Two days, that’s how long it took before Ajax could feel a change happen, the slow drip of Mana he’d been pulling from the arch finally petered out, this was as much as he was going to be able to pull out of it. Once he was sure that’s what happened he pushed as much Earth Mana into the arch as he could, the last thing he wanted to do was find out if the dungeon had some sort of self defence system against someone draining the arches.
“Finally done?” Aurexion asked as he turned towards Ajax when he felt the pulse of Earth Mana.
“The resistance to the drain increased to the point that I couldn’t pull any more out.” Ajax answered. “Time to see if this changed anything.”
Before Ajax drained the arch he could feel the Earth Mana of the arch being dominant, at about 15% of the total Mana make up of the arch. He had looked for an arch with something higher than that but what he found was that arches with such a dominant Mana type must have been rare the deeper one delved.
“Almost 17%.” Ajaz murmured after he finished refilling the arch and drew from it again. The feeling hadn’t been precise even back when he’d first realized he could sense the Mana in the arches but with his [Sense Mana] skill becoming stronger so had his accuracy. “It worked.”
“The only question is if this had any effect on the next floor.” Aurexion said as he approached.
“Huh” Ajax didn’t suppress the chuckle that came up at that.
“What’s funny?” Aurexion asked.
“That is far from the only question.” Ajax said as he shook his head. “The fact that I was able to affect it at all opens up so many more questions.”
“Like what?” Aurexion was curious, not because he was all that interested in dungeon floor but rather because he was interested in Ajax’s approach. With the number of Skills his bond had unlocked and the fact that he had some of the crafting Achievements he did he was very interested in learning more about his thought process.
“Just right off the top: if I can do this once, can I do it more times?” Ajax began. “The change was small,a little less than one fiftieth. Can I do it over and over again until all that is left is one Mana type? Or, and this I am pretty sure is the case, does it get harder the higher the presence of the Mana type already is.”
“I get what you mean by the first but not the second.” Aurexion approached.
“I drain Mana to make space for what I put back in.” Ajax explained. “But in the same way that I know what the next floor type is going to be based on the Mana I draw out it should also mean that the more prevalent a Mana type is the harder it will be to increase it.”
“Why?” Aurexion was still confused.
“Here, think of it this way. Lets say the arch is just two different Mana types, Water and Earth.” Ajax took out his cauldron and filled it with water before adding some earth into it until the mixture was all the way to the lip of the cauldron. “It’s mostly water now so if I take out a cup, most of what I am taking out is water and a little bit of earth. And I am putting in only water. There will still always be a bit of earth left in there, but depending on how many times I do this I can make water become more and more prevalent.”
This time Aurexion understood what Ajax was saying. “Unless you learn how to take out only what you want to remove.”
“It’s already hard enough to pull anything out that I doubt I’ll be able to be picky until I get much stronger and [Mana Syphon] also grows in level.” Ajax didn’t mention he also suspected he would need at least one dedicated threshold upgrade to make it a reality as well. “But it might be something to consider later.”
“That’s two questions.” Aurexion pointed out.
“Two of many.” Ajax nodded. “Like, if there is a limit, is it enforced in the same way as the amount I can take out is, if there is a limit to how many times I can do this can I go around it by infusing Mana at the same time I drain it?. Can I make changes to the arch after someone already used it to go to the next floor? If this changes the floor and I can make changes after, does it change the floor?”
“Interesting.” What Aurexion was actually thinking however was that if that was his approach to things, how did he grow so strong while he was still so young, this would make everything take forever.
“Enough about that, how was your training?” Ajax asked.
Ajax’s experiment was rather boring and other than giving [Mana Syphon] a workout it did little for him. While they were doing that however Ajax had also been chanting to use the earth pillar spell he used, since this wouldn’t infuse the Mana around him where the arch would draw from it. Aurexion had been focused on observing that Mana in the hopes of being able to recreate it.
“You think I should try chanting?” The dragon asked. “You said mixing casting methods isn’t good.”
