Sen is the first one up in the morning, and has a simple bowl of oatmeal and toast. By the time he’s finishing up, the rest of the group shambles out of their rooms. Considering his sister is absolutely not a morning person, and the rest of the group seems to have not slept well, Sen makes sure not to talk with them until they’ve all had coffee.

“What do you think our parents are going to say?” Jennifer seems to be the most nervous.

The group looks to each other, none of them sure what the decision will be. They all stuff themselves onto the small couch and put on a drama. Sen’s the odd one out, sitting reading at the counter. It’s a few hours before they hear a knock at the door.

Sen opens it to see all the parents standing around, all looking determined except for Jennifer’s, who seem to be nervous. They file in, and the girls turn off the drama they’ve been watching.

“We’ve decided to join the Allied worlds.” Sen’s father is the one who decides to lead the conversation.

Alice gets a large smile on her face, and the group looks to each other. They all nod, and then Lynna grabs her tablet to find a large gravity vehicle that can fit all of them. Everyone files out as Alice pulls up a map on her own tablet that seems to be a slightly different design.

“We won’t be able to take the gravity car all the way, we shall instead land here.” She points to a spot on the map that shows up as a D ranked hunting area. “It’s almost three hundred miles from there to our city. All of your parents are at D rank, so we should easily be able to jog a good forty miles daily.”

The parents look a bit scared, but Sen realizes that he could probably run a mile in less than two minutes at max speed, so he figures that even their parents will find it to be a relaxed pace with the crystals they’ve sent back. The first stop of the group is to get a large amount of food supplies, as they’ll be moving for at least eight days. Sen finally remembers to grab some throwing knives, as they’ll likely come in handy against the low rank monsters on the path to the Allied World’s city.

Once they’ve filled their backpacks with terribly calorie dense food, and a crystal powered portable grill for if they want to eat some monster meat, they head over to the massive gravity car that Lynna has found. It would more accurately be called a gravity bus, as it has a good four rows of four seats, two restrooms, and a small kitchen.

Everyone walks into it, and then they set off for the three hour flight over to the point they’ll be dropped off. The flight is rather boring, and they set down just as planned. Once everyone gets out however, they look to see another gravity car that they hadn’t noticed setting down right next to them, fading from some form of invisibility. The group instantly gets their weapons ready.

A good thirty people come out of the gravity car, and take out their weapons.

“Alliance?” Jennifer’s father asks them.

“Of course we’re Alliance,” The person in the lead says.

Jennifer’s father and mother start heading over to them, and are let into the group.

“Jennifer?” her mother asks in a questioning tone.

Jennifer is simply staring at them. “What are you doing!?”

“We’re doing what’s best for our family. We’re going to be protected by Alliance now. They won’t harm the rest of you, they simply want to take you back.”

The man who had spoken earlier laughs. “Well, we won’t hurt them if it’s not their first time.” Jennifer’s parents look to him and pale.

“You said they wouldn’t be harmed!”

“We did, didn’t we. We’ll have to give them extra care then. Though the guys and the old ones are unneeded.”

Jennifer’s parents seem to be panicking at this time, and Jennifer isn’t heading over to join them.

“Jennifer! They won’t harm you, just don’t resist and come with us.”

Jennifer’s eyes are wide open with a horrified, confused look on her face. She looks at her parents before closing her eyes.

“Just like they won’t harm the rest of us?”

Jennifer’s parents have terrified expressions now. They look like they’re going to say something when they get cut off.

“It seems they’re of no use.” The man who seems to be leading Alliance says. He waves his hand, and swords burst through both of Jennifer’s parents, exiting their chests in a spray of blood.

“NO!”

Jennifer goes to rush at them, but Alice holds her back.

“There’s too many of them, we should retreat. I’ll disable their gravity car, then run,” Alice says. She punctuates her comment by throwing small balls at both of the gravity cars, and there’s a snapping sound as they hit, with a massive flash of light.

