He wakes naturally, more relaxed than he’s ever been before in the tunnels, and quickly navigates the many twists and turns he needs to take in order to get to the exit. He is soon walking out of the tunnels and into the light, the sun just cresting over the horizon. Sen smiles again at being out of the tunnels, and sets his determination on reaching the city he was supposed to go to in the first place.

There’s only one issue with that. While he could likely reach it in only a few days if he could follow the path that was set up on his tablet, his tablet is unusable. He isn’t sure which areas will have different ranked monsters, he isn’t sure exactly what direction to go, and a few degrees of difference could mean he misses the city entirely. While it probably mirrors the UFoH city in that it has roads spreading from it leading to the hunting grounds, he’ll still have to simply hope that he doesn’t miss it. The best he can do is approximate the distance he’s traveled so he doesn’t overshoot it by too much.

He takes a few breaths, shallow so as to not bother his ribs, and sets off on his journey. The area is mostly flat, with a few hills here and there, letting him keep an eye out for any potential monsters. He slowly jogs along, his ribs aching with every step, hoping he’s not going to go too far off course. He’s able to estimate which direction to go due to the sun, but it’s not a perfect form of measurement.

Along the way, the only monsters he runs into are G ranked, and he doesn’t even bother fighting them, simply outrunning them. After a while though, he slows down. The monsters have raised up to D rank, and he’s worried that if he continues going in this direction the escalation will continue. There’s nothing he can do about it other than continue, slowing down to stay safe. It isn’t long however, until Sen starts being forced to fight.

The monster he’s started running into looks like a scale covered wolf that comes in a variety of colors. While they’re only D rank mobs from what Sen can tell, they’re still able to outrun him with their four legs to his two. He slides to a stop, preparing to fight the single one chasing him, and waits for it to approach. As it gets closer, it slows down, waiting a few meters away, looking a bit cautious at this prey that has stopped running.

Sen has kept his sword out the entire time, as he doesn’t want to have to drop the sheathe to the ground to pull it out. He raises it in a challenging motion, and the scaled wolf like creature soon gets over his hesitation, lunging at him, tooth filled maw first. Sen steps to the side. While it may be able to outrun him, it can’t get up too much speed from a single lunge, and his sword impacts between the two halves of its jaw, splitting it down to its spine.

The monster flops to the ground, and Sen takes the time to remove its crystal, though he keeps this one, as he’ll need some form of money once he gets to the city. He’s soon back on his way, interspersed with more of the scaled wolves, and he starts to worry. The singular monsters have started to come in twos and threes, and if the pattern continues he may start running into some issues. He tries to ignore the occasional howl around him, focusing simply on traveling.

His fears soon turn to reality, as he hears a chorus of howls. He continues his run in the vain hope that they’re not coming for him, but is forced to stop when they start loping along beside him. The monsters, a bit fewer than a dozen, circle up around him, and he’s quite thankful that his sense for the wind hasn’t decayed at all even now he’s out of the tunnels. He’d never turned it off, and at this point, he doesn’t know how to. It’s closer to an extra sense that he just hadn’t realized he has rather than something active.

He patiently waits, facing the slightly larger alpha of the pack, waiting for a tense few moments. He isn’t surprised when the one to leap at him is the wolf directly behind him. He twists his body, and uses the force generated to chop through the top half of its head. While the body flies past him, the brain matter continues to make his clothes even more messy.

He continues his spin to meet the next one lunging, stabbing into its open mouth, the easiest target. He rips his sword free as he sidesteps another jump, not having the time to cut at this one. He continues to step back and forth, his sense for the air saving him more times than he can count. Eventually their numbers wane. Even so, one of monsters manages to rake its claws down his lower back as he flinches from his cracked ribs. He simply ends up ignoring the burning lines, focusing on the fight.

Thankful for his body enhancement skills making him tough enough to not be too injured from the strike, he removes the offending monster’s front legs, before piercing its heart. He easily cuts down two more of the monsters, and looks to the alpha which hasn’t bothered to move the entire time.

The staring match continues for a few moments, Sen’s calm eyes contrasting with the seeming rage in the monster’s eyes before it lunges, much faster than its pack. Sen sidesteps, and goes to kill it the same way he had the first he’d killed, but the sword aimed for the monster’s jaw mostly misses as it ducks its head, only leaving a glancing blow above its eyes. Even so Sen grins. He waits, another staring match happening.

He’s waiting for just a few moments until the monster blinks, the blood from the new cut getting into its eyes, and Sen is the one to lunge, sword leading, piercing straight through its eye and into the brain.

As Sen starts to remove the crystals from the monsters, putting them into his backpack that luckily hasn’t fallen apart yet, he muses on how used he’s become to fighting alone. While his hunting rate is still slower than with a group, he’s gotten used to facing monsters by himself. His thoughts turn a bit dark as he removes the crystals. He’d fought alone many times in his past life, but fighting alone in his newer one simply makes him feel lonely. His head hangs down thinking about the others. The group likely thinks him dead, and he has no way to contact them to tell them otherwise.