“Chanting a few spells won’t matter.” Ajax waved off the concern. “We don’t even care if you get the Skill for [Chanting], now that you saw the Mana chanting will allow you to generate Earth Mana without you doing so yourself.”
This was an extra step compared to how Ajax usually learned Mana types but also one they both felt was necessary. Aurexion didn’t yet have [Manipulate Mana] his use of Mana so far had been direct and almost entirely focused on simple enhancement of attacks with [Spell Direction] taking care of any slight changes he wanted to make to his use of Mana. Having him chant would also hopefully help him unlock the Rare Skill which would lead to him being able to try and generate his own Earth Mana.
As for the reason Aurexion was trying to get Earth Mana it was because it would be the simplest one to gain. Not only was it only a Rare Mana type but he already had Magma, that it would be useful when he tried to also gain Metal Mana was only a bonus.
Before starting their next bout of training both of them took another small flight around the cleared half of the floor and this time there were a few stragglers that had migrated over that they stopped to kill before returning to their camp. Once they got back to the camp Ajax started preparing his Alchemy set up.
“Alright I’ll be the lookout and you can start with the chanting.” Ajax encouraged his bond. Unlike himself Aurexion was less reliant on Mana for his combat and since he didn’t have the Ettin boon like Ajax did he couldn’t use his Stamina as a substitute so that meant Aurexion could let him Mana get a lot lower before it affected his combat potential.
While Aurexion practiced his Mana Ajax started to examine the last reagent he had yet to work with. His upgraded Skill told him a few uses for the floor boss’s core but he still didn’t know how unstable it was. The core had been a little larger than a basketball before it was smashed so Ajax had a number of different sized pieces to experiment with and plenty of time to do so.
Their results after the first day were very different. While Aurexion had been getting more comfortable with trying to affect the intent of a chanted spell on his journey to unlocking [Mana Manipulation] and getting a lot more comfortable with generating Earth Mana as a result of the spell, Ajax was having issues. No matter how small a piece of core he used it was simply too powerful and too unstable for anything to get it to work. Even his [Unstable Alchemist] wasn’t strong enough to do more than delay the instability enough for Ajax to throw the mixture out before it destroyed his cauldron.
For the second day Ajax’s results were better as he left the core to one side and started crafting with the rest of his ingredients. The Mana density of the reagents and the lack of exact recipe meant most of his attempts with substitutes were failures but he did have a few that ended up as successes and he could feel his Skills being pushed.
On the third day Ajax had returned to the elemental core for the last two hours to see if he got any new ideas after focusing on something else but he was still stumped.
“What’s the issue with it?” Aurexion asked as he approached and saw Ajax just staring at the broken core.
“It’s too strong, it overpowers everything.” Ajax let out a sigh. “Not only that but it’s also so unstable I don’t have a chance to try to overpower it with quantity.”
“Good thing we have plenty of primed mud elementals with Fire Mana.” Aurexion said. “Just toss a piece to one of them and give them a day to absorb it before we kill it. They should absorb it into their core and it should make a core that is stronger than what they had but weaker in potency than what the floor boss had.”
“That works?” Ajax looked at the dragon surprised.
“That’s one of the main ways elementals get stronger and why they are more likely to fight those with the same element or something close to it while they ignore those of opposite elements.” Aurexion answered. “They absorb each other’s cores.”
Ajax was fascinated by the idea of elemental cannibalism, it was also easy to see why humanoids hadn’t figured it out, elementals alone were rare in humanoid lands and getting more than one type on a dungeon floor was also extremely rare. So throwing bits of core from a defeated one to a live one was a big leap to make. Nevertheless he didn’t let himself get played by his bond.
“Perfect, we will have something to try in a few days.” Ajax said. “Let's see how your casting is going.”
Ajax could feel his bond slump as Aurexion’s attempt to end their training early and get back to clearing the floor a couple days early failed. Ajax couldn’t blame his bond, he was aware it wasn’t exciting training. But that was simply how it was in the beginning.