Chapter 39: Ascension
There was only a minor difference between the First Floor and the Second Floor. While both floors house First-Grade Monsters, the first floor houses the weaker ones and the Second Floor the powerful ones.
Max would have problems on the First Floor in finding Level 8 and Level 9 First-Grade Monsters, while the Second Floor was filled with them so they decided to descend to the Second Floor.
Fortunately, they could travel to different floors normally through the labyrinth instead of relying on portals alone. So, after they found the stairs leading to the Second Floor, they descended to level up even more.
They spent the rest of the day on the Second Floor, hunting the monsters and using their Mana Shard to level up, though that was mainly for Max.
Stelle took all the weaker Mana Shards to saturate her mana core to the peak of the Bronze Rank, which she was incredibly close to reaching...
As for Max, he used the Mana Shards while keeping the gained EXP from slaying monsters on the side. This allowed him to level up even faster.
Technically, he should have reached Silver Rank because of the sheer number of monsters he killed on the Second Floor; sadly, Kafka locked his Ascension.
When he asked the reason for it, she had replied,
[You can speed up leveling up but Ascension to every rank should be done manually. You should know better than anyone why there is an Ascension to begin with. I can allow you to Ascend through leveling up, but I don’t think you would want that.]