He finally arrives at the city, greeted by a massive wall surrounding what seems to be a city as condensed as it can be, every building towering above him. Massive railguns are spaced along the walls looming over him, ready for a target. After a moment of admiration, he heads to the gate, and is asked to hand over ten percent of his crystals. After walking through a scanner he complies, and there’s no other questions asked, getting in without an issue.
He then starts to wonder what the hell he should do to find his group. With his tablet locked, there’s no easy way to do so. He sighs, the best he can do is go to an information broker. It takes him a bunch of asking around, but eventually he finds one. Before entering however, he stops by a much less gaudy crystal broker than the one in the UFoH city. He gets a small electronic card in payment, as his tablet is locked.
He then heads over to the information broker. He walks in, and is greeted by a professional looking woman sitting behind a desk. When she looks up, her face twists in disgust, which makes Sen realize that he should probably have bought new clothes and gotten a shower before coming here. Regardless, he approaches the woman who has quickly put on a business smile.
“I’d like to get information on a group.”
The woman nods, before looking at him expectantly. Sen hands over the card he’d gotten from the crystal store. He winces as he sees how many credits are deducted, but figures that he doesn’t have too much of a use for them anyway. He’s brought to a room with a man in it, a screen floating in front of him. Sen ogles that for a bit, he’s heard that holograms are possible, but they tend to be less useful than normal screens, not having tactile feedback when you try to use them.
The man looks up to Sen.
“What do you want to know?”
“I’m looking for a group.”
“Names?”
“Lynna Li, Xue Meng, Julie Kelly, Jennifer Kind, Alice Corbin.”
The man looks at him for a moment. “And what do you need to know?”
“I just need some way to contact them.”
The man looks at him again, and pulls up something on the screen. The hologram seems to be intentionally blurred from his side, so he can’t see what’s on it, but the man looks from the screen to Sen a few times.
“Please wait here.” The rest of his words are muttered, but Sen is quite sure he hears the word copycat there.
Sen tilts his head, but nods.
Sen ends up waiting for a good few minutes, until the man comes back.
“I’m assuming you’re yet another Sen Li looking to try and take the bounty.”
Sen looks at him. It doesn’t surprise him that they’ve put out an information bounty on him, but it being large enough to produce copycats is surprising. From what it sounds like plenty of people have tried to fake information about him, or even pretend to be him.
“So what makes you think I’m another fake?”
The man looks to Sen. “I will say, you are the least groomed of any of the imposters, but I think someone who associates with Miss Corbin would have the common courtesy to be better kept. “
Sen’s annoyed at that. Is it so hard to believe that he’d put meeting those important to him above his hygiene?
“If you are Sen Li, then their bounty will have paid off. If not, you’ll likely be sued like the others.”
“Well I was lost in some tunnels with no connection on my tablet. When I got out it was locked.” Sen shows the man the locked tablet, which makes him raise one of his eyebrows.
“Ah, rock worm tunnels. They do tend to block any signal. At least you have a good story behind you. And if you were there, you’re quite lucky to not have run into any rock worms.”
Sen nods, and is interrupted by the door opening. Alice walks in, and looks to him with a bit of a flat look on her face.
“I suppose you’re another imposter,” she says in a language that has long been lost in time.
“Has it really been that bad?” Sen replies in the same language, a worried look on his face.
Alice stares at him for a moment before her eyes widen, and she very nervously pulls out a small tablet, handing it over to him and indicating him to press his thumb onto it. He does so, feeling a small pinprick on his thumb, and she looks at the results. She’s soon jumping at him, squeezing him with more strength than he could possibly put out. He just holds her for a while while she cries, trying not to suffocate. Eventually, her sobs die down, and once he catches his breath Sen asks something he’d been wondering about.
“Where are the others?”
Alice gets an awkward expression on her face. “Everyone stopped coming after the first five or so fakes. Each time they’d come, they’d end up a bit more heartbroken, and they just couldn’t handle it. The only one who continued to come here with me is Xue, but she’s shut herself in her room for the past few days after they started talks of holding a funeral.”
