The more experienced people recovered a lot quicker, Elija, Aurora, the crown prince as well as his wife broke out of their shock almost as quickly as it hit. The four of them had known the seeds weren’t a big enough reason to set up the meeting and the floor guessing hadn’t been focused on enough to be the focus of the evening. Xavier and a few non-politically inclined members of the first hadn’t even picked their jaws up even after a good few seconds.
“I have.” Ajax confirmed the king's words. “That particular floor made for a particularly eye opening experience.”
“The first of many I hope.” the king said as he waved his hand and a stack of notes appeared out of his ring. “Unlike [Mana Syphon], [Life Aspect Mana] is not only a skill we have heard about before but as a mana aspect one that has been studied in depth.”
Ajax’s eyes were drawn to the documents. He instinctively knew they held information that would speed up his training with his newest mana type tenfold. Ajax was surprised to see the king pass the papers not to him but to the crown prince, the meaning was clear to him. So far Ajax had mostly interacted with the king and his oldest son as members of the royal family, it was finally time to set the foundations for a relationship with the future king as well.
“It is our custom to try and educate any Legendary skill owner on the use of said skill.” Despite the entire situation being a clear surprise the crown prince instantly shifted gears, beginning his explanation to Ajax as he skimmed the papers for any information he may need right now. “Do you know how many Legendary skill users there are in our kingdom?”
Ajax stopped to think for a moment. He was almost positive the king’s oldest son had a Legendary skill, it was the only way he would be able to even fight on the same level as Shadow. Next he obviously knew about the squad captain that had the stamina draining empowerment as well. With him and maybe one more hidden user Ajax was fairly confident in his guess. “Four or so?”
“Not a bad guess.” the crown prince nodded. “However the actual number that we know of is ten.
“There are ten people like Uncle?” Xavier asked, sounding as shocked by the answer as Ajax felt. He quickly covered his mouth as he realized what he had just exposed. “Sorry,” he offered lamely.
Despite the slip-up nobody was worried about it, they had thoroughly investigated the characters of everyone present at this meeting and they knew none of them would cause an issue with the knowledge.
“While all people who gain a Legendary skill are extremely talented, you can break them into three different groups.” The crown prince kept the discussion on topic despite the outburst. “The ones who are driven, the ones who are desperate and the ones who are both.”
Ajax knew he clearly fell in the first category. “The first and the third category sadly make up less than half of the people.” the crown prince continued. “ Those who come by them out of desperation usually find themselves stalling as the power of the skill eases the pressure that caused its creation.”
Ajax now realized why his guess had been so far off the mark, difficulty and danger were weighed heavily by the System but of those who barely made the cut to gain such a skill how many would be willing to push even close to those same skills to their limits in the pursuit of more power.
“Over half of our Legendary skill users wallow in mediocrity.” the crown prince sighed. “Nevertheless we always strive our best to help those who look to push further. We are finally in a position to help you with at least one of your Legendary Skill.”
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“Before we begin on the skill itself, is there anything you can share about how you got it?” Xavier’s mother asked with a small frown as she was reading the same information her husband just skimmed over.
“I gained the skill from experimenting with the seeds.” Ajax started as he continued with a short retelling of how his alchemy experiment started. “When the seed started to release a lot more mana than I knew what to do with I started siphoning it. The exposure and understanding from the experiment granted me the mana aspect as well as two Epic skills.”
“What skills?” the king’s oldest son butted in with enthusiasm at the new information.
“[Reckless Researcher] and [Unstable Alchemist].” Ajax had no reason to hide them. “Both are sure to become pillars of my future progress in alchemy.”
While his brother all but lost his interest at the answer the crown prince was jumping for joy on the inside, with these skills it was finally reinforced that Ajax wouldn’t just be dropping alchemy after he squeezed it for the levels it would grant him and he would instead become a very talented crafter as well, more than that a crafters path was one the royal family was more than capable of helping one walk down.
“That does explain the anomaly.” the future queen said.
“What anomaly?” Ajax asked.
“We have records of six previous users of your Legendary skill in our history.” the crown prince answered. “Three elves, one human, one beastkin and one dwarf. Five of them were also plant casters while the dwarf was an earth caster, all six of them however were ritual casters.”
Ajax understood now why he was the anomaly, thinking it over in fact he recognised that rituals were in fact the perfect way to take advantage of Life mana. Regardless if one used runic or chanted magic ritual magic offered the same advantage to both. In exchange for increasing the minimum amount of mana used for each spell to an insane degree it allowed for a spell to be cast over multiple sessions or by multiple casters, giving the caster or casters time to recharge their mana and launch a final spell with a lot more mana than their entire mana pool should allow.
“That perfectly leads into the first issue I ran into with life mana.” Ajax piggy backed off the idea and took out a few pebbles he had brought in preparation for this example. As he used his new Life mana with just a touch of Earth mana to fuse the pebbles into a small golem that moved around by itself. “Even something as simple as this golem took three hundred mana.”
“That doesn’t match with your fighting style one bit, what was the System thinking?” the king’s oldest son all but shouted in outrage.
“It does seem less than ideal.” the crown prince said more politically. “That said, I do hope this information does help with your progress.” he pushed the paper towards Ajax. “They mostly outline generalities and any weaknesses we have found, once we return home more specific details that we have on any of their spells will also be made available to you.”
Ajax now understood why the information was so limited to a few pieces of paper. This was simply the barebones information they had on how to counter a life mana used that the king had on him in case he ran into one that was aggressive. He now looked forward to what more specific knowledge the kingdom had back in the royal library.
“Is something the matter?” the king asked as he saw Ajax’s frown deepen more and more as he quickly read through the information.
“There is no mention here of alchemy.” Ajax complained, there were pages here used to describe how life mana could lie dormant before activating in plantlife leading to many unexpected ambushes but nothing on what Ajax had experienced during his crafting. “Not even as a side note.”
“Attempts were made.” the king answered. “Unfortunately any invigoration or infusion didn’t persist through the crafting process and any spell used during the process interfered with the alchemy. The process unfortunately does not work.”
Despite not having anyone who had a life aspect mana skill there were one or two spells left over that talented mages could cast with enough practice. The king had previously attempted to have them increase the quality of ingredients for his alchemists with life based spells but none had worked.
“It does.” Ajax said with conviction. “It worked with the seed. What little remained of the elixir maintained the benefits of the life mana the seed released. It may be that infusion does not work without disturbing the alchemy however by simply adding the life mana it would be naturally absorbed during the brewing.”
“To do this successfully, at least for anything more than the most basic of potions, you would not only need someone with the skill to generate the pure life mana that has no direction but you would also need them to work in perfect unison with the alchemist so as to not disturb them.” one of the squad mages said.
“Or you would need the alchemist to add in the life mana themselves.” Ajax answered with a grin.
“As excited as I am about the results I am sure you will produce, could I ask that you focus on the upcoming tournament for the time being.” the crown prince interjected. “In the following three weeks you will have the final and main dungeon of the Republic to delve, the elves' arrival and their welcoming ball. The tournament will start in less than a month.”