2.27.

"Sequencee.." Schwii grabbed his arm.

"Schwii, sorry about this."

"Ah.. you idiot.."

"Yeah, I'm an idiot alright."

"Then don't try to be!"

"A lover's quarrel eh? Sequencee, the hero's team is waiting at Gate A," Judy jested with a bitter smile.

"Sorry Schwii."

"Fine, fine. Stay safe and be careful. Make sure to call me when you have the time."

"Got it."

"Pinky promise," Schwii raised her finger.

'Darn.. we're really into the hero culture thing now..'

"Promise," Sequencee wrapped his pinky around her's. If not for Risa and Shiro, they would've not known what this gesture meant.

"Take care."

"You too Schwii. Good luck."

Sequencee left the site with a deep sigh. As the sage of the hero's party, he can't just refuse his role here. Gate A to Gate D were for first class students. They were gates located further away from the termination point. Gate E to Gate I were closer. Of course, it was a small difference which didn't really matter so much.

"Sequencee!" Evelyn called out. She was in her priestess uniform, holding a magic staff which served as a battery and catalyst; charged up with mana should she need any support.

"Good morning. Sorry for the abrupt notice," Aaron was also on site.

"I should've expected this. Well, what now?"

"Are you ready? If nothing then we'll enter now," Shiro said.

Everyone was equipped with supplies strapped to their back. Linzy, the shortest among them, looked like she was struggling to keep upright even though her bag was the smallest.

The students at Gate A had already entered for the examination. The instructors for those classes remained outside, observing as the last team readied himself.

"Double check to see if the SOS crystals work," Aaron advised.

"Lights up," Risa said.

"Mine's good," Evelyn said.

"Our's too," Shiro checked his and Linzy's.

"Yup," Sequencee confirmed that both the white gem necklace and red gem necklace was functioning.

"Sequencee, I'll tell you where we need to go–" Evelyn took the chance to explain the map and criteria to Sequencee. He found it odd how she, a priestess who was supposed to be the least familiar with adventuring to be the one telling him these things.

Sequencee was given a brief overview of the task. For the proofs, they would need to obtain five C-rank gray orc ears (right ear), five B-rank blind basilisk fangs, five B-rank iron golem reactive crystals (must be intact) and one A-rank gray crazy shrew fur pelt.

As the name would suggest, the crazy shrew is a small deadly creature. They looked innocent at a glance, but were as vicious as a cobra. These little bastards were rare, and if you meet one, you should always check your back as they are also excellent stalkers.

Sequencee gripped the red necklace.

"Schwii, I'll be entering now. See you."

["Take care. I'll be entering soon too."]

"If nothing more, then I wish you the best of luck," Aaron bowed. Following him the other instructors did the same.

The tasks for the examination were quite excessive for this team as the difficulty was in trying to find these monsters. The C-rank gray orcs are the appetizer, they come in groups of two and were easier to find. The B-rank blind basilisk and golems were harder to discover, and even if you were to encounter one, they don't come in groups.

The worst was the crazy shrew. So far, throughout their 3 months of exploration, the entire school of students had only encountered this creature twelve times. And of the twelve times, ten of which led to a dangerous incident whereby a student almost lost their life.

That said, Sequencee believed that it shouldn't be a problem as the heroes were natural disaster magnets. Six of the twelve shrews were found by either Risa or Shiro's team.

They entered the cave, Sequencee released part of his illusion magic and allowed the elemental beads to show themselves. He extinguished some of them and used the mental capacity to create a hundred soft light beads which extended front and back for a distance of around 20 meters.

"Pretty," Lizzy said.

"As expected of Sequencee," Evelyn hummed in a good mood.

"All of these are a single element? Fucking cheat!" Risa cursed.

When she tried to touch the elemental beads, they would quickly move away. It was as if Sequencee had eyes behind his back.

"If it breaks, I don't know what kind of reaction would occur," Sequencee said.

"So you've been doing this for how long now?" Shiro asked, a little dismayed. The beads here didn't add up to the number of elements he knew existed in magic.

