The True Orcus Labyrinth

As Mai and Masashi jumped down the collapsed bridge after Hajime, "How was my performance?" Masashi asks Mai as she holds on to him tightly.

"You could've tried to posture a little less. Your vibe was a little all over the place." Mai said as she hugged him back with her cheek on his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

"You really like listening to my heartbeat, huh?" Masashi observes.

"It's calming," Mai replies.

Masashi feels a source of water come below him with his perception so he releases his Mana and makes a large cushion of Mana under his and Mai's feet.

He just imagined the Mana being released from his body and gathering below his and Mai's feet in the shape of a cushion as it did exactly that.

With that, they go down the many waterfalls and rivers as they end up in the same river where Hajime ended up, just they were both much more conscious.

"This place seems spooky. I guess this is the True Orcus Labyrinth that you talked about, huh?" Mai exclaimed to Masashi.

"Yeah!" Masashi says, looking around the place.

Masashi then continues, "After what I did to that Kouki guy, I feel like I can do some similar stuff with our systems. I don't really like being controlled or dependent on some unexplainable system entity."

"I agree. But I still suggest that we focus more on our innate abilities like you with {BIOMANCY} and I with {MIMIC}."

"Yeah, this whole place is filled with unique monsters that have all kinds of special abilities, you can use {MIMIC} to work with them as I use {BIOMANCY} to see how I can affect them with what I do."

Masashi notices Hajime hidden in a hastily created cave at the edge of the floor, fainted, without his left arm as the ambrosia dripped into his mouth.

'Take care of yourself dude. I'll be waiting for you at the bottom of the Labyrinth.'

Masashi and Mai are suddenly ambushed by one of the rabbits, they react quickly and dodge as it was already in the range of their perception.

They were just waiting for it to take the bait.

Mai copies the rabbit's [Air Dance] ability and brings out her daggers, coating them with Mana to make them more durable.

Masashi turns his mana into ropes as he holds down the rabbit the moment it landed on the ground.

As the rabbit's stuck for a second, Mai uses Supersonic Step, a derivative of Air Dance, and jumps at the huge rabbit with her daggers in her hands, ready to slice off the rabbit's head.

Although Supersonic Step increased her speed by a lot, she's able to adapt to the speed easily due to [Perception LVL 238].

At this level this ability allows both Mai and Masashi to passively view thousands of meters around them. They are already used to getting unbelievable amounts of data to their brains every moment. A sudden boost in speed is easy to keep up with.

As Mai jumps at the rabbit, it desperately turns its head away so Mai's knives are only able to knick its neck, drawing blood.

As the rabbit turned its head in desperation, its balance weakened as Masashi took advantage of its momentary lapse in balance and pulled the ropes around its feet.

As the rabbit falls to the ground, Masashi impales it in the head with one of his swords while maintaining the ropes with his other hand.

[EXP +5%]

Masashi and Mai both get that notification and high five at their successful kill.

"That Air Dance has a derivative ability called Aerodynamic, it should've allowed you to maneuver in the air and kill that rabbit with that first attempt."

"I know, I just got the ability and didn't have the time to explore it."

"That's why I'm telling you. I want you to get better."

Mai and Masashi spent the rest of the day exploring that floor as they ran into the so-called boss of this floor, The Claw Bear.

'This is the one that ate Hajime's arm, isn't it? Sorry, I won't be able to let you get your revenge on it.'

"This one's got a long range so pay attention," Masashi tells Mai about what he knows about the Claw Bear.

The moment The Claw Bear noticed the duo it released two Gale Claws in each of their directions.

Mai just jumped out of the way as Masashi made a wall on Mana in front of himself to block the attack.

The bear treated Masashi who just released a large quality of mana as stronger so it went toward him first.

As the bear was about to reach it, Mai sent two Gale Claws that she mimicked toward its back in succession.

The bear senses the attack as it dodges the first before being grazed in the shoulder by the second one.

It gets mad as it releases an intimidating roar, which does not affect Masashi and Mai as it's a type of Intimidation.

Masashi himself has [Intimidation] at a very high level but it's not effective during dungeon fights since the monsters just brush off the pressure and are not much weaker than Masashi himself.

It works well to ward off monsters from a single stationary place though since they treat it as the territory of a stronger monster.

As it roars it turns to Mai, leaving it open to attacks from Masashi.

He puts his hand on the bear's back as he uses {BIOMANCY} to remove all strength from the limbs of the monster.

He's been practicing this on the weaker wolves and rabbits on this floor as he's got pretty proficient in it.

The bear feels something wrong with it but is unable to do anything until it's too late.

Masashi pours an unbelievable quantity of Mana into the bear's body, weakening it to the point where it couldn't even stand.

As the bear fell, Mai just stabbed it in its eye with her dagger, killing it completely.

[Level UP]

[Level UP]

Both of them leveled up twice after killing this monster as Masashi takes a few deep breaths and lets his mana regenerate.

"That guy took way too much Mana to disable," Masashi complains a little.

"I could help you recover it," Mai says in a sultry voice as she knows that [Tantric Energy] can be converted into Mana with very high efficiency.

And there's only one way to produce [Tantric Energy] that they know of for now.

"We are done with this floor. We could take a little break."

"We've been fighting for the whole day." Mai and Masashi convince themselves that this is the best course of action.

Masashi brings out the log cabin that they'd been using back when they were in the instant dungeon as it spawns near the entrance to the next floor.

The moment it appears, Masashi opens the door as Mai follows him into the cabin.

…

A few hours later Mai and Masashi are lying down on the bed inside the cabin as Masashi keeps [Intimidation] released around the cabin since some monsters may attack them.

Both of them explored some of the uses of [Tantric Energy] that was produced when they had sex.

The first use was increasing their respective innate abilities.

Since only Masashi could manipulate [Tantric Energy], he was the one who guided the energy that was produced into Mai's and his tattoo as both of their tattoos seemed to be developing a more intricate design around the heart.

Mai's tattoo was very useful for her {MIMIC} ability as it was able to store the abilities that she copied for a temporary amount of time.

The abilities that Mai gets from {MIMIC} are temporary as they disappear after a few hours but that problem is mitigated by the tattoo as it increases that duration.

Masashi's efficiency of using {BIOMANCY} increased too.

As Masashi consumed some of the [Tantric Energy] to recover his Mana, within seconds the half-empty Mana pool was filled up.

That's a really big deal since both of them have monstrous quantities of mana.

"I'm thinking that we may be able to strengthen our bodies using [Tantric Energy]. I just need some live test subjects to try it on before we try it on ourselves."

"You sound like some mad scientist when you say that."

"I do, don't I?" Masashi says with a smile to Mai.

"Well, let's get going. I want to get to the middle floors. There's someone down there who might be able to help us with our magic."

"Yeah, as powerful as [Mana Manipulation] is, we aren't able to use it to do much with it for now."

"I think you'll like her, she's got a pretty tragic backstory but she can be considered to be the most talented magician in this world," Masashi told Mai with enthusiasm as he admired the sealed vampire princess on the 50th floor of the Labyrinth.

"Really?" Mai said and got deep in thought about something.

Masashi knocked her on the head lightly, "Don't think too much, I just admire her. That's it."

As he says that Masahi picks Mai up as brings her to the bathroom to take a shower with her before they go and explore the further floors.

The both of them then go out of the cabin and Masashi puts the cabin back in his inventory.