Despite having beaten last years winner Ajax knew the final will end being a more difficult match, it wasn’t so much that the person he was fighting would in any way be at the same level that Ajax is, after all they were barely level forty and Ajax had been able to clear dungeon floors with monsters going all the way up to level sixty-five.

The difficulty came from a multitude of factors, first and foremost being that the mage he was going to be up against was a runic mage, his ability to quickly dump all his mana into attacks might actually result in something Ajax would have to look out for. The second issue was that he was an earth and wind mage and the sand in the arena would give him a slight edge. The biggest problem however was that he came from a ducal house. Not only that but he was one from their main family so he will have quite a bit invested in gear to specifically counter Ajax.

“So, do you think that is a deal we should make?” Ajax asked as he was training his [Inject Mana] on the plants.

“The market for honey is small, that said most of the demand comes from the high end of society so there is quite a bit of money to be made.” Elija explained. “How do you get the bees to stay in these hives?”

“Why does that matter?”Judy asked.

“One of the biggest things to take in consideration if we should take the deal is how likely it is that others will figure out how to do it.” Alana said. “Just because nobody has done it yet despite knowing it is possible only means the method isn’t obvious.”

“It’s not hard,” Ajax said and everyone present focused on him. “All you have to do is carefully relocate the queen and momentarily trap her inside.”

“The bees have a queen?” Aurora asked.

“Every hive is built around a queen.” Ajax explained. “It’s the one that looks a lot bigger than every other bee in the hive, here let me show you.”

With that Ajax approached the closest hive and after smoking it for a little while he opened it up from above. It took him a few moments to find the queen in the mass of bees but once he locked on to it he pointed it out.

“There, see that one that is bigger than all the rest.” Everyone else had also gathered around the hive.

“That’s a queen?” his mother asked. “I thought you said you had to trap it.”

“You do at first,” Ajax explained as he pointed to the little wooden cage that was now covered in wax and stuck to the bottom of the hive. “After about a week you can let it go free since they will have already settled in.”

“I definitely recommend making a deal with the Goldmancer’s.” Aurora said. “It isn’t going to take people all that long to figure that they just need to take the big bee to get the others to stick around.”

“Say nothing about the mana infused plants.” Elija said. “I’m not sure how you even got them to be mana infused but that is something we are not going to let get out.”

“Is it that important?” Ajax asked.

“We’ve had every single bigger organization that we owe a favor to come and try to use the favor we owe them in an attempt to know you got the honey to even have the small mana infusion it has.” Aurora explained.

Getting anything to take mana infusion was a massive pain. Ajax had quickly found that out as he had grown his plants and bees. Firstly not only did anything living need to be injected with mana from an early age, but everything surrounding it had to be as well. For the Bees that meant individual infusion in small doses as well as the mana infused plants. For plants you also had to ensure to infuse the soil regularly. All this had to be done without overloading, Ajax theorized that over a few generations you could get more than just the slightest amount of mana to stick but you had to take everything gradually.

“I think that House Goldmancer is more interested in learning how to get any mana infusion to stick to something than the honey market itself.” Elija said. “That’s a good thing too.”

“Why is that a good thing?” Ajax asked.

“Because it means they’ll give you a good deal on the bees hoping to figure it out by themselves from there.” Aurora said. “And even a fair deal on such a large scale would set us up as one of the bigger unlanded Baron houses. A good deal we might end up as top five for the next few years while the monopoly will hold and the wild bee population recovers.”

“I’ll talk to Anna about it.” Ajax said. “Hopefully we can get a negotiation meeting with someone who isn’t her father.”

Ajax still felt a chill run down his back when he thought back to how much of an effect the archduke’s skill had had on him during their simple conversation.

“You just worry about your fight.” Judy said. “We’ll worry about the deal.”

Ajax very much appreciated how quickly his family had taken to his delegation of tasks. With that he focused back on his training and made sure to get enough rest so that his Mana and Stamina would be full in the morning.

The next morning the arena stands were filled up once again. Ajax was glad to see that almost his entire class had shown up to watch the match, though some of them were there to cheer on his opponent (All of those however had come by and told him it was because of a family relationship with the ducal house).

As he stepped into the arena Ajax could clearly feel the mana in the gems that studded his opponents armor. Unlike the first year tournament, the 6th year allowed for some much more complex gear to be brought in and people always paid up for the finals.

Unlike in all the previous matches Ajax’s opponent’s cocky personality was nowhere to be seen. He was fully focused on Ajax and had already taken a fighting stance, he didn’t even look away when the referee asked him if he was ready and had simply given a nod.

The moment the fight began Ajax had started with a metal infused arrow before moving to close the gap. For the first time in the tournament however his opponent was just as quick as he was with getting an attack going as wind blades launched towards him.

None of that mattered much to Ajax as he simply started to syphon extra mana from the incoming attacks as he dodged them with his increased physical stats. As soon as Ajax got in melee range of his opponent however the staff he had been using was swapped out for two shields.

It was then that Ajax got a taste of how annoying a prepared runic mage could be on the defensive. Despite Ajax switching his [Mana Augmentation] on every strike his opponent seemed to have a defensive shield of the opposite element ready go.

This was the second time that his opening charge was repelled. But Ajax wasn’t discouraged, if a frontal assault wouldn’t work he would just have to keep adding pressure. Besides his [Mana Augmentation] he now started adding some environmental magic into the mix. His first attempt at messing with the sand below his opponents feet had almost let him decapitate the man, the only thing that protected him was a wind enchanted necklace that triggered a strong wind burst separating the two fighters.

The moment his opponent had Ajax at range he quickly swapped out his shields for the staff again and started to go on the offensive again, his slightly pale expression did however show just how close Ajax had gotten with that surprise attack.

Ajax knew he could simply outlast his opponent, with the amount of spells he was throwing out Ajax was not even paying half the cost of [Mana Syphon] from his own mana pool. He did however want to put a quick end to the match so he charged again.

The simplest way Ajax had to finish the match quickly was to finally show one of the aces he normally kept hidden. As soon as he got back into striking range and his opponents brought out the shields Ajax used a solid amount of mana to launch a fireball. His opponent was quick to bring up a water wall but that simply wasn’t enough as Ajax used his [Cursed slash] to turn the fire black.

Despite the flames going out quickly once they made it through the water wall they had already done their job and applied the curse. From there all Ajax did was release a pulse of holy cleansing magic.

More than one of the experienced fighters had winced sympathetically once they saw Ajax’s plan, despite the weak curse that was applied the amount of pain inflicted from the clash of curses and holy mana was something they all knew. Oddly enough the ones who best dealt with this combo were those who had a high Perception stat as that allowed them to minimize the amount of pain they felt.

Ajax’s opponent had been lucky to fall unconscious a moment after the pain hit, he hadn’t even managed to let out a proper scream as all that came out was a short grunt before he dropped like a rock.

“And there you have my Lords and Ladies.” The commentator was quick to jump in after the match had finished. “Another interesting surprise from our champion Ajax Hearthbound. At only seventeen years of age I am expecting we will see a lot more of him in the coming years.”