Not only Kazui and Yuri, but fifteen other students from the same high school had also been transported as otherworld refugees. They were being sheltered in Aquila and had all become adventurers around the same time.
However, those fifteen had long since become full-fledged adventurers and had already left Aquila to head for the labyrinth city in search of a way back to Japan.
Staying in an ordinary autonomous city like Aquila wouldn’t help them return home. To do so, they needed to reach a labyrinth city where massive underground dungeons existed. That was why the other students had left.
In short, Kazui and Yuri — whose growth was slow — had been left behind by their classmates.
The reason their progress was so delayed was because both of their native skills were considered dud skills.
Most skills adventurers used were obtained through training or special items. However, when they incorporated a small orb — an "Orb" — into their body to gain the ability to manipulate aura or mana upon becoming adventurers, they could also receive a skill at that moment.
The skill gained when incorporating an Orb was called a Native Skill. Adventurers blessed with good native skills had an advantage in the early stages and could grow more easily.
Unfortunately, both Kazui and Yuri’s native skills were highly quirky and difficult to use — so-called "dud skills." This was why their leveling was significantly delayed.
Kazui’s skill, "Replication," was especially terrible. It was an ultra-rare skill — so rare that only about a dozen owners had ever been confirmed in history.
Replication allowed the user to copy and obtain skills that other people possessed. At first glance, it sounded extremely useful, but there were clear reasons it was treated as a dud.
Owners of Replication faced a major drawback: it became extremely difficult and slow for them to acquire new skills through normal training. On top of that, Replication would not activate unless specific conditions were met — conditions that the owner themselves didn’t know in the early stages.
Furthermore, the activation conditions were completely different for every single owner of Replication, making past information useless. Even appraisal-type skills that could investigate other adventurers’ abilities couldn’t analyze Replication’s activation conditions.
The owner had to discover the conditions themselves. If they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be able to obtain any skills through Replication.
The number of skills an adventurer possessed was directly linked to their level and overall strength. If it was already hard to gain skills through training, and Replication couldn’t be used either, it became extremely difficult to grow stronger.
As a result, many past owners of Replication who couldn’t discover their activation conditions ended up retiring from adventuring. It was only natural that Replication was treated as a dud skill.
Kazui, whose native skill was Replication, still hadn’t discovered his activation condition. Therefore, he couldn’t copy skills from other adventurers, and his pace of acquiring skills through training was slower than others.
As a result, even though six months had passed since he became an adventurer, he hadn’t leveled up at all and was still Level 1. The only skills he had obtained through training were the most basic ones for martial artists: Aura Mail and Aura Shot.
Yuri’s native skill was "Leonization." It was also quite a rare skill, but for a male like Yuri, it was very difficult to use.
Moreover, owners of Leonization faced a milder version of the same drawback as Replication — it made acquiring skills more difficult. On top of that, it even made it harder for them to level up.
These drawbacks would disappear once Leonization was used even once, but Yuri had never used it. Therefore, both drawbacks remained in effect.
Because of Leonization’s drawbacks, Yuri — while not as bad as Kazui — also had fewer skills and slower leveling speed. As a result, even after six months as an adventurer, he was still only Level 2 and remained in training.
"If we hadn’t gotten dud skills, we would’ve become full adventurers long ago, gone to the labyrinth city, and wouldn’t have ended up in this mess..." Kazui muttered.
Yuri nodded in full agreement on this point.
"We both got terrible dud skills, huh?"
"By the way, what exactly is your native skill?" Kazui asked.
In truth, Yuri had been hiding his native skill and hadn’t even told his best friend Kazui about it.
There were skills — though few in number — that allowed the user to conceal their existence from others. Leonization was one such concealable skill.
"...It’s a secret," Yuri refused to answer, then added, "Anyway... it’s a dud skill that I absolutely don’t feel like using. Nothing good will come from it."
Leonization was effective in battle, but the real problem was what happened afterward. Most men who used it couldn’t avoid going through something quite unpleasant.
Even though using it would remove the drawbacks, it was so bad that Yuri still didn’t want to use it. That was why he had never activated Leonization before and wanted to avoid it as much as possible.