"From young? I don't remember when I began.. maybe when I was three or four."

"Ahem," Risa coughed, "So what element is this bead?" She pointed at a mint coloured pearl.

"Aqua magic."

"Aqua as in water?"

"Aqua magic and water magic are fundamentally different. Aqua is more comprehensive, with tangents that associate themselves to lakes and oceans. Water is more generalized."

"What's even is the difference.. they sound the same to me..." Risa looked at Sequencee with dead eyes.

"To put it simply, one is more natural, the other is more artificial," Sequencee didn't really know if Risa could understand him even if he tried explaining.

"I give up magic," Risa groaned.

The team advanced, until they met with a pack of twelve gray goblins.

"Linzy."

"Un," the little silver-blue haired beastkin took out her dagger and charged forward. In no more than twenty seconds, the heads of the goblins all dropped to the ground, Linzy returned to Shiro's side. There wasn't even a speck of blood on her uniform.

'What in the world..'

Sequencee's expression froze up.

"She's amazing isn't she?" Shiro said as if he were a proud dad. He tousled Linzy's hair.

"Boo– I'm so jealous," Risa pushed Shiro's hands away and hugged Linzy. "Good work, good work <3."

Linzy, from what Sequencee knew was a slave the hero picked up from the slave market. It happened around two months ago, Sequencee wasn't sure exactly where he found her. He had heard news that this girl is super talented, but this was the first time witnessing it himself. She looked like she was only 12 years old.

Sequencee knew that this girl was abnormal. Either she had some unique system gift for close combat, or a single use system gift for sudden growth.

'Speaking of which, I still hadn't gotten soul points to exchange for a new gift.'

"A fork. Which path to take big bro?"

"We'll take the stairs."

"Straight to a red zone eh? Actually, where are we going to stop first?"

"We'll take the stairs here, then we'll make it over to this node to rest."

"Okay. Let's go."

"Haa.. alright," Evelyn sighed.

"Do you need anyone to carry that?" Sequencee asked.

"Oh right, I forgot. Pass me your stuff everyone," Shiro said.

"Hm?"

It was only now that Sequencee realized that Risa, Shiro and Linzy's bag had disappeared. Apparently they had a unique gift that allows them to store stuff in a special subspace. Sequencee had tried many times to create a magic which could do something like this without the supernatural aid of the system– but he wasn't able to come up with any viable solutions.

First they were stopped by C-rank gray centipedes in swarms of three. Then their first C-rank gray orc encounter. Sequencee watched from behind.

"They're charging!" Risa pumped herself up, her hands to the katana on her waist.

"Linzy," Shiro commanded.

"Un," leaving an airy utterance, the beastkin disappeared just to reappear behind one of the gray orc's neck.

Her eyes glinted in a cold, blood red shade as she twisted her body in the air to perform a one kill strike– which of course, only left a graze on the thick, rocky skin of the orc. She disappeared once more just as the orc was about to grab her. Her figure appeared and reappeared, sparks popped whenever her dagger came into contact with the skin, more and more lacerations piled up, blood slipped from the cracks that could be seen recovering visibly.

C-rank gray orcs were not normal orcs in that they had an unnatural regenerative factor. Unless Linzy could settle it in one strike, her efforts here are wasted. So Sequencee was confused as to what exactly Shiro was doing when he told her to fight.

Risa drew her blade and performed one fluid strike. A gold trail was left in the path's wake as a large gash appeared across the orc's chest. With blood spilling out like a broken pipe, it roared and sweeped one of its large arms toward Risa. A futile effort on its part as Risa hopped onto it and shot towards its head. A swift motion of her arm sliced a brain into two. Risa landed gently.

Thump. The C-rank orc went down just like that.

'So this is the power of a hero huh?'

Risa was just fast, and agile– her majesty with the katana is mesmerizing.

"You can do it Linzy!" Risa cheered.

"Surprised? She's gotten really strong the past month," Shiro said with a laugh.

"You're pretty good yourself, too, right?"

