Chapter 10: Labyrinth diving

That night most of the class was given a room, but Selena ended up alone. She slapped Hajime's shoulder and gave him a wink like everything would be alright. He gave her a worried smile. It was the best she could hope for given the nerves they were on for the first time diving into the dungeon. Once midnight passed, Selena heard from the room next to her, 'I believe Kaori is going to have her heart to heart with my bro.'

So Selena got up and went to Shizuku's room and knocked on her door to hear Shizuku's surprise to hear someone else was still awake at this hour. Opening the door, Shizuku sees Selena who then greets her, "Hey Shizuku fancy meet you here" as Selena awkwardly twiddles her index fingers around in circles.

"Haha, is that your killer opening line?" Shizuku smiles at her to see how nervous she is instead of the tomboyish personality she normally projects.

"Well it is a lovely night," Selena says as she looks out the window and sees that the moon is illuminating the room so no candle is needed to see.

"What's on your mind?" Shizuku asked not buying Selena's horse shit.

"Well, do you think Kaori will get into Hajime's heart?" Selena finally asks, diverging the topic to what is really bothering me.

"Mmm, well you know you could always help her out with that."

"Haha," Selena deadpans at her. "I'm not gonna push my friends into something they don't want.

If he wants to respond to her wish it's on him since my job always supports him." Shizuku nods her head with a smile respecting her thoughts on the subject. She pats her bed side for Selena to take a seat next to her. She happily flopped on the bed instead of laughing as Shizuku pokes her for playing dumb. "You know Shizuku. I really hope for the best tomorrow since this will be our first time down in the great orca's labyrinth."

"I know what you mean," Shizuku says while giving a meaningful look at Selena.

Selena handed her a necklace she bought in town. It was a simple star shape. "Hope you wear this for good luck tomorrow." Selena says with a smile, as her cheeks turned bright red.

"Thanks," Shizuku said as she parted her hair, "Can you help me with it?" Glad to help, Selena gets on her knees behind Shizuku who's cheeks start to redden. There was a comfortable silence between the two of them for some time. Out of nowhere the door opens and Kaori walks in spaced out and the tension breaks and looks at Kaori with shit-eat grin.

"Oh, how daring to wear that for Hajime," Selena giggled. Kaori looks at us on Shizuku's bed. "Don't tell me you try to steal my best friend, Harlet!" Kaori says while pointing her finger.

Selena throws a pillow at her face and dash out of the room with her huffing at Shizuku like she was wronged. Selena closes her door and decides to call it night and wait for the promised date.

The next morning, everyone reported to the plaza that served as the entrance to the Great Orcus Labyrinth at the crack of dawn.

The students were all filled with equal parts trepidation and curiosity. Hajime however had a more complicated expression on his face. He was also somewhat excited and nervous about the first excursion into a dungeon, but when he saw what the entrance to the Labyrinth looked like, some of his excitement faded.

Seeing his excited expression change to a more conflicted one, Selena bumps shoulders with him to try to take his mind off of the situation. Looking at the entrance kind of reminded me of Orario, city of labyrinth. In order to be as ready as possible, Selena ended up eating twice as much as she normally would.

Numerous stalls were lined up on the plaza surrounding the entrance, the merchants were all haggling. The business advantage would be buying and selling too.

With the upcoming war soon they didn't want adventures of dying needlessly so rules were placed to make sure the least amount of people died before the war started.

As Captain Meld led the students to the stairs to the labyrinth, it didn't pass Selena's mind where they walked like a squad of trained soldiers with how in order they marched on.

When they entered the dungeon the peaceful atmosphere changed the suffocation with the cave being five meters wide, a little small for the whole class to be able to fight in big groups.

Meld had Kouki's party lead with him in front as he began to show them how to approach the floor. After about nine minutes a red-eyed rat monster showed up. The mages of the party got a little too excited and cast bigger spells than needed to, and destroyed the mana crystal from rat monster in the process.

"It is good to see everyone eager but in the future try to kill them without destroying crystals, but since it is training it all right," he said with a smile, trying to keep morale up. Kouki's group led the group for the first few floors and when they switched Selena saw Kaori look at Hajime with a smile. Hajime looked in another direction so would be embarrassed to see as the wall held some great secret. Kaori pout sees as she was taking her promise that she made very seriously. Selena looks towards Shizuku while pulling her bangs back, smiles at her, and Kaori pulls her along, still mad at the night before.

Some of the knights that were escorting them sent some monsters towards Hajime and Selena. Following a plan they came up with, Selena leads them to fall down a hole and Hajime traps them. She kills one of them and Hajime kills the other monster. This surprises the knight due to how innovative Hajime has made his ability work out, making pitfalls and trapping the legs of fallen monsters.

"Man it's hard to do all those transmutations in quick succession, it burns a lot of mana fast," Hajime says while panting as he takes mana pills to try catch his breath.

"Well now you have food for thought when you train next time" Selena says with a cheeky grin on her face. All around the two, most of the knights were impressed. Not used to seeing that form fighting style from a synergist class, also the hero party took note seeing the team work and bait and switch tactics be used on the monsters instead of head on fighting style they had been used up till then. Ryutarou, Shizuku, and Kaori were surprised and happy to see their friends doing so well despite being labeled as weak by most of the class.

Daisuke noticed all the eyes on the team of two. He was pissed due to his jealousy, and of course, his heart wanted Kaori to look at him with those affectionate eyes instead of Hajime. As Selena turned to see him, he sneered at her. 'With all the looks he gives us you think he tries to borrow a hole right through us.'

While they were going down the floors, Meld showed the students a magic tool called fair scope that allows the user to see any magic trap that was built in the dungeon. Sometimes he throws a monster on the censor active trap and killing the monster and other simple rock throw would suffice.

After a few hours they finally reached the 20th floor. Selena felt her stomach was about to drop with the amount of butterflies she was feeling.

Selena was looking at rocks around them to try to find the monster she knew they were hiding. As soon as the group was all in the passage it began. The rock monkey things were throwing excrement at frontline, to their disgust, and they blocked it. After the frontline was a bit distracted, the monkey went on to grab a bolder throw not at the frontline but back line. After a few seconds it transformed into a swan dive crazy looking person, flying towards Kaori. All of the back line flipped out and lost concentration on their spells they were chanting. Selena ran up, pulled her sword out, and used the force he used to be thrown to bisect that ugly shit in half. Captain Meld yelled at the back line to get them to focus.

Kouki missed understanding the situation somehow even though everyone was safe. He got pissed and chanted his Celestial Flash last few rock monkey things and Meld failed to stop him and blow a new hole into the wall.

"Never fear girls. I got them all for you." Kouki says trying to put the girls at ease. Selena's eye twitched and smashed his head, "You fool what, if your strike causes a cave in." As they finish their skit Kaori looks up at the hole Kouki made, and sees a glowing crystal on the wall, "ooo that looks pretty".

Meld, seeing what Kaori was referring to, replies, "Oh, that's a glanz crystal. And a pretty big one to boot. How rare." As Meld went on to talk about them being used for rings and what not, Selena zoned out gripping her sword hard in its holster turning her knuckles white.