As Sen's view is replaced with the familiar city, he has Tir call him one of the automated vehicles and starts towards the Lotus school. The drive doesn't take long, and he hops out of the tall car with a spring in his step. He always likes working with his sister in games, and the two have eventually gained a tacit understanding of each others playstyle. Though their double DPS combination often causes some trouble with harder content, which they make up for with a few of their other online friends.
Sen has no real offline friends considering he is tutored at home, though not for his parents lack of trying. His parents had tried for a while to get people to play with him, but ever since he'd become both Damien and Sen, it has been… rough to get along with other children. There had been a grand total of one he had enjoyed hanging out with, and she was banned from meeting him by her parents after he got her addicted to immersion games. After a while, his parents had given up on him and now allow him to continue his hikikomori lifestyle.
His sister, on the other hand, goes to a private school, and has plenty of friends, and while immersion video games are amazingly ubiquitous, a good seventy percent of the population playing them, his sister is far, far better at them than her real life friends. This leads to her playing more with Sen than her real life friends, though she will still regularly go do some easier content with them.
Once he arrives at the lotus school, he is surprised to see it look like a large complex, filled with three to five story concrete buildings, and looking around, he sees that all the surrounding areas are filled with similar complexes, each of them having banners flowing in the wind. The banner for the lotus school is a yellow lotus blossom on a sky blue background.
He waits for a bit, and soon sees his sister coming out of one of the buildings, along with a couple of other girls and a guy. He waves to her, and she speeds up her walk a bit to join him. She arrives a few seconds ahead of the others with a short "hi!".
As the others arrive, she begins to introduce them. The first girl is named Xue, and is tall, with a slightly masculine face, her look that is only moderately feminine betrayed by her considerable assets. She seems to be around seventeen, though Sen had never been considerably good at judging a person's age. Apparently she is a schoolmate of Lynna's who has recently transferred in, and according to Lynna she is quite good at immersion games. She has eyes and hair a shade brighter than pitch black, and she gives him a once over before dismissing him.
The other girl is short, with her striking green eyes, which contrast with her curly reddish brown hair. She looks to be around sixteen, a bit older than Sen. Her breasts aren't as pronounced Xue's, but she is no way small, and Lynna introduces her as Jennifer, before mentioning that he may know her as Jade. She cheerfully greets him, and he returns the greeting with a smile. He's played quite a few games with Jade, or Jennifer as he supposed he should now call her, as she was an online friend of himself and his sister. They'd met in an old immersion MMORPG, and they'd stuck together ever since.
Finally, John is introduced. He has an unremarkable face, with brown hair and eyes, and looks quite annoyed with Sen for some reason. He looks a bit older than the rest of the group, maybe eighteen or nineteen. Sen simply ignores the provocative gaze. He's earned quite the reputation in a few games, and he is used to the negative attention that would come with it.
"So what's with the group? The monsters aren't exactly numerous enough to need one."
Lynna gives out a smirk. "Well maybe you've just been going to the wrong places. The grassland and forest to the north may only have individual monsters, but if you go to the east, they'll actually form herds, giving us plenty of things to hunt."
"That's more like it!" Sen excitedly says.
"Well let's get going," Jennifer happily says.
Lynna has her guide call one of the automated vehicles, and they are soon on their way to the east. Along the way, Sen gets to learn a decent bit more about active skills. It seems that controlling your energy in a certain pattern in or around your body will allow you to do superhuman things. While none of the group has even come close to mastering a skill, they are able to use them to a certain extent. This is in direct contrast to Sen, who has gotten nowhere with his body enhancement skill.
They soon arrive at another grassland, and he discusses going into the forest instead with the group, but finds out that, excluding Xue, they only have one of their stats at F rank, energy, where everyone starts at F. Sen grins at his sister, mentioning how all of his stats started at rank F, and gets a glare in return from both Lynna and Jennifer.
Sen takes out his dagger, as his sword will be overkill for the bunnies he is going to be fighting. It takes a while to find their first prey, and the first sign they find is a clearing made in the chest high grass. Looking to the clearing, the group sees a group of around ten horned rabbits munching on the grass at the other edge of the clearing.
John looks a bit nervous, and Sen wonders if this is his first immersion game. The group doesn't bother to make any plan, and simply charges the bunnies, which upon noticing them, charge back at the group.
Two of them jump at Sen, and he easily dispatches the first while dodging the second, before turning around and stabbing the second rabbit in the back.
He looks around to check that everyone is ok, and sees that Lynna, Xue, and Jennifer have each dispatched two rabbits as well. John on the other hand, is failing horribly. He's more flailing his sword than swinging it, and he makes massive motions to dodge the rabbit every time it jumps at him. He even uses some sort of skill that speeds him up and still isn't able to kill the bunny.
Sen snickers as Xue kills her third rabbit, and then they simply watch for almost a minute before John manages to kill his single rabbit, his body soaked in sweat. The group then continues, ignoring John who seems to want to take a break after the single fight.
Once they are done fighting, John looks around and looks a bit ill. He is obviously over sixteen, and apparently hasn't enabled the censorship, as the only reason to react like that would be if he is seeing the full gory details. The monsters do their sparkling animation, and John seems to look a bit less pale as the bodies disappear.
They come across a few more groups, all of them having between eight and thirteen rabbits, which are easily dispatched - aside from those that attack John. They then start running into groups of goblins, but as the groups of goblins tend to be quite loud, Sen is always able to summon his sword from his inventory and defeat the goblins who choose to attack him slightly more quickly than anyone else, the reach of his sword giving him an advantage in quickly dispatching them compared to the longswords the rest of the group are using.
