Ajax knew that Fluffy was intelligent and while she picked up on the meaning of what people mostly spoke to her he wasn’t sure just how well she understood. Teaching her something like Void was going to be done more in the same way he learned new Mana affinities.

“I developed Void from Shadow.” Ajax explained as he used his [Manipulate Mana] to show Fluffy the process as he turned Shadow Mana into Void Mana. “Where Shadow Mana hides an attack, Void instead moves it to a different place.”

Ajax spent about two hundred Mana over an hour as he demonstrated the change as well as a few attacks with Void for Fluffy but he wasn’t expecting the shadow cat to learn it in one lesson.

“Let's see if you learn better through combat.” Ajax said after Fluffy hadn’t made any progress and ran through about half of her mana.

Ajax was naturally holding back a lot. Most noticeably he wouldn’t be using any of his Legendary Skills. Even without those however Ajax was doing just enough to pressure Fluffy while giving her plenty of space to actually attack.

“Sparring might not help just yet.” Kate said as she came half an hour after they started sparring and brought Fluffy a bowl of water. “She instinctively reaches for Shadow Mana, only once she knows how to call upon Void do I think she’ll have a chance to use it in combat.”

The feline was laid flat on the floor panting heavily, her silky coat matted with sweat after all the effort it had put in. Ajax had also worked up a sweat during the spar as he hadn’t been using [Mana Syphon] to boost his stats, but it was the equivalent of having finished warming up.

“Did Jake already head to school?” Ajax asked as he used a rag to wipe up his sweat, he silently promised himself for the hundredth time he would look into recreating towels but the plan would always leave his mind the moment he was no longer drenched in sweat or drying after a bath.

“He did.” Kate let out a big sigh, she had spent the night awake monitoring Jake just in case he had nightmares, while he hadn’t been harmed yesterday it was still the first dangerous situation he had been in and Kate had wanted to be there to comfort him. “Though I think he was putting up a front for Jari and Nashara, both of them are clearly troubled by what happened yesterday. Whatever you said to them however seems to have made them channel it into something positive.”

“I’ll let Theron know to keep an eye on them.” Ajax nodded, he didn’t want them pushing themselves too hard, especially since he knew they felt guilty about how they had frozen in the face of an imperial noble. “How are things going with the Healing Union?”

“Very good.” Kate nodded, since she was a member of the Union she was also the point of contact for House Hearthbound and the Healing Union, with her being a long time member who already made contributions it didn’t look bad for her to head straight to Luna when working on their plans. For anyone else but Ajax to do so would be seen as arrogance seeing as Luna was still the Guild Master. “In fact she wants to talk to you.”

“One of the things we suggested has already shown results?” Ajax was surprised since with building the research outpost in his duchy there was barely any time for any of the things they would be looking into to actually be started, let alone show results.

“No, it's about the slaves that will be coming.” Kate said as she shook her head. “While there will be about twenty thousand former slaves, fifteen thousand of them would be beastkins, considering they were mining maybe four thousand dwarves and one thousand elves. That is a lot of people, among them it isn’t as rare to have access to Mana so she wants to do some recruiting.”

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“That will be fine.” Ajax nodded. “But I do ask her to expand the scope of the emergency building that is currently at the quarry. With the infusion of people I expect we’ll be dealing with a lot more injuries.”

“I will.” Kate nodded as she scratched Fluffy’s behind the ears as she finished the bowl of water. “I’ll let you get back to your training.”

Having done some experimentation with Gravity Mana and gotten a decent workout with Fluffy, Ajax would be getting some more practice with the ettin staff next but Kate turned around right as she got to the door.

“Speaking of Mana able people, we have twenty thousand of them coming, that is about a tenth of the population in the duchy. It might be best to talk to Arianwyn and Elara about sending a few extra people over as part of your training deal to act as Mana teachers.” Kate was already out the door once Ajax turned around realizing how valid her point was but he only caught a glimpse of her tail arching behind her as she disappeared from view.

As Ajax was having hard time getting back into his training with the recent realization, Sandor and Denisa were having a different realization of their own as they talked with Clark about what their people had found out since they made it to the city yesterday.

“He really was telling the truth about having everyone educated.” Sandor frowned after having listened to the report of the people he sent to look through the town. “That can’t be cheap.”

“It’s not that expensive either.” Denisa pointed out. “It’s just journeymen that are teaching and we know he has plenty of gold after he got lucky inside our dungeon. Now if he was having Masters and Grandmaster crafters teaching that would get really expensive.”

“I still don’t see what he stands to gain from all this.” Sandor said with a frown.

“He must be looking to shore up his retainers quickly.” Clark gave his take on the situation. Seeing both royals turn to him with some confusion he explained. “It’s hard to remember when looking at all he achieved but less than a decade ago his family had only a medium merchant organisation and now they are a landed ducal House.”

“You’re saying he’s training everyone so that he can pick out the best people for his retainers?” Sandor nodded as he understood the point Clark was making.

“Lancel aside, as he came from House Manashaper, Ajax is also their strongest combatant.” Clark pointed out. “He made a good choice in marrying a Manashaper, but he can’t rely on them to build up the rest of his House.”

“Then why keep training everyone?” Denisa asked. “Why not just find those with talent and drop off the rest to go back to whatever they were doing?”

“The price to train more people isn’t that much higher compared to training enough to hire for himself, at least not at the lower Skill levels.” Clark explained. “The favorable impression doing so leaves on the people is well worth the investment, especially so as it would also most likely be at least partially paid back with higher taxes more skilled people will be paying”

Trying to educate commoners wasn’t something that hadn’t been tried before as an investment to raise taxes, this is also why a lot of nobles dismissed the idea out of hand so quickly when they learnt about Ajax trying it.

What those people hadn’t taken into account however was that all those previous attempts fell short in a number of different ways. Firstly they were tried on a much smaller size than a whole duchy. Secondly the Skills that were taught weren’t broad general knowledge but just the flavor of the month in terms of what was the most profitable. Finally there was also the increased Stats these children would have since they would wait until the age of fifteen to spend their free points.

The duels that took place today were much fewer though they did have their own surprises. Ajax wasn’t surprised to see that nobody had challenged Lexi after the last demonstration she made but Anna was challenged. Unlike her match the previous day it wasn’t a fellow mage that challenged her but a physical fighter who was quickly defeated by a barrage of empowered fireballs before he could even cross half the starting distance between them.

The big upset however was an imperial mage beating out Emeris. The victory was purely tactical, the mage had managed to launch a fireball that was just strong enough to break the first of Emeris’s enchantments and block his vision while he was setting up his Domain. The second and third enchantments were broken afterwards in quick succession, one by the bolt of an enchanted crossbow the mage had brought with him and the final by a quick Lightning bolt that Emeris was slow defending against since he was still surprised by the crossbow bolt.

The last to take the field was Xavier who didn’t want to be left out of the duels and he masterfully dominated his opponent as he put his Legendary fighting style on display by not taking a single blow from his physically focused opponent despite being slower and weaker than him.

“That will give people something to talk about.” Lexi whispered to Ajax as they both cheered their friend's victory.