Entering the arena, he sees LostMind across from him, and raises his wounded blade, bowing in respect as soon as the white walls of light go down. LostMind returns the bow, and then they slowly approach each other, before Sen starts the fight, launching himself towards LostMind. He calmly blocks Sen’s blow, even enhanced by Weight of the Mountain, showing his superior stats, and sends out his own blow, his sword becoming wreathed in a brown glow.

Sen isn’t sure what it is until he goes to block, the impact of the sword causing an explosion. Sen takes a bunch of steps back in pain, his insides roiling from the shockwave. He goes to raise his sword, then blinks. The top half of the sword is entirely gone, snapped at one of the weakened spots from his previous match.

He’s far too competitive to stop fighting though, and swings his sword at LostMind, the shorter reach making him go closer than he’s comfortable with. His blow is stopped by his shield, and LostMind’s return blow is far faster than Sen can move. He manages to avoid a fatal blow, but takes a deep cut on his chest.

The pattern repeats, and while Sen parries a majority of the blows, he isn’t able to get past LostMind’s guard a single time with the shortened blade portion. He’s slowly worn down, covered in blue lines, and with a bleeding debuff icon in the top left corner of his vision. Eventually, his vision fades, and he dissolves into blue motes of light.

As he reappears outside the arena, he sees Julie looking quite happy, apparently she’d completely swept her bracket. She mentions that she was completely outclassed stats wise by her opponents, but they’d both tried to get close, and with them close she didn’t need to use many of her array knives, not using up all of her few remaining cores.

Sen shudders, there has to be some way to counter that. He’ll have to look that up on the wiki when he gets out. Jennifer and Lynna are both congratulating Julie, who is far too logical to let the pride from victory get to her head. That doesn’t stop her from celebrating though, quite happy from her victory.

Xue comforts Sen about his loss, and he thanks her, though he’s a bit grumpy to have lost in such a fashion. He wanted to at least wound his opponent some, but with half his sword missing, he hadn’t been able to put up a proper fight.

The group, rather than deciding to celebrate in game, decide that this is a good time to have their meet up in real life. Logging out, Sen is met with his familiar room, a bland place with nothing but a bed, dresser, and a desk upon which his computer rests, the silver capsule being the most prominent thing in the large room, which would seem painfully empty without it.

Getting out, he takes a much needed shower, drenched in sweat from the exercise the capsule has put him through while he was in game. Once he’s finished, he switches into a plain set of clothing, just jeans with a plain grey shirt. He’s never been much for graphic t-shirts, though he has a couple official Gladiator t-shirts. Once he’s done, he goes to get some coffee and wait for his sister. Knowing her, she’s going to be a good thirty to forty minutes, so he savors his coffee as he heads over to the dining room.

Once there, he sees his mother, Jiu, eating what looks to be fish pancakes, and she smiles at him as he arrives. It isn’t too rare for Sen to run into her even during working hours. As a surgeon, she has very odd working hours, though she spends far more time at work than with her family. Regardless of that, she almost always makes it for the family dinner somehow, finding the family time very important. She finishes her meal before talking with him.

“So I see you’ve been enjoying Fifth Dimension. How have you been doing in it?”

Sen smiles back, even his annoying loss feels small when with his loving mother. “I did well in the second round of the tournament. I took second place in my bracket.”

His mother nods. She hadn’t ever encouraged her kids to play games, but does try to keep up with their gaming situation, wanting to have something familiar to discuss with her kids.

“Good luck in the next round, I’m sure you’ll do well there too.”

Sen smiles, his mother is always supportive, even if she doesn’t believe that immersion games are a good way to spend their time. As his mother gets a call to go back to the hospital, he gives her a short hug goodbye, and sees her out the door. As he gets back to the dining room, he sees Lynna has finished up with her preparations.

They both exit the house, and Lynna gets in her car. While vehicles are automated, similar to in game, you still require a license to drive them in emergencies, and Sen has never bothered getting one, even though he is old enough to do so. They’re meeting up at a bubble tea store, and as they walk in, they see that they aren’t the first to arrive.

