Chapter 377

Sorry for the delay in getting the chapter out, wasn't all that happy with the first iteration and had to rewrite a part of it.

Ajax panic left just as quickly as it arrived, the moment he felt the statue die he knew that Lexi wasn’t in anymore danger. Despite knowing that it didn’t make him any slower in pushing himself to make sure he caught his girlfriend before she dropped to the ground after she passed out. 

Lexi was only unconscious for a few seconds as Ajax used his Light and Life mana to help her enchanted items in healing her following the battle. As she woke Ajax could see the confusion as her memories of the fight were reviewed, despite that he was happy that even when waking up like this she made jerky motions to stand up, simply learning even more into his embrace.

“How are you doing?” he asked her after she got her bearings. 

“I’ve got a killer mana headache.” Lexi said in a quiet whisper before her voice picked up some volume and pride. “But I did it.” 

“I never doubted you.” Ajax’s lie was almost perfect, nothing about him gave away that he had almost crushed that statue the moment the blow on Lexi landed, the same could not be said of Harold and Xavier who were right next to him. 

“Yeah, right.” Harold who had held him back mumbled. 

“Bullshit.” Xavier delivered the least believable cough of all time.

Lexi kindly chose to ignore the two of them as she got back to her feet before checking her notification and breaking out in an exclamation. “I did it!” 

“Lexi?” Ajax’s tone now had a quiver of concern as he examined her head for any injury he might have missed. 

“No, not that.” Lexi waved him off. “I got my Domain, the skill is finally there [Domain - Disaster(Fire, Wind, Water, Vibration)].”

A new wave of congratulatory cheer went out from all of them as Lexi did her best to overcome the exhaustion she was feeling. 

“Anyone else want to try and clear this floor?” the prince asked after he gave them a moment. 

Nobody spoke up, Anna knew that she didn’t have the defense required to take a direct attack and fire just couldn’t kill anything fast enough for them not to retaliate. Xavier looked like he was thinking about it but in the end he decided not to push it and simply shook his head no.

“Fine then, Ajax go take out your frustration because we need to get moving.” the prince said.

“Actually we aren’t in that big of a rush.” Ajax said. 

“You do remember we are trying to get out of Deepwood as quickly as possible?” the prince said with a serious voice.

“I know but this floor is perfect for my Alchemy” Ajax said. “Earth and Life mana perfectly compliment my poison, I only have two attempts so it will be two hours at most before we move on to the next floor, it's just not that big of a rush.”   

Following his comment Ajax dashed off in search of his own mini boss to kill in order to bleed off some of the restless energy that had built up as he watched Lexi’s fight. It didn’t take him long to find a target and with it being only level seventy Ajax used his hammer and Metal mana infusion to turn the hydra statue into a massive pile of rubble.

As soon as he was finished with that Ajax let out a relieved sigh before taking out his cauldron and reagents. The first mixture Ajax started with was a simple healing potion, he was only making it to get a good sense of the ambient mana before he tried the poison.

While the healing potion came out great the same could not be said for his first attempt at the poison. Sure the abundant earth mana in the surrounding air had made it a lot easier for Ajax to get his ingredients to combine; he hadn't accounted for the side effect of so much Earth type mana. While his mixture did come out just as toxic as he would have liked it to be it also came out with the same consistency of honey. There was no way to use it as a poison since it would more likely than not simply plug the wound it was applied to than enter the bloodstream.

His second attempt did wind up better than the first but it was still nothing he could proudly call a success. The second try had come out as an inferior version of the poison to his identification skill, it was still stronger than the original poison he had used to kill the first assassin, but only marginally so despite the much better reagents used.

“How did it go?” The prince asked once he saw that Ajax was finished. 

“Not great.” Ajax said with a sigh as he tossed a small tin with the first result. “That should work as an antidote to hemorrhagic poisons that are resistant to healing, just make sure to only apply a little, wipe it away quickly afterwards and don’t use it for any wounds above the neck or close to the heart.” 

“I thought it was a poison opposite the hemo-” the prince cut off his own sentence as he opened the tin and saw the viscosity of the mixture that might as well be a cream. “I’m sure it will have its uses, what about the other attempt?” 

“That one went better.” Ajax said as he showed a small vial of the poison. “Still very close to a failure but it's a little stronger than the one I had previously.” 

“That will have to do unless you find some other ingredients in the dungeon that you can take outside.” The prince followed that with an evil smirk. “You still finished off the last kill, we'll just have to make sure not to hurt the next one that badly once he starts running.” 

After the team stepped on to the tenth floor all of Ajax’s classmates exited the dungeon. With only Ajax being able to gain anything from this floor he made quick work of it and moved on to the eleventh. It was here that the delving speed started to slow down for the first time since they started their trip. With Arianwyn and Elara also needing the floor clears they now had two more people scouting and soloing bosses. 

While the eleventh, twelfth and even the thirteenth floor weren’t all that hard to handle, the same could not be said about the fourteenth floor that pushed Harold to the limit. 

“I got this.” Harold grunted even as the snake he was fighting sank its fangs into his leg.

The prince respected Harold's determination and watched as Harold brought down his sword with so much power that it went straight through the snake's scales, brain and flesh to pierce out the snake's mouth and into Harold's own leg. 

As soon as the snake was dead the prince was there to apply a tourniquet to Harold’s leg to both stop the blood loss and to stop the poison from spreading. 

“It’s a hemorrhagic poison.” Ajax quickly analyzed what remained of the venom sac from the snake corpse. “It won’t stop the healing but make sure you keep the tourniquet in place until the wound is sealed or he will lose too much blood.” 

The prince nodded as he gave Harold a supplement snack to eat, that should help him replace the blood he lost without interacting with the boosting potion he took before the fight.

“Wouldn’t your poison cream work as well?” Darkclaw asked as he prodded Ajax jokingly about his failed attempt. 

“In theory, yes.” Ajax nodded. “But it was still an attempt to make a poison, I wouldn’t try it out without a proper healer present and especially not on someone who can’t take a potion.” 

Once Harold was stable the team moved on to the fifteenth floor where Harold bowed out and the rest of them remained to battle the level one hundred. Since Ajax had managed to find a humanoid floor none of them were that worried about the upcoming fights. Yes, they wouldn’t be easy but all four of them had already cleared similar floors in the main dungeons of their own respective kingdoms.

“Are you sure?” Arianwyn asked Ajax once they were all standing in front of the arch to the sixteenth floor. “The jump in power is a lot bigger than just the ten levels, the dungeon becomes a lot harder, the monsters are stronger if more solitary.” 

“I’m sure.” Ajax said as he followed the prince onto the sixteenth floor.

Once there everyone but Ajax and the prince exited while Ajax took a deep breath feeling the increase in ambient mana as he swiped away the extra stat notification to take in his new surroundings. 

The sixteenth floor was forest themed. Out of all the options they found on the previous floor this was the best one, not only that but it seemed like fate for Ajax considering the first floor of the first dungeon he entered was forest themed so his first floor past level one hundred should be the same.