Chapter 444

“One week, you couldn’t hold out for one week!” The crown prince sounded exasperated as he made his way into Ajax’s lab followed by his laughing brother.

Ajax had tried his best in his meetings with his fellow nobles, for about two days. For every noble that was willing to try and work out something mutually beneficial there were five that were looking to trick the new young Duke into a very one sided agreement.

In their defense Ajax wasn’t able to spot the issue with over half the deals that were offered to him, the issue was always in the details and the deal looked fine at first glance. Ajax also hadn’t been stupid enough to take those meetings alone. His grandfather had been with him every step of the way and was quick to call out the issue much to the nobles displeasure.

“I really tried.” Ajax said as he took his attention off the chemical mixture.

The final straw had been when a Baron tried to push his deal through by making a play at Ajax’s ego. “Who is the real head of your House?” the Baron had asked when Ajax looked to his grandfather. “Can’t you do anything yourself?”

The baron’s red face as anger threatened to overcome him as Ajax responded was worth the time wasted on that meeting. “If you think I got from a commoner born in a small village to the head of my own ducal house at my age by focusing on business you are dumber than you look. Of course I will lean on my grandfather when discussing how to rule my duchy.” From there Ajax had taken to starting the meetings with his grandfather, mother or Alana by his side and depending on the noble’s attitude during the first five minutes he would excuse himself and let them finish the meeting or engage further.

“Did they come and complain to you?” Ajax asked.

“Of course they came and complained.” the crown prince let out a defeated sigh. “That’s not why I’m here now, you seem to have forgotten that we had a meeting scheduled, that’s what we’re here for.”

“He thought you were entrenched in an important meeting with a fellow Duke and with both of us coming to get you it would smooth over any ruffled feathers.” the oldest prince said as he looked over Ajax’s vials and cauldrons. “What are you trying to make this doesn’t look like potions?”

“Something that just doesn’t seem to work.” Ajax said with a defeated voice as he watched his latest mixed batch harden far too quickly and the solid was almost as crumbly as a good cheddar.

It had taken Ajax hours of focus where he leaned heavily on his [Meditation] skill but he managed to remember three big differences the Greeks had used for their cement. The first was unslaked lime, he had no idea how that differed from regular lime stone but since he needed to find a substitute rock for that here it was simply a question of trial and error.

The second and third ingredients were both a lot easier and a lot harder to find. Volcanic ash and sea water wouldn’t take too much testing to figure out the proper amounts for. The issue with those was that there was no Volcano in any of the humanoid lands and more than that if this world had a sea Ajax hadn’t even heard of it yet.

Ajax wasn’t discouraged however. He knew what the end result should be, knew the creation process and the basics of the materials involved, it might take a while to reverse engineer proper base reagents but he was confident in his [Alchemy] skills.

Ajax left the mansion and joined the princes in the carriage that would take them to the royal palace where the meeting was to take place. Ajax had also brought with him his gauntlet but he wasn’t yet willing to part with it.

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“Oh yes, before I forget.” The crown prince turned to Ajax once the door to the carriage closed. “Our blacksmith is very interested in perhaps buying five regular size ingots from the massive bar you brought back.”

“The royal blacksmith?” Ajax was surprised, the steel used in his alloy was only the level fifty range, perfect to push his father but hardly worth it to a grandmaster. “I would have thought he had access to steel magicite alloy with a much higher quality steel.”

“He does.” The crown prince said before wincing a bit. “At least when we need something made from it he has plenty, but not even we have access to that much magicite that we’d waste it on low mana density steel. He wants it to be used as a prize and motivation for his apprentices.”

Five standard ingots weren’t nothing but they also weren’t a lot considering the size of the ingot he had brought home. Nevertheless Judy would have been proud of Ajax when he haggled them down. “I’d be willing to part with three of them, my father really does need them to push himself forward as a crafter.”

Ajax wasn’t even lying, his father had only tried to work the metal for one day and half of his blacksmithing related skills had already gone up one level. At the same time he had also exhausted himself thoroughly throughout the day, he was barely awake at dinner after emptying his Stamina pool several times over the course of one day.

“And I don’t want to sell them, I’ll trade them for a commision.” Ajax said.

“A commision from him is worth much more than three ingots.” the crown prince frowned.

“Even if it comes with a new crafting design?” Ajax asked and he could see the eldest prince’s eyes widen.

“You already have a crystal?” he asked Ajax with excitement.

In response Ajax just pulled out the gift Judy had gotten him. The ping pong ball sized Void crystal with level ninety mana density. “With this as a base I think it can last me a good while, maybe even until I reach your level of power.”

“It’s Void as well, so that will be a hammer.” the eldest prince said as he examined the gem.

All three of them put the discussion on hold as they got out of the carriage and entered the royal palace. The guards instantly saluted and opened the way as they all headed straight for the small throne room.

“Silvertongue, you owe me five gold coins.” The eldest prince’s voice resounded throughout the room as soon as he stepped in.

The king didn’t even attempt to hide the facepalm or the dispirited sigh that came. Ajax was sure that this was all on account of his son’s antics but the king was actually reacting to what they bet on, whether or not Ajax had ditched the meetings with the nobles and he was late because he was training or doing Alchemy instead.

Ajax had yet to meet with any representatives of the three Archdukes. It was customary to let the smaller nobles meet with any newly landed nobles to give them a chance at closing some business deals in their specific niche before the large well established Houses swept up everything, this was all the more important when it came to the amount of land a duchy would cover.

Seeing that the meeting was already off the rails, Duke Manashaper no longer showed any restraint as he quickly assaulted Ajax with a few rapid fire questions regarding Vibration Mana.

“... I still can’t seem to make the transition between getting my sound spells to work like shockwaves, do you have any guesses why that is?” the duke asked.

“It might be because of how the sound based spells work.” Ajax answered. “Unlike a shockwave they disperse their energy to amplify a word or even a whole sentence. A shockwave is so concentrated that while it technically also has a sound you could only hear it for an instant like the crack of a whip.”

“Interesting and important as Vibration mana is, especially with two users in our kingdom, the topic we are gathered here for is arguably even more so.” the king interrupted them. “I’ve had all of our historic records regarding the ascended races scoured and while there was no obvious pattern it all matches perfectly with the agreement you last mentioned was in place.”

“I have also had my family scour our own records.” Archduke Steelblade said. “Out of twelve encounters with the ascended races we have, two of them are retaliatory in nature based on ruins. Nine are encounters found in the Wild Lands where the group stayed well away. The last however is the most valuable.”

“Someone else spoke with one of the ascended races?” Ajax was surprised at that.

“No, nothing like that. The records were recovered from the ruins in the Wild Lands, but they mention the unprovoked attack by a hydra.” the archduke said.

“Unprovoked?” Archduke Silvertongue questioned. “Is this a report disproving the agreement?”

“No.” The archduke shook his head. “The reason we have the record is because the civilisation lived to record it. The hydra was killed by a quick response from a dragon, phoenix and chimera working together before they left the kingdom’s territory.”

Ajax very much agreed with Archduke Steelblade, even if it was a record from a doomed civilization and not as reliable as the others it was a sliver of proof for the agreement being enforced by the ascended races.

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