There was a team waiting for Arianwyn and her escort out of the dungeon, more than that there was an entire army camped around the entrance with three champions as part of it.
“What is going on?” Glandir asked as he shielded Arianwyn behind him.
The two of them had been delving for the last few weeks and since their dungeon wasn’t as close to the Republic headquarters they hadn’t been informed of the changes to the war before they entered. After entering Glandir took advantage of the time difference to speed up his recovery by extending their stay on the final floor. At the same time Arianwyn took the chance to improve her ability to use her Domain, keeping a Domain active was a lot harder when there was already a high Mana density in the surroundings.
“What happened with Gryndor’s champions?” Glandir asked after the current situation was explained to them, it was his presence the Republic were after since every champion mattered. As for Arianwyn they wanted her to at least return to the Republic’s capital so that she couldn’t become a political hostage.
“They are at the capital right now helping Duke Hearthbound with his delving.” The answer came easier than Glandir expected. “They started their second delve three days ago and we expect they’ll be on the front lines within a week. The Duke and his bond might take much longer as they will be staying on that final floor.”
“And what am I to do in the capital?” Arianwyn asked.
“The council has worked out a deal with your father where he will be sending another champion to aid us in exchange for you getting a similar deal with Duke Hearthbound.” The answer came as a surprise to both Glandir and Arianwyn. “Though I doubt you’ll be delving as deep as level one hundred and eighty.”
Knowledge of how deep Ajax could delve no longer surprised Arianwyn or Glandir, both of them had seen him and Aurexion in action if anything they would have expected he could push a floor higher, only a bad floor boss would be the only reason they wouldn’t risk it.
Glandir was fully rested when they exited the dungeon so once a group of Sylvanthal elites that had already been waiting approached and took on the responsibility of escorting the princess to the capital he was sent to a different battlefront.
“No need to look so worried princess.” The elites tried to reassure her as she didn’t bother masking her emotions on the road. “There have been no hit squads behind enemy lines since the deployment of champions changed, too many risks for almost no reward. Our path should be clear.”
“It’s not us I am worried about.” Arianwyn shook her head and refused to elaborate further.
Arianwyn was actually worried about her father, he had already sent four champions to help the Republic and now he was sending a fifth essentially to ensure her protection and help build up her foundation for the future. Sylvanthal was a relatively old nation and while leadership did change a few times this meant that the country had about fifteen champions total.
The problem was that only about nine of them answered to the crown. The other five or six, Arianwyn wasn’t sure if the last one was still alive since she was even older than Aranor but while weaker the old gal had been a physical fighter so she very well could have a longer life span. With the latest champion sent to aid the Republic the king was left with only four champions at home. Considering the financial stress her grandfather had put on the country even after all the work her father had put in to alleviate that situation there was a risk of a coup.
Doubly so if Deepwood was willing to fan the flames, something they had all the motivation to do if reports about Ajax’s development had reached them. News that this war had also taken a more brutal turn in dealing with captured champions literally in the last few days were not reassuring at all.
“We’ll focus on getting our delves done, I’ll take advantage of the extra training time but you’ll get preparations started for our return to Sylvanthal once we are done.” Arianwyn finally spoke.
While her position as the future queen wasn’t yet locked it, especially after all the developments that the new generation were going through her enormous talent as well as her connection to Ajax and Gryndor as a whole still marked her as a likely candidate. Right now she was sure that as much as she’d like to take her time to refine her Skills and gain experience during the war whilst getting access to more dungeons to delve her father needed her back home more to help smooth over relations with some of the other noble Houses.
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Ajax and the rest of Gryndor’s champions weren’t aware of the battle that had taken place hours ago and the way the beastkin prince had single handedly reverted all the work the Republic had put in to change the approach of the war from killing champions on sight to looking for potential exchanges. Their leverage and the worth of their prisoner had dropped considerably since actually making the exchange could now be seen as insulting to the Republic.
