Chapter 718 (Patreon)

The first thing Ajax had to get used to now that he was back was that there were responsibilities that required his time even if he didn’t think they were all that important. While the nobles had been satisfied with a mere greeting and a short exchange the day before a new day was a new opportunity to them. 

The other thing Ajax didn’t miss was how these nobles thought they could go around his brother and the rest of the family’s decision by getting him to agree to their proposals. Ajax didn’t have more than a few minutes to spare for each noble that visited but there were just so many of them. 

“Is that what you all had to deal with all the time?” Ajax asked, mentally drained after a few hours of dealing with most of the branch nobles that lived in Lessis. 

“Most of us can’t tell them to pack it up after a few minutes.” Lexi said with a smile as she sipped her tea. She conveniently left out that she could do something just as close seeing as she was not only the future duchess but also an important member of House Manashaper with no direct control of this duchy until her marriage with Ajax was finalized. “But we can also avoid having to deal with them all at once. Once the novelty of you being her fades I doubt you’ll need to spend more than a couple hours a week or so dealing with them unless you plan to take a more active role in the way cities are ruled.” 

One of the few things House Hearthbound had drawn a very strict line on was their expanding quarry turned city. With so many skilled former slaves they quarry Lexi and Ajax started with their spells had expanded and built into a proper city. But where the former slaves were expert miners the rest of the city was an opportunity. 

This opportunity was one that Lexi chose to keep for their House. Instead of letting merchants rush the city and take advantage of the beastkin who had no Skills or even experience with haggling she had insisted on House Hearthbound handling their merchant district with set prices while also having the kids who developed merchant Skills during school go there once a month to practice their Skills and teach the beastkin’s how markets were supposed to work. 

Ajax was impressed by Lexi initiative as unlike crafter or combat Skills training merchant Skill without any currency or real exchange backing it was all but a futile effort. In fact Ajax learnt that Alana had asked the family to turn a blind to a small black market that had been built up in the student body where more entrepreneurial students took to selling and trading benefits or small tokens with each other. The only thing they policed were the trades of dangerous items or the use of actual money to keep all the students at the same level without involving their family’s financial stability. 

“Do you plan to share your former life with your family?” Lexi asked Ajax before they moved on with their day. 

“Not yet.” Ajax said. “I’ll do it before we start building large boats, we really need a name for them.” Ajax stayed on a brief tangent as he fought against using the english word ‘ships’. “ But first I just want to get settled in and have everything reach a new normal before I spring that on them.” 

Lexi understood his point of view but she was also determined to not allow Ajax to simply put things off forever just because it was simpler that way as she feared if he waited too long the secret would turn into a rift that could tear the family closeness of House Hearthbound apart and she saw just how much damage that could do to a noble House first hand with Anna’s family.

As he exited the meeting room Ajax quickly spotted Alana, Judy as well as both his grandparents and mother all doing their own thing but taking a moment to glance at him. It was clear none of them wanted to smother him upon his return but they also wanted to spend time with him before Jake returned from Lessis and would shamelessly try to monopolize his uncle’s time. 

Ajax was more than happy to catch up with his family, since the day before they had focused on what he did during his absence he was now more than happy to take some individual time with each of them. 

Where Ajax was trying to slowly integrate himself into his family’s day to day life as well as their House’s ruling of the duchy Aurexion had a much easier time getting used to his new life. Between the low ambient Mana, the pursuit of shapeshifting and the gains he made during the war a lot of Aurexion time was spent curled up sleeping or practicing his Mana control.

Ajax spent more than an hour with Alana and Judy but since they were focused on rare and valuable items most of it just went over his head. He knew a lot Mana density from his time in the dungeon and his practice of Alchemy made him aware of how to appraise items. Value in terms of need of those items and their rarity in humanoid lands outside of dungeons as well as the political artifical scarcity noble houses used to target each other was too advanced for him to get a clear picture. 

Ajax’s time spent with his grandparents was a lot easier to understand. While they were ensuring the most of the trade for basic good to ensure the duchy had plenty of common necessities the distribution of such items fell to his mother to manage. More interesting to him was the other part of the family business his grandparents oversaw: the cement. 

Seeing their production numbers, where it was being sent and how much was sold to the royal family gave Ajax a pretty good idea of how far along his plans at getting roads built was. He was a little surprised at how much their production had increased but he assumed that making basic cement wasn’t too hard of a process even for a relatively average alchemist once the recipe was finalized. It was only for the more Mana dense stuff where the mixture became unstable and a skilled alchemist was needed to keep it stable while it set.

Getting into the numbers had led Ajax to start his calculation for how they wanted to build the new port city. He was already planning for it to mostly be cement seeing as they would need the wood they were amassing for their future naval armada, Ajax knew study ships could be built out of metal but that was for their future Skilled shiprights to slowly work their way up to. 

“What are you worried about?” his mother asked him as she saw Ajax looking over the cement production numbers. 

“The new city we are building.” Ajax answered. “I’m not sure how long the buildings are going to last.”

One thing Ajax didn’t have a chance to test was how this recipe of cement would do over time. Taking the risk with roads was an easy oversight as he expected roads to be damaged from use and simply repaved but it was much different when it came to buildings people lived in. Ajax was sure the Mana infused stuff would last but building an entire city out of Mana infused cement was simply a non-starter.

Despite his worries Ajax found that city planning was relaxing for him. The act rekindled the passion he had back on Earth that had led him to be an architect and while he had a lot more different interests now, like magic, it was a pleasant experience to think like an architect again for a moment as he planned material usage and design for something as large as a port city. 

Ajax of course didn’t even get a chance to properly start any of the calculations before Jake returned and he was dragged out to the practice fields. Just because Ajax had the patience to look into city building before resuming his daily training didn’t mean that his combat enthusiastic nephew did as well.

As Ajax stepped on the training grounds a few things stood out to him a lot more now that he had returned from war. The first thing was just how weak his own people were. Ajax always knew that outside of Lancel who had come with Lexi from House Manashaper all of his retainers had always been much weaker than himself. But following the war Ajax had more points of refrence to compare and none of them painted his people in a good light. 

Forgetting other champions or the squads, none of his people even came close to the level of a regular elite soldier. Even his strongest retainers could only be counted as good soldiers among the common armies that had fought in the war.

On a logical level Ajax understood that the reason for this was that his people were still technically young and most of them had solid foundations his House had trained into them and that they simply needed time to grow into their potential, his rapid rise to power was the exception where most people often took decades to grow in strength.

Still looking over the practice field with fresh eyes Ajax promised himself that in these coming years of peace he would not only focus on the growth of his duchy but also on helping his House’s retainers in not only reinforcing their foundations but also begging the slow climb to true power he knew they were capable of.