Chương 153: Into The Labyrinth

In the days leading up to the labyrinth run Gene and Josephine joined Damion for his morning exercises and magic practice in the afternoons. He was not overly impressed with either of them, as they were not even able to keep up with Elicia during the runs and they both ran out of mana quickly during practice. However, he did not have any other candidates, and he wanted to at least have a healer in his group which meant bringing Gene along.

Gene's training and admission to Damion's team did not go unnoticed by Mage Sorin and his goons, but surprisingly none of them tried to bully Gene into backing out. He asked Elicia if she knew why Thomas would not bother Gene and learned that Josephine was the reason. Josephine Caplan was, like Elicia, a member of a noble family that had substandard talents according to their families. Her task as an attendant was to recruit Eugene Hill into the Caplan family.

According to Elicia, the Caplans and the Sorins had an agreement not to interfere with each other's recruits. This meant that even though Thomas did not want Damion to succeed in forming a party, his elders likely had forbidden him from interfering with the Caplans' plans for Gene, which in this case extended to not messing with Damion. When the rest of the student body saw that Mage Sorin did nothing to Gene or his attendant after they joined Damion's team they all thought Mage Sorin was all bark and no bite.

Many quickly rushed to Damion, wanting to join in on his labyrinth run, unfortunately for them, he had already decided to keep the team small. He had no use for fair-weather team members. The end of the week finally came and Damion, Elicia, Gene and Josephine set off with Mage Teft into the Argentum for their dungeon run. The journey was not long, as Mage Teft provided transport in a ground car owned by Silver Spire Magic Academy.

Outside the dungeon containment compound, as Damion had now learned the locations were called, Arica waited patiently for him and his group to arrive. When he climbed out of the ground car Arica could not help but feel Damion had changed greatly in the short few months since she last saw him. Physically he looked the same, but Arica could sense from him that he truly had risen to C Rank.

"It is good to see you again Damion," Arica greeted him with a hug that made Elicia scowl when she saw them after getting out of the ground car herself.

"This is Elicia, Gene and Josephine," Damion said introducing each of his teammates in turn.

"This is Arica Miller, our Spatial mage."

"Nice to meet you all," Arica said doing her best to keep an even smile, even though she could feel Elicia's eyes wanting to cut into her.

"Remember, you all are on the same team, work together and watch each other's backs" Mage Teft said.

"I will only step in if you are about to die." Mage Teft led the way through the containment compound to a large gate that had a number of people waiting in line outside.

"Are all these people waiting to go into the labyrinth?" Damion asked as he looked at people in the ever-growing line, already there were a half-dozen people behind them in line. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Yes. But don't worry. Most of these people are B Rank, they will speed past the lower Rank floors to find what they are looking for. Lots of people are here to get in now since it is the start of the weekend rush, once you get inside you will see how people spread out and it won't seem like a lot of people."

"They can advance floors without defeating the guardian?" Damion asked.

"Once a floor is cleared in a labyrinth the entrance to the next floor is revealed. It lets people move forward without having to completely clear each floor each time they pass through it."

"I get it, high Rankers just speed through the low Rank floors to get to the more challenging areas. But what if someone decides to just kill everything as they go? Doesn't that mess everyone else up? And what should I do if the guardian of the tenth floor is already killed when I get there?"

"People that wantonly kill things below their level can be reported and they either get fined or suffer the fate of being banned from the labyrinth. You should be mindful yourself, until you get to the D Rank floors, don't just attack, let your team handle those."

"It doesn't matter if I kill something lower Ranked than me on the D Rank floors?"

"You should still let your team get their experience, but as long as you are within one Rank of the floor you are fighting on you are fine."

"Should we try and rush to the D or the C Rank floors?"

"That is for you as a team to decide. I've given you all the help I am willing to, now it is up to you to figure things out for yourselves," Mage Teft said as they reached the attendant outside the labyrinth portal. Mage Teft showed the man a card and they were waved inside. Damion and his team walked through the labyrinth portal and a moment later were in an entirely different world. They appeared in a wide-open plain.

There were only a few trees, but lots of knee-high grass that could allow smaller Demonic Beasts to hide. Ahead of them Damion could see some people around their age fighting F Rank Demonic Beasts. Off in the distance he could see the group of people that entered before them quickly moving through the area, presumably heading to the entrance to the next floor.

"Everyone got their gear on?" Damion asked. It was more of a rhetorical question, everyone had geared up before leaving the academy, but he wanted everyone to feel like they were ready to start. Damion received a chorus of 'good to goes' from his team and he led the way from the labyrinth entrance heading in what he hoped was the direction of the entrance to the next floor.

"Gene, you are responsible for all the fights on these first few floors. Everything here is the same Rank as you, so you should be able to kill any Demonic Beasts we encounter."

"Right," Gene affirmed. As the only F Rank mage in the group, it made sense for him to be responsible for taking out F Rank Demonic Beasts. The difficulty was in how many he would be able to take out. Gene only had a mana capacity of around 100. For a 15-year-old mage that was considered normal, but it was hard for Damion to remember that since at 15 years old he had over 300 and now at 18 he had over 2, 000 mana.

Damion considered buying some F Rank Mana Potions from the Magic System Shop, but he decided against it since he had no plausible way to account for where he acquired the potions. If Mage Teft was not following along with them to grade his performance he might have risked it and told the group she had given them to him, but that was not an option for this run.

After a few minutes of walking Damion's team managed to get well clear of the other people in the labyrinth and finally encountered their first Demonic Beast. The group had not spotted it yet, but Damion could see the Demonic Beast's F Rank tag through the grass thanks to True Sight. Calling his team to stop, he turned to Gene.

"Gene, there is a Demonic Beast in the grass up ahead. You are up."