After calming myself down, I began to think. I had the lowest amount of mana. That was definitely not good.

With things as they were, there were two possible options for me.

One, I was going to get bullied until something life-threatening happened to me and awakened my hidden OP-ness.

Two, I was going to get bullied until something life-threatening happened to me and actually managed to kill me.

Thinking realistically, the second option was more likely to happen. After all, plot armor was something I probably didn't possess. In other words, no miracle was going to save me. In order to avoid that, I had to do something.

I looked at the boy, who was still consoling me. “Thanks, I'm fine now.”, I said and gave him a wry smile, “What's your name?”

He seemed surprised at my sudden question, but still answered. “I'm Andreas.”

“I'm Ron. Nice to meet you.”

It was a somewhat awkward greeting, but still a greeting. We shook hands and then looked back to the sphere. Somewhere, a certain annoying guy was still laughing.

The next surprise came when a girl with short, red hair stepped forward and placed her hands on the sphere. Her mana count was…

“83...” The old man seemed lost. I couldn't blame him, it was already the third person with a low score after all.

The girl noticed us and we waved our hands at her. She joined our group as the annoying guy started laughing again.

“Dammit, that guy thinks he's special, or what?” She sounded very irritated.

“It's always like that,” I said with a shrug, “the ones with high scores think they're better than anyone”

“You seem to take your mana count surprisingly well though,” Andreas remarked.

The girl shrugged.

“Well, I don't really get what the numbers mean anyway, so I don't really care.”

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She shot an angry glare to the direction of where the smug guy was standing.

“I do care about people making fun of other people though.”

“Well, let's just ignore him for now. Maybe there are still more people like us.” I said and pointed to the next person touching the sphere.

Our expectations were not betrayed.

Together, a total of three boys and two girls had a low mana score, me included. The mage seemed at a loss what to do, but didn't say anything else about it.

“Well then! Now that you all know how high your amount of mana is, let us go to meet the king!”

He lead us out of the room and we started walking again.

While we were walking, Andreas tried to strike up a conversation.

”So, uhh, we all got pretty low mana scores, huh?”

Way to go, buddy. I almost face palmed.

“Seems so,” the third boy answered with a flat tone.

“Ah, right, why don't we introduce us to each other first? The name's Andreas.” Andreas said in a panic.

There we go, buddy. That was better. I decided to follow up.

“I'm Ron.”

“My name's Tony,” the third boy replied, still with a flat voice.

“I'm Lily,” the girl with red hair said.

“I-I'm Nakamura Chihiro, but, umm, I think just Chihiro is fine.”

My head turned almost automatically to the direction of the last girl. She had long, black hair that almost reached to the hip, a traditional hime cut. My otaku heart jumped a little. A genuine Japanese girl…

No! No! I shook my head. Now was not the time for such things!

“What's wrong? You just made a weird face,” Lily asked with her eyebrow raised.

“Nothing, nothing.”

Way to go, buddy. I almost face palmed, this time at myself.