Chapter 314

“Am I going to be fine using fire here?” Anna asked as they got ready to start exploring the floor.

“You’ll be fine.” The prince said. “This is a healthy tree not some dried out husk, I suggest you get your fire as hot as you can in hopes of making your enemy catch fire, don’t worry about it spreading.”

Ajax couldn’t help but agree, one other thing however was on his mind as he looked down at all the branches. “What happens if we fall out of the tree?” he asked.

“You die.” Both Shadow and the prince answered instantly.

“What if I have a way to stop my momentum before I reach the ground?” Ajax asked.

“Won’t matter, besides the fact that you can’t see the limit of the floor and you will smash into it before you reach the base of the tree, it's not the fall that will kill you.” Xavier said. “I mentioned it before but there are detailed texts on this type of dungeon. Once you get low enough on the main trunk of the tree where no more branches grow you will find intense bouts of wind. The lower you climb the stronger the wind will become until it rips you apart.”

That answer left Ajax with an unpleasant visual in his mind, this made him somewhat restless. Luckily enough they soon ran into a perfect outleft for his energy as the team found their first boss. It shouldn’t have been surprising that treents would be a thing on this floor but the hulking wood humanoids were much bulkier than he had originally expected.

“There, you see that there.” the prince pointed behind the Treents and to the side of the arch next to them. “That’s what a seed looks like. Now who wants this mini-boss?”

While the prince was talking Shadow showed his exceptional prowess, all the treents but the miniboss were dissected from top to bottom, more impressively however was that Ajax hadn’t been able to catch a glimpse of his weapons. He had been able to somewhat track him with his eyes as a blur covered in shadow mana dashed through the group but he didn’t see even the gleam of a blade.

“I’ll take it.” Ajax offered happy for the fight even though a monster at level fifty-seven wasn’t much of a challenge for him.

Despite being able to take the monster out with sheer force Ajax wanted to see just how effective fire would be against the plant based enemies.

“Already?” the prince was surprised to see his go first since he usually waited until others had their shot and would take the harder variants.

“That seed you pointed out, is it one we can take outside?” Ajax answered with a question.

“No, why?” the answer came.

“Because I want to see what happens when you use one of them for alchemy.” Ajax said with a hungry smile.

“How wasteful and greedy can you be?” one of the other nobles with them asked. “Those are natural resources and you want to waste them on alchemy?”

“That one isn’t.” Ajax pointed out. “I wonder just how much that will help me increase my skills. Would it be less wasteful to leave it behind on this floor?”

“That’s not what I meant… uh” the noble quickly backpedaled.

“Fine, go for it.” the prince said. “Just don’t make any of your explosive vials.”

Ajax had developed a big fascination with the more combat focused applications of alchemy outside of potions, he had been looking into using alchemy to create flash bangs as well as dynamite.

Everyone besides his classmates were quick to give Ajax an extra few feet of space when they heard that. “I wouldn’t do that.” Ajax defended himself. “Not to start off with anyway.” He followed up as he looked away.

With all of its friends dead the treent didn’t take all that long to find the group and come charging towards it. Ajax had no intention of trying traditional fire to kill it, it would simply use up too much mana. He instead charged straight ahead and using his axe left a long deep slash on the chest of the treent, the entire gash was filled with magma that quickly started to burn its way deeper while also cooling and forming a crust on the outside that proved to be an inconvenience for the mini-boss’s movements.

Another thing Ajax quickly noticed was that the treents used mana to move. It was quite obvious when he thought about it since bark while more durable was much more rigid than muscle, he quickly also latched [Mana Syphon] and the treent slowed down considerably.

With its movement slowed Ajax quickly got behind it and went to work with his axe, the fight lasted no longer than thirty seconds before Ajax turned the treent into a large pile of magma covered kindling.

“Probably best you don’t take on a treent Anna.” The prince said after watching the fight. “With the level difference I doubt you will be able to kill it before you run out of mana.”

“What am I supposed to kill then?” Anna asked.

“I’m sure we’ll find some birds or lizards here somewhere.” The prince reassured her.

That information appeased the fire mage but Ajax was already closing in on the seed. The seed was covered with a thin veil but Ajax still found the basketball sized object a little big for an ingredient.

“Whatever you do, don't cut it.” Shadow said, when he saw the weird look Ajax gave him he decided to be more clear. “The moment you cut it you will release all its power into the surroundings, the seeds are valuable and contain a lot of energy but they are barely stable.”

Ajax nodded and slowly picked up the seed but he was quickly interrupted by the prince. “Oh no, not now. Put that in your storage and come on, you can play with it once we set up camp.”

For the rest of the day the team focused on clearing as much of the floor as they could. With the prince and Shadow there it went much quicker than a normal floor clear would go and Ajax was pretty sure they had cleared away half the floor already. Out of all the people who needed to get a kill however Xavier was the only odd man out.

He didn’t have the mages burst potential nor the physical fighters endurance to face a monster that many levels above him, the first fight had been close but he simply ran out of both mana and stamina before he could finish it.

“Fine, yes we’ll set up the camp so you can play with the seeds now.” The prince said with exasperation as he found Ajax looking at him. They had managed to find twelve seeds they could take outside so far so he was happy with it considering they were only halfway through.

Ajax wasted no time stepping aside and pulling out his alchemy crafting set. This was a newer set he had gotten about a year ago when he outgrew his beginner set and had set him back almost a full one thousand gold coins.

The first trial he wanted to run was going to be for a rejuvenation elixir. The portions were supposed to restore stamina mana and health and the recipe was one of the most stable ones he knew. Ajax also made sure to use the exact ingredients required with no substitutes, not only that but he wasn’t making a single potion but a large batch of twenty as he wanted to dilute the seed as much as his cauldron could allow.

The final reason he chose this specific recipe for his first trial was that each ingredient had a separate preparation and they all came together at the same time instead of slowly being added to the mix one after another, that would be the perfect moment to add the seed.

As the ingredients came together Ajax removed the seeds protective layer and added it to the cauldron. He could feel every ingredient soak in the mana the seed practically pulsed as the potion started to come together.

It was then that Ajax realized there was a small problem. While he realized that the seeds held a lot of power he didn’t take into account how he would deal with all that power being released into the mixture. It wasn’t a problem at the start as the ingredients were soaking up most of it but once they got all they could take Ajax realized the seed was not only still producing more mana but it was still growing in the amount in released every second.

Ajax quickly started using [Mana Syphon] to drain the excess mana of the seed while also using his own mana supplies to smother the seed but none of it was enough. It was pure hubris to think that he could control that large amount of mana after all it took a hundred of them to revitalize the entire farmland of a kingdom.

Ajax kept pushing until [Danger Sense] started screaming at him, at that point it was all he could do to kick away the cauldron as he jumped back towards the camp. The lid had been securely placed so the bouncing cauldron drew the attention of the entire camp as they had just finished setting up the tents.

The cauldron had almost fallen off the wide branch they were on when its enchantments had finally given up and it exploded. “What the hell was that?” The prince said as they all watched chunks embedded into the area around them, the most embarrassing one for Ajax was the one he saw Shadow holding in his hand, though he didn’t know if it would have hit someone or not. “I thought I told you no explosive stuff.”

“That was the most stable recipe I knew.” Ajax responded in a daze. Despite his expensive cauldron exploding and danger he was in, Ajax was focused on the notifications he received.