Once the group is finished signing up, Kang leaves to go do… whatever it is he does,
while the rest of the group goes to practice their body enhancement skills. While most of the girls are carrying a bottle of water around to use with their water manipulation, it doesn't come in too handy with their current ability. It's mainly used to counter array users like Julie, spreading out the water into a dense fog, and locating the true body with that.
Julie on the other hand, can coat her sword in flame, but it's only really for visual effect, as the flame isn't powerful enough to do much. Sen all but forces them to go practice their skin enhancement skill, as with the increase, he's imagining images of water cutters and fireballs. Once they go off to practice, Sen goes to play with his wind abilities.
Unfortunately, he isn't able to create any sort of wind blade, though he gets proficient enough that he expects he'll be able to knock other people off balance. After thinking for a while, he decides to go buy some throwing knives to play with.
Getting back to a personal training room as he doesn't want to accidentally hit anyone, he starts practicing throwing the knife, then using wind to accelerate it to ridiculous speeds, or even using the wind to make it curve in the air. Sen has a lot of fun with it. He isn't bad with throwing knives, and adding the power of wind control makes it so that he can do ridiculous things with them.
Packing up his throwing knives into a bandolier, he leaves the training room to go and try and get the second tier of his skin enhancement skill done. He doesn't manage to do so before dinner, and logs off.
He still has a bit until it's actually dinner time, and goes online to see that the news that Alpha had decided to join the United Federation of Humanity. Sen doesn't know why, but he shivers a bit at the news. There's practically nothing else being talked about online, and there are tons of people asking about aliens, just as Sen had.
He finishes his browsing and heads down to have dinner with his family. His father is looking very sullen, likely due to the news that had been plastered over the internet. They eat in silence for once, Jiu seeming to respect her husband's mood.
Once they've almost finished, Tien speaks up. "How are you doing in game?"
Lynna is the first one to reply, in an excited manner. "I completed the first tier of skin enhancement! And oh my gosh, I can control water sooo much better now that all the patterns linked up. I can cut things with water now!"
Sen chuckles at her. She never spends much time practicing her body modification skills, but she is a lot faster than Sen when she actually does, so she never falls far behind him. Considering Sen is the top three percent, Lynna has to be the top one percent or better.
The rest of the group is around Sen's skill with it, Julie using her ridiculous memory to simply memorize the patterns and match them with machine like efficiency, while Jennifer and Xue have an excellent control of their energy.
"Do you think Julie will be able to throw fireballs once she's done? She always likes playing a mage," Lynna asks Sen.
"Well, there are a couple skills that throw fireballs already, but they're pretty weak, maybe with the fire control she can make them useful?"
Lynna seems quite excited at that thought, and the group finishes up the meal with no further discussion, everyone carrying their dishes to the sink, and Sen ending up being the one to do the dishes today.
Once he finishes with the chore, he wonders yet again why his family doesn't hire a maid or butler like many of the other families living in this area, but shrugs it off. It's not like doing a little work will kill him.
He logs back in, and goes hunting for a while with the group, as the fifteen hour timer for the dungeon lockout is over by this time. After acquiring a bunch of C ranked crystals, they all log off and go to bed.
By the weekend of the tournament, none of them have gotten a stat to B rank except for Julie, who has been trading almost every single crystal she earns in for crystals which will increase energy. They all get together, even Kang, who still insists on being called DarkBlade. The only one who obliges him is Jennifer, and she seems to get quite a bit of amusement out of it.
They arrive at the arena together, and see a massive number of people there, all of them split into different groups of six. The group had talked tactics a few times, and the general consensus is that for the early rounds they will just try and split off, turning the fight into six one on ones. For later rounds, they will all be protecting Julie while she set up arrays throughout the arena, and everyone hands over a bunch of crystals to her so she can power the arrays.
This tournament is slightly different, split up into D rank and above, and E rank and below, to cater to the new players and separate them from the more experienced ones.
Kang is practically bouncing in nervous excitement, and Sen wonders if he's not going to be a bit of a drag, but decides to trust Xue. If she thinks he can keep up, he probably can. The group wait around for the few minutes before the tournament happens, and then everyone is whisked off to the arena.