply didn’t have a way to fight against anything that could fly or tunnel underground.

The fight had started off well, he had taken the time to watch Ajax dance his way around a non-mini boss version of the snake and got a good read on its fighting style. In the opening exchanges not only was he perfecting his understanding but he had also managed to land a good few slashes backed by some powerful spells.

Unfortunately for Xavier the snake had caught on to his strategy before enough damage had been done and instead of going for precise devastating hits it started throwing its entire body in hope of connecting a blow. Xavier had been able to predict the change in movement but with his stats split between mental and physical he still couldn’t keep up and dodge. The prince had interfered and killed the snake once the snake’s body threw Xavier to the ground and the tail was following up with another wide swipe.

“I saw it coming.” Xavier’s fist struck the ground in frustration as he got back up. “I just can’t keep up.” 

Ajax didn’t want to put any salt on Xavier wounded pride so he handled the next snake miniboss they ran up against by ambushing it with a void empowered hammer blow straight to the brain. The snake barely had a chance to coil ready to strike once Ajax’s hammer made contact with its scales before its eyes bugged out a little and blood started seeping from its eyes and nose as the brain was squashed.

“That affinity is something else.” Arianwyn said as her hand instinctively went to her ribs that were shattered in a similar manner when his void infused hammer had stuck past her ice wall.

Lexi had a much easier time against her falcon than Anna did. While her Vibration affinity didn’t have the same raw damage that Anna’s [Pyromancer] did, its versatility showed when she was able to batter the bird left and right with well placed shockwaves. Her fight had taken longer than Anna’s and she was nearly out of mana by the end with her Domain entirely drained but at no point did she let the falcon within five feet of her.

“You think she could have been louder if she tried?” one of the rangers grumbled, Lexi’s shockwaves had sounded like thunder and drew in monsters from every direction that they all had to deal with to ensure her fight wasn’t interrupted.

Xavier had tried a second attempt against a snake but it ended up much like his first. After an even better start than his first encounter the snake had eventually given up on precise attacks and the fight ended once it switched to wide sweeping attacks that Xavier had no way to dodge. He had managed to jump over the snake’s first tail swipe by seeing it coming but the second time the snake reacted to his jump and while the tail had only managed to clip his legs it was still enough to send him to the ground and unable to react to the follow up attack.

“We’ll just have to leave this floor for next time.” Benedict said as he tried to comfort Xavier. 

Benedict knew that he wasn’t as close to being a match for these creatures as Xavier was but he was also the only other person in the group who hadn’t been able to kill them. What made this even more frustrating for Xavier however was that he could reliably best both Lexi and Anna in a duel, his build simply wasn’t as effective in covering such a large gap in levels even with a favorable match-up.

Once the group got past the tenth floor and Xavier, Lexi, Anna and Benedict left the floor clear time shrunk considerably. Floors eleven, twelve, thirteen and even fourteen barely took a two to three hours each as Ajax, Darkclaw and Harold cleared their mini bosses relatively easily, a less than ideal match-up did mean that harold had needed two tried on the fourteenth floor but even with that he was confident that a better match-up would mean he would be capable enough even against a level one hundred on the fifteenth floor. Before that however it was time for their second night in the dungeon. 

“What’s your plan?” Elara asked Ajax. “After you are done delving in our kingdom.” 

“I’ll be passing through home before I head to the Empire to delve their main dungeon.” Ajax said. 

“You got them to let you go into that again?” Arianwyn asked surprised, she had found out he had already had that chance once a few years ago but it had been essentially a solo delve and not a boost for him. 

“Part of the same deal actually.” Ajax said. “Archduke Goldmacer managed to get us two delves into the main dungeon, sadly I won’t be able to push as far into that one as I can here.” 

Ajax was comfortable enough going up against a level one hundred and thirty, he knew it would be extremely close if he was to face a level one hundred and forty, when it came to actually delving into a dungeon he wouldn’t go past level one hundred and twenty with a group of people at the same level, on his own he would stay one floor below that to one hundred and ten since multiple enemies and sneak attacks would be enough to get him killed.

“What did he give them in exchange for that?” Arianwyn asked. “And how come you got a spot?” 

Ajax didn’t answer that and just smiled, while he wasn’t the most politically apt person he knew not to give away information for free. “It’ll be a short trip, I should be back by the time you make your way to Gryndor to delve.” 

While the trip would take a couple of months there and back Ajax knew it would take longer than that to finish ironing out the current exchange in dungeon delving. Both royal families knew that whatever agreement they would make now would become the basis for the nobles exchanges that would take place to keep nobles above commoners so they would need to be much more thorough than any usual deal between countries with a solid alliance.

“And after that?” Elara asked. “What will you do once you get back and get your ducal title?” 

“It won’t just be a title.” the prince said with a smirk.

Ajax had trouble containing his surprise as he realized that he would become one of the few landed dukes of Gryndor. He knew that it would be a possibility further down the line as he got stronger and became much more influential but it was coming now.

“It seems I’ll be quite busy.” Ajax said as he watched the others try and hide their own surprise, all the while he was making plans to take care of everything that needed his personal presence while he was adjusting to the influx of stats and delegate everything while leaving for his trip to the Wild Lands in search of a bond.