The rest of the day is spent practicing their body enhancement skills in the automated vehicle, along with breaks to complain to each other about why they developers couldn’t have just let us unlock fast travel to other cities by paying a fee. By the time they are all ready for bed, they’ve traveled to most of the cities with a B ranked dungeon nearby, though the group doesn’t know yet if they’re going to be occupied by another guild.

The group all goes to bed, and Sen can’t remember his dreams, but wakes in a melancholy mood regardless. As he eats his breakfast along with Lynna, Lynna finally decides to question him about the skill he had used before.

“So what is up with that skill you used in the dungeon the other day? Is it a new one you didn’t tell us about?”

Sen shakes his head. “It’s actually from combining my two normal sword skills with a different mental image.”

“So you can combine skills?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure how it works. Maybe they need to be certain skills to combine them? Regardless, it’s powerful.”

Lynna nods, and Sen knows she’s going to spend quite some time trying to combine her different skills into a new one. Curious, and knowing the rest of the group won’t be up quite yet, he hops on the wiki to search for combined skills.

They are confirmed to exist, as people have been trying since day one, though most of the found combinations are all lower ranked ones. Interestingly, he doesn’t see anything about using a different image to combine different skills. Usually, the image is just a mixed version of the two skills, for example, a flaming mountain, or an exploding blade of ice rather than being completely different like the one Sen has found.

As he finishes up his research, he logs back into game, and messages everyone in the group, only to find that his research had made him the last one in the game. He quickly meets up with the rest of the group, and they all buy some earplugs before going to run the B ranked wind bear dungeon.

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Once they’re done, the run going much easier with them not being disoriented by the boss’ roars, they fast travel to one of the cities that is neighbored by a different B rank dungeon. They rent one of the off road vehicles, which is a good deal more expensive when not being rented from a school, and head over to the general area.

As they approach the dungeon, they run into a group that Sen is both excited and annoyed to see. It seems King is the group that has taken over this dungeon. They easily dispatch the small ten man patrol after the patrol attacks them in a fit of stupidity, and then back off. They don’t want the main group to go hunting after them if the patrol has a way to contact the main group from out of game.

They discuss what to do for a while. They can try taking out a bunch of patrols, but that will only end with larger groups sent after them. They can try and set up an array, but the patrols will likely find the keystones. Their only viable option they come up with, as apparently King is attacking anyone that comes close to the dungeon, is to contact another guild.

Before that though, they’ll need to scout out the area to get the approximate numbers making up the guard group. They all put on the misdirection amulets that Julie had made for them, and slowly start to skulk around, dodging the patrols where they can and eliminating a couple who spot them even with the amulets.

When they arrive at the dungeon, they all let out a groan. The surroundings are completely filled with at least a few hundred people, and while only a small number of them are likely to be C class or above, the numbers will still be able to wear down any elite group that tries to challenge them.

The group backs off, and Sen logs off to contact Ares. What he gets is a response in the negative. The Ares guild has its hands full with just trying to control their own dungeon, and while they have some spare players they could send to help, they don’t have nearly enough to control both of the dungeons.

Sen asks them about which dungeon they’re controlling, and they give him the location, which Sen appreciates. Sen thanks them, and logs back in. He gives the response to the group, and they all groan. Eventually, they decide that they’ll need to give a few different smaller guilds the location of the dungeon King is controlling in an attempt to dislodge them, as the smaller guilds tend to not have information about where the dungeons are.

If they can get a few of the smaller guilds into an alliance, then adding on the people Ares guild can spare, they can probably take control of the dungeon back. Sen is excited, he’s been in some medium sized conflicts in Fifth Dimension so far, but this will hopefully be his first large scale fight.

For now though, they get the car back to the road and send it on its way before fast traveling to the city that the dungeon Ares is controlling is next to. Once they arrive, they’re forced to rent yet another vehicle to drive out there, Lynna grumbling about all the cores wasted, even if they’re only using a D ranked vehicle.

Once they arrive, the group greets the people they are familiar with, though for some reason Xue is pretending to not know anyone, something Sen wouldn’t have thought about before he knew her username from Last World Online. Sen makes a decision to ask her about it later, and they head into the dungeon, this time planning to be a lot more careful about the dungeon dive.