“Have there been a lot of copycats?” Sen puts off the funeral comment for later.
Alice looks to him, exhausted. “I’m the daughter of the owners of the hunter association on Epsus. Plenty of people would love to inherit that. Some of them even had very good illusion arrays used to imitate you. Additionally, there were the people chasing the reward, pretending to have seen you or your body.”
Sen looks down. His disappearance has been nothing but trouble. Even so, he would repeat his actions in a heartbeat if it meant keeping his friends, his family, his girlfriend, and his lady safe.
“So what do we do now?”
“We head back to my apartment and crash their talks.” Alice lets out a bit of a grin.
Sen smiles a bit at the morbid humour, but is more sad than amused. He follows Alice into her vehicle, noting the bodyguards that are following her around. Sen hesitates a moment about getting the pristine white seats dirty, but gets in after a glare from Alice.
It isn’t until the car lifts off that Sen realizes it’s a gravity vehicle. They’re headed to the center of the city, the tallest building slowly growing larger before him. Along the way, they continue to chat in the language of their past lives. Sen tells her about what he’s been doing, about his stay in the tunnels, and the much shorter trip back to the city.
By the time they set down on what seems to be the tallest building in the city, he’s gone over everything that has happened to him. They soon exit the vehicle, and the driver of the vehicle exits, before approaching the door on the roof. She scans a bracelet over a small pad by the side of the door, and it slides open.
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The bodyguard scans the inside before nodding at Alice and heading down, another guard following behind them. Eventually, they reach the top floor from the roof, and Alice goes to one of the doors in the hallway, scanning her own bracelet. It clicks, and she opens the door. The bodyguards watch them as they enter, but don’t follow them inside.
When the door opens, Sen is greeted by a terribly expensive looking area. Everything is pristine, decorations spread throughout the room, and even the couch looks regal somehow. The decorations aren’t opulent enough to be overbearing, simply tasteful, and there’s a massive painting on one of the walls of a view of the moon over a small hill with a simple log cabin on it, a small river flowing throughout the bottom of it.
Sen admires the view for a second before realizing something.
“Isn’t this terribly expensive?”
“Of course. My parents are quite kind to me,” Alice answers.
Sen stares at her. She’d mentioned her parents are A rank hunters and that they’ve retired and own a few businesses, but from what he can see, Alice has the entire top floor to herself. Sen doesn’t want to imagine how much this costs, especially considering this is the tallest building in the entire city.
“So where is everyone?”
“I shall get them. They likely won’t believe it if I just drag you out.”
He walks to the window that takes up an entire wall, and admires the view over the city, the sun just starting to fall behind the buildings, sending rays of light across the view. Alice leaves him, heading down the hallway before knocking on a door and entering the room. He simply stands there, unsure what he should do, when Xue comes rushing out of that room. She almost sprints to him, but pauses when she gets close.
“What was my username in Last World Online?” Apparently she’s used to the imposters as well.
“It’s been a while Flowery.” Sen still isn’t sure how she’d gone from fitting that name perfectly to the cold state she’d been in when he met her again.
She looks at him for a moment, before her eyes water up, and she runs to him, nearly tackling him to the ground. Sen holds her, running his hand down her long hair in comfort.
“I’m sorry.”
Xue simply continues crying for a while as everyone else starts to file in, looking on in shock. Lynna is the only one who seems a bit suspicious, and she decides to question him.
“What did you use to call me when you were a kid?”
Sen looks away a bit, before saying something that sounds similar to sister in the common language, but is clearly different. He tries to hide his face even more when he sees Alice stifling a giggle. It’s a word from his past life meaning simply ‘lazy’.
His sister copies Xue’s look, runs up, and hugs him from the side before pulling back, leaving him for Xue for now. She catches Alice’s expression, and gives him a look. She’s quickly distracted though, more interested in him being back than an old nickname.
“So what happened?”
“I fell into some tunnels while delaying Alliance. The information broker mentioned something about rock worm tunnels? I was able to get Alliance’s leader at least.” Sen feels a bit of satisfaction at that.
