(A/N: 50 fuckin chapters guys. Holy shit I can’t believe that I’ve been writing so much stuff. This is crazy. Anyway, thanks for sticking around.)

Masashi released his hold on Hiyama’s neck, making the already fainted guy fall down.

He then stepped on Hiyama’s head, crushing it under his sole. “You know, I’m something of a hypocrite myself but this sort of betrayal over petty jealousy… It disgusts me. I damn you to death.” Masashi said getting too much into this role of damnation.

‘Try to hold back a little on the damnation stuff.’ Mai cheered him on in the background while giving him tips.

“Ahhhh!!!

Hiyama had already woken up due to the pain and was screaming his lungs out as, after another second, Masashi intensified the pressure on his soul and burst the bastard’s head like a watermelon.

*Splat*

As Hiyama's head burst open like a watermelon Masashi walked away from him and walked to Kouki next.

“I don’t like you either. Your self-righteous attitude is fucking painful to bear.”

He could see Kouki give him a painful death stare with red eyes as if he was going to eat him alive.

“What? You’re mad that I killed your friend? What’re you gonna do, huh? …Nothing, that’s all you’re capable of.”

Masashi says that and puts his hand on Kouki’s back and uses {BIOMANCY}.

“I haven’t really tried this on anyone yet, so you should be proud to be my first test subject.”

Masashi uses a huge amount of mana to scour through Koiki to find the anchor of the Hero class.

It takes him a few seconds as he finds a powerful source of external energy that probably did more than just empower the guy.

He first tries to directly remove that external energy directly but realizes that that energy is too strong for him to actually affect it on his own.

During this experiment, the energy reacts a little violently as Kouki starts screaming crazily due to the pain that he’s feeling.

Masashi still keeps the guy held down as he decides on a different approach.

He uses {BIOMANCY} to change Kouki’s body to reject that energy constantly.

This change works wonders as the anchor that was the so-called Hero class was loosened a little due to the body itself rejecting it.

Masashi just gave it a push as that energy started to escape from Kouki’s body on its own accord, probably to return back to its owner.

“Don’t even think about it!” Masashi just puts that blob of golden energy inside his inventory just as it was about to escape, for future research.

The only reason that Masashi was able to take such a risk was that he was inside the Labyrinth where Ehit’s gaze couldn’t reach.

If he did this outside, he’d be branded as a heretic and chased around the entirety of Tortus instantly due to the faker god feeling him do this.

Even if he had [Conceal] as a permanent passive, all that did was block him from the passive senses of the god and nothing else.

If Masashi did this to his so-called apostle, Ehit was bound to drop in to see what the variable was doing.

Since he did this now, he was confident in saving himself from any problems that may or may not occur later down the line.

At this point Kouki had already fainted from the pain and wasn’t able to understand what was happening or else he’d be horrified, because the hero class that he had and all its boons were gone from him and he was now basically the most average person in the entire team, having no skill other than the Language Comprehension skill that was granted to everyone upon being summoned.

The next thing that he did was to read Meld’s memories using [Legilimency LVL 29] because that was the guy that was tasked to look after and train the hero party, Masashi thought that he may have some useful information.

The guy had some minor defenses but nothing too hard to bypass. Masashi and Mai had already trained this skill to an unholy level.

They had this skill in consistent use for 2 entire years as they read at least the surface thoughts of every single person they met.

After that, they’d hit something of a bottleneck since no one in that world had any actual mental defenses.

Using the skill on Meld Masashi got out all kinds of information from his mind without hurting him or even letting him realize that his memories were like an open book in front of Masashi.

Masashi didn’t find anything too significant other than the general locations of almost all the crucial places in Tortus since he had traveled more than enough.

He also got all kinds of information about dungeon diving from him which might prove to be useful later down the line. Meld had obviously only told the students some basics for now since it was too early to say everything to them.

Masashi took all the useful information as it was automatically organized in his mind, with Eidetic Memory.

After he was done with everything, he looked at Mai.

“Let’s go, baby.” Masashi held out his hand to Mai.

Mai walks to him with a smile on her face as she holds his hand.

Masashi hugs her tightly and holds on to her as they both jump down the cliff.

Looking at the two people who just utterly made the group helpless to no end fall like that, Kaori realized that Hajime was indeed alive, even after falling down.

As she was just about to jump down after the duo, she was stopped by Shizuku.

“Don’t even entertain that thought,” Shizuku says as she holds Kaori down.

“Those two are literal monsters in human skin, you saw what he did to Kouki and Hiyama. I doubt that the girl with him is any less of a monster.

“They have the power to traverse this dungeon alone but you don’t, none of us do.

“Do you expect them to carry us through everything, making us feel like burdens?”

Shizuku pours water on Kaori’s thoughts as she comes back to reality.

“B-But. But Hajime-kun…”

“Trust him. He’ll be fine. It’s Nagumo-Kun, he’ll power through like he always does.”

Kaori just looks down and clenches her fists as she thinks, ‘I’m sorry Hajime-Kun. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep our promise.’

As Shizuku finally convinces Kaori to not leave, Meld comes back to his senses and sees the dead body of Hiyama and the sickly-looking body of the hero that was supposed to be the savior.

“…This is my fault. All my fault. I was supposed to protect these children…” Meld says in a defeated manner as he kneels down weakly.

…

The group of heroes went back to the castle after that harrowing tragedy in the dungeon, and tragedy was putting it lightly.

As it turns out two of the people from the hero party were imposter demons that sabotaged the entire operation and resulted in the death of two of the other-world heroes.

But the greatest loss was that of the hero.

The demon did something to extract the blessing of the god that was given to the hero and ruined him for life.

All the stats and skills that the hero had were completely gone, absorbed by the devil.

That was the story that was known to the higher-ups of the church.

Only The Pope and the hero party knew what actually happened. They knew that this whole situation was caused due to the actions of one jealous teenager who couldn’t control his jealousy, along with two variables who shouldn’t even be here.

After this, The Pope seemed to have lost his confidence in the hero party as they received the bare minimum required resources to regularly train, as he wasn't willing to completely abandon them due to their boons.

Meld was also removed from his position as the captain of the knights and was appointed as the trainer of the heroes without pay.

This demotivated the group, but still, some of them kept up with a bit of their training. All except Kaori and Shizuku.

Kaori was still clinging to Masashi’s words that Hajime was alive and hoping to see him. This is why she trained non-stop in hopes that she could go down to find him and also protect him if anything like this happens again.

Shizuku was still training regularly due to her own discipline. Kaori regularly pushing herself also made Shizuku want to get stronger.

The rest of the hero party wasn’t really that motivated to train anymore.

Some of the people decided to travel around Tortus as Aiko, the teacher of the group, decided to put her skills to use to help the people in need since she had the job of a farmer.

She took an entire entourage of knights along with some of the mage girls who were curious about the world.

Kaori and Shizuku also decided to follow her around as they were bored of the depressing atmosphere of the others and wanted to go around a little.

The one who had it worst was Kouki. What Masashi did was basically remove all his powers and made him a normal human without a single skill other than Language Comprehension.

He spent his days depressed and defeated in solace as most people just gave him space.

One day someone came to him, to provide him with a lifeline.

A lifeline that made him a slave to that person, for life.

And Kouki agreed, all for revenge.