"Hm? Where did you hear that from?"

"???"

"I'm weak."

'What?'

"Unlike Risa, my stats are comparable to a commoner."

"Ah.. we never told you, did we?" Evelyn said with a troubled face.

"Don't talk bad about big brother. Even if he's like this, he's smarter than me, you know?"

'The hero is weak?'

Sequencee recalled their first encounter, how Shiro was able to resist his strength when he had tried to choke him.

'There's no way, right?'

"Linzy, return!" Shiro commanded.

"My turn. Hiyyah!" Risa rushed towards the bloody orc and performed a series of four strikes. Perhaps because it had enough warm up from Linzy's earlier performance, Risa had a little more trouble finding the gap to slip to finish it off.

===

"Hey!"

"It's Risa and Shiro!"

"Hello!"

"Nice to see you guys here."

Sequencee's team came to a safe zone node. They encountered another two teams that had wound up camping here just like they were preparing to. It had been about half a day since they entered the dungeon.

"Gordon, how's progress?" Shiro waved.

"Good so far. We still need to hunt two more B-rank blind basilisks and more D-rank shield toads. Both aren't easy monsters."

"Good luck with that."

"What are your missions? Is it something insane?"

Shiro chatted among the fellow members of his class. Risa tended to Linzy while Sequencee got the camp set up.

"Risa, what did Shiro mean when he said that he was weak?" Sequencee asked as he unpacked the items.

"Weak?" Linzy tilted her head.

"How dare you say that! He's not weak of course," Risa huffed.

"Then why would he say that?"

"Well, that's simply because he doesn't have the blessings I do."

"Blessing?"

"Blessings are like gifts, except they're cheats. I have three, [Blessing: Holy Severance], [Blessing: Weapon's Master], [Blessing: Appraisal]. Most likely the Goddess gave the blessing to the wrong person."

"The Goddess?"

"It's not like we met the Goddess, but we think that she's the one responsible for our isekai into this world. Goddess Ra, I mean."

"What's isekai?"

"..This is why talking to the people of this world is such a pain in the ass.." Risa shook her head.

In short, Risa came to the world with good blessings while Shiro did not. Shiro came with the normal system while Risa came with the one buffed with steroids. She had leveling systems and jacked-up gift systems which Shiro lacked. Though that didn't mean Shiro can't grow stronger, it meant that he was far below the average as it was only 3 months ago that he got the system. Even then, his stats started as all D, which really wasn't worth seeing.

This was also the first time Sequencee was hearing these grading systems; Risa had to go through another round of trouble trying to teach this fantasy world demon lord what game logic was. He also learnt then that it was this [Blessing: Appraisal] that gave away his and Schwii's identity– which meant that Iona's identity must have been compromised too.

As of currently, Shiro's stats were still D except for strength at D+, dexterity at C- and mana at C.

"And compare mine which is straight B's, it's a large gap."

"So the gap difference between C and B is much larger than D and C?"

"It's probably ten times greater, based on my brother's estimate."

"I see.. then how about mine?"

"Your's is a little weird. I don't know what the brackets mean, but your strong points are your Vitality at B, Mana at A, Intelligence at S while the other three are C."

"S grade? Intelligence? What does that mean?"

"It means you're an absolute cheat in magic!" Risa flapped her hands like a bird.

"I-I see.." Sequencee completed the five tents.

"Don't look down on my brother okay? Just because he's like this doesn't mean he doesn't work hard. He'll become a cheat some day, I'm sure of it."

"So until then, we have to protect him huh.." Sequencee's attention shifted to Linzy who sat on the floor gazing towards Shiro's direction. Her tail was drooping, she likely wished for his attention.

"I'm back.. ugh.. this is horrible. How do people get used to this.." Evelyn groaned, adjusting her clothing

"Did you cover back the hole?" Risa asked.

"Of course I did!" Evelyn hissed.

Matters related to nature's call should be kept separate from others– was what Miss Willy taught. Sequencee didn't comment on Evelyn's complaint.