Chapter 602

Now that he was inside the dungeon Ajax could finally drop his guard a little. It might not be wise to do so inside a dungeon but he was pretty sure there was nothing on this first floor that would be of any threat to him, in fact he was decently sure only the final floor he completed would pose any threat to him and that was if he was to activate the obelisk.

“First things first let's investigate this floor, clear up an area around me and then get some sleep.” Ajax nodded to himself. 

Ajax and Verya had stopped to rest from time to time but Ajax hadn’t fallen asleep once, he had also made sure to only eat from his own rations, Verya hadn’t mentioned anything about binding deals from eating food grown by the sidhe but even if the stories he knew were hit or miss in terms of accuracy it was better for him not to take the risk.

The first floor of the dungeon was one of the strongest first floors Ajax had come across. With monsters going up to level forty Ajax was a little disappointed that he would only be able to get the clear bonus from two floors. The final floor would be filled with level eighty eights which he might just activate the obelisk to make it a challenge for himself after he clears out about half the floor and makes sure any floor boss that spawns isn't a problem. 

‘Why not try and clear the next floor. It’ll only be level one hundred and twenty, you’ve killed monsters on much higher floors.’ A little voice in the back of his mind tempted him but Ajax was wary of the floor boss that would appear. 

After clearing out the surrounding area Ajax set up his little camp as well as a series of alarms to ensure nothing snuck up on him before he went to sleep for a few hours. If he had one complaint about this floor however it was the constant rain that was pouring down and from the looks of it, it wasn’t about to stop any time soon.Six hours later Ajax was completely refreshed and ready to begin his training. 

Considering Verya’s parting words Ajax was pretty sure she wouldn’t be there by the time he exited the dungeon so there was no reason for him to rush, he could take a week inside the dungeon with no issues and if he was lucky any other sidhe following him might get bored of waiting for him to exit and he could simply find the elemental hawk without having to deal with them. 

The first step on Ajax’s training was to take advantage of the ample Mana available inside the dungeon. With [Mana Syphon]’s latest threshold upgrade and the Mana density inside the dungeon Ajax was pretty sure he could keep casting until his Mana channels would need a rest and that the amount of Mana he would be throwing around would simply be replenished.

To start off Ajax started to clear out the first floor but he only did so by casting spells and trying to gain [Spell Direction]. Fighting in a similar manner to a conventional mage didn’t come naturally to Ajax. His high Perception Stat combined with his high Mental Stats made the fight feel like it was going in slow motion. The level thirty nine lizard had no chance of winning yet Ajax also wasn’t doing that much damage to it. 

Right now most of the power in Ajax’s spells was coming directly from the amount of Mana he was putting into them, since he was only using about thirty Mana a cast they were about the same strength that a level thirty mage’s fireballs would be. Enough to deal some damage to the monsters on the floor but it would take a lot of spells to kill anything. 

As the hours passed however Ajax could feel that he was getting better and better. Despite using the same amount of Mana his spells were starting to hit harder and harder. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was getting closer to unlocking [Spell Direction] or if he was just improving with his regular spell casting. If he was honest it was probably both but he assumed most of the progress came from his progress in unlocking [Spell Direction].

Fifteen hours later Ajax was finally starting to feel the strain on his Mana channels. He went through close to one hundred thousand Mana, about twenty times his Mana pool yet with his ability to regain Mana as well as [Meditation] it wouldn’t be long before his Mana was refilled. Even now he still had three thousand Mana left but he could feel his Mana channels hurt from such consistent use.

“Good as time as any to take a break.” Ajax shrugged as he set up his camp once again. More than half of the floor had been cleared already, under normal circumstances he was sure he could clear the entire floor in half the time he had spent training but since he was limiting himself to casting like a mage it was taking a lot longer. 

The first thing Ajax tried was pushing Life Mana through his body to see if it would have any effect on his Mana channels. He couldn’t say he wasn’t disappointed or surprised to realize that using more spells couldn’t help heal his overstrained Mana channels.

Giving up on that Ajax chose instead to go over his training using [Meditation] to see if he missed anything, any sign that might help him gain [Spell Direction] faster. Two minutes into his [Meditation] and Ajax was already cursing how he could have been so stupid as to miss something so obvious. 

With the focused help of [Meditation] Ajax quickly came to the realization that while speed was obviously important for [Spell Direction] the speed of the movements required were all relative. 

Since the only example he had seen before had come from watching Verya cast with it it only made sense that he thought that was the speed the movements should have been made at. If he had stopped to think about it a bit more he would have realized that this would have meant the Skill would have had no future in higher level combat.

The few times where he instinctively finished the moves a little faster he found himself getting extra power out of them. The question now was just how fast should he be going through the motions, at what point were they too rushed? There was also a question about how precise each movement should be, this was a Skill used for casters but with his Dexterity as high as it was Ajax was pretty sure he could get some extra power out of his precise movements.  

After about an hour of [Meditation] Ajax was starting to get restless, he had so many new things to try out yet his Mana channels weren’t recovered just yet. As a compromise Ajax instead decided to clear the rest of this floor with just his physical Skill and attacks. He told himself it was a way to ensure that he wasn’t neglecting his physical training but it was more about getting out of the rain and trying new things out on the next floor where the monsters would be stronger and he would need the extra power to his spells in order to do any damage to them. 

While it took Ajax fifteen hours to clear out half a floor with just casting he was done with the other half in less than four hours by just relying on his physical Stats and his physical focused Skills. And that was without the boost from [Mana Syphon]. 

By the time he finished Ajax was rather low on Mana and Stamina having pushed himself to see how quickly he could really clear the floor without relying on his Mana for anything other than converting it to Stamina. He breathing was a little labored and he was sweating but he wasn’t worn out, he was just a little past a good warm up. 

During the entire three hours Ajax had only been hit twice, both times it was a hit he had decided to take since there was literally no place he could dodge and both had been perfectly received. Ajax had switched weapons throughout his training ensuring he trained all of his weapons Skills apart from [Bow], much as he liked the ranged weapon it just didn’t fit with the training he was doing. Even his [Unarmed Combat] had gained a skill as he had taken ten minutes to actually punch the monsters to death, though fists were clearly a suboptimal weapon when fighting monsters with reinforced skin in the form of scales.

Having cleared the entire floor, or all that he had seen as he traveled across it Ajax had found a lot of arches that led to different second floors. He had plenty of options when choosing what type of floor he would go for next but his primary concern when choosing was to find a floor where it wouldn’t rain. The constant downpour he endured for more than twenty hours was enough for him.