Bella had the good grace to blush at my explanation.

Which just made me laugh a wee bit more naturally.

She finally collected herself. "Are you serious Will? You're honestly just completing the course faster, you're not giving up your rank or anything?"

"I promise Bella. I'm not giving up on the course. I actually want to maintain my rank. Since you mentioned its normally done by tier fives and you at least are now in the club, I guessed there would be multiple people completing it. I don't know what their criteria would be for who gets the higher rank if we're all completing it so I just decided to push myself. I'm honestly still completing it, no worries." I raised my hands and patted in the air to help appease her.

"Well..... that's good then. Obviously I need to beat you fair and square then, that's all. You.... you are completing it rather fast though, do you realize that?" She was definitely at ease now by the end of her question.

"I did not think it was that fast to be honest." I shrugged and said truthfully.

"I have a feeling if you hit tier five Will, you'll clear it even faster. It still boggles my mind that not only are you tier four and clearing it, you're clearing it faster than the few tier fives we have running it. Does that not seem strange to you?" She asked that last question rather ruefully.

"Eh, I just think I've been doing it longer so I've had more practice, you know? Practice makes perfect and all that." I smiled as I waved away her concern.

She sighed. "Maybe that is it and I'm just overthinking this. Well, moving on, how's your mana training going. You're apparently detecting tier levels just fine it seems."

"Ahhh yes, sorry about springing that on you like that, but turn about is fair play isn't it? You peeked at my tier without my knowledge, I peeked at yours." I grinned at her. "Anyway, I went with the sound based visualization and it clicked really quick. It has made my detection really noisy though, and I wish there was a more direct way of telling the exact tier really. Right now I am only comparing other people's mana sounds to mine. People tier three and the goblins at tier one don't have the... depth that mine does. While yours sounds just a bit deeper. Oh and that lady knight's was extremely deep and scary."

"You detected our knight instructor?" She startled and blurted out her question almost as if it was one word.

"Yes, by accident and she stared me down as if she knew I had done it. I'm sure I looked incredibly frightened when she caught me staring. It seemed like she was able to detect me sensing her? I am assuming that's a thing?" I shuddered a little bit at the memory of hearing her tier sound and catching her stare.

She nodded slowly, still in a bit of shock I detected the knight. "Its something you will learn as they teach you finer mana control when you're a squire. As for the knight, she's a minimum of tier eleven, but is likely tier fourteen or fifteen since she's been chosen as an instructor. I know when I felt such a difference it was definitely scary, so I understand you're feeling."

"Oh now? You've detected someone in that tier as well? You little rascal you!" I smiled as I teased her a bit. She had made my same mistake!

She blushed as she realized what she admitted to. "Well, yes. But mine was different okay! It was my.... teacher. And they had given me permission! That's a lot different than you rudely intruding on someone else's mana pool!"

"Well I didn't know it was a thing okay? It really was an accident!" I threw up my hands in defeat at this conversation.

"Yes, of course. I see that now. It... it was my failing honestly. You had no clue about circulating it or sensing it to begin with. I should have mentioned it was considered rude. I will mention it to our friends over breakfast or lunch tomorrow." She nodded rather sagaciously over her thought process. "Well, maybe I can help with your visualization then, as thanks for enlightening me on my failing. Try practicing on me here for a bit. Detect my tier and just try to tune out the sound and picture some sort of visual aspect of your detection on me somehow. Now that you are in tune with your mana its a bit easier to mold your perception of it, although you may always end up falling back to how your first learned it."

"Wait, really? You didn't mention that before! I've been killing myself as is with all these little sounds popping off in my head this whole time!" I asked her a bit exasperatedly. It really was a struggle dealing with it.

"Will you're not understanding how fast you're moving still. Your friends have still not quite grasped their own internal mana detection and you have not only moved on from that to detecting others, you've accomplished that and are now trying to further mold your detection. Honestly, if you were not so dumb you would definitely be a savant." At this she threw up her hands in defeat. Which made me smile and laugh.

I quickly made calming motions with my hands before she could get upset. "Okay so just focus on you and picture some kind of visual representation on top of you or something?" She nodded. "Okay, I'll give it a shot, bear with me please?" I asked and began staring at her.

As we sat there across the table from each other I did try to follow what she said and fired off my detection constantly while staring her down. As I was listening to her tier five sound over and over I was trying to morph it into some kind of visual representation. I wasn't really getting anywhere with it, and it only became harder and harder to concentrate as Bella seemed to get more and more uncomfortable with the whole thing.

It seems she was not used to being stared at so she started to blush a little, and it quickly changed to a full on scarlet red blush across her whole face and she quickly stared down at the table instead of continuing to look at me.

Needless to say this was all very distracting until I couldn't focus anymore and eventually just smiled and continued to stare her down.

This continued until she glanced up at me, at which point she scowled once again and then kicked me under the table. She kicked hard too, right in the shin. It actually hurt despite all this mana I supposedly had now which means she definitely had to use some!

"Gahh!!!" I yelped and immediately pulled my leg out and rubbed it furiously. "What was that for!?"

"You know very well William! If you weren't going to be serious about it then you could just go to bed already!" She seemed a tad upset really, even though I really had been trying.

"But I was being serious about it. I just couldn't get it to work quite yet. And then you started looking all bashful and cute and I could no longer even focus on the attempt anymore. It was totally not my fault!" I tried defending my actions here. They were mostly justified I felt.

She froze up a bit at my explanation, before turning an even deeper red. She began sputtering a little bit until... she lashed out and kicked my other shin.

"Gah!!! What did I do this time?!" jerked my other leg out so that I was now sitting perpendicular to the table and was furiously rubbing both shins now.

She stood up with a huff. "I'm going to bed. You can practice on your own time Will. Good night." And with that she stormed off.

I kept rubbing my shins, but as the pain was quickly passing I couldn't help but smirk again at the circumstances.

—----

Next morning Bella did make good on her word to tell the rest of our friends about mana detection etiquette in case anyone figured it out. She refused to look at me though and gave me the cold shoulder all morning.

Since my shins were all better I couldn't help but find the whole situation amusing. I tried not to let Bella catch on to that though.

The rest of the day was just another dungeon dive. Although today we would be breaking up into individuals and venturing in, since our squad had already practice the scenario I was a lot less worried about the whole situation.

I was more concerned with how bored I would grow as there would be no one to talk to in the downtime I had between fights.

A fact that was quickly proven true.

We started off as one big friend group going down a path. As a branch opened up one of us would split off on our own to start our own individualized path. As we were wishing the first split off, who happened to be Bella, Mel took on the leader role and just gave a short pep talk and a reminder that there was no map backup and to always keep in mind which way would bring her home. Bella smiled and waved as she disappeared down her path alone.

Bea went next and followed by Tom. It was much a repeat of the same with Bella. Lots of encouragement and Mel reminding them to keep their path in mind and to map it the best they could.

Then it was down to just the sisters and myself. Figuring Em and Mel would stay together as long as possible I went ahead and took the next split myself. Still a repeat just on a smaller scale at this point. Emilia was surprisingly encouraging about the situation and Mel once again saying a reminder about the path.

I smiled and waved and wished them the best of luck as I continued down my path alone. As soon as I could no longer hear the echoes of their steps I began jogging. Time to see if all that practice we did would pay off.

Because for honestly the first time since I'd come to this world I was truly alone.