As he reaches Xue’s side, Sen goes to hold her hand, and worries when she flinches a bit before tightly grasping his hand. The girls are all a bit shook up, though the rest of them are mainly just trying to support Lynna. Sen keeps his hand in Xue’s trying to provide a little comfort as he goes to check on Lynna.

“Lynna, are you going to be ok?” He’d offer to leave if he didn’t think they would get in massive trouble with the military. “You want to stay back with Julie?”

Lynna shakes her head. “Well, no. I… I need to do this. Alice has told us what’s going to happen to Alpha. So If we… If I want to help, I need to be able to do this.”

She seems to be slowly collecting herself, and Sen feels a bit of pain in his heart. He wishes he can simply protect his sister, keep her from ever dealing with something like this, but he knows with her personality it is impossible to keep her from doing so. He can never stand in front of her, she’ll simply shove her way to standing beside him.

He gives her a short hug, letting go of Xue’s hand for a second, before she grabs it back the second it’s available again. He gives Xue a reassuring squeeze of the hand as she does so. She may be the one taking it the best on the surface, but she’s still not comfortable with it.

Jennifer is having the easiest time killing, but that will only last so long as her anger does. Sen is sure that once she finishes her revenge, she will realize what she’s done. At that point, he simply hopes she doesn’t shatter into pieces. Sen can only hope the group being there for her will be enough.

Jennifer herself is looking at the fight, rage still etched into her features, clearly wanting to get back into it. The group rests for another half hour, Sen sitting there with Xue leaning on him. Alice flanks his other side, but doesn’t lean on him for support.

Once they’ve all recovered their energy reserves, they join back in on the fight. At this point, most of the D rank fighters have dropped out, so it becomes much more challenging. The group sticks together, covering each other, everyone giving special care to Lynna, though she seems to be much more stable at this point, having figured out in her head what she needs to do.

Sen parries his opponent’s blow before removing his opponent’s hand at the wrist and pulling his sword at the last moment before plunging his sword into her heart. She quickly surrenders, and is sent with one of the bodyguards to be a prisoner of war. She’s completely in shock, looking at her removed hand. Sen doesn’t bother spending the time feeling pity. It can be reattached or regrown.

At this point, both sides are thinned down, mostly from people retreating from wounds or lack of energy rather than dead, but plenty of dead litter the field regardless. Everyone in Sen’s group no longer has an opponent, and they look around to see which group they will be fighting next, when a massive man wielding a two handed battle axe decides that he’s going to try and make the group his prey.

The man rushes towards them, and everyone is put on guard, realizing the man is B class from his speed. Lynna instinctively takes the front, used to acting as the main tank as images of Julie flank the man. The images go to cut into him, but only leave light scratches that the man simply ignores. Sen is annoyed. Those images have more force behind them than bullets, while being ridiculously sharp, and the man has simply ignores them? B class body enhancement skills are bullshit.

Lynna doesn’t go to directly block the heavy blow the man gives, his battle axe tearing through the air with ridiculous speed for its size. Her deflection knocks the battle axe off course, but also sends her rolling. Alice steps in at this point with a sharp thrust of a flame empowered sword, but the man simply ignores it, slashing towards her, and Alice is forced to step back, not willing to take a strike when she’s unsure a single blow can even grievously harm him.

Jennifer is slashing at him from behind at this point, and the man lets out a grunt as her Icicle Thrust stabs a few inches into his back, but simply uses the force of his swing to keep going, spinning with his weapon to force her to back off. Sen sees with a ton of worry that Jennifer doesn’t want to back off, and gets there just in time to interpose his sword between the man’s arms and Jennifer, forcing him to curtail his swing so that he doesn’t lose his hands.

The man gives Sen a glare, stepping back a bit to put Sen within his weapon’s range, but a flame empowered slash from Alice staggers him as the flame explodes on the man’s back. He snarls and turns to her with a close in chop of his axe, but Sen and Jennifer don’t give him any time to focus, Sen using cutting squall towards the man’s achilles tendon, and Jennifer using the skill that makes an image like a whip of water appear over her sword and slashes towards his neck. One of Alice’s bodyguards makes sure to get in between the swing and Alice, Sen noting that Alice seems a bit exasperated.