The start of this dungeon delve went much like the last one with the team clearing the first few floors in a matter of minutes with little care about what type of floor they ended up on. The one change they made was that they took a little extra time for Ajax to try and use his [Inject Mana] on the first arches they found on a specific floor before taking the second they found to the next floor.
“What’s the point of taking the time to use [Inject Mana] on them if we aren’t going through them to investigate if any changes were made?” Evelyn asked, she had done research with Ajax before so she was curious what he was trying to do.
“It’s too risky for us to take them.” Ajax answered. “We have no idea what the dungeon might throw at us if we enter an arch whose Mana we changed and risking so many champions would just be stupid. I’m doing this to see if anything changes in the amount of Mana I can actually inject into them.”
“How’s that going?” The prince asked.
“I barely managed to get a little of it to enter the first arch I tried it on, back on the first floor.” Ajax answered. “Every other one was fully resistant to all my attempts simply releasing the Mana I tried to inject in the surrounding.”
“So you’re ready to give up?” The prince asked.
“Not even close.” Ajax shook his head. “In fact I even have hypotheses for why it's not working. The problem is I can’t try one of them out at all and the other would take too long. I will be trying the second one once I have some time on the final floor.”
“And why can’t you try the first one out?” Evelyn asked.
“Because I don’t have a Legendary Skill for shoving Mana into something.” Ajax’s answer caught them all off guard. “So far the only thing I’ve seen even close to working on them is [Mana Syphon] and even that barely gets a trickle of Mana to drain out so small it would take hours for a few points of Mana.”
“What’s the other one?” The prince asked, from what Ajax said about the first floor arch working a little he suspected this theory was the correct one even if that was a little disappointing since as far as he knew there was no such Skill in all of Gryndor.
“That the arches can only hold a certain amount of Mana.” Ajax answered. “Sure I may have had the power and used one thousand Mana to get the one on the first floor to take a bit more Mana but that was me just brute forcing it, with enough power and pressure you can actually get more liquid into a mug that it’s supposed to hold.” The lessons about physics, pressure and volume he had learnt back on Earth would lend a lot more credence to this theory.
“How do you plan on testing this one?” Evelyn asked.
“I’ll be on the last floor for months.” Ajax answered. “I can spend hours just using [Mana Syphon] on a single arch to see if it will accept [Inject Mana] afterwards or if I have the same issue.”
Evelyn and the prince were a little torn on the answer. On the one side they were both happy not to have to wait for hours just watching Ajax lean on an arch to see if something happened. On the other they were very interested in the result of his research and the delay was eating at them.
“I need to be the one to kill a miniboss from here on.” Ajax said once they cleared the level one hundred floors. The team had already been through fifteen floors, with little of value found, Ajax had only taken with him a set of enchanting tools he found on the eleventh floor, the level eighty set would be a great help for to his father’s Skills and provide motivation for him to grow his level to live up the tools he had. “Not only that but I want to look for some alchemy ingredients on the floors from here on, I’ll be spending a lot of time on the twenty third floor and I hope to be well stocked.”
“You sure you have enough spacial rings to carry that much up there with you?” Evelyn asked while looking at the four rings Ajax had as well as the spacial bracer on his wrist.
“I’m sure you’d all be happy to help me take them up there if I run out.” Ajax said as he turned a greedy look that belonged more on Aurexion’s toothy maw than on his own face towards the spacial rings on the champion’s fingers.
“How’d you figure that?” At this point Evelyn was just teasing him but she had underestimated the influence of Ajax’s bond on his sentiment of leaving any valuables behind.
“I’m sure the prince will be happy to convince you about the valuable sacrifice you are all making.” Aurexion didn’t bother to hold back his laughter as his felt Ajax’s intentions through the bond. “He knows how valuable the things I find in the dungeon can be, do I need to hold on to all of them myself?”
Everyone took the joke in stride but a few subtle glares from the prince made it clear that he, and by extension all of them, were not taking any chances on Ajax deciding to hold on to that set of armor.