Chapter 581
As Ajax was getting further and further away from the humanoid kingdoms he started to really feel the Mana in the surroundings pick up. It wasn’t so much the Mana in the air that was all that much higher but it was the Mana in everything else.
Much in the same way he managed to raise some bees with Mana by slowly pushing Mana into the earth and the plants surrounding them, the same process was naturally happening out here. The Mana in the earth was absorbed by the plants and they passed those on to the herbivores. Now that he knew dungeons were draining everything surrounding them of the Mana it explained why his garden in the capital needed constant infusions of Mana, it was being drained by two extremely close dungeons.
With the increased Mana and the large open space Ajax got to see a lot more of how a food chain developed in this world. With powerful beings like HelSotHein claiming the top spot for large areas that still left plenty of space for regular creatures at level one hundred and twenty and above to claim high spots.
What shocked Ajax about those creatures was that they didn’t all attack him, even some predators decided to just leave him be without a fight. Ajax wasn’t sure if those had a better way of analyzing his strength or if his Aura was enough to simply let them make the decision he just wasn’t worth the trouble.
Over the next few weeks of travel Ajax started formulating a theory that it was the lack of ambient Mana available that made the higher level creatures and monsters so aggressive in the humanoid lands. That wasn’t to say that all the ones he found here were peaceful but it was all more in line with the behaviour he had seen back on earth in wildlife documentaries.
The fights he had gotten in while traveling the land were working wonders for his leveling as well as his Skills. The novelty combined with the danger and challenge meant that Ajax was already a third of the way through level fifty six.
These closer fights had also helped Ajax to narrow down his choices for [Mana Syphon]’s threshold upgrade down to two. It all came down to Refuel or Mana Steal, Ettin was good and would make him even more troublesome for mages to deal with but he was already plenty good enough against them. Ettin would become a much more attractive choice one he had Refuel since it would mean his Stamina pool would also be getting refilled but until then it would just be an extra resource to drain to power up his body.
One of the things Ajax realized was that both Refuel and Mana Steal were going to be things he was going to pick up unless future thresholds offered something truly outstanding. This left him with the question of which upgrade he wanted first.
In the long run Refuel was clearly the better of the two since it would help him unlock more Mana types as well as limit the weakness of his resource heavy style. At the same time Mana Steal was much better at the moment. Besides the obvious danger it allowed him to present towards those who had little to no Mana as draining them of the little Mana they did have would be enough to knock them out or severely weaken them it would also allow him to deal with any enchanted items.
The amount of time Ajax spent pondering on this one choice was enough to make Ajax realize just how important thresholds truly were. During his time at the academy they had been mostly put aside and barely covered compared to other topics but now he realized that was simply because of the target audience.
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Even the high nobles of Gryndor would usually cap out at Epic Skills, they would manage to maybe get the second threshold of that Skill when they reached level one hundred a lot later in their lives making planning for specific threshold combos a bad way of thinking about developing Skills.
But Ajax had a number of Legendary Skills. He wasn’t even thirty yet he had one Legendary Skill at the second threshold, two more past the first and three more approaching the first. It was perfectly reasonable to expect not only that he would gain access to a second and maybe even a third threshold for those Skills within a half a century but with his lifespan it was reasonable to build his Skill around the combos of thresholds he could stack.
This realization made Ajax focus on branching out with both his Vibration and Life Mana usage. Life Mana was a few levels away from its first threshold and Ajax had almost always used it exclusively to help his healing. He moved towards creating golems not because he didn’t want to upgrade his Life Mana towards healing but because he wanted the option to choose.
His work with Vibration Mana also followed a similar track, instead of just using the Skill for offence he started trying to use the Skill for scouting in an attempt of mimicking a sonar but none of that bore any fruit even after extensive attempts, he wasn’t about to give up and thankfully Vibration Mana had a few more levels to go before the threshold compared to Life Mana.
In terms of his immediate combat ability increase Ajax had made some big strides with [Telekinesis] as well as his shadow jump. His biggest discovery when it came to using [Telekinesis] was that he could start learning to control the output more by using the Skill on himself.
This was very much discouraged in Gryndor both when it came to runic or chanted spells since there was a good chance you’ll do real damage to yourself and not get any better at casting. Ajax’s casting method however worked differently, in the same way you could accidentally bite your tongue while eating but doing it intentionally was much harder since you would subconsciously not hurt yourself using [Telekinesis] on himself Ajax was not only working on his flight but also starting to get a much better handle on the finer control of the Skill.
Ajax’s progress with shadow jump wasn’t anything to do with pushing the ability further, he wasn’t any closer to remaining in the shadow he jumped to than when he started, what did improve was his success rate when jumping, going up from one in three to one in two, as well as his ability to control his exit from the jump. Where Ajax would initially just be tossed out of the shadow he was now starting to transform this into an actual jumping exit that allowed him to put his weight and momentum behind a blow with his axe or hammer when exiting.
This new development made for a devastating combo when used with Void Mana as jumping from a shadow not only gave him an unexpected angle of attack but since Ajax knew the path from Shadow Mana to Void Mana he could use all the lingering Shadow Mana surrounding himself from his shadow travel and jump to increase the power of the Void strike that followed.
Ajax’s fighting prowess wasn’t the only thing to improve. While he was still debating on his choice for [Mana Syphon]’s threshold upgrade he was already seeing some great results from his [Alchemy] upgrade. There were so many new ingredients he had found as he explored the Wild Lands. Ajax wasn’t sure if it plants he found simply didn’t expand to where they would grow inside the humanoid kingdoms or if the low Mana there actively prevented them from growing but Adaptability was proving itself the right choice, not only did it help Ajax shore up his potion reserves as he used his during his fights but it also helped him learn more about the new plant life he was finding here.
“I wonder if I’m being watched?” Ajax intentionally mumbled the words with some volume behind them.
It had been weeks since he left the ruins and while he had expected to not to meet another of the Ascended races for a week while he exited HelSotHein’s area it had now been three times that long and not only had he not met another Ascended race but he hadn’t even found any evidence of their presence.
All of this put him on edge, over the last few days Ajax was more and more sure that there must be an Ascended race watching him because [Enigma] was giving him the feeling of being watched. Whatever inspection Skill they were using had to be strong enough that while it couldn’t break through [Enigma] it was strong enough that [Enigma] wouldn’t be registering the attempt properly. This meant this was an Epic Skill past its second threshold backed up by a few lesser Skills or another Legendary Skill they weren’t willing to push further so as to not alert him.
There was of course a third option, that the inspection Skill was a Legendary Skill past its fourth threshold and it was so strong it not only broke past [Enigma] but it did so while the Skill could barely perceive the attempt. Ajax chose to dismiss this option since any Ascended race with a Legendary Skill at level one hundred or higher shouldn’t need to stalk him so carefully and if they were there was nothing he could do to change that.