The next morning, Mai and Masashi get up with far larger Mana pools.

With two units of Mana per second, they both now had well over 50000 Mana in their pools.

{MP: [59752/60000]}

They both kept increasing their Mana capacities as they slowly absorbed the Mana in the air.

With this their [Mana Manipulation] skill leveled up a few times as they were using Mana to expand their pools and sucking it in from the air slowly.

[Mana Manipulation LVL 8]

The higher level [Mana Manipulation] increased the speed of expansion as they were able to get more and more mana into the pools while pushing on the walls.

Early in the morning everyone was brought to the training grounds and handed their status plates.

These were artifacts that were made using some old Age of God's magic.

The people now don’t really have to ability to understand how they’re made. Only the production lines are still functional and under the control of the church.

Masashi and Mai knew that they couldn’t really showcase their abilities or else they’ll instantly get on the radars of the church people and may just be branded as heretics which would be very annoying.

Therefore Mai used {MIMIC} and copied the attributes from some of the classmates for herself and Masashi as he used his {BIOMANCY} to temporarily add those attributes to both of their blood.

After they both put their blood into the status plates they showed some average base attributes of the 50s.

Masashi showed the Mage class and some skills related to that which could be considered as weaker versions of [Mana Manipulation] so that he could show those skills if needed.

Mai got the class assassin as she showed some subterfuge skills which could be easily used through {MIMIC}.

Everyone’s mana colors were displayed as they had no real control over their mana.

Only Mai and Masashi didn’t display their mana colors as they had no reason to.

Masashi’s mana was an ominous black and Mai’s mana was a milky white that seemed to purify one’s entire being.

‘It’s weird how we keep getting these opposite things. First, the armor, then the tattoos, and now even our Mana colors. It’s like there’s something deeper going on.’ Masashi commented to Mai as she just rolled her eyes at him.

‘You’re just salty that you are getting everything in black themes. Also, both of us can change our mana to look like any color we want, what’s the big deal.’

After that everyone was asked to report their stats in the name of creating a ‘training program’ which was utter bullshit.

Things went on in the typical troupe fashion as the Hero fuck had the highest stats with Mai and Masashi not really getting a special response compared to the others.

The underdog showed his stats in the end as some meaningless mocking went on for a while before everyone moved on.

‘I don’t really want to interfere with his progress. I might end up not letting the guy go through his defining moment. Definitely don’t want that.’

The next two weeks went by in a pretty stale manner except that Mai and Masashi got tons of stat increases along with reaching a monstrous Mana capacity.

The stat increases were due to the passive strengthening of their bodies due to the Mana that they finally unlocked.

After they hit 100000 MP the increase in numbers went down as they were only able to increase their MP at a tenth of the speed as before which is a 2MP increase every ten seconds

Currently, their Mana pools can hold around 200000 MP after working regularly for the entire week.

This mana's capacity is monstrous, to give some perspective, Meld their trainer and one of the best soldiers in the entire kingdom has just a few thousand Mana.

The only problem is that Mai and Masashi didn’t really have anyone teach them how to utilize their [Mana Manipulation] correctly since no one really has it.

They both also learned how magic works in this world. The people use magic circles or inscriptions to cast magic.

They have to use inscriptions to cast magic as no one can directly manipulate mana.

With just this Mai and Masashi realized how overpowered [Mana Manipulation] was.

It allowed them to cast any type of magic as long as they visualized the mana acting in a certain way.

They can cast magic without chants but they haven’t had real training for that.

The only problem is that their efficiency for that stuff is horrible.

Masashi has someone in mind to teach them both magic without any circles and incantations.

After training today, Meld, their trainer, told them that they were going on an expedition to the Great Orcus Labyrinth which was basically all Mai and Masashi were waiting for.

During the days that they were all training, Mai and Masashi kinda just stayed away from the group of walking cliches as they mostly did their own thing with training and everything.

Meld and everyone mostly focused on Kouki as he had the most potential for growth.

A few random girls sometimes gave Masashi some looks but that was all.

Every time someone tried to look at Mai with lustful looks Masashi just blasted them with his full-blown soul pressure for an instant as they completely got disoriented and forgot about everything for a few seconds.

