Chapter 313

The reveal of Ajax’s ability put all of his former classmates in a much better mood causing them to try and turn the night of rest between delves into one of celebration. This idea was quickly shut down, just because they only had one more floor to clear tomorrow didn’t mean that others had just as little to do. This didn’t stop Lexi from attempting to sneak over to Ajax’s tent once or twice but the difference in stats and skills meant that she couldn’t take two steps outside her tent without the oldest prince knowing about it.

“Can’t you just turn a blind eye?” Lexi asked as she was led back to her tent. “His tent has a silencing enchantment.”

“No.” the prince replied firmly as he pulled open her tent flap. “Now go to sleep.”

Lexi huffed as she retreated into her tent. How was she going to get any sleep when she was so excited and happy? The prince simply rubbed the bridge of his nose as he felt a headache coming on.

“What’s the harm in just turning a blind eye?” Shadow asked as he appeared next to the prince. “My sources haven’t told me that Gryndor cares all that much about remaining ‘pure’ for marriage, well besides a few families.”

“That’s not the issue.” The prince said. “Everyone knows they are together, almost everyone knows they aren’t waiting either. The problem is everyone else with us.”

“They’re the best of the new generation, what’s so bad about that?” Shadow asked.

“You heard what is going on with the generation after them?” the prince answered with a question.

“Yes, you’re somehow getting them to hold their points until fifteen before spending them with no drawbacks.” Shadow answered. “Care to share how?”

The prince just gave him a ‘nice try’ smile at that and didn’t bother to answer that question. “We are, that means that their generation will slowly be surpassed. Maybe not them since they are getting these extra stats but their friends, their siblings. Both Ajax and Lexi will end up leaders.”

“I see the issue now.” Shadow nodded. “Ajax was the source of this discovery, it’s what got him his title, and its success is what would see it upgraded. Some might resent him for it and having sex in the dungeon, during a boost in a foreign dungeon of all times, that could be used against them.”

It was the prince’s turn to be surprised. He knew that it had gotten out that Ajax was the source of the discovery long ago but from the way Shadow talked he was sure of Ajax’s short term path to Duke and that was something that was a closely guarded secret.

“I’m more worried that his less talented peers will band together against him out of envy.” the prince let out a sigh. “He was born a commoner, but became a duke. He has more than one Legendary skill. He made more than one discovery. We both know how some members of the nobility feel about people reaching above their station and the less acceptable objections they have to him the better.”

The morning after had gone about as Ajax expected it to, when they got to the next arch he was all but interrogated about what to expect from the floor, after all despite them trusting his word they were curious just how accurate his ability was.

“So what will it be?” the prince asked.

“I don’t know.” Ajax said with a frown as he looked at the arch. “There is a bit of air mana, some life as well, the rest however is all plant.”

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“Sounds like a forest.” The prince said.

“It's not a forest.” Ajax said with surety. “There is no Earth mana I could feel there, at all.”

“That ever happened before?” Shadow asked curiously.

“Yes, a few times. Frozen floors set on ice, flooded floors, even happened upon a floor made up entirely of mirrors.” Ajax answered.

“That can’t have been that hard.” One of the younger people with them tried to join the conversation, his words however caused both the older prince, Shadow and the more experienced delvers among them to wince.

“How bad was it?” Shadow asked instead, his serious mood let the others know that such floors were no joking matters.

“Bad, light elementals mostly.” Ajax shared. “Turns out there were shadow elementals too, we lost someone thinking we were safe after we smashed the mirrors underneath us.”

“Should we be going here then?” the same person asked.

“Yes, plant life and wind. All of them should make it easy to get a kill with fire based attacks.” Ajax nodded towards the arch. “If this was a normal delve and not a boost I would stay away but nothing there should be a threat to us with them around.”

With the decision made the whole party started walking through the arch. Exiting out the other side however came as a real surprise to most of them, as they swiped the system notification about extra stat points away and came face to face with a long drop.

“It's a tree.” Ajax whispered in awe as he looked up at the massive tree that stretched out and covered his entire field of vision. “The whole floor is happening on a giant tree.” Ajax couldn’t help but wonder if this was what Yggdrasil would look like from up close.

While everyone else was marveling at the odd floor they got, the two boosters were staring intently at one another, the serious atmosphere slowly spread as everyone slowly backed away from them and towards the arch just in case something happened.

“Seventy - thirty.” The prince said at last, breaking the silence.

“Too much.” Shadow responded. “Fifty - fifty.”

“It’s our run and our boost.” the prince countered.

“It’s our dungeon, runs have been halted and postponed for less.” Shadow didn’t back down.

“Ajax led us to it.” Ajax felt himself start to sweat as Shadow glanced at him when the prince brought that up.

“Sixty - forty.” Shadow finally got out after a long moment of pause. He raised his hand when he saw the prince go to speak again. “And we round in your favor.”

“Deal” the prince’s serious face was replaced with his usual friendly smile as he extended his arm towards the beastkin.

“Deal.” Shadow said as he took the arm.

“Alright everyone, sorry about that.” the prince said as he turned towards the group. “SOrry for the inconvenience but we will be fully clearing this floor.”

“What?”

“Why?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Well at least it’s an interesting floor.”

“Floors like this are just too rare to pass up I’m afraid.” the prince said. “You will be free to keep anything you can get, the only exceptions are any seeds from the tree that can be taken outside. Those will all be collected and retained as a national resource. There are usually twenty to thirty of them on a floor this size.”

“I heard about these.” Xavier whispered conspiratorially to his former classmates. “The seeds are an emergency measure.”

“Emergency measures for what?” Ajax asked.

“For famine.” Xavier answered. “It's pretty obvious but no matter what if you plant a seed from this tree you won’t get a tree this size.”

“That’s a good thing,” Benedict pointed out. “If you could get it to grow it would be a national weapon. All you have to do is plant it by the border and cut it down while making sure it falls on your enemy. I don’t see what you can do about something like that.”

“The seeds basically dissolve in the soil.” Xavier waved away talk of a super weapon. “ It takes about a hundred of them to replace an entire kingdom’s harvest. So long as you have the fields and workers you can plant and harvest every farmland in the kingdom in about a month.”

Ajax could see how the seeds weren’t all that valuable to an individual if that was all they were good for. They were too situational even if a noble could use one to massively increase his yield they were more useful as an emergency measure. “Are there seeds that we can’t take out of the dungeon?” Ajax asked as his mind fixed on the wording of the prince’s announcement.

“There should be, why? What do you want those for?” Xavier asked.

“I want to see what they can do in alchemy, from the sounds of it they could be used to amplify the potency of a potion by empowering the ingredients during the brewing process.” As always Ajax had his alchemy tools on him as well as a few sets of supplies for some specific recipes he knew well. He was eager to see if he could document a solid result, especially if the kingdom had hundreds of such seeds in its coffers for a rainy day.

“I suggest we all watch our step.” Anna’s serious tone brought their focus to her. “We’re some of the weakest here and while the monsters might not be an issue this whole floor is much like a labyrinth, there could be a trap anywhere. Even worse since it's all plant life the trap might be instinctually smart enough not to go for the first person that passes over it and try to aim for someone more fragile.”