Jennifer and Julie are both chatting, or rather, Julie is teaching Jennifer about some obscure information about modern physics. Scientists are almost to the point where they can recreate the warp drive. Considering that on earth, there had been just one super genius that had developed it, Sen wonders how they hadn’t developed one in the fifteen thousand years humanity had been on Alpha.

Their conversation is interrupted by the siblings arrival, and the two girls both go up to give Lynna a hug, following with a hug to Sen. He feels a bit awkward, two attractive girls giving him a hug when the only female friend he’s had in either of his lives is Julie. Xue soon arrives, and looks as awkward as he felt as she gets hugs from the other girls.

They all get some bubble tea, and chat, mainly about Fifth Dimension. Xue lets slip that there’s a reason that the capsules exercise you, and that starts some speculation about what the hell is going on. Xue refuses to comment, but that doesn’t stop the conversation to getting to conspiracy theory territory.

“So has anyone else noticed the censorship online? Every theory people have been posting online just disappeared all of a sudden,” Sen mentions.

“I noticed that!” Lynna says.

Xue looks a bit uncomfortable at that, and gets stares from everyone, but her poker face soon comes back, with a bit of sadness mixed in.

“Sorry, I really can’t say.”

“It’s fine,” Sen breaks the uncomfortable silence. “Our dad won’t tell us anything either.”

The conversation slowly peters off, and goes back to gaming. Sen finds it interesting how everyone is using their real names in game, and finds out that everyone has independently decided that considering they are stuck with their own body, they’ll use their name as well. Everyone agrees that they need to find more dungeons, and Julie makes everyone feel stupid, pulling out her phone and checking the wiki, showing that three E rank dungeons have been found in the vicinity of Falan.

As large as King is, they can’t control that many dungeons, and controlling just one will simply send other players to different dungeons, so they’ve been quite silent. Once the game gets further on, there likely won’t be as many higher rank dungeons, so they will likely be heavily fought over, but for now, there are enough for everyone.

Lynna soon gets started telling some of the funny stories from their previous games, and while Jennifer and Sen were either participants in the stories, or had heard them already, they simply grin, remembering, but Julie is laughing at some of their antics. The worst one is the time a streamer had convinced his fanbase to collectively confess to Sen after seeing how awkward he was when one of his fans had confessed, and Sen had started hiding from the public for a month.

Xue’s cold face cracks a bit at that, and jokingly confesses to Sen as well, who turns bright red, regretting the fact that Lynna had found out about that. Sen returns the favor with stories about how Lynna had a good portion of the Ares guild chasing after her after she had shared a picture in the forums when everyone was doing a face share.

Lynna still has a few people in Ares who are chasing her, but Lynna isn’t interested in any of them, having a crush on someone at her school, and she has refused to tell Sen who he is.

They part after the stories, and everyone goes back to their own homes. Sen isn’t really in the mood to do hunting in Fifth Dimension, but feels obligated to play it, and so hops in, practicing Bones Like Wind until it’s time for bed.

When Sen wakes, he checks his computer, and sees the internet utterly inundated with a new piece of news. Alpha has been contacted by humanity from Earth. Sen gapes. They’d been cut off for fifteen thousand years, and now they’d been found again. There isn’t much news on it other than there are diplomatic relations currently going on. There’s no explanation on how they had been found, and no talks about how diplomatic relations were ongoing when they are so far away from Earth it would take years to contact them through traditional means.

The news completely overshadows any discussion of anything else, and Sen realizes that maybe the conspiracy theories about aliens had been right in a way. But if the new contact with Earth is how Fifth Dimension had been developed, there is a much more pressing ‘why’.

Sen can’t think of any valid reason for them to have people playing a game. There won’t be any reason to be reading their minds, as people who have things to hide already don’t play immersion games because of conspiracy theories about such things. It can’t be purely for getting the population in shape, as the only real benefit there would be reduced health care costs, and that can’t account for it. It can’t even be to train super soldiers, as it would have a more modern setting if that is it.

Sen spends the next hour or so mulling over different options, but isn’t able to come up with any answers. Eventually, he gives up, logging back in to fifth dimension to do some hunting.