As I was practising my energy magic alone in one place, I felt some stares and whispers at me.
"That's the guy who got first place in the written exams..."
"Yeah, and he seems like an Energy Mage, too..."
"Yeah... an energy mage who beat Sophia in the written exam, and no one has ever heard of him before?"
"Yeah, he's weird no matter how you look at it..."
'Mind your own business, fuckin' slackers!', I wanted to shout out, but I controlled my anger.
I was repeatedly casting 'Reinforcement' on a training dummy in front of me, and shooting it with a Magic arrow right afterwards. That way, the efficiency of training would be higher.
Also, I have gravity magic activated too, increasing the weight of my body to about 2 times its original weight since I want to train my stamina too.
After about 3 hours of constant training, I was too exhausted. I had almost run out of mana and my body was aching like hell from its own increased weight.
I slowly walked over to a resting spot where I could sit down and take a break. I could see many other students practising in the huge football field-sized room. The ceilings were massive too. But even though the room was so big and completely covered, there was not a single dark spot in the room, thanks to the high-tech lights embedded in the ceiling and walls.
As I was resting, I heard some footsteps walk up to me.
"Hello there, Samuel Francis. Having a rest?", it was William.
"Ah, yes sir. I have almost completely run out of Mana, and my body also aches a lot...", I replied.
"Hmm. About you running out of mana, I think I have a solution you can use to combat that. Care to hear my advice?"
'Wow, I guess I'm pretty lucky.'
"Yes, that would be great!"
"Hmm. Your mana circuits aren't meant to be used this way... try altering your spell structure in this...", he started to explain to me how I could improve my mana efficiency.
Unsurprisingly, it worked.
"Thank you for your time, sir."
"It's fine, It's my job anyways.", he replied and started to walk away.
'He might be a member of the Black Market, but he IS still a hero and a teacher at Nexus Academy.', I thought.
This reminded me, the original novel's academy starting arc was very chill, without any actual action or story. It was more about how Julian was coping with the world after returning from the otherworld after so long. How he had become introverted and had difficulty talking to people, and how his friends, especially Sophia, had helped him out of that. It was all very wholesome, really.
'Well, I don't have time for that, though...'
'When the Main cast will be going through 'cHaRaCtEr dEvElOpmEnT', I'll be GRINDING dungeons, and getting stronger.'
That's right, I planned to visit some important dungeons I knew from the novel and loot them. I know there are hidden stuff inside some dungeons, and I will get them.
I don't really care much about the main story... as long as I can get strong, it's all good.
...
I got up from resting and refilling my mana and started training again.
'Today's Wednesday... I'll go to the dungeon on Saturday...', I thought to myself.
...
The next two days of classes went smoothly. People had tried to ask questions about how I could beat Sophia in the written exams, but I only gave them vague answers. I didn't want anyone to know about my skill 'Concentration'. It's quite an OP skill, considering the fact that it's still at level 1, even after using it so much.
it was now Saturday. I took the purple robes I had found from the skeleton from which I got the gravity magic from and headed out.
This dungeon was originally found by the government, who then donated it to the school for 'Training Purposes.'. Julian and his gang were selected to be the ones to clear the E-rank dungeon.
Inside it, Julian had found a very useful artifact that he would use till the end of the novel. It was called the 'Meteor Ring', and it boosted all physical attacks done to enemies by 15%. I needed that because my Gravity Magic deals mostly physical damage.
I reached the destination, which took me like, 3 hours to get to by Skyrail. The dungeon was located underground, in an abandoned mine. The mine was created to extract magic crystals that had been generated there, but once the magic crystals had been completely extracted, it strangely became toxic and the place became uninhabitable.
Well, it wasn't really radiation that made the place toxic, it was Miasma, which was radiated by the dungeon gate deep inside the mine.
The dungeon's main type of enemy was the Undead. Scientists still couldn't fully understand what created the undead, but they knew that it had something to do with Miasma.
Well, no one in the world but me knows that information yet.
The mine's name was 'Withering Mana Vien No.1296'. It was located 50 kilometres southwest of the city 'Vierent', which is mostly occupied by French-speaking people.
The city wasn't anything special, just a place for humans to live in, so I didn't pay any attention to anything inside the city and went straight towards the mine.
I rented a car by showing my Nexus Student ID, which actually gave me a good discount on the price, and drove to the place.
Apparently, Nexus students don't need a driver's license to drive a car...
I reached the mine within 20 minutes of driving. The roads were mostly empty, and I drove the car at very high speeds because I knew that if something went wrong, I could just use my gravity magic to lift the car up in the air and slowly reduce my speed.
...
It was a strip mine. There was dust and rust-coloured boulders everywhere. The place looked like it was nuked or something. Straight out of an Apocalyptic movie...
'Not a single soul in sight...', I thought as I scanned the surroundings of the massive place. It had craters created by TNT, and the earth had scars on it, presumably because of heavy mining equipment.
I cast an 'Energy Coat' around myself that will defend me against the miasma.
Energy Coat was a spell that covered the caster in a thin layer of mana. It was effective against miasma, poison and radiation. Yet another spell that was quite useful. No wonder Energy mages are sought after so much, even though they aren't that strong in combat.
I slid down one of the slopes that lead towards the centre of the mine. After walking around aimlessly for about 10 minutes, I finally found the entrance to the lava tube that leads to the dungeon's entrance. I walked around aimlessly because the novel didn't really specify where the lava tube was.
It was dark inside, but that didn't matter to me, since I had a spell for that, 'Dark Vision'. Another Energy magic spell.
'I fucking love supporting classes so much...', I thought.
If I wasn't an Energy mage, I would have had to buy so many hardware and gadgets and had to work much harder to achieve the same result...
After walking through the lava tube for a good 30 minutes, I finally found it. The dungeon entrance.