Reincarnated In A World Of Mana As A Mechanic-Chapter 37: Class Advantages

"Ezekiel, please understand—"

"Oh, I perfectly understand." He cut her off with an indifferent tone to his voice before calling out. "I wish to transfer 1000 points to Participant Anna."

Anna’s eyes trembled even stronger as she heard these words, tears brimming as she easily understood what his sentence meant.

He was directly cutting her off their team. Those points were her due reward for the contribution she had granted to them during the first trial. Not to mention that he had since stored the Windchaser in his hands once more.

Tears began to form in Anna’s eyes. "Please, you have to understand my position—"

"Your position..." Yuri said with obvious disgust and pain—having already begun to consider the young girl her friend. "...Is apparently more important than your friends, the same ones who had saved your life multiple times and fought beside you."

"That’s not fair!" Anna cried. "You don’t know what it’s like to have your entire family’s future hanging in the balance. One wrong move, one powerful enemy, and everyone I care about could suffer!"

Ezekiel’s expression softened slightly, but his voice remained indifferent. "Anna, we all have things we’re fighting for. Responsibilities, people we care about. Your path is obviously not in the same direction as ours."

"I wanted to stand with you." She whispered. "But I can’t risk—"

"Then you’ve made your choice." Yuri interrupted. "And so have we."

The three friends began to walk away, leaving Anna standing alone on the grass. She called after them desperately. "Please, don’t do this! We can still work together! I just need to be careful about how—"

"Careful about being seen with us?" Ezekiel didn’t turn around. "Don’t worry, Anna. We wouldn’t want to damage your reputation any further."

The three quickly disappeared from her view, walking forward in silence while the atmosphere remained tense. They also made use of the chance to scout their possible entrance into the forest before finally stopping at one.

"We’ll pass through here then." Ezekiel calmly spoke, as though unbothered by the previous events while he equipped his Windchaser boot and scanned the chaotic mix of light and dark green before him.

Vahn glanced at his friend worriedly before sighing. "Ez. It’s not really your fault that it turned out this way."

The mechanic paused, then sighed and simply shrugged. "I don’t blame myself, trust me. I just feel that we would have been able to avoid a lot of danger if I had just ignored everything that happened in that ore mine. I’m not angry that she has such a view concerning relationships. I’m angry she doesn’t trust us enough to deal with such a thing."

Yuri displayed a smile before she grabbed his hand and grasped it in hers. "You shouldn’t bother yourself with the thought anymore then. Let’s get this trial over with."

Ezekiel smiled, his heart warming up as he stared at his two friends, touched by their concern for him.

"..."

"..."

After a minute, his brows twitched as he stared at the young girl by his side. "Aren’t you going to let go?"

Yuri responded to him with a sweet and innocent smile. "You can’t be feeling shy, can you? Ez?"

The mechanic snorted and replied. "Shy? With your small body? What’s there to feel in this tiny hand? I should really feed you more."

His words caused the Death mage to burn up, her face painted red as she let go of his hand and hid behind Vahn, an aggrieved expression apparent on her face as she glared at him. "Jerk."

Ezekiel simply shrugged while Vahn merely chuckled at their antics, inwardly happy that the atmosphere had returned to what it usually was, unaffected by the scene with Anna.

"You all have 10 seconds before the trial begins."

The sudden voice dissolved the happy atmosphere, causing the three to display stern expressions as they readied themselves, their attention spreading out to observe their surroundings.

"Begin."

Chaos erupted the moment the signal was given. Participants broke out into a sprint as they dashed into the forest, their anticipation and excitement evident on their faces. Some more extreme participants seemed to even go as far as attacking the individuals beside them, aiming to reduce their competition before-hand.

Luckily, one couldn’t really die in this mysterious world. The badges on the chest of the defeated merely glimmered before a force-field would coat the heavily wounded, and have them teleported out of the world directly.

Ezekiel, and his friends, having already made sure that none were near them at the beginning of the trial had gotten into the seemingly never ending forest immediately, an amethyst light trailing behind them as they weaved through the maze of branches and leaves.

(You should be careful. There are multiple D rank Mana beasts within the forest.) Laura faithfully reported the images fed to her by the drones Ezekiel had released upon the start of the trial.

He had seen by himself how a courageous participant had endeavored to fly above the treetops, wishing to either scout ahead or simply blitz through whatever obstructions were before him, only to be struck down by a bolt of lightning.

Faced against such a swift release of power, the young woman had merely been able to release a Mana shield before the lightning bolt tore through her and her spell together. Luckily for her, the badges given to them would still work as long as she wasn’t killed in an instant, so she had been teleported out of the trial as well. Though whether she could be healed remained to be seen.

Anyways, due to the scouting the girl had so selflessly done for Ezekiel, warning him of ever replicating such, he had merely tested whether he could release a few of his drones, and, to his surprise, he could.

This either meant that the method had been used to sense any participant who dared to break the unspoken rule was Mana sense or that the rule was in place for living things alone.

Either ways, it was in situations like these that allowed Ezekiel to smile proudly at the advantages his class granted him. His manaless, subterfuge devices allowed him to evade any sort of detection the Institution’s examiner employed to keep track on him.

With Ezekiel leading his friends, the trio cleverly slipped past the Mana beasts avoiding any point of contact so as to reach their destination as fast as possible. This wasn’t a trial focused on battles after all. Their task was to safely get through the maze-like forest.