Chapter 611

While he recovered from the fight with the troll Ajax also took the time to use some of the reagents he brought with him into the dungeon to make a small variety of poisons. The necrotic poison he had already made plenty of would be invaluable to finish the fight but at the start it wouldn’t be doing much since the troll’s regeneration would nullify it. 

Ajax didn’t bother with any hemorrhagic poison for the same reason the necrotic one wouldn’t help. He did however make a paralytic poison and a Mana toxin, it wouldn’t work at slowing down the troll's regeneration but it would be causing it to spend more Mana meaning it would hopefully run out of steam faster.  

With his equipment ready Ajax now needed to find a way to bait the troll and to prepare their fighting grounds. The fight couldn’t take place in these underground tunnels, useful as they were in letting Ajax make his escape during the last fight; the presence of the Undead Mana meant his [Mana Syphon] was too limited so he would need to get the troll to chase him back outside.

The fight would have to take place inside the ziggurat. Ajax couldn’t give up the advantage the corridors would provide him by limiting the amount of space the nine feet tall troll would have to swing its massive club. Ajax spent a couple of hours setting up traps, all of them were made to help him pump as much poison as possible into the troll from the start.

“Let's get to it.” Ajax said to himself after he finished setting up the final trap, this was one he was hoping he wouldn’t have to use. In the event that he couldn’t beat the troll this would be Ajax’s last trick to delay while he ran for the exit arch, as much as he wanted to avoid a dungeon break it would still beat dying. 

It didn’t take long for Ajax to find the troll, now that he knew where to look he even managed to find it without giving away his own position meaning he could get the troll to chase him from a safer distance by leaving some clues in its path. This way Ajax wouldn’t even need to engage it in the underground at all meaning he could conserve more Mana for the fight. 

“RAAAWWWW!!!” A roar of challenge echoed down the passageway letting Ajax know the troll found his trail. Trolls weren’t smart by humanoid standards because they also weren’t stupid, the troll had almost gotten the drop on Ajax the first time so by roaring like this Ajax was pretty sure the troll was aware Ajax would be leading it into a trap. Ajax simply hoped it wouldn’t care. 

“Looks like I was right, ugly.” Ajax taunted as he made his way out of the underground when he saw the troll hot on his tail. “You are that stupid.”  Ajax didn't know if the troll could understand him but he hoped he could. 

Once inside the ziggurat Ajax pushed [Mana Syphon] to increase his physical strength further as the troll barreled through all of the traps Ajax set up without a care. The daggers, arrows and spears Ajax set up all knocked aside after they hit the rampaging floor boss. Some of them managed to aim themselves a few inches deep but they were quickly pushed back out as the troll regenerated the wound.

As soon as the troll started using its regeneration Ajax got to work directing [Mana Syphon] in hopes of slowing it down with little success. While the Mana toxin wasn’t doing much it did enough to give Ajax’s [Mana Syphon] a small gap to try and add some extra delays to the troll's healing. 

Now that the troll was in melee range however the fight started in earnest. Ajax found himself feeling a little uncomfortable in fighting an endurance battle for the first time. It was the first time that he was the one being pressured by the fight going long, Ajax was under no impression he would be able to outlast the troll’s regeneration, he needed to find a way to end the fight before he ran out of Mana and Stamina. 

The role reversal wasn’t the only reason Ajax found himself uncomfortable during the fight. He was used to being slower and weaker than his opponents and while he was actually a little faster than the troll with the boost from [Mana Syphon] Ajax was far weaker. What made Ajax uncomfortable was the lack of diversity in his own attacks. 

Under normal circumstances Ajax would be throwing around a number of different elemental attacks looking to leverage each element’s strengths. Now on the other hand Ajax was being as conservative as he could be with his Mana and Stamina as he put as much as he could into [Cursed Slash] every time he attacked looking to push as much Curse Mana into the troll. 

The first ten minutes of the fight were tough for Ajax, while the troll was under the effects of the poisons he was recovering from while Ajax was just trying to stack as much Curse Mana as he could. The fight was close at that point with Ajax managing to get in a few hits before taking a glancing blow that he would need to heal. 

Over the years Ajax had often been displeased with himself for not pushing more of his Free Stats into magical attributes when he first distributed them, while [Mana Skin] was a nice reward [Berserker] hadn’t proven to be that useful, but it was paying dividends now. The pain coming from slowly healing his wounds instead of just flooding them with Life Mana made Ajax’s healing almost resource neutral accounting for the Mana he spent and the Stamina refund [Berserker] gave him. 

