When they arrive in the arena, they each grab their weapons, Sen unslinging his shoulder harness from his body, and drawing his greatsword from the ground, the rest simply unsheathing their weapon and leaving the sheath on their waists. With everyone prepared, they look to their opponents. It’s a group of six guys who look to be a bit younger than Sen, and when both sides ready up and the walls of light disappear, they start to heckle, seeing that there’s four girls on Sen’s side.

Sen doesn’t bother responding, he’ll let his actions speak for themselves, but Jennifer flips them off, and Xue’s face gets a bit more iciness on it. Kang on the other hand, is yelling something about “How dare you look down on the mighty DarkBlade!” The group sticks close enough to cover each other as they charge the enemy group, and are in disbelief as only one of their opponents manages to block a single blow. He can understand the opponent who Julie had hit with a fireball, but the rest of them?

Yes, none of them have a shield, but Sen had expected them to last more than one blow. The entire group is wondering why they even bothered to sign up. It’s not like there is a participation prize in this tournament.

Jennifer strikes her second blow on the only one who’d managed to block the first, and it’s plain to see that the first block wasn’t entirely luck, but Kang simply comes up from behind and stabs into him, looking proud that he’s been the only one to get two kills.

The rest of the group wipes off their blades, Kang and Sen being the odd ones out, as they’re still playing the censored version of the game. The group instantly presses the button to leave the arena, but Kang doesn’t show up for another minute, likely showboating for the crowd.

The wait for the next round takes quite some time, as there’s twenty minutes for each round, along with twenty minutes of break in between each fight. As they wait, they chat a bit, Kang bragging about his two kills, the rest of the group seemingly having made an agreement to ignore him.

Sen can see Xue’s look of exasperation showing through, and pats her on the shoulder a bit awkwardly, which gets him a grateful look after she jumps a bit in surprise. The group quiets down a bit as the timer for the next round counts down, and by the time it’s over, not even Kang is talking.

The group ready their weapons and formation before everyone presses the ready button, and as the walls of light go down, Sen recognizes the group as one of the second string Ares teams.

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“Let’s go all out, no trying for solo fights this round,” Lynna orders, clearly recognizing them the same way Sen has.

She gets nods in return, except for Kang, who looks disappointed that he won’t be able to show off by going off to fight on his own. They stay together, and rather than charging, stay in a defensive position around Julie as she sets up an array in their surroundings. The enemies obviously know what’s going on, as they charge in towards the group.

They’re stopped cold at the front line, Sen swinging his sword in a wide arc, enhanced with weight of the mountain, and the enemy who blocks is knocked into the person next to him. Sen continues to harry the two, but is forced to use smaller strikes after the first, as he can’t allow one to get in a strike as the other blocks his blade. He throws a couple knives in between, managing to hit one in the foot, but it isn’t a debilitating injury.

Sen is having trouble with the two skilled players, but whenever he starts having too much of an issue, Lynna will push back her opponent and go to cut at one of Sen’s. This balance doesn’t last very long, as soon a bunch of Julies are running around, and the enemies become terribly outnumbered. Sen uses the distraction to pierce one of his opponents, and then ends the other with Cutting Squall.

The rest of the opponents are either distracted by the Julie clones, or killed by the images when they try to completely ignore them. Once they’re all killed, the group all perform the usual sign of respect, a small bow with their weapon in front of them. Kang is the odd one out here, shouting his “name” for the crowd.

As the usual pattern of everyone leaving the arena except for Kang happens, they all look to each other. Second round in and they’d run into a team from Ares. While it wasn’t their main team, this was going to be a good deal more challenging than before.

As if to mock their seriousness, the next round goes extremely smoothly, the group deciding to hold back Julie’s arrays until they’d felt out their opponents, and then they simply split them up, making the fight into six one on ones, and everyone kills their opponent within twenty moves, Kang being the last this time.

He looks quite sullen at that, and exits the arena with everyone else, claiming that his condition was bad that round the second they get out. Jennifer mollifies him with a laughing expression in her eyes, and their conversation switches to the different dungeons, and more efficient ways to run them.

“You mean you’ve found C rank dungeons!?” Kang’s eyes are as wide as humanly possible at that revelation.

Julie nods in return, and he instantly goes from utterly arrogant to begging.

“Please take me with you! My group can’t even hunt C ranked monsters, they just all die and then I’m stuck trying to fight it on my own!” His eyes mirror those of a puppy who’s been told no.

The group all looks to Lynna, but this time, she looks to Sen in turn. While she usually leads the group, she tends to look to Sen for some decisions, and this apparently counted as one. Sen thinks for a moment, not letting the look in Kang’s eyes sway him, but eventually decides that they may as well let him try.

Kang jumps up as Sen nods, but looks a bit disappointed when Sen adds a “But you’re joining us as Kang, not DarkBlade.”