alex bozdog

Chapter 79

The last two weeks had been an exercise in frustration for both the conscripts and the guard units. Ever since they lost the bugs the two future barons had formed a firm front to take every precaution before accepting a battle. This had lost them almost all of the ground they had gained with the initial two victories.

According to Tom the archduke’s daughter was starting to get fed up with their indecisiveness but there was nothing she could do about it. Her friend had joined her as p...

Chapter 78

With the new loot being taken care of, Ajax proceeded to enjoy his meal. There was quite a bit he wanted to talk about with Tom and Kate but all of that would need to wait until they were in private. Despite the rarity of the shadowcat its presence was little more than a short interest to the rest of the unit after the presence of Fluffy. The other hunters were taking it a bit harder since they missed out on the loot by not going to check the area on their first day off thinking they would ge...

Chapter 77

The trip back to the camp took quite a while longer than Ajax would have liked. The sun was already starting to go down despite him leaving late in the morning. It wasn’t something that could have been helped however. Had he known about the location of everything it would have been a much shorter trip but with all the investigating it had dragged on for hours on end.

He was also limited to his physical stats while traveling along the road, despite being a fair way from the camp using ...

Chapter 76

Both Ajax and the fish were locked in a stalemate. The fish was not as strong as Hatchet and Ajax had gotten pretty close in power to him so with the difference in strength it should be an alright risk to take under normal circumstances.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. Not only was the fish in water, an environment that Ajax couldn’t bring his full power to bear in the water was also heavily mana infused, while that would be neither useful nor harmful to him he couldn’t sa...

Chapter 75

Ajax woke up late in the morning, he had a hard time going to sleep from the itching, not only that but his stamina was near bottomed out from the day of fighting. He was used to spending his stamina but not with the repeated use of it for an entire day was something else that left him drained.

As he got out of bed he noticed that Kate and Tom had already left. Only Fluffy was still in the tent sleeping on her improvised bed in the common area. He scratched the sleeping feline in greeti...

Chapter 74

Ajax was mindlessly petting Fluffy while Kate was finishing up on his wounds. Both the cut on his arm and shoulder were fully healed while the one on his shin was halfway there as well.

“This is as much as I can do for now.” Kate said as she bandaged his leg. “According to orders, we have to be focused on the most injured and just do a quick patch job on everyone else. I’ll finish healing this tonight for you.”

“I get it.” Ajax said dejectedly, knowing he will have t...

Chapter 73

After a good night’s sleep the whole army came together early. They started marching right as the sun began to rise. Everyone that was going to fight today had been told to go to sleep early and those that stayed behind had to pull a double shift on the lookout. Not only that but they were also quite busy, each of the guard camps had caught at least two and as many as four spies trying to infiltrate. The main camp had caught ten and a after a quick interrogation to make sure there were no m...

Chapter 72

As Ajax and the rest of his unit made it back to the main campgrounds they reunited with the other two guard units that were thwarting flanks. They had an even larger success than we did as while their flanks were larger in number, they were also on foot and only contained one guard unit instead of two.

With all of us eventually being beaten back it still gave the main army enough time to capture and remove from the fight enough of the enemy conscripted that we were now even in numbers....

Chapter 71

The next morning the entire unit woke up early. We moved together and headed to set up our ambush. It could have been argued that our tactic of using the horse trained commands and an amplification spell to get the cavalry to stop and run into each other was an unfair move, but the commands could have been picked up by a spy so it was only toeing the line.

The biggest hope of the battle fought today was to even out the numbers on both sides. It seems that the opponents conscripted four ...

Chapter 70

As the shadow cat polished off the reminder of the food the commander inspected it. He seemed to also be looking for something specific.

“How do you know that this is a shadow cat?” he finally asked.

“The prompt I got for forming the bond said that a shadow cat wanted to form a bond with me.” Tom replied.

“Hmm, you did indeed get lucky with this.” the commander said as he finally stopped scruitanising the cat and turned back to us. “Magical creatures that can i...

Chapter 69

Ajax was extremely pleased with how today had gone, it was the final day of their solo trapping and he had managed to not alert the camp of his movements in the area. That is not to say that he didn’t trip any of the traps, he knew he wasn’t good enough for that, so instead he worked his way through by not letting them fire off a signal.

In the end the combined efforts of the three even had the lead hunter trip a signal back, something they hadn’t managed before so all of them wer...

Chapter 68

Tom P.O.V

I watched as Ajax quickly left the main camp and made for ours. I was surprised to see how quick he reacted and managed to put a defensive position not just for himself but also for me. The speed with which his mana reacted was what surprised me the most. I had never seen a mage use mana that quickly when caught unprepared, and that was the time until I saw the blue sheen on his skin, just how fast is he at bringing it up?

I turn back towards the firing range where I see...

Chapter 67

That discussion had ended with both Tom and Kate taking their time to comprehend his situation. Ajax was most likely one of the top five fighters in this unit and could make the push to get into the top three, which was not something they had expected.

Tom knew that both the commander and his right hand man were both over level fifty despite not knowing their exact lavel. With Ajax being one of the strongest people around in this skirmish Tom felt a lot more relieved, this meant there w...

Chapter 66

The rest of the day Ajax spent doing the same tasks as all the other hunters. As he got assigned to another of the quadrants that they had split the surrounding area into and proceeded to hunt for a few boars. The area was relatively full of them and by the end of his time there he had killed four of them. He could have gotten a lot more of them but the hunter team as a whole decided not to change the ecosystem of the forest so much.

The other part of his job there was to set up new tra...

Slight delay

I'm really not happy with how chapter 66 has turned out so far. I've rewritten it twice and am still not happy with it. Therefore the chapter will be delayed a bit but I will make sure to still get it out today. 