He is a bit jealous that the rest of the group can simply keep their swords out on their waist, and that their swords are more useful against small prey like the rabbits. He quickly dismisses his misplaced jealousy though, there are tradeoffs to everything.
Surprisingly, John does much better against the goblins than he had against the rabbits, likely due to the fact that they are slower and bigger targets, though he does get a few cuts on himself. They continue hunting, even with John being wounded, and they eventually get to the point that less common monsters are appearing, though goblins are still the predominant monster in this area.
After a few groups of goblins, John gives up and fast travels back to Falan, as he is too heavily wounded to continue. Once he is gone, Sen decides to learn why a total noob had ended up in the group.
"So what is up with John? He seems pretty new to immersion games," Sen said, trying not to let his annoyance with the deadweight show.
Jennifer shrugs. "His dad is a good friend of my father. He's not a bad guy, but this is his first immersion game."
Lynna snickers. "He joined just to chase Jennifer around, it's sort of adorable how he acts like a puppy following her around."
Jennifer wryly smiles, a stark difference to her usual constant cheerfulness. "Yeah, there's no way I could see him like that though."
Sen felt a bit bad for him. His initial annoyance at Sen must have been due to how cheerfully Jennifer had greeted him, even though it was simply due to having played games with him for so long. While the conversation goes on, Xue simply looks around, remaining alert for anything that may happen.
They continue hunting for another thirty minutes, pulling in a good haul of energy crystals before they decide to head back to Falan. Once there, they all go to sell the loot they've acquired. Sen ends up with a large pile of goblin energy crystals, and instantly decides to buy some rare G rank cores at the energy crystal store.
Lynna decides to come with him, while the other two say their goodbyes for now and log off to get more caffeine. Sen grins, it seems quite a few people are pulling all nighters for this game. He arrives at the crystal store, and sees it is just as gaudy as the clerk had mentioned.
It's a painfully bright blue, with gold accents everywhere, and is built almost like a cathedral, with towers rising from each of the four corners. Once he gets inside, he is greeted by a tall, arched ceiling, and glass cases throughout the store, each of them having a different selection of crystals. Looking around, he sees it is organized by rank, from G to C, though there are none above that.
Sen assumes that the higher level crystals will need to be acquired by the players themselves, as just being able to infinitely level up by trading up lower ranked cores would be a bit silly. There are hundreds of different cores in each section, and each section is itself subdivided into what stat the cores raise the most. The energy section is the smallest, with only around two dozen different cores, while the most common is the "mixed" section, which has almost fifty different choices.
Sen is impressed by how many different options the devs have included. While the higher level monsters seem to usually be variants of lower level, it must have been incredibly hard to include so much variety.
Sen goes up to the counter with Lynna, and he notices that as they approach the counter, Lynna disappears, so it must be one of the instanced areas. He wonders for a bit why they hadn't instanced the place where he sold his loot drops, but quickly drops the thought in his excitement to get some new crystals.
"So how does this work? I just pay you in crystals, and get different kinds?"
"Yes. We have a variety of cores here at the the crystal emporium, which range in price from one and a half to five base crystals. As a general rule, crystals which will increase energy are the most expensive."
"Hey Tir, what does the energy stat even do?"
"It increases the energy you can use for skills. With each increase in energy, you can have another body skill, and you will require large amounts of energy to use higher level skills."
"I'd like to trade in twenty rank G base cores, and twelve G rank horned rabbit cores for a variety of speed increasing cores please." He doesn't really need to increase his energy stat at the moment, as he he hasn't even gotten started with his body skill, and the only skill he has that will actively burn energy is body strengthening, which he could use for a good five minutes before running low on energy. While it would be nice if he could use it longer, it isn't a priority for him.
The man nodded, and opened a trade window. There are seventeen crystals on the other side of the trade window, two of each kind, with the exclusion of one. Sen figures that these must be the cheapest type of crystals, and presses the accept button.
The second he gets his new energy crystals, he wants to down them, but decides to wait until he's outside to do so. As he walks away from the counter, people start to fade into view, and it isn't long until he sees Lynna again.
"How many crystals did you get?" Sen asks her.
"Only five. It's a lot more expensive to increase your energy stat, and I still have to trade in some of my crystals for contribution points for the school," Lynna complains.
"I'm sure it'll all pay off in the end," Sen tries to comfort her.
"I'm sure it will!" Apparently, Lynna doesn't need much comforting.
Once the two of them are out of the shop, they take the new crystals they bought and down them, enjoying the different flavors, as if they were a type of candy. Sen is disappointed when his speed stays at the F rank, but figures it's only a matter of time to get it higher.
"Wanna keep hunting with me? We could try heading into the forest."
"I'd join you, but I'm utterly exhausted. I think I'm going to just log off and relax in a bath. I'm going to cry when I get out and I'm still sore," Lynna said.
Sen grimaces, now he thought about it, he is pretty exhausted at this point too. He can't go to bed unless he really wanted to screw up his sleep schedule though. Eventually, he settles on practicing that stupid bone skill that he'd acquired. The rest of the day flows by, only taking breaks for meals and other biological needs, as just as when he first practiced the bone skill, time seems to flow by impossibly fast. Eventually, it is time for the family dinner, and he logs off to join all of his family in their daily tradition.