Sen wakes in the morning realizing that he needs to stop hiding from the girls. He lets out a quiet sigh, waiting a bit for the others to wake up. The only other one awake is Alice, and she’s playing with the hologram coming out of her bracelet.

Sen copies her, reading some novels while he waits for the rest of the group to get up. He finds it interesting that the science fiction works of humanity developing a warp drive and meeting other alien races is his reality at this point, but enjoys the stories regardless.

Once everyone is up, he decides to get some information about that.

“Alice? Why haven’t I seen any aliens? I thought the allied worlds had alien races.”

She looks at him, looking like she’s trying to not look sad and failing. “Sylar is only connected to the world Epsus, a human colony world. Not that the aliens are much different anyway.”

Sen creases his eyebrows. “What do you mean not that different?”

Alice shifts uncomfortably, biting her lip. “From what we know, life was seeded across the universe. Evolution of most sentient species was guided by what amount to nanomachines made of pure energy from the fifth dimension in order to manufacture most races. While small differences appear due to random chance, almost all races are only very slightly different.”

Sen gapes. There goes all the religious theories that claim that a god was the one to guide evolution. Well, unless this god decided to use nanomachines to do so.

“So are there elves?” Sen gets a bit excited at this.

Alice looks at him in a judging manner. “There are a couple races with pointed ears, but the only one that’s similar to the stereotypical fantasy elf is one of the most violent races in the galaxy.”

Sen quickly gets the name of the race, which is Blad. Sen thinks that it has to be simply someone having slightly altered the word blood, but passes on thinking of the connotations. He quickly puts the name into a search engine, but rather than the regal looking elves he expects he’s met with videos from various movies and documentaries about how bloodthirsty they are, and how they live for combat.

It seems that they’ve continued to use cold weapons for long after they’d developed hot ones, simply as ritual combat is seen as a good thing in their culture. They’d been holding duels with cold weapons since they first had a civilization, and Sen does not want to know what kind of warriors that produces.

Apparently, their population isn’t too high due to not being able to expand to other worlds until the past thousand years or so, or they would be a much more powerful group. They have the highest percentage of high rank hunters of any of the races, five percent of them reaching A rank, with twenty percent of their population hunting in the fifth dimension. That’s significantly more than the fifteen percent of humans that enter the fifth dimension.

Sen opens up a few videos on the ritual combat that the Blad go through, and is astounded. He considers himself to be very good at fighting with a sword, but he’s currently watching a video on two A rank hunters, as the duels between S rank hunters don’t allow any recording devices.

Even with these not being the Blad’s greatest fighters, Sen feels that at his best he would only be able to match up with them in pure swordsmanship. They seem to have an instinctive knowledge of when and where to strike, cutting in with quick blows, which always seem to be at the perfect angle to get around their opponent’s shield.

The blows are repeatedly blocked, as perfectly placed and fast as they are. Sen is even more horrified when he sees how much the fight is slowed down. Yes, A rank is above him, but he’s watching at half speed, and they’re still moving faster than him.

He watches as one of them finally gets a light cut onto the shoulder of the other, and they stop, dropping their swords and clasping their sword arms together before the video ends. He leans back with a sigh. He’d lose against either of them in a straight fight assuming they had equal stats, the two handed sword he’s using not as useful against other people as a sword and shield.

One in four of their population that enters the fifth dimension reaches A rank. Sen shakes his head. After looking at some other stats, A rank hunters for humanity are only point one percent of the population. Considering just over fifteen percent hunt in the fifth dimension, humanity is honestly disappointing.

The only benefit humanity has is that they’re the largest population of any of the alien races, having spread to the stars millenia before them, even having introduced many worlds to the fifth dimension. Even with the lack of skilled hunters per person, the UFoH outnumber the Blad three to one in A rank hunters, while the human portion of the Allied Worlds has a similar amount of hunters compared to the Blad.

It’s only been in the past two centuries that humanity has split into two, the Allied worlds, who support other races, and the UFoH, which thinks them beneath them, to be used as slave labor. Sen wonders what will happen to those on Alpha. While they’re not technically aliens, in his experience, people like Alliance were doing nothing but trying to suppress people who live there. Alpha would either have to cave, or hope that the Allied Worlds sees enough in them to fight for them.

By this time, everyone is up and eating breakfast, and Sen joins them. Luckily, this super sized gravity car, which Alice owns in addition to her smaller gravity car they’d used to get around the city, has a kitchen. It’s a small kitchen, but a kitchen nonetheless. Lynna must have been the one to make the chicken ginger congee, and everyone enjoys it, focusing on the food rather than talking.

Once they’ve finished their meals, they head out to do some more hunting. They have a fruitful day, finding plenty more of those sheep monsters, which Sen learns are called ironwool sheep. They also find a very long, but surprisingly skinny snake that can actually blend into its surroundings somehow.

The first time they run into it, Sen readies his sword and charges at the thing he feels with his wind sense, and as he slashes down into it, no one has followed him. As the blade bites into the rather skinny monster, it twists and goes to wrap around him, its color that was blended perfectly into its surroundings changing to an angry red.

Sen quickly Gale Steps back, and notes that only now is the rest of the group joining him. Apparently only he had been able to tell where the snake is. The rest of the group starts chopping into it, and it dies in just a few moments, extremely fragile for a rank C monster.

“Well that was easy,” Lynna remarks.

“It’s an ambush predator. It could have caused us trouble if Sen hadn’t noticed it. There’s not supposed to be chameleon snakes here though, that’s odd…” Julie trails off towards the end, pulling up her holographic screen to look something up.

