Gamer Reborn

Chapter 291

As he stands in front of the arch Ajax can’t help but look back down the corridors that make up the labyrinth that is this floor. The high tech panels on the walls, the constant whirr of machinery, before his parents died in his first life experiencing something like this dungeon floor biome was something he had always wished for.

He was also very much tempted to stay on the floor until he finally found one droid that could be taken outside so that he could keep that blaster. It wasn’t even for the sake of power, Ajax didn’t know how the dungeon or the system did it but the blasters fire here was more of an irritant than anything else. Sure if you could handle the kickback and continue to aim the fast fire rate, almost instantaneous projectile speed and lack of ammo would make the weapon very powerful for a level fifty but it was clearly balanced so as to not be overpowering.

The main reason why Ajax decided not to try getting that blaster was because he knew it would simply be taken away from him. There is no way the Empire would allow him to keep it once they saw it in the inspection his storage ring would go through and he would much rather not get his hopes up only to see them dashed.

“At leasts the fun’s not over yet” Ajax murmured as he ran his hand down the best blaster he managed to find on his way to this arch. Sure the blaster would burst into mana motes after he felt the dungeon but that didn’t mean he couldn’t keep it for one more floor as he climbed, not only that but he might even be able to push his skills further by seeing how his magic interacted when it was used to amplify a blaster.

As he stepped past into the arch and onto the next floor Ajax felt the familiar pull on his body for an instant before appearing in front of another arch. What awaited him on the sixth floor of the dungeon was nothing as novel as the fifth floor. Despite that Ajax was if anything much more content with this floor theme as he took a look around.

Surrounding him were miles and miles of glass greenhouses as far as the eye could see. All neatly arranged in a grid layout with pathways connecting all of them. He all but shouted in joy as his [Sense Mana] took in the world around him and he felt all the different mana herbs and plants that were being grown, the only thing that stopped him was the fear of attracting whatever monsters were on this floor.

“Good to know that I can start a fire here if I really need it.” Ajax said to himself, though he could feel the pain that doing something like that to all these alchemical ingredients would cause him.

With a careful step the first thing Ajax did was go back to the arch and start focusing his [Mana Syphon] on it. He was going to do this absolute best to remember the mana makeup of this type of floor. With all of his portable alchemy lab stored away neatly in his spacial ring Ajax stepped away from the arch with a silent apology.

“I’m sorry but I am going to worry all of you for a little while.” Despite there being none to hear him Ajax knew it would take him at about three days to clear out the floor but he planned on spending at least a week in here if not more just to progress his [Alechemy] as much as he can with the variety of mana infused herbs that are around the same level and the mana rich atmosphere of the dungeon floor.

His moment of silent apology was interrupted by a sharp ping from [Danger Sense], most troubling was that the danger was coming from below him. Ajax quickly jumped and launched himself into the air only to feel the power of his jump be the final straw causing a small collapse of the ground he was just standing on.

What he saw there under the ground sent a frosty chill down his back. Two hippo sized moles with claws the size of longswords were shifting through the rubble and looking for him. The chill that went down his back had nothing to do with being attacked, that much he expected from the dungeon.

The problem that came up was that the moles could and would destroy some if not most of the garden if they were left alone. Ajax simply wouldn’t stand for that as he summoned his axe and swords before he charged down the moles looking to follow down their tunnels and quickly clean up the entire mole population of the floor before they destroyed too many of his precious ingredients.

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It was only twelve hours later that Ajax finally decided to take a break from his hunt. He carefully made sure to set up his base camp and barriers before he got ready for a good night’s sleep. He didn’t even get a proper chance to wash out his gear from the layers of mole blood and dust that he had built up in his tireless crusade before he fell on top of his bedroll and went to sleep.

It took four hours before the next mole stumbled upon his little haven but to Ajax it felt like barely seconds had passed between laying his head down and the alarm barrier waking him back up. The only thing confirming the passage of time to him was the refilled mana and stamina he had.

He quickly took care of his uninvited guests before repacking everything and for the first time since he entered the floor he once again headed towards the surface. Despite only spending three hours underground Ajax knew that he had done serious damage to the mole population, from the looks of things this seemed to be a fairly standard if very rewarding floor biome so he should have killed more than half the moles present on the floor already with his initial hunt.

“Might as well start on some alchemy now” Ajax muttered to himself. “I won’t be able to keep any of the potions I make anyway so I might as well make something that will help me clear the rest of this floor quicker.”

Once he finally found an exit to the underground tunnels Ajax had to face his next challenge on the floor, one however that he was more than happy to have. He was spoilt for choice in terms of what plants to use for his alchemy session. Being on such a high floor all of them approached the quality of some of the best ingredients Ajax had ever worked with before now, add on the natural interference from the ambient mana and Ajax found his first three attempts to all end in failure.

“Professor Vilethorn told me that the more mare rich the ingredients were the harder it would be to prevent a failure but I definitely didn’t expect this.” Ajax complained to himself as he emptied out his latest failed attempt.

Despite having previously used ingredients of this mana concentration before, the biggest difference here was that he had always used them in combination with other inferior ingredients. Even in his previous delves he would collect different plants from different floors before starting his alchemy. Now all of the ingredients being this high quality meant that there was no low quality ingredient that he would have to compensate for and saturate with the mana of the better ones as he did before.

His fourth attempt finally saw a success as he carefully poured the completed potion into a vial for his [Alchemist's Examination] to inspect. Much to his shock the [Mana Potion - Common] was one of the best potions he had ever created. Despite the imperfect brewing this potion would still grant the drinker an instant infusion of two hundred mana as well as an increase in their mana regeneration of twenty times over the next minute.

His moment of celebration was quickly interrupted as he heard voices coming from the glass greenhouse he had collected his ingredients from. He had no idea what language they were speaking but from the sounds of it this floor definitely would have some humanoid monsters that he was going to have to take care of. This was the perfect chance to practice with his blaster.

As Ajax carefully approached the sound of the conversation he leaned into his [Stealth] skill as much as he could, with only a Common skill however his progress was relatively slow he would definitely need to look into getting a few higher rarity skills that would synergise with this one.

Despite it taking him a bit of time he silently climbed one of the trees outside the greenhouse to where he had a clear view of the orcs that seemed to be having an argument while pointing to the empty plot inside the greenhouse from where he had collected his ingredients.

To start with Ajax didn’t use any mana augmentation on the blaster as he wanted to get a baseline for the weapon against these enemies, despite this he turned [Mana Syphon] all the way up to max and even used the tree he was sitting in to help with the recoil.

Beside the initial shot which accurately took one of the orcs right in its left eye Ajax felt like at most ten of the next thirty shots even hit his target however they did seem to do some burn damage. It was then that he tried his first [Mana Augmentation] on the the blaster as he infused it with void mana.

Much to his surprise the blaster bolts had turned from a bright red to a pitch black, unfortunately they also went from low damage to no damage at all. In hindsight that might have made sense seeing as void helped bypass armor after the point of impact but the bolts carried no force to speak of to damage the orcs.

Changing the augment to magma however turned out to be a great success as the bolts now left small patches of magma on impact that the orcs had to quickly wipe off. His fun and experimentation quickly came to an end however as he felt [Danger Sense] let him know to store the blaster and pull out his shield just in time for the third orc, a shaman by the looks of it, to throw a wind bomb at him. He managed to syphon enough mana from it that the wind blast released on contact with the shield did nothing more than violently remove him from the tree he was in.

Back on ground he saw the two orcs marred with wounds from the blaster charging towards him as he took out his hammer from the spacial ring. Experimenting and trying to increase skills was all well and good but you always went back to the basics.