The group starts to run, going rather slowly with their parents only being at rank D. Jennifer seems to have gotten herself together enough to run, though it may just be shock. Sen’s filled with rage as he sees streams of tears dropping to the ground.

They continue to run, but they start to hear an odd sound, and look back to see the Alliance members on what look like dirt bikes. Eventually, they reach a winding area filled with canyons, and they dive into one of them in an attempt to lose them. Eventually, they manage to get a bit of distance, the Alliance members bikes not being quite so fast on the rough terrain. They stop a bit for a rest, and Alice checks something on her tablet. They almost think they’re safe, but only until a drone flies overhead.

They instantly start running, and Alice uses a curse only Sen can recognize.

“There’s only one path from here. We can’t outrun them either, those bikes will just keep up with us until we get too tired to run. We need to fight.” Alice says.

“We can’t, they have two rank B members with them,” Lynna says in a defeated tone. Apparently she’d done some research on Alliance.

Sen takes a deep breath, feeling a bit of deja vu. “Then someone needs to slow them down.” Alice looks to him, a bit horrified, as Sen notices a tight area in the path where only one of the bikes will be able to get through. He stops his run, sliding a few meters to stand in the opening.

“Don’t you dare!” Alice shouts. “Not again!”

She starts to stop, but Sen gives a look to Lynna, who knows what he’s thinking, and she grabs Alice, throwing her over her shoulder. Alice is protesting violently as everyone continues to run, Sen’s parents being dragged along by Julie. Sen can see the tears dropping from Xue’s eyes, but she starts running again as he shouts for her to take care of his parents. Alice is still trying to stay, but in the air on Lynna’s shoulder, she can’t find any purchase to go the other way.

It isn’t long until Sen hears the rumbling and crunching sound the dirt bikes make moving over the ground, as their engines are totally silent, powered by crystals. He takes a deep breath as they all slide to a stop. Sen notes one of them has a much larger tablet he’s looking at, and marks his target. That has to be the drone controller.

“Admirable of you, but it won’t save your group,” says the leader of the group.

Sen simply lets out a grin and throws a few knives at speeds that shouldn’t be humanly possible. The enemies all raise their weapons before being surprised. Sen’s target hadn’t been to kill any of them, and all of the knives home in on the tablet controlling the drone, Sen’s control of the wind leading all of them to impact it, leaving it filled with holes. At this point, Sen considers running for a second, but there’s two B ranked enemies who could easily catch up. All he can do is buy time.

The man leading the group gets an enraged look on his face.

“Kill him!”

Sen grins, it seems his fate is the same in both lives. He raises his sword as the first enemy approaches after hopping off of his bike, the tight walls of the canyon limiting those that can fight him at once. The first enemy is a D class fighter, Sen notices, and he intentionally slows himself down, only barely keeping up with him and not using body strengthening.

He makes sure not to take any damage, conserving his energy and dragging out the fight as long as humanly possible, making sure to give everyone enough time to escape. The leader, clearly getting frustrated by how long the fight is taking, eventually orders another person to the front.

This fighter is clearly C rank, though rather low in it, and Sen has to start to use his full speed, along with body strengthening, which causes a lot of rage in the Alliance leader, who realizes he’d been tricked. Sen diverts the first blow to his right, but doesn’t take advantage of the opening much, only giving him a light scratch on the chest of the idiot who is using a one handed sword without a shield.

The idiot goes to strike again from overhead, and Sen easily pushes his strike to the side before cutting his arm slightly. At this point, the group of Alliance has started to jeer at the guy fighting Sen, and his next strike has a dull brown glow over his sword as he attacks.

Sen carefully surrounds himself in a barrier of wind, and uses Weight of the Mountain to empower his sword as he slams it into the side of his opponents sword, not wanting to take it straight on. The sword slams into the ground, and explodes, sending fragments of rock flying, which thankfully only leave small scratches on Sen’s leg, the skin enhancement skill paying dividends.

This time, Sen gives him a deeper cut on the leg, enough to make it so he can’t support himself anymore, and leaves him lying on the ground until one of the members drags him back. At this point, Sen is pretty sure that Alliance is just playing a game, and if he plays along and doesn’t kill anyone, he’ll probably be able to earn quite a bit of time for his group.