After a few times this happened, people just stopped caring about them.

Aiko had a few talks with the duo but nothing too important. Just some general conversation.

The group of adventurers left the capital for the outpost town of Horaud, together with Meld and some of the knights.

The town was small but prosperous as it was the place that held the entrance to the Labyrinth.

The students were all staying at a state-run inn that was in the town as the place also served as a place to train the kingdom’s soldiers.

The group stayed the night there as Hajime and Kaori had the talk at night where she tried to persuade him to not go and he insisted that he should go and she can protect him.

…

The next morning, the group is completely ready for their dungeon exploration as they all felt trepidation and curiosity about what kind of existence the Labyrinth was.

They were a little underwhelmed at seeing the museum-like entrance which had a reception desk manned by two people to check the people’s identifications i.e. their status plates.

The plaza had numerous stalls lined up as they sold all kinds of different materials from the Labyrinth.

The group of students, their trainer, Meld and the repertoire of knights that followed them all got themselves registered at the reception and were granted entrance as they finally made their way into The Great Orcus Labyrinth.

Masashi and Mai just acted in their respective positions as mages and assassins and did a minimal amount of effort to help the others.

Kouki with his cheats of ‘Hero’ and ‘The Holy Sword’ did the most damage apart from Meld who was the highest leveled among the team.

The mage group was responsible for the long-range firepower.

The priest Kaori kept helping everyone with her support abilities.

Shizuku was a fine swordsman as she finely cut through the monsters.

The rest of the class was somewhat useless since they kept freezing and needed help from the knights to save their sorry asses.

Meld kept guiding them all and gave them directions as to what they should do and how they should look for traps to avoid them.

His advice was even useful for Mai and Masashi since this was their first time in the dungeon and Meld basically spent decades exploring the place.

Mai and Masashi didn’t need that advice for now but when they go to areas that are actually dangerous, that advice might be useful.

The group kept going lower in a similar manner as more and more of them started taking an active role in the fights. Everyone except Hajime, since the poor guy had no combat-based skills.

Eventually, they arrived at the twentieth floor, the place which served as something of a distinction between the amateurs and the pros since the monsters inherently behaved completely differently in this place.

They started attacking in groups and coordinating with each other. This made the further floors much more difficult to traverse.

The group was planning to clear up until the twentieth floor as they decided that they will be returning after clearing this floor.

The group reached the deepest room on the twentieth floor. It was a room filled with icicles as even the floor was made of ice.

On the other end of the room were the stairs leading to the next floor.

They just had to clear this room before they would be going back.

Everyone was going ahead in a single file as the room seemed too narrow for too many people to go through at once.

Suddenly, the first two, that is Kouki and Meld stopped.

“It’s camouflaged. Keep a close eye on your surroundings!” Meld yelled as they all got alert.

The moment Meld shouted, the wall that was keeping the path narrow suddenly began to move and turned toward the students.

The berserker of the group, Ryutarou held back the monster.

A few seconds later it realized that it couldn’t get past Ryutarou so it decided to use a skill.

*Roar*

It roared at the group as the people in the front froze in place. It was a skill similar to Masashi’s [Intimidation] as it stunned everyone into inaction.

It grabbed a boulder and threw it at the support group with Kaori and the Mages, aiming to get rid of them first.

They just froze in place as they were unable to act.

Just as Masashi was about to take action, Meld intercepted the boulder and scolded the girls, “What the heck are you doing?”

All this was visible to a hot-headed buffoon with a hero complex as he decided to unleash his ultimate skill on the monster.

“Soar unto heaven, O divine wings— Celestial Flash!”

“No stop you fool!” Meld screamed at him as they were in an enclosed space and Koouki just released a strong area-of-effect attack.

There was a loud rumbling as the rackmount was shredded into pieces as the whole room shook for a while.

Kouki turned back expecting applause and some of the girls running toward him but all he got was a punch in the stomach from Meld.

“You damn fool! I understand why you got angry, but you can’t use skills like that in a narrow passage! You could’ve brought the whole cave down on us!”

The simp girls went over to comfort him as Kaori noticed that there was something shining in the rubble.