Recruiting the Collectors as retainers didn’t take that much more after the delve had finished. Unlike their other retainers they did get to have a sit down with Ajax’s grandparents to ensure that they would have some exclusive access to a few of the more exclusive things the established merchants had access to, but after they were reassured none of them had any real reservations about joining.

The Collectors also knew that they needed to join a House if they wanted to keep progressing at a decent pace, with the Goldmancers and Manashapers having given them a boost in power with their favors that brought them up to the top class of their levels for adventurers. By doing all that and not recruiting them however they also took them off the list for any of the strong houses as they could have been spies.

For the remainder of the Academy break everything seemed to have slowed down and set into a rhythm. Ajax had still joined House Silvertongue on their delves in order to push himself further. All four of their delves had been uneventful, with general biomes spawning for the 8th floor, they didn’t run into anything more than a few nasty injuries that their healers had to path up with a bit of speed.

While his deep delving had been kept on pace without his position as a teaching assistant Ajax didn’t get to join House Silvertongue for their crafting dungeons, in exchange Ajax had managed to score a delve slot in each of the capitals dungeon for his own House. He joined his retainers for both runs but while the Collectors and the guards were focused on pushing themselves and clearing the appropriate floors Ajax had focused on his crafting.

Despite his slow progress into Alchemy Ajax had managed to successfully and consistently output +1 strength potions that worked all the way up to two hundred strength. This wasn’t something that he could use himself but plenty of his new retainers had been more than happy to grab the extra few potions he had been able to make during the delves, not only that but all of them were bragging about the outlandish bonuses House Hearthbound were giving.

“Oh no you don’t!” Aurora was quick to slap Ajax’s hand away from the new shipment of herbs they just received.

“The Academy is starting again next week.” Alana joined in. “You’ve cost us enough over the summer.”

His two crafting delves hadn’t been enough to sate Ajax’s need for alchemy reagents. Despite being much more conservative with ingredients procured by his sister and grandparents Ajax still didn’t have a high enough mastery that his potions and elixirs would sell for more than the sum of their parts. More than anything his constant consumption on reagents had helped build a lasting bond between Alana and Aurora as both had taken on the job of protecting their stock from Ajax’s stick fingers.

“Fine, fine!” Ajax relented and headed for out towards their hives.

In the end Ajax had managed to strike a good bargain with house Goldmancer and had shared their bee raising techniques. From what his grandfather had said after he returned from the meeting with their representative the archduke had pressed on the scales in order to give them a better deal than they would otherwise get. Despite the good deal they had gotten all of their upfront payment was used for the cost of the families noble estate inside the capitol, this meant that they would need to until the following year for a cut of the honey profits.

That had made Ajax feel a little guilty when he noticed just how many experts had shown up along with the archduke himself when Ajax came by to teach them in person. Despite both Annabeth and the archduke having maintained their composure, some of their experts couldn’t hide the disappointment that came when Ajax taught them how to identify a queen and how to relocate a hive. That small amount of guilt however wasn’t enough for Ajax to spill any more secrets though he did drop by a few days later with a few jars of honey that had a tinge of mana to them.

As he headed towards their beehives Ajax could see the spectacular harvest that was coming in all around his specific plot. His grandparents had made a very lucrative investment buying up everything around his plot as the relocation of the bees and their slight mana infusion had clearly helped turn the land plots from some of the least favorable to ones able to compete for the best plot status. More than that his grandparents had confirmed to him that the farmers they had hired to tend those lands had seen a noticeable increase in their farming skills.

“You’re already back, sir?” Theron called out as Ajax approached their small training corner made out of a rock patch of ground. “I wasn’t expecting you until later tonight.”

Once Theron had officially joined his House he had started treating Ajax very differently, gone was the casual and friendly address. This was something that Ajax had spent the summer breaking down into a more informal and friendly interaction in private. Despite that, Theron had always maintained a respectful tone and always addressed Ajax as sir or Lord Ajax.

“I’ve apparently cost them enough profits and I am to give Alchemy a break until the Academy starts back up.” Ajax grinned as he joined a few of his retainers in the small training arena they carved out for themselves.

Their small training corner was only temporary, once their official residence was finished they would have a proper training field inside the city and their temporary time here was dubbed as rock removal to expand the flower fields some more.

“You ready?” Ajax asked as he took the field opposite the bull beastkin.

“Always, sir.” Theron responded as he took up a battle stance.

Despite how their initial battle back during the tournament had gone, the summer had seen the match-up flipped on its head. That wasn’t to say that Theron could now thrash Ajax, but rather that Ajax had taken to training against Theron without using his mana and relying only on his skills and stamina.

Theron still had quite a bit of room left to grow his raw stats with potions, despite this and all the increases Ajax had accumulated through his training and dungeon boosts he still came out behind when it came to raw physical stats. The physical stat difference added on to Theron bull beastkin physiology on top of his years of training meant that Ajax was below him in both skill and stats.

The one equalizer Ajax had was more of a double edged sword. His [Cursed Slash] showed why high rarity skills were so important, despite his inability to use it frequently due to the high Stamina cost the simple fact that Ajax could use it forced Theron to fight extremely defensively.

As they started their spar Ajax quickly leaned into his [Berserker Style], as it turned out the style was almost a perfect match with [Cursed Slash], not only that but Ajax had finally started to get some use out of his [Berserker] skill, with [Cursed Slash] eating up so much of his stamina the stamina regeneration it provided every time he got hit did wonders in keeping him from tiring out.

Ajax however wasn’t the only one to gain a lot from these spars. Theron had been forced on the defensive by a slower and weaker opponent for the first time in his life, his defensive skills with the massive two handed axe had grown immensely over the summer as he battled against Ajax’s duel-wielding style.

The biggest winners of the spars however had to be Kate and the two healers who both decided to join Ajax house, they would always be needed after Ajax and Theron finished one of their spars and healing either fighter brought with it more knowledge and experience.

Healing Ajax would mean getting a feel for his own self-healing, as it turned out healing someone at the same time they were healing themselves made for good training as the healer had to be careful not to disrupt the patient's mana.

For Theron on the other hand the healers had gotten the chance to work actual battle inflicted curses for the first time. Since Ajax’s knowledge of curses was still nearly non-existent the extent of his [Cursed Slash] boiled down to simply infecting someone with cursed mana. This inefficiency proved to be a solid training method for their healer to try and heal cursed injuries without the use of Holy affinity healing spells. The process was slow and required extreme focus but it allowed them to build up their techniques. Kate and both of the healers were actively working on a paper to share this discovery with the Healing Union on behalf of house Hearthbound.