Sen’s sword cleaves through his tendon as the whip of water wraps around his neck, and as the man falls, losing support of one of his feet. The group stays out of range of his wild swinging, coming in for short attacks before backing off as Alice’s group of bodyguards make sure no one comes in to attack them from the back. Not that Sen wouldn’t notice, his sense for the air currently in overdrive.

Julie’s images are with the bodyguards, dogpiling onto anyone who tries to get close to help the downed man, and eventually Alice gets the final blow with a thrust through his eye, and the group lets out a collective sigh before looking to the battlefield. Sen doesn’t bother mourning the man’s loss. He clearly wasn’t from Alpha from his rank, and he’d been looking to them as easy prey rather than trying to find other B ranks to fight with.

The group notices a B rank Allied Worlds’ hunter losing against a B ranked hunter from the UFoH, and quickly go to aid him. This fight is much easier, the group simply taking off the pressure from their current ally until he manages to finish his opponent. There’s no point in taking B ranks as prisoners. All of the B ranks are fighting, and with none guarding the prisoners, they could easily escape.

As the group looks around the battlefield, they note that almost all of the UFoH hunters have either retreated or fallen. The rest of the hunters from the Allied Worlds have started to charge at the resting enemy hunters, who quickly break and run.

As the enemy hunters run, the Hunters from the Allied Worlds turn to assisting their soldiers, who seem to still be evenly matched. The group rushes forwards, excited by their recent win, but are greeted by a shield wall.

Sen frowns, Even if all of the members in the shield wall are D class, which he’s sure they’re not, only the twenty or so B class hunters will have enough stat points to break through it. He watches as just that happens, a few B class fighters simply smashing their way through the shield wall as if it’s made of ragdolls, not people.

The rest of the hunters try to pile through the gaps, but there’s simply not enough room in the small gaps for all the hunters, so Sen decides he’ll make his own gap. Focusing, he starts to do something he’d done quite a few times in game, and starts to compress the air into as small of a ball as he can.

He finds it easier than in game, his new sense for the air from having lived without light for over a month aiding him, and within a minute he has it ready, as compressed as he can make it. He sends it flying over the shield wall, and bursts it while reducing the shockwave that heads towards his group.

The people in the shield wall start to stumble, only staying up with the support of others nearby, and Sen rushes forwards, slamming his sword into the head of a disoriented soldier. It splits with much the same sensation of cutting a melon, and the rest of the group piles into the stumbling soldiers, finishing them off.

Some of the other hunters, seeing the disoriented soldiers, join in with them, piling after Sen’s group and Alice’s bodyguards. Alice seems to be getting more and more frustrated with her guards. They come forward to match every blow coming towards her, and Alice starts to charge deeper into the lines. Sen instantly follows her, knowing perfectly well that she has a bad habit of going too far and ending up in trouble.

Just that happens as she ends up surrounded, none of the group next to her save Sen, and he presses his back up against hers as they face enemies all around them.

“This seems familiar.” Sen comments, though he doubts she can hear him with the din surrounding them. The soldiers go in to strike at them, and Sen expects to sacrifice his shoulder to one of the weaker blows, while sweeping away two more blades.

The person is apparently not only D class, but also only has a D class weapon, as his blade cuts in not even a centimeter rather than the inch deep slice Sen had expected. Mentally thanking his fancy new clothing, Sen slams his sword into a wide sweep empowered by Weight of the Mountain in order to create some distance. One of the enemies makes the rather foolish move of going to block the blow, and is knocked into his allies as Sen’s sword cuts through his shield and into his arm, the shield barely absorbing enough force that he doesn’t lose his hand.

Sen continues to use rather wide sweeps to keep them back, none of the enemies fast enough to go in for a hit in between his sweeps. That changes when a rather small girl steps forwards, signaling for the others to stand down. She raises her sword, and Sen focuses, if she thinks she can handle him, she’s definitely going to be trouble.

She leads in with a terribly fast slice, empowered by some skill, and Sen is forced to use Cutting Squall to be able to move his sword fast enough to knock her sword off target. She repeats the strike, but this time Sen doesn’t need to use a skill, having his sword in a better position to block the speedy blow.

