That request had brought not only Ajax up short but also the rest of their party, all four of them sported frowns on their faces but Lexi and Rick had theirs trained on the prince while Anna and Benedict were looking at Ajax.

“You expect him to leave at least a floor’s worth of stats if not two?” Rick sounded offended on Ajax’s behalf. “That’s all some people get when they get a chance to delve in another kingdom’s dungeon.”

“Doing it that way is actually the smart move” Anna cut in, though from the look Lexi threw at her she agreed with Rick. “Not doing so could put a very big target on your back.”

“She’s right,” Benedict agreed. “ House Slivertongue has done a great job of keeping how deep you delve secret but just from the party you are going with you have to be at least able to handle floors holding level fifties.”

Ajax was surprised at that, House Silvertongue had done a really good job if all Benedict could be sure about was that he delved up to level fifty instead of the sixty five he had been to multiple times, dubbly so considering the incident with the kitsune.

“If the word spread that you can delve that high up to enemy nations you will have assassins going after you.” Benedict said.

“Would they do that with the recent peace that was just established?” Ajax asked. “I thought nobody wanted to make a move because of that stealth users the Republic had.”

“They’re more likely to do it because of him.” Anna cut in. “ With war taken off the table tournaments are the way that any point of conflict will be resolved. There is no way your current level hasn’t already been leaked, a simple check of the Adventurer Guild will have that pretty accurately and at your level of growth you may very well dominate both the under fifty years old and the under level one hundred for a good long while.”

“Not to mention that you will extend your own period of forced peace if you grow strong enough.” Benedict added on.

“And that’s if they see you doing only floors with level fifties.” the prince spoke again.

“ONLY!?” Rick was the only one to exclaim but everyone now had their eyes trained on him, clearly the royal family had much better information and knew that Ajax had cleared floors with level sixty-fives on it.

“In exchange my grandfather will be willing to sell you a spot for the team that will be delving the Republic’s dungeon when you go there for the tournament.” the prince continued. “Despite that delve being a few years away you’ll be going in with level one hundreds and will have no reason to hold back there.”

“You’ll be able to push as hard as you want in their secondary dungeon.” Anna seemingly saw his inner conflict and tried to placate him. “The cap for that one seems to be eighty so you’ll be able to push as far as you can go.”

It was here that Ajax had to realize that despite how much this world felt like a game he couldn’t simply min-max everything. Ideally he would get to delve into each and every dungeon and get the bonuses from every single floor but that simply wasn’t feasible. Not only that but it would also be the highest floors that he wouldn’t be collecting, he would have quite a bit of time to gain a delve into that dungeon before he passed the level where they wouldn’t be giving him the stat points any further.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I’ll do it.” Ajax said finally. “I make no promises but I’ll do my best to try and not leak just how far I can go.”

Ajax was pretty sure that the king would give him a spot in upcoming delve in the Republic dungeon regardless of how his first foreign delve would go, that said it didn’t mean that he didn’t want to be on the good side of the royal family, so far they had been straightforward with him and had given him a space to built his own place in their kingdom.

For the remainder of the day the group had decided to stick to small talk following the serious discussion. Rick, Benedict and to a lesser extent Lexi and Anna had been throwing looks at Ajax as they made their way through the swamp biome that the dungeon had thrown at them. The revelation that what he displayed during the tournament wasn’t his full power had been a lot to take in. Ajax was also drawing quite a bit of attention to himself by intercepting everything that got close to any of them. He was given clear instructions to be more protective of them on the first day while they got used to the theme, especially once they saw it was a swamp.

As for Ajax himself he was beyond pleased with the floor theme. The specific swamp biome that the dungeon had spawned was filled with poisonous and venomous creatures, Ajax had counted at least three different types: a giant wasp, large toads and massive snakes. Not only that but the floor had also presented him with specific plants and fungi that he could use in his alchemy.

When creating an alchemical antidote to a poison the temperature of the ingredients was very important as the poison was usually only effective at specific temperatures. This floor coming after days spent in class practicing and discussing this exact phenomenon was the perfect dungeon floor.

“What are you doing?” professor Silvertongue asked him once all of their group got back to the meeting spot before night fully fell. “I thought we agreed you would be doing alchemy at the end of the delve.”

“The toads are poisonous, not only that but the snakes and wasps are venomous.” Ajax said as he kept setting up his dungeon alchemy station. “I wanted to try make an antidote for them.”

“We have antidotes.” the professor said as he pointed towards the rings. “I know we gave you a few specific supplies just in case a weird floor theme showed up.”

“Those are too good.” Ajax said as he now started pulling out all of the things he had collected throughout the day. “They’ll cure the poison the moment they are taken like it was never there. The best I can do is make one on short notice that will partially work.”

“I know, that’s why I said you can do it at the end of the delve.” the professor said with a little exasperation in his tone.

“If it will only partially work it will give them a proper experience of how it will be delving without a chaperone, not only that but taking a partial antidote will also give them a good chance of developing [Poison Resistance].” Ajax countered.

“Fine.” the professor relented after he stopped to think things over for a moment. “But only until the first watch is over, after that you go to sleep as well you need to be rested for tomorrow.”

Ajax was tempted to argue but he just opened his mouth and closed it again simply nodding his acceptance of the terms. With the floors being bigger and uncharted, their delve here would last longer than the simple three to four days they did in the first year, he could look forward to five, six or maybe seven depending on how hard the floors were to fully clear.

By the time the first shift had ended Ajax had already made ten attempts at creating an antidote for each of the three poisons he encountered. Twenty-four of those attempts had been complete failures, learning to improvise with the ingredients available was one of the main challenges when crafting in the dungeon and the first twelve attempts had been wasted just on figuring out which ingredients definitely didn’t go together well.

Of his six successful five of them were [Minor Antidotes] and one of them had advanced a stage to a [Lesser Antidote] according to his [Alchemist’s Examination]. Despite that they weren’t evenly spread, he had only managed to get one of the minor antidotes for the wasp’s sting, never having dealt with this type of poison before. He had a little more success with the toad’s paralytic poison having two successful minor antidotes. His biggest success by far was with the snake hemotoxic poison as he had a better understanding of what the poison was doing, essentially just not allowing blood to clot and managed to make two minor and one lesser antidote for it.

Come morning Ajax had kept four of his creations to himself though he did give one of the minor snake and frog antidotes to professor Silvertongue. Not only that but all of the helpers were going to be taking a big step back going forward now that the students had had a full day to get used to the unfamiliar floor theme. Ajax wondered if it was mean for him to hope that someone in his group got poisoned just to see how effective his antidotes were.