When Sen wakes the next morning, he wonders why there’s a weight on him for a moment before realizing Xue had decided to sleep over to have some comfort. He ends up laying there for a good few minutes, but Xue must have noticed something, because she soon wakes up.

As she stretches out on top of Sen, she stops for a second, looks to Sen, then sprints out of the room, nearly tripping at the door. Sen blinks a few times, then gets himself out of bed. Lynna must have been woken up by Xue coming back, because she is soon out to get some oatmeal for breakfast.

She gives a halfhearted smirk at Sen, her usual teasing attitude curtailed by what had happened yesterday. The rest of the group slowly leaves their rooms as well, Xue being the last one out, even though she was the first awake. She blushes as she looks to Sen, but it fades quickly into a lost expression, matching the rest of the group.

Sen finishes his meal, and realizes he needs to say something about what had happened.

“We didn’t have much of a choice. If they were just going to take the crystals, then I could accept it if you wanted to give them up, but I wasn’t going to leave any of you behind to them.”

“The last one though, he didn’t even resist!” Jennifer seems to have been the one to take it the worst.

“You heard what he said. I’m not sure what Alliance is, but I’m not willing to risk us being attacked by them by letting someone go. You need to pull out the roots when removing weeds.”

“They’re people though! Not weeds!” Jennifer is getting a bit frantic at this point.

“They were scumbags who wanted to rape you.”

Jennifer quiets down at this point, and Lynna moves next to her, rubbing her back in comfort.

“Sen’s right. It may not have been moral, at all, but it was something that needed to be done. We didn’t have any way to stop them in a non lethal manner, so Sen did what he had to do. I did what I had to do.” The last part comes out in a whisper, Julie doing her best to convince herself that she’s speaking the truth.

Sen looks to her, she’s the only one of the group who’d actually killed one of them aside from him. He’d tried to make sure Lynna wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of a human life on her hands, at least not yet.

“I hate to say it, but we may have to deal with situations like this again. I don’t think they’re the only group to do something like this,” Sen adds.

“Scumbags are everywhere,” Xue adds in a scathing manner, making Sen wonder what she’s thinking of.

The rest of the group goes silent, likely worrying that Sen’s comment is the truth. The rest of the day is spent mostly in silence, the girls talking to each other. Sen would have felt a bit ostracized if it isn’t for Xue making sure to talk to him.

Jennifer seems to be scared of him at this point, but she seems to get a bit better after having spoken with Lynna and Julie. The day passes with them not doing anything, and Sen ends up doing some research on Alliance.

It’s basically a guild, though they’re called clans rather than guilds like they are in game. Alliance itself is a gathering place for rich and powerful people to make connections rather than a proper clan, the highest rank person in it only having B rank stats. You need to have some sort of connection to get into it, which means that the person Sen has killed is not necessarily a big shot, but is definitely not someone unimportant. They also have a sub clan for their lackeys as well, which, while technically part of Alliance, is looked down upon by the main clan. He worries for a bit that he’s going to have some issues that come from what happened, but there’s nothing he can do about it now.

Not killing him would have been an even worse option. He’d almost certainly try for revenge. At least this way Alliance may not be able to find out who had killed him. Sen soon finds their chat server, and it’s filled with arrogance. Everyone on it is from a rich family, and have been given crystals the second they are old enough to go to the fifth dimension. Seemingly none of them had bothered to use the Fifth Dimension training capsule, simply using crystals to boost their stats up to rank D or E instead of being built up by the capsule before coming to the fifth dimension.

That at least explains why they had all seemed to be so utterly clumsy with their weapons, and Sen wonders what kind of stupidity it takes to not bother training for a place that can very well kill you. Once he’s determined that there’s no discussion about the people he’s killed, at least on their public chatting areas, he lets out a bit of the tension he’d been holding on to, and goes to practice his body enhancement skills.

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The next few days pass with them staying in their apartment, but Jennifer finally seems to have calmed down around Sen. Lynna eventually gets around to teasing Sen for having had Xue sleep in his room the one time, which leads to Xue avoiding Sen’s gaze for a bit.

It’s another week before the group is ready to go hunting again, and they finally leave their apartment. Heading out, they head to a forest that holds some E ranked monsters. The monsters themselves look like giant lizards, with two rows of bone plates sticking from their back.

They’re faster than the group, but slower than their weapons, and Sen has no trouble beheading them whenever they come in to bite at him. As they hunt however, Sen is constantly having to cover for Lynna and Jennifer, as both of them flinch whenever they stab into the monsters, leading them to nearly getting wounded here and there.

Sen holds in a sigh. It seems that it’s going to be quite some time until they get used to hunting again. Thankfully, they don’t run into any more bandits, as that is what they truly are, during the period that they’re out hunting. The days start to pass, and the group gets more and more comfortable with hunting again, though Jennifer seems to shy away from blood a bit more than she used to.