He continues to block, and plans on simply holding off until the rest of the group manages to catch up. That plan is ruined when he hears a short shout of pain from Alice, and he panics a bit. He instantly goes on the offensive, leading in with a cutting squall from the side. The woman, surprised by the sudden offensive, barely blocks it with her shield, and Sen takes advantage of the fact that she’s had to raise her shield above her eyes to cut down with a Bloody Peak, the sheer speed of the blow clearly outside of what she had expected from Sen.

The blow removes her foot, and Sen spins around, rushing to the side of Alice. Her opponent has raised his sword, and Alice’s shield is hanging, her arm heavily wounded as Sen slashes out with a Cutting Squall. The man, not having expected any help to come to her, shows fear in his eyes as his throat is sliced through.

Sen wonders what the hell he’s going to do now, and starts to use his sense for the air to avoid attacks from his back as he blocks anything coming from his front. He’s forced to take quite a few blows, intentionally going out of his way to prevent his lady from getting any more injured. He’s certain he would be dead if it wasn’t for the new jacket he’d gotten, which blunts the worst of even C ranked strikes, blows that should be cutting deep into his ribs only leaving scratches on them. Luckily, no more skilled C ranks, and even more thankfully, no B ranks join the fight against him, so he’s able to survive long enough for the rest of the group to finally catch up. The bodyguards circle protectively around Alice, and surprisingly, Sen as well.

The group quickly cuts its way out of the formation of soldiers just as some sort of light show explodes overhead, and the group gets out to see that the UFoH soldiers are retreating. Cheers sound out from the soldiers from the Allied Worlds, and they continue to force themselves forwards along with the retreating UFoH forces, which are losing some of their cohesion as they fall back.

Eventually, the UFoH lines fall apart entirely, every man running for their own self, while others simply surrender, feeling safer being a prisoner of war. The soldiers surround the captured enemies as they head back to their campsite. Once they arrive, everyone heads to their own tents. Xue follows Sen to his tent, and the first words out of her make Sen blink.

“Strip.”

Sen simply stares at her for a while until he realizes she just wants to check over his wounds. He carefully removes his clothing, doing his best to not bother his many wounds. As he gets his clothing off, leaving him in nothing but his undewear, Xue simply stares at him with a forlorn expression.

Looking down at himself, he’s a complete mess. He has multiple cuts that stretch along his ribs, he can feel two very long ones across his entire back, and his arms are littered with mostly small cuts and a few deeper ones. Even his legs aren’t spared, Sen having been limping the entire way back to the campsite. He’s quite sure one of his shin bones is cracked, but he isn’t going to complain. He’s had worse in his past life.

“You’re coming with me to the medical tent.” Xue starts dragging him out, Sen forcibly stopping her.

“Nothing is fatal or will cause permanent damage, I can wait until we get back to the city. Others will need it more.”

Xue looks at him with that same forlorn expression before leaving the tent. Sen lays down on his bed, but Alice comes in the second Xue is gone. When she comes in, she winces at the state Sen’s body is in. Her wince soon changes to the same forlorn expression that Xue had worn.

“I’m sorry.” She bows her head, and Sen’s eyes widen. His lady had never apologized in her past life, and he’d ended up in worse states protecting her back then. She approaches him, and Sen is still in shock as she presses her lips to Sen’s.

“And thank you.” She quickly leaves the small tent, and Sen looks over to see Xue glaring, but not trying to stop Alice, which surprises Sen. She approaches, and Sen notes she has a bottle of healing salve and quite a few rolls of bandages in her arms.

She tenderly helps Sen sit up, and then starts carefully applying the healing salve to all of his wounds. Each time she finishes, she’ll wrap the cut in bandages, moving slowly and deliberately, and she winces every time Sen twitches from the pain. Eventually, she finishes with all of his wounds, and she looks to him with an unsure expression.

Sen isn’t sure what to say to reassure her, but leans in for a kiss, hoping the action will help get his feelings across. Xue accepts, lowering her face to meet Sen’s. For once she’s the taller one as she’s on her knees while Sen is sitting. She bites down on Sen’s lower lip a little, as if to claim him, pulling back and smiling at Sen before forcing him to drink a surprisingly tasty potion that apparently helps to mend bones.

Sen still has no clue how alchemy works, but all of his wounds are itching like crazy, and he’s unable to get any sleep. Eventually, he gets frustrated, and leaves his tent.