Chapter 416

The ninth floor of the dungeon was a wild jungle that provided Ajax with a large variety of ingredients to use in his [Alchemy]. It didn’t take long for him to set up his cauldron and portable lab equipment and he began working while ignoring the rest of the world.

“What’s wrong?” the prince asked as he approached Ajax after a few hours.

Ajax was starting to look more and more defeated every time he took a small break to grab new ingredients, despite this he never moved to store any of the resulting potions.

“I got too arrogant.” Ajax said with a defeated tone. “All seven of my attempts at brewing something failed.”

It had been a very long time since Ajax had experienced something like this. The last time this happened was more than a decade ago in his old village when he was attempting to unlock the [Alchemy] skill.

It wasn’t just that he had failed to brew a potion seven times in a row that made Ajax feel so defeated, it was that he recognised this for what it was, a lack of skill on his part. Unlike combat his massively inflated stats didn’t compensate enough when it came to alchemy. The same was true of his Legendary skills, Ajax simply wasn’t yet ready for ingredients of this quality.

“Why not try a more stable recipe?” the prince asked.

“I have no clue what to try with ingredients like these.” Ajax answered honestly. “The only thing I can do with them is mix them with some of my existing ingredients, their quality will only ease the creation of the recipes I already know, it won’t increase the quality of the outcome.

“Don’t worry about this.” The prince waved away Ajax’s concerns. “You’ll have years to practice your alchemy skill as you get used to your increased stats. Most alchemists back home were actually very surprised that your skill with alchemy remained proficient within one floor or what you could consistently delve. At your level most crafting adventurers are barely now getting used to consistently using mana infused reagents.”

The encouragement helped Ajax a little but it was by no means enough to cancel out the frustration he was feeling. Luckily enough for him he still had to clear this floor so he was planning on taking all his frustration out on the miniboss he would have to face.

Battling an ent turned out to be exactly what Ajax needed. While unlike most depictions of the living trees back on Earth these ents were rooted to the ground, the control over the ground still forced Ajax to adapt.

While Ajax’s [Mana Syphon] was good enough to weaken any spells the ent tried to unleash the ent’s own large underground mana networked left Ajax with no options but to slowly whittle away with [Mana Augmentation].

By the time he won Ajax was down to a little under half his mana pool, not only that but his armor also sported a few tears here and there where one branch or another had broken through his defenses.

During the time that Ajax fought the prince and Aranor watched over him, the rest of the elves had spent all the time Ajax spent crafting and killing one miniboss scouring the floor for anything they could take back out, the jungle was filled with exotic ingredients that might be novel enough to help push the skill of some high end alchemists.

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More than a few of the elves didn’t seem happy to split their spoils 50 - 50 with Ajax upon their return. None of them complained however, all of them were aware of the agreement that the simple fact they got to keep everything they found on the floors Ajax wasn’t clearing would make up for it.

For his final floor Ajax surprised everyone when he decided to go with the fire theme. “Are you sure it’s a good idea?” the prince asked him once he heard his decision.

“I’m sure.” Ajax nodded. “Even with how dangerous fire is there are plenty of ways for me to weaken it with water and ice, not only that but it's also the only element that wouldn’t be instantly lethal for me when wielded by a level one hundred and thirty five.”

With such a large level difference almost every other element could end the fight pretty much instantly, that was something Ajax had been made keenly aware of when he was fighting against the assassins back in Deepwood. The Plant floor could lead to a poison he had no way of counteracting, the earth floor could see him crushed with a single swing, Lightning, Shadow and Light each came with their own big issues.

“You do make a good point.” the prince nodded before he turned towards his newest live entertainment. “How about you Rimthel, have you made a decision?” The prince made no effort to mask the glee in his voice.

Rimthel was stuck with a very hard decision. One of the arches Ajax had inspected as he was looking for a good floor did end up being primarily Metal mana. The only question left was if Rimthel would be part of the clear team sent there, where he would most likely spend days on end smithing away at the mountains of metal they couldn’t take outside, or if he would pass on this arch and hope that another primarily Metal floor was available after the next floor.

Unlike the last floor this time all the remaining members of the second ranger squad split up into two man squads along with Rimthel as they each chose one floor to go clear. Ajax didn’t pay much attention to that as he also moved on to the next floor where his next challenge awaited.

The first thing Ajax noticed as he stepped through the arch was the way the air seemed to burn his lungs as he drew breath. The floor layout was a stretched out hilly landscape that was covered in geyser-like holes that periodically released a column of flames.

“Well this is certainly a strange floor.” the prince said as he took in the surroundings. “Let's find you something to kill other than an elemental.” n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Ajax very much agreed with the sentiment, while an elemental would be among some of the more fragile creatures they were likely to find, the sheer versatility and mobility of a flame elemental would quickly overwhelm him. That wasn’t even mentioning the issues pure physical attacks would have on doing any damage at all to the creature.

It didn’t take long for the group to be attacked by a roaming pack or worms. Or better said worm-like creatures, while the monsters did have the same body type as a worm that is where the similarities ended.

The creature's heads could split along an X shape revealing rows of serrated teeth and their flesh open like a blooming flower revealing a direct express access to their stomach in the center. Unlike the normal fleshy skin he was used to, these worms were covered in large scales with small gaps here and there from where they could release a flame jet.

“Those look promising.” the prince said as the ranger squad jumped into action. There wasn’t a miniboss present in the roaming group that attacked them so there was no need for Ajax to take part in the fighting. That wasn’t to say his eyes weren’t fixed on the fight to examine the worms for any strengths they might show and more importantly the weaknesses that would be made obvious.

“Yes they do.” Ajax agreed after a short while where he examined the creatures as they were being taken apart by the rangers. The worms were more physically focused than Ajax would have wanted but the limitations of their large body with no appendages was enough to make up for it.

It took the team a few tries to find the first worm mini boss. The first two arches they found were both guarded by elementals. “Third time’s the charm.” Ajax said with a smile as they finally found a larger worm easily measuring thirty five feet long and five feet wide coiled around an arch.

Unlike his usual fights Ajax didn’t start by drinking a potion, instead he placed an opened flask in his spacial storage, with just how physically imposing the creature was if he started the fight with the potion he wouldn’t be able to finish it before the backlash kicked in.

Ajax’s opening move was an empowered Lightning arrow, he very much wanted to see what effect lightning would have on the giant worm and he was not disappointed. As soon as the arrow made contact the worm wriggled unnaturally exactly as Ajax expected, what was unexpected however was the large discharge of mana as flame jets erupted all around the creatures.

‘Its magic is somehow linked to its organs!’ Ajax was almost too shocked by the discovery to continue with his plan. He hadn’t even thought it was possible to directly link a part of your body with a magical reaction and that was something he was very much looking forward to try. But first he had flaming giant worm shooting towards him like a freight train to deal with.