Chapter 605

Verya was starting to get really uncomfortable. For the last week and a half she had awkwardly focused on improving her Skills. Ajax wasn’t the only one to get some inspiration from watching his recent traveling companion fight. 

“What are you doing?” Eduin asked her for what had to be the tenth time but she continued to ignore him. 

The young sidhe was beyond bored, a week and half of just staring at a dungeon arch was getting to be too much for him. It didn’t help that a group in the high eighties of water naiads had come through two days after Ajax entered the dungeon and they had also just come out the day before having finished their dungeon run. 

“I thought you said he finished the other dungeon in three days.” Elduin’s mother spoke again as she focused on Verya. 

“That’s how long it took him.” Verya confirmed. “But he also assured me he was going to go through it fast and when he came out he said he was distracted by the plants on the first floor of the dungeon.” 

“What does that have to do with anything?” Elduin asked. “This dungeon’s first floor is nothing like the other one.” 

Elduin had cleared the first floor of both dungeons already. “No but since we already agreed to split up now that I finished my part of our agreement he had no reason to rush through. If he found something interesting on one of the floors he might just spend some time there to examine it. I just hope he found it on the third floor so the time dilation is as much in our favor as it can be.” 

“What could be so interesting in a dungeon before level one hundred?” Elduin’s mother questioned. “The floors before then are so curated I’ve yet to see something truly spectacular spawn there, they don’t even all have floor bosses.” 

“Well for one thing he can finally sleep.” Verya muttered, she specifically spoke as softly as she could. 

“What was that?” Elduin’s father asked. 

“I may know why he is taking a bit longer, but I want to trade the information.” Verya said as her pointed teeth could barely be made out through her sweet innocent looking smile. 

“What do you want in return?” Elduin’s father frowned at her. 

“I want a minor favor from you.” Verya said, sidhe had long worked out a societal accepted value to trade during deals, miniscule, minor, small as well as big, major and lifesaving favors were determined amounts.  

“Does this have anything to do with the human?” Elduin’s mother asked. 

“Not anymore.” Verya answered. 

“I’ll take the deal.” Elduin's father agreed. “So long as you request your favor now.” 

Elduin smirked at his father’s clever move, by adding a time limit Verya couldn’t wait for the human to exit and use her favor then. 

“Perfect!” Verya smile turned genuine, she spoke as she lifted her arm to point. “There is a level one hundred and ten devourer that is close to evolving into an Ascended. It’s in that direction using a small tree of everburning flame as bait. I want credit for finding and reporting it.” 

The smile on Elduin’s face dropped. Getting rid of the devourer would be nothing for his parents and while they might claim some favours from the village chief for killing it, it wouldn’t be much. Verya on the other hand would he heavily praised for finding, escaping and then reporting such a dangerous creature considering it was about twenty levels above her. 

“What do you know about why the human would be taking so long?” Elduin’s father quickly moved on, though his impression on Verya improved. She would surely progress her station, he was also thinking of building up a few favors with her in the future once they returned to the village. 

“I am pretty sure he sleeps in the dungeon.” Verya said. 

“We all sleep in the dungeon.” Elduin cut her off as he mocked her answer. 

“Yes, but he doesn’t sleep outside of it.” Verya explained. “ At least not as far as I’ve seen. He is using [Meditation] to make up for his lack of sleep but it slowly wears on him. When he came out of the other dungeon he seemed refreshed.” 

“He’s that paranoid?” Elduin exclaimed.

“Can it really be called paranoia considering we are here waiting for him?” Elduin’s mother took the chance to educate her son. “I’ll rather call it surprisingly insightful of him since I doubt he knows just how interesting he would be to so many Ascended races.” 

“He noticed us.” Elduin’s father said, drawing a click of the tongue from his wife. 

Verya didn’t get a chance to ask any questions nor did she need to as she felt a powerful Aura was over them moments later. The elemental hawk that had claimed the area had noticed they were here. And judging from his Aura he was stronger than either of Elduin’s parents though maybe together they could defeat it. Such a battle was sure to lead to the death of both Elduin and herself. 

“What are you doing here?” The voice was powerful and Verya could spot four different colors in the hawk's plumage. “You’ve been here for more than a week and yet you haven’t entered the dungeon. Are you looking to challenge me for my claim?” 

“We are not.” Elduin’s father answered. “We are waiting for someone who entered the dungeon to leave. We have no quarrel with you or wish to claim your territory, it's why we diminished our presence while we waited. 

“Very well, then you should have no issue if I decide to wait with you.” the hawk’s Aura drew in a little as it settled to wait with the sidhe. In Verya’s mind this was a very bad outcome. It was likely that the three would end up fighting once Ajax came out of the dungeon so now she could no longer just sit and practice her magic, she had to find a way to leave before Ajax exited the dungeon.

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Ajax could barely care about the ants coming towards him as he could feel the venom in his arm starting to spread. It was odd, even with the small amount of Life Mana he had surrounding the wound it was like there were two different venoms, one that had already traveled up his arm and working to quickly infect his whole body through the blood and a second much slower acting that was eating the Life Mana around the wound. 

Ajax’s first action was to drop his knife, pushing void through it so many times had already caused some structural issues in the blade instead he pulled out the axe he was gifted and used up almost all of his remaining Mana to cut and sear the wound with Magma before the second Venoma ate through all of his Life Mana.

Ajax was really hoping the first venom wasn’t the one that caused lycanthropy but he had no way to know. Instead he needed to focus on what he would do next, his Mana was down to one hundred, his Stamina was at under five hundred and it was dropping quickly the second Venom was draining his Stamina and he had a lot of ants still rushing towards him.

Ajax was sure that there couldn’t be more than two hundred ants left in the entire floor, he and the werewolf had surely killed most of them by now but he was just running on empty. He wasn’t sure he could deal with the twelve that were in the tunnel with him now let alone any others that would come later. 

Fighting off three of the ants and killing two of them was a lot harder now that he had so little resources to work off of and had lost the use of one arm. While he was sure we would be able to heal the wound in time if the poison didn’t get him Ajax couldn’t use his left arm right now for anything other than a few select motions he knew to gain some extra power for his spells, the added danger might even help him unlock [Spell Direction]. 

Ajax fought his way past three more forks in the tunnels and his Stamina pool had already fallen to three hundred and his Mana had barely climbed back up to one hundred and ten. The ants were still chasing after him and Ajax knew there was only one way to escape them. He had to go through an arch and leave the floor. 

Sadly for Ajax there was no way he would make it back to the exit arch. He was pretty sure the elemental hawk wouldn’t hold it against him if he was to exit now and cause a dungeon break of under two hundred mid eighties ants.

Unable to get back to the exit arch however Ajax only had one option, he had to go to the next floor. He would then have to hide, recover and then do his best to clear it, it would be a level one hundred and twenty floor, not the highest Ajax had ever been on but twenty levels higher than any floor he worked to clear in a group and wasn’t boosted through. Even worse with how quickly he was running out of Stamina he wouldn’t even get a choice to choose a floor he wanted. As he turned the corner Ajax saw an arch and knew it was his only chance to escape the ants alive. Whatever floor was past it would be one he would have to face.