As the battle began Ajax could see the wisdom in Quinn’s words to not join from the start, however remaining inside the carriage was a very bad idea as far as he was concerned, what good was it to stay hidden against mages if they knew roughly where you were to within a few feet.

Ajax very much suspected that Quinn advised him to remain hidden because she was very much not aware of just how good his stealth really was. [Stealth] had been one of his first Skills and while it had fallen behind many of his other Skills that was solely down to him not using it in combat, especially recently as he was always the one ambushing his prey with stronger people on stand by to protect him if things got out of hand.

As such Ajax made the executive decision to put together everything he had learned. He hadn’t been able to pick up much from Shadow, the Republic’s premier champion, the simple fact was he was simply too good with the affinity for him to be able to do more than pick up the barest hints of his skill, Fluffy on the other hand had helped him immensely with his progress.

He still hadn’t gotten [Mana Skin] to work with camouflage so Ajax instead focused on simply covering himself in Shadow Mana to extinguish his presence while also flaring out [Mana Syphon] over the battlefield to unbalance his enemies.

For the first minute of the fight Ajax slowly moved away to stand on the edges of the fight. He knew there were spells and Skills that could detect him through his Shadow Mana so he didn’t want to push his luck by charging in.

A minute of watching the fight however gave him a pretty clear picture of how the fight was going, and the answer was not good. While the members of the royal squad were stronger they were outnumbered by more than two to one, more than that the enemy had half their number in mages supporting their side from a distance.

The tiger beastkin leading the ambush was clearly an outlier, according to [Inspector’s Eye] and [Judge Threat] the beastkin was only slightly weaker than Clark the imperial champion. With him locking down Patrick the squad was being steadily pushed back, the only reason they were still standing tall was Quinn working overtime to heal the wounds they endured.

That was when Ajax made the decision to join the battle. Since he was already hidden and everyone thought he was inside the carriage focusing on his [Mana Syphon] nobody expected him when he approached the mages.

A group of eleven mages and all of them were standing close to one another. There was safety in grouping together but it also made it very easy for Ajax to take out the entire group before their front line even realized what happened.

Taking a quick look at his Mana Ajax suppressed a wince, one of the other reasons he didn’t use Shadow Mana all that much was just how expensive the spells were for him to use. Unlike the other schools of magic he couldn’t compensate for the lack of power his casting style suffered from so he had to do so through Mana output. He had already burnt through one thousand Mana before doing anything.

Due to the high Mana output required to maintain his Shadow Mana cocoon Ajax approached the mages covered in Shadow Mana but the moment one of the mages showed even a hint of being onto him Ajax dropped the spell infused his body with the power from [Mana Syphon] and launched himself towards the mages.

Ajax knew the mages themselves were fragile but he could feel the strength of their defensive enchantments and spells so he decided to forgo all but three avenues of attack.

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Void was a clear choice to bypass a shielding enchantment, as it would simply push the impact past the shield. He focused his Void hammer on the mages with the heaviest enchantments. Though it wasn’t useful against mages that used defenses that didn’t act like a second skin.

Vibration was the perfect choice for any solid shield the mages used, Earth walls or Ice shells were all useless since VIbration Mana transmitted the blow straight to the body of the mage.

[Telekinesis] was by far the most useful of his abilities however. The only defense they had against it was their enchantments and those didn’t last long when Ajax bore down his full power grasp on it as he tried to crush their heads like a watermelon.

The mages were all former soldiers but it was clear that the last fifty years since the war had made them rusty. They had spent their time infiltrating Gryndor not honing their combat abilities. The moment they saw their friend's head burst in a shower of blood and gore all while feeling the presence of [Telekinesis] they descended into chaos.

Ajax took no prisoners as he killed ten out of the eleven mages in under twenty seconds. The only reason he hadn’t killed all of them was because one of the front liners had finally made it back in time to engage him and save their last mage.

The rhino beastkin expected Ajax to retreat like an assassin the moment he lost the element of surprise. That was also the last mistake he ever made. Ajax quickly used Earth Mana to open up two small holes that dropped the beastkin’s feet slightly causing him to lose balance just long enough for him to seal him in place with a wave of Ice Mana.

The moment he was trapped Ajax swapped out his hammers for a sword and an axe, using a quick sword slash with Lightning to further paralyse his opponent before infusing the axe with Metal Mana and slamming it straight into the beastkin’s head cleaving his skull in two stopping only halfway through his neck as a fountain of blood erupted.

Ajax turned to chase for the remaining mage but quickly saw there was nothing for him to do. The squad had perfectly reacted to the chaos he caused when he attacked the mages, without their support the openings left by the frontliners were quickly exploited. The only people still fighting were Patrick and the tiger beastkin. Quinn was also working hard as she stood over the prone body of Frank who had a nasty claw mark cutting across his body from hip to shoulder.

Much as he wanted to help Ajax knew he could do more harm than good by interfering with the battle. The same however was not true for the other seven members of the squad that had finished off the rest of the frontline and the one mage that had managed to get away from Ajax. They had trained with Patrick for decades upon decades and they smoothly joined the battle without getting in his way.

Ajax was impressed with the tiger beastkin’s instincts, he had managed to somehow avoid any devastating hits for a full twenty seconds before he simply had no way of dodging a spear that took him cleanly through the upper thigh. From there the battle ended in the next two seconds as the injury left him too weak to defend himself properly.

“Quinn, how’s Frank?” Patrick asked the moment the beastkin was down for the count.

“Hurt but on the mend.” Quinn answered with a professional attitude. “It will take at least a month before his body can recover enough for me to finish healing him, that was a nasty wound.”

“Good, then I want you to seal Śēr’s wounds.” Patrick said. “Our King will have questions for him when we return to the capital.”

Quinn scowled as she moved to obey the order. As far as Ajax could tell however it wasn’t that she had an issue with healing someone who had tried to kill them all so much as it was with the order of healing the wounds in such a way that they would still be debilitating but non-leathal that seemed to rub the healer the wrong way.

“What now?” Ajax asked.

“Now we keep moving.” Patrick answered. “We have a job to do, getting you to the border and then killing anyone that wants to chase after you.”

“But you have a prisoner now.” Ajax pointed out as he moved towards Frank. He hadn’t felt any Life Mana from the spells Quinn had used to heal the scout so while he knew he wouldn’t be able to magically bring the scout to perfect health he suspected he would be able to speed up his recovery time.

“And we will send the King a message informing him of this development.” Patrick nodded towards the carriage, their mission was still a time sensitive one. “If he sees fit to have us end our mission early he will tell us. Most likely however he will just send another squad to bring the prisoner back.”

Ajax had to admit he was impressed with how the squads handled this. If it was him he knew he wouldn’t have been able to follow the orders he had been given if something of this magnitude had happened.

“Is that Life Mana?” It was the first time Ajax had heard Quinn sound surprised as he started healing Frank as he carried the scout back to the carriage.

Ajax chose not to answer the question as he, Frank, Quinn, the mages of the squad and the restrained beastkin all crammed together in the carriage before they restarted their journey towards the border to the Wild Lands.