Their stats slowly go up over the following month, and they start to reach the edge of Rank D. The difference compared to the game is impressive. While in game their speed would only go up so much, as their reactions and thoughts simply couldn’t keep up with faster speeds, in this reality, their reactions increase along with their speed, so they’re moving as fast as they had been in game at B rank, even though they’re not quite at D rank.

Sen is a bit regretful at the fact that their intelligence doesn’t seem to improve. He’s been hoping that he would get smarter from the crystals, but that is one of the few things that isn’t increased by imbibing crystals. He can think faster, but he’s still limited by how he thinks. Eventually, Sen works up the nerve to give Xue a goodnight kiss in response to the one she’d give him occasionally, even though it’s only on the cheek, which drives his sister up a wall.

Lynna ends up getting him alone at one point and berating him for not having even given her a kiss on the lips after literal months of dating, and Sen eventually caves, agreeing to do so in the near future.

The next time they go hunting, they’re finally going to be going for D rank. The monster they decide to hunt is actually one that they’d hunted quite a bit in game, and one that Sen protests greatly. It’s a very large, acid spitting spider, an evolution of the lower rank version. They call one of the automated vehicles, and are soon on the way to the forest they’ll be hunting in.

Along the way, Sen complains a bit more before giving up and simply sitting there with Xue. She pats his shoulder in support, which sort of feels demeaning, but he knows she means well. As they arrive, they hop out of the vehicle to see a massive forest. The trees are as large as they are in game, stretching to the height of skyscrapers, their trunks needing a dozen people with their arms spread to surround it for the smallest ones.

The leaves which occasionally fall to the forest floor are the size of palm fronds, though they’re all one big mass rather than the individual leaves that make up fronds. Their colors are dyed in yellows and reds, and the group simply stares and admires the massive, brightly colored forest for a while before heading into its depths.

It doesn’t take nearly as long as Sen would like for webbing to start appearing. The strands of webbing aren’t terribly thick like some of those he’d seen in game, but they’re still around half an inch in diameter, and they stretch up to the top of the canopy. He can occasionally see motion high up in the trees, and decides that he’s going to watch above more often than he watches ahead for now.

The first spider they run into is alone, simply waiting on an intricate web making a beautiful spiral pattern, and it’s easily dispatched, Lynna distracting it for a bit as Xue finishes it off. Sen winces at the cracking noises that sound out as they crack open its carapace for the crystal within it, and tries to hide as Lynna tries to convince him to be the first one to eat it. Eventually, like usual, he falls to his sister's cajoling, and takes a deep breath before putting it into his mouth.

They start running into groups of two and three as the webs become thicker, and they’re soon having to burn their way through. With how many spiders they’re running into though it’s still an efficient hunting spot. They’re doing well, when they start hearing the chittering sound the spiders make not from just one direction, but all around them.

They instantly circle up, and look into the shadows thrown by the trees, catching the occasional glimpse of spiders against the white backdrop of the webs. It isn’t long until a veritable flood of spiders is coming towards them, and Sen starts swinging his sword as quickly as he can. The first spider goes to bite at him, and he dodges relatively easily before chopping his sword about halfway into it.

The next one goes to spit acid at him, and he uses the little control over wind he has at this stage to shove it to the side, as if he simply dodges it will hit Lynna. A few drops still splatter on his skin, and he can hear the hissing noise, but doesn’t flinch from the pain. While the pain is far greater than in game, it’s nothing compared to his previous life.

He doesn’t charge forward at the spider, as he doesn’t want to break the formation they’ve formed, and grins as he sees an image of Julie going to smack the spider around a bit. While the energy blade it’s wielding can barely get through the shell of the spider, the image drives it towards Sen, and he easily finishes it off with a stab, clear ichor dripping from the hole in its shell.

A few more of the spiders spit their acid at Sen, but even his weak wind control is strong enough to blow it off course, away from the group. Once he notices that there aren’t too many spiders left, he breaks formation, charging at them.

He crushes each of them with a quick Weight of the Mountain, before turning to check that everyone is ok. While a couple of them have gotten a few drops of acid on their skin, the only real losses are the shields of the group, which have become ruined messes from all of the acid flying around. Sen checks over his sword, and is ecstatic to see that it’s still pristine, making him wonder how his father had gotten him such a good weapon.

The group then has the laborious task of breaking the carapace on each of the spiders, and extracting the crystals from the hearts of the monsters. By the time they’re done, everyone wants to take a break, so they have Julie set up an array, and simply sit down and relax for a while.

Once their short break is over, they follow the path they’ve burned through the webs back towards their vehicle. About halfway there however, everyone raises their weapons as they start to hear footsteps. Sen and his group want to go around, but they’ve only the one path, and so they simply circle up as the footsteps approach.

Jennifer starts to hyperventilate a little, but Lynna soon reaches her side, putting her hand on Jennifer’s shoulder in order to help settle her down. She’s comforting Jennifer even with a very worried look on her own face. Xue steels her face, locking in the cold mask she used to constantly wear, even around the group, while Julie sets up an array for security. Sen simply hopes that this group won’t be hostile. The girls aren’t going to be up to fighting other humans for quite some time.