She quickly finds news that another party had gone missing in the area, and Sen wonders if they’d run into a nest of the snakes or something. Sen gets a bit of a frown at that thought. People disappearing is never a good thing. On the other hand, they may be able to benefit from this. While monster nests, the entrances to the underdark, are completely filled with tunnels and practically infinite monsters, if it’s a chameleon snake nest, they may be able to go hunting there.

The chameleon snakes are easily the weakest C class monster Sen has fought. He’s quite sure that anyone in the group could easily handle one alone. If they manage to find the nest, they stand to gain a massive amount of C rank crystals in one fell swoop.

The rest of the week is spent hunting. They start finding more and more chameleon snakes, and the girls start to surround themselves with a layer of mist around five meters away from themselves to sense any that get nearby. They have a hard time for the first few days, but quickly pick it up, though their sense isn’t nearly so detailed as Sen’s. Alice and Julie with their fire body enhancement skills are stuck in the center, which Alice complains about a few times.

Alice finally gets to the point where she’ll talk to Sen normally again, but she avoids clinging to him, which Sen is both thankful for, and a bit sad at. Sen blanks out for a bit, he should not be sad that Alice is not clinging on him. He already has Xue, and Alice is his lady.

He gets rid of the distracting thoughts as they all get back in the gravity car and start flying back towards the massive penthouse they’re staying in. Once they arrive, Sen and Lynna end up being the two who don’t get access to one of the bathrooms immediately, and Lynna decides to berate him about his insensitivity now she finally has him alone.

“So you know Alice hates the fact that she was above you her entire previous life. Why did you have to bring it up in this one?”

Sen decides to go with a different track. “I already have Xue, I can’t be leading her on.” He winces a bit internally at that. He’s quite sure he feels worse about how he has to treat his lady than anyone else knows.

Lynna looks nervous for a bit, and opens her mouth as if to say something, but decides against it.

“Well she’s part of our team. We need to stick together, let alone the fact that our parents are basically working for her parents. If you need to play along, just play along. Just don’t go too far with it.”

Sen stares at her. Even if their parents are working for Alice’s, they would easily be able to live off the crystals that Sen and Lynna send back to them. Admittedly, both of them are workaholics, and they would probably go a bit crazy, but they don’t absolutely have to do this.

Sen sighs. It’s probably best to listen to his sister. She always ends up being right in the end. Always. He isn’t sure what her end goal is, but he’ll trust her. He nods, and Lynna smiles, patting his head like he’s still a little kid. He’d been annoyed by the gesture when she’d used it a long time ago, but by now he simply appreciates the show of affection.

Eventually, Sen gets his chance in the shower, and he enjoys it immensely. Once he’s groomed and ready to leave the shower’s sweet embrace, he heads back out to the sitting room. Everyone is on a seat or a couch, and Sen goes to sit next to Xue, who is on a couch.

Alice exits the bathroom, apparently the last one out even though she’d been the first one in, and she nervously goes to sit next to Sen. He doesn’t encourage her, but doesn’t shy away as she nervously sits there.

The rest of the day is spent with most of the group watching some sort of drama. Sen gets a bit distracted from his reading, wincing as the love triangle hits a little too close to home. The entire day is spent simply relaxing, everyone exhausted from their full week of hunting.

They all go to bed, and Sen gives Xue a kiss goodnight, and not hesitating as Alice gives him a hug goodnight. Sen’s woken from his sleep far too early by a whining sound from his bracelet, and he turns it on to see what on Alpha is causing that annoying noise.

Pulling it up, he simply stares for a while. The UFoH is attacking hunting parties from Sylar, the city Sen is currently staying in. While ostensibly, the UFoH and the Allied Worlds are at war, it’s been limited to simple skirmishes for the past few decades, and those are usually done in space, not fights in the fifth dimension. The last large fight in the fifth dimension had been a few years ago.

Sen instantly gets out of bed and heads to the sitting room, hoping the rest of the group will come and join him. He’s surprised to see that Alice is the first person out, and she’s looking terribly disheveled. She’s actually brought out a brush, and hands it to Sen, who automatically starts to work through her hair, something he’d done countless times in his past life.

Xue comes in and sits next to Sen, not saying anything about him brushing Alice’s long hair, but the second her hair is no longer a mess, she stares at Alice until she gives up her spot and takes her place. Sen repeats the gesture for Xue as the rest of the group files in.

“What do we do?” Sen’s the one to ask.

Rather than Lynna being the one to take charge, it’s Jennifer that speaks up. “Fight back. Alliance is the one leading them.” Jennifer’s tone is soaked in obvious bloodlust.

Sen isn’t sure what to say. He’s been soaked in blood, but he doesn’t want any of the others to know what it’s like. On the other hand, he’s not willing to get in between Jennifer and her vengeance. It’s something you need to do yourself, even if you only feel empty when it’s completed.

Lynna looks at her in worry. “But are we up for fighting other humans? I know Sen is, but I don’t know about the rest of us.”

“I shall be fine with it. My hands may not be as soaked in blood as Sen’s, but I’ve never shied away from what needs to be done,” Alice joins in.

Julie looks torn. “I can use my arrays, but I don’t think I could actually kill another person…”

Julie has already dipped her fingers into blood, but having her array kill someone, and killing them herself are two completely different things.

“I’m willing to fight,” Xue seems to be determined.

Lynna takes a deep breath. “It seems we’re going to find out what some real life PvP is like.” She doesn’t look nearly so confident as she sounds, and the group looks to each other.

“If we’re going to be fighting, let’s get some sleep first. We need to get as much rest as we can,” Sen shares his experience with the others, but he doubts any of them will get much rest for what remains of the night.

Sen heads to bed, and with his mind in battle preparation mode, he falls asleep nearly instantly, knowing that he’s going to be needing as much rest as he can get.