Sen lets out a bit of a smile. He has friends in this life, even a girlfriend, and here he is expecting it to end anyway. The next person to come up is another C rank with a massive two handed axe. His first blow is slamming his axe from the side, but due to the weight of the axe, Sen is easily able to step back out of range, and when he steps in he puts a cut into the man’s shoulder.

The axe slams into the canyon wall, and Sen notices cracks start to extend from there all the way to the ground, a massive chunk of broken stone falling from the wall. The man’s next strike is a backhand from his position, and yet again Sen simply steps back, not even bothering to use his movement abilities. This time, the man hasn’t bothered to use a skill with his strike, and it only crushes a bit into the stone wall.

He has no problems pulling his axe from the wall, and yells “Storm Slice!” as he swings his axe from overhead. Sen gapes a bit at the idiot yelling the name of his ability. He quickly focuses as what looks like three images of the axe head towards him, and uses Earth Step to back up, but hastily raises his sword up to block the fake images of the axe, which are sent flying at him.

He blocks one, and mostly dodges the other, taking only a light cut on his arm. Sen instantly goes back in, and leaves a deep cut onto his opponent’s arm, making it hang limp, and he waits as this one is dragged back like the previous one.

The next one to show up has a sword and shield, and by the way he’s holding them, he knows what he’s doing with them. He starts with simple probing strikes, which Sen deflects carefully, going in for his own probing strikes each time his sword isn’t in a position to strike Sen.

The man’s shield easily catches each of the blows, but after a bit, Sen’s opponent gets a bit annoyed, clearly not as mentally controlled as he is skilled. He uses a skill familiar to Sen, wreathing his sword in flames, and starts slashing with abandon. Sen is forced to hold up a shield of air as he blocks, getting slightly more singed each time the sword of flame explodes.

Sen decides to drag this out as long as he can, so he continues to block, only going in for small strikes to keep his enemy off balance and attacking in an angry fashion. Eventually, his opponent starts to breathe heavily, and his sword of flame goes out.

Sen smiles, he’s only down a third of his energy as well. If the exploding sword of flames didn’t use so much energy, he may been running a lot lower. As this one is dragged back, the leader of the Alliance group steps forwards himself.

“As skilled of a C rank as you are, you’re only a C rank. Let me show you what strength is.”

The man, who is using a similar two handed sword as Sen, drops the sheath from his back, and draws his blade oh so slowly. As he raises his sword, Sen simply stares at him. The man’s first strike is terribly fast, and Sen barely manages to get his sword in between the blade and his own body. Sen is slammed to the side of the wall, but pushes off in time to dodge the following blow which hits the wall with a loud crash, cracks stretching from the wall, even extending onto the ground.

Sen decides that he’s not going to be able to buy more time, so the least he can do is try and take out this enemy. He strikes out with a Cutting Squall, wanting to save his trump card for a moment he knows will get a kill.

The cutting squall actually manages to leave a long scratch on the man’s chest, and he seems to become enraged. Sen grins, a wild enraged swing is exactly what he’s looking for. The man steps back, and raises his sword overhead.

“Die!” He slams his sword down, a massive image of an entire mountain range forming over the sword, making it seem ten times larger. With how terribly telegraphed the strike is though, Sen uses both Earth Step and Gale Steps to speed to the side. He expects he’ll be clipped by the image, but he doubts he’ll die, and maybe he can kill a few others.

He doesn’t have to work whatsoever to come up with the image of pure death, and slams his blade forward with Bloody Peak, the macabre looking image practically teleporting to the man’s neck. Sen can see his eyes widen a bit as his blade bites deep into his neck, and Sen is clipped with the image of the mountain range, slammed to the ground.

When Sen’s opponent’s sword hits the ground though, there’s a massive cracking sound, and the earth beneath Sen collapses into emptiness. He falls for far too long, and impacts the ground, blacking out.