“He was B rank!” Lynna exclaims.
“He was negligent. I never showed my full speed and he assumed I was weaker than I was. He was also using a two handed sword, and I know better than anyone how to fight that.” It may be arrogant of Sen, but he’s yet to find someone that can prove him wrong.
Xue is hanging on his words, and Alice has an expression on her face that seems to say “Of course Sen can kill a B rank”.
Lynna laughs, still wiping a few tears of relief. “So how did you get stuck in rock worm tunnels?”
“What exactly are rock worm tunnels? I couldn’t get a connection on my tablet, and I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t use radio waves.”
Julie is the one to explain. “They’re tunnels made by rock worms. The energy infused in them prevents any other sort of energy from escaping, similar to a faraday cage. It’s one of the only ways to prevent tracking through arrays. We’d thought you dead when we couldn’t get any response from the blood searching array.”
Sen lowers his head. Of course his luck is that bad. Though, if the tunnels hadn’t been there, he’d be dead instead, so his luck can’t be that bad. After a bit, he gets around to answering Lynna’s original question. “The last attack from the Alliance leader collapsed the ground under the canyon, and I fell in.”
Lynna nods, and gives him a look that Sen is sure means she’ll be interrogating him for more information later. Now that his sister has pulled away, his mother takes her place, calling him “my baby” more than he’s comfortable with, at least in a group setting. Looking to his father, he’s not rushing to hug him, but the happiness is clearly showing in his eyes.
“I’m so glad you’re back.”
“It’s good to be back.”
Jiu stands beside him for a while, until Xue finally calms down and steps back. As she does, Sen can see dark circles under her eyes, messy hair that hasn’t been cleaned recently, and she seems to have lost a bit of weight. He looks at her condition in sadness until his mother takes charge.
“Now you need to shower, shave, and get some new clothing.” Jiu instantly changes into her motherly mode. She practically shoves Sen into the bathroom, and Sen takes off his clothes which are absolutely filthy. They seem to be rags held together by blood and dirt rather than actual whole pieces of cloth. Sen is honestly surprised the woman at the information shop was willing to deal with him.
Now that he gets a good look at himself in the mirror, he winces. His black hair is practically caked together by blood, his face is coated in dirt and a few spots of blood he’s missed in his short cleaning sessions, and he’s grown a bit of a beard, which just does not look good on him.
There’s a knock on the door, and he’s asked to crack open the door, and a razor and clothes are passed to him. He gives a short thanks, and then hops in the shower. The shower itself is fantastic. It has multiple shower heads which completely coat him in water, and it feels almost like it’s a massage with the high pressure. He simply sighs and relaxes for a while before taking some soap and scrubbing himself until the water stops coming out looking a reddish brown, which takes a worrying amount of time.
Once his body is clean, he switches to his hair, which takes far longer. He thankfully has pretty short hair, even with the near two months he spent away from society, but he has to work for a good thirty minutes until he’s satisfied that there’s no more congealed blood in it.
He finally grabs the razor, and goes to the sink to shave. Once he’s done, he’s feeling much better about himself, and he throws his old clothes in the trash before putting on the clothes that are just a bit mis-sized, likely his father’s.
He exits the bathroom, and both Xue and Alice are practically clinging on him, seemingly worried he’ll disappear again. He has a sad expression on his face as everyone goes to eat Him being gone was not good to them. The meal has a salad as appetizer, then what seem to be very expensive steaks, followed by a delectable blueberry cheesecake.
The meal is served with a red wine, which Sen happily indulges in. Apparently, his alcohol tolerance from his last life doesn’t carry over to this one however, and he’s quite tipsy after just three glasses.
Everyone watches a show, with more alcohol to celebrate Sen’s return while the parents retire early, leaving the group to their own devices. The next morning, Sen wakes with a light headache, and quite a few missing memories. He can recall flashes of Xue and Alice hanging on him, then everything goes blank. Looking to his sides, he sees both Xue and Alice, and panics for a bit until he realizes he still has his shorts on, there’s no mysterious stains on the bed, and the air smells only of the girl’s shampoo.
