Chapter 418

Ajax wasn’t unconscious for long, especially with the prince healing him quickly after they confirmed the worm had died. He woke up two minutes later with a headache that would put any hangover to shame.

“Ugh,” Ajax groaned as he rubbed his forehead in a futile attempt to lessen the throbbing pain. “What happened?” 

Even with the pain he was still quick to look around and survey his surroundings. Sadly the surroundings didn’t tell him anything, sure he could see a good portion of the worm corpse but he didn’t know if he had gotten the kill or if they had been forced to intervene after he lost consciousness.

“You did it.” the prince confirmed for him with a grin. “ It was closer than I would have liked, next time let's not go for something with that much vitality and endurance. But you did it.” 

Ajax couldn’t suppress the wide smile that broke out on his face, the smile didn’t last long as it turned in a wince following a particularly powerful pulse of pain from his head. 

“I’m dry on mana.” he rasped out. 

“Well you have at least ten more minutes before you can take a potion to help with that so you’ll just have to bear with it.” Aranor said as he approached him. 

During his fight the ranger scout had left to cover as large a portion of the floor as he could. Much like on the other floors he wasn’t looking to kill anything but simply looking for anything that could be brought out of the dungeon, the rest of the squad had watched his fight however. This fight raised their opinion of Ajax considerably, they had all seen aristocats being boosted, even those who had talent, it was Ajax’s attitude and dedication to accept the duel of attrition that impressed the rangers. 

As he went to stand up Ajax was glad to see that his physical body was fully healed, the burns he had before had been healed, the same couldn’t be said about his mana channels, his final blow had over-stressed them. 

“Where’s my spear?” Ajax asked as he got to his unsteady feet. 

“I got it.” the prince said as he pulled out the two handed spear and the shield Ajax had tossed aside out of his spacial ring. “You did quite a number on them.” 

The shield looked exactly how Ajax expended it would, deformed from the pressure and heat, the deformation rendering its enchantments broken and even a few patches of rock stuck to the surface where the molten rock had cooled. 

The spear on the other hand came as a surprise for Ajax. While he had fully expected the shaft to be in rough shape he hadn’t expected the structural damage the tip had suffered. It was only then that he remembered that his glove had failed partway through that final attack, with the gemstone shattered his weapon ended up channeling the Ice mana without a buffer to prevent the structural damage. 

Ajax had a back-up shield but he didn’t have a back-up spear, it simply wasn’t a weapon he expected he would have to use all that often, not only that but in the situations where he would have to use it he very much didn’t expect for it to be damaged. He was also partially right, he simply hadn’t expected the gauntlet to fail on him.

It was only now that Ajax realized he had become overly reliant on the gauntlet, sure he had initially made plans to have his weapons crafted with material that had the same affinity as the mana he most often used with them but he had kept pushing those plans back further and further, the materials would have been expensive and he hadn’t really needed them. 

“I’m surprised there’s anything left of that spear tip.” Aranor said as he examined the weapon. “With the amount of mana you pushed through it and the fact that this is barely steel from a level ninety floor I honestly expected it would freeze during the attack and shatter as well.” 

None of the elves there commented on how the spear was actually a little weak to be Ajax’s weapon. All of them knew that it had been not just adequate but in fact towards the limit of what he could use back before he left Gryndor, this just perfectly exemplified how much Ajax had grown during the last year.

“Let’s see what this last arch is, hopefully for your sake it's better than the Water and Shadow we found before.” Ajax said as he headed towards the arch the worm had been coiled around. 

As Ajax put his hand on the arch he could parley pry any mana away from it with [Mana Syphon], the floor it would lead to would contain level one hundred and fifty three creatures, Ajax had barely managed to get a read on the mana primary mana type but he had no idea about how prevalent even that would be, it could be 10% or 80% and he would be none the wiser. 

“You’re in luck, Plant.” Ajax said with a small smile before the entire group pushed on to the next floor.

The floor seemed to be some sort of jungle theme at a glance but Ajax didn’t really care, as soon as he confirmed his +1 to all stats both him, the prince and Aranor quickly exited the dungeon leaving the ranger squad to scour the floor for anything useful as well as fully clearing it.

As they exited the Dungeon the guards surrounding it moved towards them for a moment before they recognised who they were, once they saw Aranor however they quickly saluted and resumed their posts while letting them leave. They were almost all the way out of the area before the dungeon started spitting out monsters.

“Leave it.” the prince said as he saw Ajax turn. The monsters weren’t even all that strong, barely level eighty, meaning the delvers had died on the sixth floor. “They have it handled and you need to sleep, you have a party to go to tomorrow.” 

Ajax didn’t argue, he had noticed Aranor had gone back to help so he knew there was nothing he could do to help, hell even without Aranor’s help this was one of the capital’s dungeons and there were plenty of protections put in place to stop any monster outbreak from happening.

Once Ajax arrived at the embassy he found himself congratulated by everyone once they heard that he managed to clear the tenth floor. They were also understanding about his need to sleep despite it being the middle of the day, while nobody said it Ajax was well aware he looked like the worm had chewed him up and spat him back out even if he did win the fight.

“Don’t worry about it, you barely even had the chance to try [Alchemy] with level ninety five reagents consistently,” Lexi comforted Ajax as he got ready for bed once he told her about his failure to make even one successful potion. “Now that the royal family knows about your ability to predict floor themes I’m sure you’ll have more than enough chances.” 

With that Ajax crawled into bed and put his head on the pillow, Lexi had stayed and cuddled with him until he fell asleep but she then carefully left the room without waking him to join everyone else.

The party would start tomorrow around noon, everyone was attending and they all had a lot to do in preparation, everyone except Silvia and Alana. Since both of them were part of Ajax’s house they would usually be the ones in charge of preparing a gift for the birthday boy, with House Hearthbound’s gift being knowledge both of them could relax and simply enjoy themselves. Alana however had taken it upon herself to help Benedict as he was looking to make a good impression on Sylvanthal’s nobility considering his intentions with Elara.

Ajax woke up late the next morning feeling refreshed, gone was the mana headache and even his mana channels were doing much better than before. His good mood didn’t last all that long however as he had to quickly make himself presentable as they would be leaving the embassy in about one hour to go to the party, a party that would last well into the evening. 

“A headache just passed and here comes another.” Ajax muttered as he got dressed.