As I discussed with my squad earlier, we decided to push a little harder on this round in the dungeon. Just as before I was able to keep up my mana sensing the whole way, even during the fights. I don't know if it was my visualization of the drip or what, but it was definitely not interfering like Bella said it would.

We eventually reached our sixth fight of the dungeon. It was no different than any other fight and we dispatched the goblins easily. We congratulated each other on a job well done and turned around to head back. It was while we were heading back and I had fallen more fully into a walking meditation that I noticed a change in the background noise that was my mana drip.

At first I thought the echo-y quality had just deepened and so I started paying even more attention. That was when I noticed the echo sounded like it was coming from next to me rather than within. Fully closing my eyes briefly, I listened again and fully caught a second drip I was able to "hear". Opening my eyes and quickly orienting to where I heard it, I of course saw a squadmate. He must have sensed me staring at him as he eventually stared back at me, looking very confused.

I just smiled in return and shook my head before looking straight ahead again. At this point I had an idea that I was able to effectively hear other people's mana. Having an idea that's what I was doing now, I tried sending out my senses further to detect the rest of the group. When I guided the direction with my sight to "push out" towards the actual direction of my squad I was able to sense everyone after a little bit.

Smiling once again at my progress, I made sure to practice sensing my squad the whole way back.

By the time we made it back to the main room with the knight I had been able to consistently "flick" my detection to each member of my squad and hear their mana in about a second. It was currently impossible for me to have multiple members get told apart though. The sound became too cacophonous if I went for more than one at a time.

I did notice that my squad sounded different than my own did. Theirs came off at a slightly higher pitch than mine did. I'm hoping this would end up being the tier difference I was noticing, but I would need a bigger sample size to tell.

Once we rejoined with my friends I detected them as well, and everyone but Bella came back similar to my squad. Bella sounded almost identical to me though. Mine still had an echo-y quality to it but the tone was the same.

Now that I knew that's what the different tone meant I went around detecting everybody. I still had a range limit of about ten feet, but felt like I just needed to practice to extend that.

I decided not to tell Bella about my new ability. I wanted to spring it on her as a surprise, and I decided to do it when I detected her as a tier five.

—----

The rest of the month continued without much exciting happening.

I did have a bit of a scare at one time towards the end though. I had been regularly keeping up with my mana detection during our diving. I had increased my range to about thirty foot and discovered that it even went through walls. I found this out when I was practicing my range and heard over a dozen tiny "blips" all at once.

This caught me by surprise as I had gotten used to hearing the tiny blips from the goblins during the fights, but not yet from the other side of the wall before I had even heard their scrabbling little claws.

And while that was a bit of surprise, the scare came when we were back in the main room with the knight instructor. I was full blasting my mana detection still and caught the deepest blip I had yet heard. If I was a bucket then surely it was the ocean. I jerked my head in its direction and the knight instructor was just staring at me.

Audibly gulping I slowly turned and avoided eye contact. I also quickly reigned in my mana detection back so she wouldn't be in it. I'm sure she stopped staring at me but I didn't risk it the rest of the day.

—----

It was actually on our last five man squad day that I finally got to surprise Bella how I wanted. We had already gotten to lunch and I had detected everyone's tier.

Bella had reached tier five, but also Em and Mel were both at tier four now.

Deciding I would have to make the conversation force that way I decided. "Hey guys, how is everyone's mana sensing coming along? Anyone learned anything yet?"

Both Bea and Tom answered in the negative. So we switched to talking about any difficulties they may have been having.

"You know, it might cheer us up and encourage us to do better if anyone had any good news to share. Anyone got anything? Maybe someone tiered up or something?" I kept glancing at Bella as I finished my sentence.

She just stared back at me, incredulously. Eventually Mel of all people piped up and said she had actually tiered up, to which she got a round of applause and congratulations. She blushed mightily but everyone was so happy for her she came around too.

As we wrapped everything up and headed to bed, I stood and patted Bella on the shoulder. "Congratulations to you too Bella. Tier five is a big deal, right?" I smiled and walked away. She scowled at me the whole way. It was glorious.

—----

The next day our squad would be going down to three and we were all talking about it as we made our way to breakfast. Tom and Bea were hoping they would still be placed together since they had managed this long to do it.

We were in for a surprise though it seems. When the knight instructor started giving out orders for the next squads, she threw us through a loop by saying that we would pick out our own three man squads this time.

As awesome as I was thinking this was, Bella moved before me somehow and was already talking to Tom and Bea. She looked very smug about the whole thing so I just had to laugh it away. Instead I went and found Melania and Emilia. They didn't have a third so I asked to tag along with them. Mel agreed and Em did her usual glare at me, so all seemed right in the world. We again followed along with Bella's squad for a bit before breaking off.

I decided I would act as a scout this time, and made sure Mel and Em were aware of how I could use my mana detection. They were skeptical the first time, but after they saw how well it actually worked we made haste through the path and heavily relied on my detection. Getting back into the swing of things with a diverse squad was definitely nice and we were cutting through goblins like no tomorrow. Each fight with the goblins took no more than five or ten minutes and it was about thirty goblins each. We definitely had a rhythm down pat for it.

Since we were essentially sprinting between goblin fights we got a lot of them in. A total of ten fights before we turned back. Being able to sprint until my mana detection went off was definitely great for our clearance rate. By the end when we were heading back even Emilia seemed impressed, as she didn't seem to glower at me as much.

Mel couldn't stop raving over how useful it was and wanted to be taught it. I told her we need to bring it up with Bella, since she taught me.

When we met back up with our friends I told Bella and how useful it was. Even she was impressed that I had extended my senses out to about thirty foot. I brought up that it would be useful for everyone and wondered if she could give a quick rundown for Mel and Em, which she gladly obliged.

Before we went to lunch we swung back by the sparring room tree and meditated for a bit while Bella went through the whole spiel with Mel and Em.

We meditated for a bit as they were getting settled, but eventually we just called it and headed back to get some lunch.

—----

As training continued, I was getting a bit bored with just cutting down goblins all day. I opined as much to my friends but they just said I had to deal with it. Bella pointed out that if we became squires that we would be doing this with the tier two through tier five monsters in the dungeon as our daily life.

It really hit me after that. This was the daily life for everyone in the order really. Sure I considered it training for now, but if I stuck around here, my next year of life would essentially be the same thing just on floor two of the dungeon. The year after that would be floor three. As noble as the order made that sound..... it seemed maddening that I would put myself through that.

I started talking to Bella a bit more about her hometown. She of course was happy to talk more about it, and I don't think she quite caught on to the reasons I was suddenly so interested in it.

Because I was definitely not sticking around here for another year.