After the first ten minutes of the fight however the floor boss was starting to weaken, the difference in speed between him and Ajax was starting to grow as Ajax pushed more and more Curse Mana into its body. 

Looking from the outside the troll looked to be winning, Ajax’s armor was in taters, he was covered in bruises that were slowly healing while the troll still looked in top shape but with every second that passed, with every precise swing of his Ajax’s sword the floor boss was getting weaker, it was getting weaker and Ajax was finding more and more opportunities to attack. This in turn meant the Curse Mana was stacking up faster and faster.

While the ten minute mark marked the change in who the dominant force in the duel was the twenty minute mark showed Ajax outright outclassing the troll he circled the floor boss now only needing to use his footwork to dodge the slow telegraphed swings with the club, all while never missing a chance to use [Cursed Slash]. 

By twenty five minutes in, Ajax was down to a quarter of his Stamina and Mana. The amount of Stamina he consumed with [Cursed Slash] during this fight was much bigger than anything he had spent in hours of training and while Ajax’s body was starting to protest such high Stamina usage his body had been tempered by the damage he had taken and recovered from in the past. 

Twenty five minutes is how long it took for Ajax's sword to snap. Despite the weapon being made for a level one hundred and twenty fighter there was only so much it could endure as it was forced to slash through the tough troll flesh again and again while having Cursed Mana run through it. 

Ajax’s sword snapping however was the trigger for the final part of Ajax’s plan. Instead of switching to another of the weapons he had brought with him Ajax stored his shield and instead started pulling out the weapons he had been collecting from the cultists since the start of the floor. Now with every swing Ajax wasn't just applying more Curse Mana but he was also applying a healthy dose of necrotic poison. 

None of his temporary weapons lasted more than ten swings but thanks to the abundance of humanoid enemies Ajax had amassed quite the collection of weapons as he continued to flood the troll with more Curse Mana and necrotic poison barely even slowing down when one weapon broke to drop it and take another out from his spacial storage.

The effects of the poison were hard to see at first, even with the Curse Mana doing its job the troll's regeneration was still healing the wounds and nullifying the poison within twenty seconds of the attack. But as more and more cuts were opened the amount of time it took for them to heal increased, necrotic flesh was starting to appear as poison was applied quicker than it could be cleansed.

It had been half an hour since the start of the battle and Ajax’s Mana and Stamina reserves were both under a thousand but he could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The troll looked more like the undead he had faced with visible bones and the dead flesh hanging off it in clumps, its attacks hadn’t been a threat to Ajax for the last ten minutes.

“RRRAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!!” An enraged howl unlike the previous grunts of pain marked the unexpected change. The light blue of the floor boss’s skin turned into a deep red and the necrotic poison seemed to speed up but the troll seemed to no longer be weak or slow.

“It enraged…” The words came as a whisper from Ajax’s shocked face. 

Troll floor bosses at level one hundred and ten couldn’t enrage. Since Ajax had been planning to fight at those levels when he did his research he barely skimmed the information about higher levels. He barely remembered that higher level trolls reduced their regeneration in exchange for increased strength and speed as a last resort.

Ajax was barely quick enough to react and bring his shield back out as he took his first direct hit of the fight from the boss’s club which launched him into the stone wall. He had been able to use Vibration Mana to slightly mitigate the impact but Ajax’s shield was done for as it cracked in two, thankfully the Curse Mana was still weakening the boss or Ajax could very well have died from how the change had taken him by surprise. 

Unfortunately for himself Ajax knew he didn’t have the option to go on the defensive, while enraging did lower the troll’s healing it could still recover even from the half dead state it was in if Ajax just took a defensive approach, so Ajax forced his body to move even as every muscle protested he needed to attack. 

The next few exchanges saw Ajax taking a few more glancing blows as he continued to land strikes against the troll. This continued for almost a minute before the troll stumbled as his knee gave out. His club swing went wide and Ajax didn’t waste the change as he swing with the bone weapons he held in his hands. 

What Ajax hadn’t expected was the floor boss to attack with its head from his kneeling position. For the first time in the fight the troll didn’t use its arms, legs or club to attack and instead it tried its best to jump forward from its awkward kneeling position, its jaws clamping open wide.

“Aaarrrghhh…” Ajax hissed in pain as he backed away from the floor boss as it fell flat on its face from the forward momentum of its last attack. Still for the first time in the fight Ajax took his eye off the floor boss as he could do nothing but stare at the stump of where his left, werewolf arm, had previously been.