Despite the curse being spread out and weakened, Ajax spent the next fifteen minutes feeling like his blood had raised its temperature by twenty degrees, this wasn’t enough to deal any real harm to him especially through his [Pain Resistance] but it did certainly make for a very unpleasant time.

With that the attacks seemed to have stopped and soon night was upon them. As Ajax was considered one of the crafters for the duration of the mission he wasn’t assigned a position in the night shift. Despite the tents having some silencing runes on them they weren’t strong enough to suppress the sound enough for Ajax Perception so he was woken up both times when a gargoyle attacked.

The third time he was woken up by the sounds of battle it was close enough to morning that he decided to simply get up. The sight of another gargoyle being added to the pile next to the forge however wasn’t what interested him, what did interest him was the bubble of mana he could feel from next to the anvils.

As he approached he recognised Nina from her stature but he was still surprised to see the woman bring the hammer down on a piece of metal yet hear no sound. The phenomenon was soon explained by the mana that was swirling around the metal as it easily stopped all the vibrations from traveling.

“How does that work?” Ajax asked when he saw Nina put the hammer down.

“How does what work?” Nina asked him not at all, startled by his presence.

“The magic that stops the sound from your hammering.” Ajax explained, the mana movement was so complex and quick Ajax couldn’t make heads or tails of it even with his [Sense Mana] at level fifty.

“I have no idea.” Nina admitted something that shocked Ajax.

“You don’t?” Ajax all but shouted in his surprise.

“No.” she said as she turned to look at him questioningly.

“But then how are you doing it?” Ajax asked.

“You’re in your first year at the Academy right?” Nina asked and Ajax nodded. “That makes sense then, you won’t go over this at least until later in the year but it is related to my skill.”

Seeing Ajax still looking confused she decided to explain a bit more of the theory. “Skills are gained through practice in a field that you have talent in, for the most part anyway, but if that was all there was to it why wouldn’t people without the skill not be able to replicate it by simply copying the technique?”

“The answer is that when you gain a skill the system adds the innate knowledge of how to fully complete the skill to whatever it was you were doing before.” she continued. “It’s seen less with lower rarity skills but it gets very obvious with higher rarity ones.”

Thinking over her words Ajax was surprised that he hadn’t put that together himself, after all he had no idea how his own [Mana Syphon] worked, sure he knew and understood the process of absorbing the mana, but turning what he siphoned into a physical increase was something he didn’t know, he did it purely by muscle memory granted by activating the skill.

“My Epic skill, [Mana Compression] came from me trying to keep all of the mana present in the metal despite forging it, the skill does that but also more that somehow makes my work better.” Ajax was surprised that she so easily revealed an Epic skill that his mind completely switched tracks from the discussion they were having.

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“Why would you reveal an Epic skill?” he asked before he could stop himself.

Nina simply chuckled at his question. “It is a bit refreshing to see some of the gaps in your learning. After the power you showed and the skill with the few crafts you tried your hand at, it's a nice reminder that you are still limited despite all that potential.”

“As for your question, I don’t mind telling you about that skill because a lot of people know about it. You said you come from a small village so I’m sure that your parents drilled it into you not to share any skills that are Rare or higher right?” she asked.

Ajax simply nodded.

“That’s a good approach as a general rule, but once you have enough power to stand up for yourself, or join a house or guild with enough power” she pointed to the silvertongue sigil on her armor. “ Epic crafting skills are something you share as advertisements. Combat skills should absolutely be hidden but revealing some skills like this can also help you hide others by having people know you for just the skills you let them know. I’m the smith with [Mana Compression] and that’s what I’ll be to everyone even if I have an Epic combat skill they might only suspect I have.”

Ajax nodded along with her reasoning. “Then I should probably be advertising that I have [Enigma], a Legendary skill should be enough to cover up a lot.” Ajax had no issue revealing that since the higher ups of house Silvertongue already knew he had that skill and so did quite a few other parties.

The look of shock on Nina’s face when she heard the name of the Legendary skill was something to see, her eyebrows made a dash for her hairline and her jaw dropped open as she just stared at him for a few seconds before she regained her composure.

“I’m not sure you should have told me that,” she said after she regained her composure. “You do know it’s something I will have to share with the family higher ups.”

“I know” Ajax nodded. “But seeing as professor Silvertongue not only knows when I got the skill but also used his connections to help me get the skill they must already know about it.”

It was then that Ajax felt an appraising skill be used on him by Nina. [Enigma] tried to fight it but it was still too low to be able to stop whatever skill she used, what did surprise Ajax was that [Enigma] informed him that all Nina got from him was that his race was human. He hadn’t seen any previous inspection skill collect information on his race.

“Thanks for that.” Nina said.

“For what?” Ajax asked, confused.

“My appraisal skill just beat a Legendary skill. This should help me unlock an appraisal skill that is a higher rarity.” She said.

Ajax didn’t get a chance to respond as the scout on duty interrupted them with a call “ Incoming hellhound pack, they’re almost on top of us!”

Ajax quickly reacted and took his bearings, focusing on the pack of horse-sized dark red chihuahuas that had come out of camouflage and were charging towards the cave. There weren’t that many of them, only fifteen but they were moving a lot faster than the imps and most of the combatants weren’t in formation.

Ajax was careful to only use [Syphon mana] on his own mana as he drew his sword and pulled out his Axe, the hammer wasn’t as good against highly mobile enemies, especially when there were allied he might send the hounds crashing into with a strong hammer blow.

It took him almost no time to decapitate the hellhound he targeted and had no issue spotting the second that tried to jump him. The problem was that he was in no position to dodge so he quickly used earth mana to mold the ground into getting him a way to jump out of the way.

The hounds jaws snapped shut right where his shoulder had been a second ago. What was even more worrying however was that in the last second Ajax felt a lot of curse mana be released from the hellhounds teeth. Unlike with the imps however this mana quickly dissipated into the atmosphere after the bite missed.

The second bite attempt ended with an axe splitting the hellhound's skull, killing it instantly. The rest of the battle was also winding down with Nina having killed three hounds herself and Trevor standing over two despite wearing nothing on the top half of his body, a clear sign he had just woken up.

For the first time since the delve had begun however the team had finally suffered an injury. One of the combatants had a hound bite down on his arm, despite the plate armguard the teeth still managed to get two inches deep into the skin after a few repeated bites on the

same location.

Sensing the danger the hound let go of the arm and jumped backwards as a spear barely missed it. Ajax was surprised to see the hellhound breathing so heavily and moving so sluggish, he had read about them before and they should have had more stamina than this. The last remaining hounds were quickly mopped up while Trevor moved towards the injured combatant. “Nobody touch the wound.” he commanded as he shoved the team's healer closer.

“They had a cursed bite.” he said as he quickly but carefully removed the damaged armguard to reveal the bite mark that was quickly turning purple.

Ajax was surprised to see them shove a piece of wood in the injured person’s mouth but it was self-evident why a moment later when the healer used Holy mana on the cursed site. The wounded combatant looked to be in severe pain as the Holy mana cleansed the curse, his jaw tensed so much that Ajax was worried he might bite through the wood.