Chapter 357

As the group made their way to the arch Ajax recommended the prince was quick to come to his side. “Try draining my mana.” the prince said as he offered his hand.

Ajax attempted to do the same thing he had done with Xavier and Arianwyn but to no avail. The prince felt exactly the same as everyone else did before Ajax’s latest training in draining Domains. “It’s not working.”

“Okay,” the prince nodded in satisfaction. “Now try again.”

As Ajax attempted to use [Mana Syphon] a second time he actually felt it latch on to something and began slowly pulling mana from the prince. The rate it worked at was much slower however, barely managing to pull three points of mana in the same amount of time it took to take thirty from Xavier. Not only that but the prince was able to stop it as soon as the fourth point was taken.

“Even when it works it's much slower on you.” Ajax said, thinking back it was also slower on Arianwyn compared to Xavier but the difference wasn’t this big.

“That’s because I know how to defend myself against drain skills.” the prince said. “They start to appear in dungeons at level one hundred and thirty and above, they are one of the main reasons why high level people aren’t allowed to delve.”

“They are that big a problem?” Ajax asked, surprised.

“Unlike you, those monsters are all very specialized in draining. They are almost exclusively without another form of offense, on their own one of them wouldn’t be that big of an issue but they are all swarm monsters and they don’t have your touch requirement limitation.” The prince explained. “They are still rather rare in dungeons but the mortality rate when first encountered is above 80%, and that is just from the groups that had someone survive to report what killed them. A big reason why is because people can’t figure out what it is that is draining them, they exploit stealth and all of the drained resources are funneled into a defensive skill.”

Ajax could imagine it. A couple dozen chameleons following you around slowly draining you of your stamina mana or health as they empowered their shields. He knew from experience just how debilitating going below the final hundred points of mana was for him and if something was to keep draining after there was nothing left he would survive for long.

“You instinctively learn to fight it and slow down the drain as you experience it, not only that but the more total stats you have the harder you are to drain, it’s why even when I am not fighting you it takes so much time to drain from me.” the prince said. “As the difference in stats between us closes I won’t be able to shut you out fully.”

“Doubt I’ll be using this in combat.” Ajax said honestly, while the ability to drain mana from people was interesting it didn’t have any current practical applications, not unless he would choose to pick a specialization based on it on his next upgrade of the skill.

“It won’t do you much good in combat but be careful when using it around commoners and children.” the prince advised. “They mostly don’t have all that much mana and you should outlevel them handedly by now. Draining them can be a really elegant way of subduing them but it can also be very harmful if you drain too much, and it’s not easy to know how much mana someone has left. The big problem they cause is that if they are released from the dungeon a single hive can kill an entire city in a few hours with the swarm just passing through.”

“Is there a resistance skill to it?” Ajax asked.

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“There is but it’s hard to unlock, once you thin out the swarm enough it flees and stops draining so you can’t just keep one alive in hopes of unlocking the skill.” the prince said. “Most who have it now also have mental scars from unlocking it as they are the sole survivors of the team that got overwhelmed.”

“I’ll have to see if I can help people unlock the skill.” Ajax said, a little said that he couldn’t help himself unlock it.

“The Adventurer’s Guild will want you to help its high end teams experience a drain.” the prince said. “Even if none of them get the skill there are so few adventurer parties that are allowed to delve at that level that they will be willing to invest in giving them the experience to fight back against the drain at all.”

As Ajax was left to think on that the group quickly made it to the correct arch and crossed over to the third floor of the dungeon. A sickly green hue illuminated the otherwise dark tunnels of the third floor as the party entered.

“Damn it, I was hoping for a dry forest.” Ajax swore as he took in the floor setting. “Should have realized there wasn’t enough light mana for that.”

“I hate underground floors.” Anna muttered as she pulled an enchanted item from her spacial ring to light up her surroundings. “Fire is so much harder to use.”

Fire spells weren’t as reliant on oxygen to work since they could simply use mana as a fuel instead, this didn’t mean that they wouldn’t use up all the oxygen available first however if the caster wasn’t being careful.

“Most of the monsters here are probably plant based.” Ajax informed them as he was busy scraping some of the moss off the wall. “There was too much plant mana in the arch for it to be explained just by this glowing moss.”

Despite knowing that the moss was probably nothing special Ajax just couldn’t resist taking a small sample to mess around with. From his memories of Earth he couldn’t help but associate the green glowing moss with radiation and found himself fascinated.

It didn’t take more than ten minutes of walking down the tunnel before the group found their first arch, interestingly enough it looked completely undefended but none of them were stupid enough to actually believe it.

“Here we are, who wants the first boss? it’s looking like a tough one.” the prince said with a cheery voice as he looked towards Anna, Lexi, Xavier and Benedict.

“What is it?” Anna didn’t buy into the prince’s game and much to his disappointment looked to strategize.

“A vine predator.” Aranor answered her, clearly also looking to get through this as quickly as possible. “The root and stem are a few meters buried behind that wall but the vines surround this tunnel and can come from all sides.” he said pointing to their right.

“How stable is this tunnel?” Lexi asked as she excitedly thought of something.

Ajax quickly caught on to her plan and sent out a wave of mana through the ground looking to reinforce the tunnel before answering her. “It feels pretty stable, I say go for it and I’ll make sure it doesn’t come down on our heads.”

“What are you talking about?” Xavier asked as he looked with more trepidation towards the cracks in the walls.

Lexi however wasn’t going to stand around and already began chanting as she slowly started to walk towards the wall Aranor indicated. Once she was twenty feet away all of them became aware of the slowly slithering vines that had started coming out of the cracks and were slowly heading towards her.

“That’s quite a bit of mana.” Aranor commented as he felt Lexi gather more than five hundred mana in her spell.

The vines started moving slightly quicker as they closed in on the mage but they hadn’t yet given up on their attempt at stealth, the monster unaware that it had already been spotted. It was only when Lexi was two steps away from the wall that the monster finally sensed the mana Lexi was channeling and the vines lost any attempt at subtlety and darted straight for her.

“Too late.” Ajax muttered with a grin as he channeled his own mana ready to react once Lexi cast her spells.

Lexi finished her chant right as her arm extended and made contact with the wall, following the large release of mana the entire tunnel started to shake and Lexi released a powerful shockwave straight towards the root and stem of the plant.

Rubble started to fall from the ceiling as the plant abandoned any already created pathways and the vines pushed as hard as they could towards Lexi but it was already too late as the shockwave squashed the plant while a massive spider web of cracks formed from the point where Lexi touched the wall.

Ajax wasted no time, as soon as he felt the plant die with his [Sense Mana] he quickly released a five hundred mana spell of his own to stabilize to tunnel, he couldn’t do it beforehand as he wanted to make sure Lexi got the solo kill and he reinforcing it earth beforehand could have been counted as interference with the vines.

“That was awesome, how did you do that?” Elara was surprisingly the first person to react as everything stopped shaking. “Was that sound mana? That would fit so well in my storm Domain, thunder is sound after all.” she quickly got a hold of herself as soon as she finished talking and followed up with a slightly embarrassed voice. “We should discuss a deal in private after this dungeon.”