Letting out a breath, he sees Xue start to rouse, apparently woken by his panicking. He looks to her as the sheets slide down, admiring her curves showing through the thin nightgown she’s wearing. Sen stares for longer than he should before he looks away, only to see a similar view on his other side. He does his best to stay calm. He’d been ordered by his lady to help her dress on a regular basis in his past life, so this isn’t that bad.
He carefully keeps his eyes at a proper height as he gives both of them a good morning, Alice not caring whatsoever that she’s barely dressed, while Xue seems to have not noticed yet. Alice heads into the closet, and comes out with clothes, handing them to Sen before standing in front of a mirror, obviously expecting him to help dress her.
Sen obliges, brainwashed from his previous life, and Xue simply stares at them in confusion for a bit.
“What are you doing?” Xue’s expression has turned into the icy cold one she’d worn when she first joined the group.
Sen looks to her before realizing how odd this would seem in his current life. He doesn’t quite realize that it was just as odd in his previous life to do something the maids are usually forced to do.
“I’ll just leave,” Sen says, keeping his eyes on the door as he goes out, but turns back at a high pitched noise from Xue. He looks back to see her hiding behind the sheets and glaring at him, and he speeds up his walk out of the room, not wanting to cause more damage than he already has.
He hides in the kitchen for a while, searching for some food, and makes himself an omelette while not sure what he’s going to say when the girls get out of bed. Eventually, the two girls come into the kitchen, Xue having a mixed expression, blushing with a cold look on her face, and Alice simply seeming to think everything is normal. Sen makes each of them an omelette as penance.
Thankfully, neither of them mention anything, and Sen is starting to realize that they probably were just terrified he would disappear again, wanting to stay by him so he can’t.
“So how far ahead of me are you at this point? I hunted a decent amount of monsters while I was in the tunnels, but not nearly so many as I could’ve with you.”
Xue and Alice look to each other. “We haven’t actually gained many stats. We’ve mostly been getting our families settled on Epsus.” Xue seems to be leaving some information out, but Sen isn’t going to pry.
Julie and Jennifer soon come out, roused by the smell of omelettes, and Sen makes one for each of them as well. As Lynna exits her room, Sen can see the evil smile she has on her face, and hands over the omelette he’d prepared in advance, smothered in extra cheese to distract her.
“Sen, give me your tablet,” Alice says after she’s finished her meal.
Sen grabs it from his backpack. He’d kept it even if it was pretty much useless to him now. Alice plugs something into one of the ports on it, and it boots up no problem. She fiddles with it for a bit, gets Sen to press his thumb on it, then nonchalantly tosses it in the trash.
She then hands over a bracelet similar to the one all the girls are wearing.
“So what’s this?”
“The newest model. We’ve finally gotten holograms to the point where we can properly miniaturize them, and not needing a screen saves a lot of space and makes it less fragile.” Julie seems more excited about the new technology than anyone else.
Sen is prompted to press his thumb on it, and gets another sharp pinprick for his trouble. Once it lights up, he presses a few buttons on it until the hologram pops up, and it seems no different than a real screen. Looking around the other side, it’s pure white on the back, so people can’t see what you’re looking at without being behind you.
Sen goes to poke at the screen, and notices that it actually depresses a little rather than his finger going through it like he’d expect.
“It doesn’t have all the functions that our old tablets did, but it’s much more convenient,” Julie continues.
Sen nods. Not needing to lug around the tablet will save space in their backpacks. Though he questions the claim that it’s less fragile than the tablet, that thing had been built like a brick, somehow surviving even the fall into the tunnels.
“So what’s the plan?” Sen asks after having his fill of playing with the hologram that seems to deform around his finger.
“Today? Shopping, you need clothes. After that, we can finally go properly hunting again.” Lynna seems to have a feral expression on her face, though Sen isn’t sure if it’s for the shopping, the hunting, or the teasing she’s going to putting Sen through soon.