He shakes off the thought, and is soon back on his way. Luckily, he soon reaches an area where the monsters have gone back to being in smaller groups, and only ends up with some scratches on his arm when one of them bites down on his sword, pulling him off balance for a moment. Once he gets to the point that the monsters are back to coming in singles, he looks to the sun. It’s setting.

He downs some of the raw meat that he’s been eating, and finds a small crevice between two rocks to rest in. He goes to bed worried about his group. He wakes to the sun, somehow seamlessly adjusting back to the twenty six hour day. He slowly chews his way through another bloody scaled wolf steak, which actually tastes far better than the monsters that he’s eaten down in the tunnels.

Once he’s eaten, and worried about his water supply, he goes back to traveling. The hills slowly start to get more brush cover, which fades into trees, growing larger and larger as he continues into the forest. The forest is eerily silent, only the occasional chirp from what looks to be a small F or G ranked bird like monster. He hopes that this is simply a low rank hunting area as he continues, wary for anything else that may show up.

As he travels, he finds a small stream, and lets out a sigh of relief. While it’s not like he’s running low on water at the moment, he isn’t sure how often water sources will show up, so he refills the bottles he’d gone through the previous day with the slightly murky water. His travel continues, not having any monsters attack him, even though he spots them fairly regularly. He wonders if they won’t attack anyone or if they can just sense his massively superior stats, but doesn’t complain.

That night he ends up resting in a small cave formed by a tree falling, the ground torn up, and the base of the tree covering the small hole in the ground. As he wakes the next day, his sword still in his hands, he crawls out of the small space, and stretches, eats another unappetizing meal, and heads back the direction he’s been going.

It isn’t long until the low ranked area has a change. Spider webs. Sen leers at them. While he would be willing to fight spiders to get back, there’s a problem. In their nests they tend to come in groups. He growls a bit. It will be best to go around. He heads to the right. He’s not sure if it would be better to go left or right to get around the area quickly so he picks it at random.

Sen follows the slowly curving webbed area, occasionally running into a spider or two, but they’re D ranked and alone, so easily handled. He does make sure to get some crystals. He’s not sure how much he’ll need when he reaches the city, but money never hurts. Eventually he starts noticing that the webs are curving in the right direction to let him continue his trek. The only way he can tell is with intermittent glances at the sun, but it’s still enough to approximate.

He smiles. For once he didn’t make the wrong choice. He winces at how many dead ends he’d run into in the tunnels. Eventually, he’s able to keep going in the same direction he has been, and gives the webbed area one last glare before heading out. The next couple of days have nothing happen, the most exciting thing for Sen being finding another stream to fill up his water rather than the fights.

Sen pauses. With how fast he’s been traveling, the city should be around here. Unfortunately for Sen, the only thing surrounding him is grass. Sighing, he decides to start traveling to his right for a day or so, then the opposite direction for another few days. Trying to push down the worry, he heads off in the new direction.

The path soon turns into an area filled with completely rocky hills, and Sen continues through it for a while. He doesn’t run into any monsters for a while, and has almost let down his guard when he senses something behind him with his wind. Quickly spinning around, he gets a glimpse of what looks to be the big brother of the scaled wolves he’d seen. He slashes at it while it’s still lunging at him, but his sword cuts in only a little.

He focuses, pushing with his sword to keep the monster off course in its attack, and pulls his sword back to a ready position once it lands on the other side of him. The two get in the same staring match as he had with the smaller one, but it soon lunges in again. Sen doesn’t bother going for any fancy strike, simply using Weight of the Mountain to slam into the monster’s side, again sending it off course.

The monster is only lightly harmed, and twists around, this time not lunging, but going in with short rushes, trying to cut Sen’s ankles with its claws, its teeth occasionally snapping at his face. Sen does his best to keep it away, but one of its strikes ends up being stronger than expected, and while the blow is knocked up to his calf rather than his fragile ankle, he ends up with a few deep cuts.

He grimaces, at least he’d managed to mostly remove the offending paw with a Cutting squall once he noticed he needed his sword to move faster. At this point the monster is limping, and Sen takes advantage of this, going on the offensive himself. He circles around, stabbing in when it’s delayed by its grievously injured leg.

It’s a careful dance to keep the monster from being able to strike at him, and wound it enough without wasting all his energy on it on the chance that he may run into another monster before he can regenerate his energy. Eventually however, it falls to the ground, long after he would’ve been able to kill it with the group. Sen makes sure it’s dead with a stab through its eye, before removing the crystal from its chest.

He sits there for a moment. They wouldn’t place the city this close to any C ranked hunting grounds, so it’s unlikely that he’s heading the correct direction. He lets out a sigh, before turning around and heading back the way he came. His travel is mostly painless and the areas start having lower and lower ranked monsters. Sen’s almost given up on finding the city, when he finds something that give him hope. It’s a road! He instantly starts following it, going to the left this time, but after a few hours of jogging at a ridiculous pace, it dead ends into a small circle with a bunch of vehicles parked in it. He considers asking for a ride, but who would trust someone looking like him. He lets out another sigh before heading back the way he came, following along the road.