Chapter 65

Ajax was conflicted about how to go about reporting that the bug had been placed. On the one hand he didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than absolutely necessary, on the other hand he wanted this whole thing to end as quickly as possible, which is why he went to plant the bug in the first place.

In the end he decided that getting to sleep and discussing this with Kate and Tom in the morning was the best course of action. Since he was on an obscure path and had been usin...

Chapter 64

As they were finishing setting up their tent one of the two guards they saw at the command tent came over to grab Tom.

“Tom, you are to get ready to meet the nobles. It seems the final group will arrive at the base camp in a few minutes.” he said.

Tom nodded and proceeded to get changed into his armor, after all he had to look presentable as the main liaison. He got dressed very quickly with the help of Kate, showing that he had plenty of experience putting the armor on and ta...

Chapter 63

As Waleter led the three towards their commander’s tent they all exchanged some worried looks. After the conversation he had with Kate the previous night as well as the talk through their whole march Ajax was feeling rather good about this whole situation. Sure being conscripted was not exactly how he had planned to spend his time, but he could use it to bring his skill levels up to where they should be for someone of his stats.

This new development was something that he hadn’t expe...

Chapter 62

The guards working under commander Grievous managed to set up a much better camp than I expected. After all this was only just a one night stop before we would reach the meeting place where the Baron’s son and whatever other noble commanders would join us and the rest of the conscripts. The terrain where we would fight was specifically chosen so that a river, a forest, an open plain and a small pass were all included in the approximate geography.

To me this seemed like an odd place fo...

More chapters coming

I have found more time to write and am feeling motivated. I am looking to get at least 13-14 chapters ahead on Patreon to make the $5 you guys are subscribing with worth at least a month of advanced chapters. I am planning to get there before the end of this month, but I can't make any promises. 

Chapter 61

Tom P.O.V.

“Wow, he must be really talented then. After all, he caught up in level with you.” His light statement rendered the room silent for a few long seconds.

“HE WHAT???” Kate, the commander and myself all exploded after we processed what Walter just said.

“How do you even know this?” I quickly followed up.

The information left me stumped. I know for a fact that even if Ajax really is already level twenty-four there is no chance he would even think abo...

Chapter 60

After Kate dropped that bombshell Ajax went through explaining everything that happened again and how he got conscripted. It was quite heartening to see that the captain had the same reaction when he thought that a member of the guard conscripted him as Tom did, both having been very similar to Kate’s. He did a much better job of pointing out that it wasn’t Darren that got him conscripted this time.

Now that his brother was also here he went much more in depth and explained the inte...

Chapter 59

As Ajax started to walk away from the amused receptionist and the fuming recruiter a wave of laughter broke out from the tables across the room. All of the attendees were adventurers and despite their merry attitude and drinking they all had enough perception and innate curiosity to pay attention to the conversation to catch the last few exchanges. One or two of the older ones went so far as to give Ajax a pat on the shoulder as he passed by their tables.

Knowing what was going on now h...

Chapter 58

“Hello, by order of the lord you are hereby conscripted, you are to present yourself to the Guard hall in two days time”

The words ring in my ears, I stay there motionless trying to comprehend what the man is saying. It all seems so surreal to me. After all this effort I spent trying to stay under the radar of the nobility I ended up conscripted.

I take another look at the man who found it fit to put my life in jeopardy. He’s a short pudgy man, with slimy brown hair that he�...

Chapter 57

Thinking through what the most recent Achievements he received meant I calmed down a lot. It seemed that 500 was the minimal threshold for which someone would receive an Achievement like this. Getting a total of 500 in four of the stats by the end of the Apprentice trait didn’t seem that difficult to him. But that was just his own perception from experience.

On average a normal person would average around fifteen in their stats. So before adding anything extra they would have a base o...

Chapter 56

I was breathing hard from the floor of the cavern where we had our little spar. For the first time ever [Judge Threat] had given me no indication of anything. Before I spent my free stat points it used to give me a sure death feeling when used on Hatchet but now it returned absolutely nothing. This was something that I was going to ask him about once I caught my breath.

Looking at my stat values I noticed that the ten minute fight at the end really took a lot out of me. My mana was sitt...

Chapter 55

With his new punishment in effect Ajax found himself a lot more restrained. This worked out very well for his new training regiment. Hatchet took the time that whole first day in sparring with him to ensure that he wouldn’t hurt people accidentally with his new strength. Most level twenty-fours had around 650 total stats with the elites pushing 700. He had 661 points just in his mental stats, add to that the 600 point infusion in one day and he was liable to injure some of the younger villa...

Chapter 54

Ajax was quite miffed at the achievement. He was also a little upset that he wouldn’t get the weaker version of the +5 to all stats as well as the +10. Even so the amount of stats he gained was four levels worth so he was definitely glad about it.

That was not the only notice to be flashing for attention, as he took a look at his second one.

Achievement: The carrot and the stick

Suffer a Retribution and earn an Achievement.

Requires two Discoveries to earn :

Ch...

Chapter 53

The appearance of the Punishment was a great surprise to Ajax. Despite the fact that this punishment will be all but obsolete in the coming weeks, with him spending his free stats any experience he was going to get from fighting things that far below his level would have been shot from the extreme lack of difficulty and danger.

This was not to say that this was something to take lightly. A decrease in experience earned, especially one as large as a fifth was definitely concerning so he ...

Chapter 52

Hatchet P.O.V

It might have taken almost five years of constant training but the kids' dedication sure paid off. Despite not having placed any points his stats were all at least above 50, at least from what he had been able to figure out. It was hard to get a read on the exact levels considering the use of skills.

Today he was training alone. The glove being from a dragon still bothers me, but I guess dragons aren’t something you can decline a gift from either. At least he didn�...