14 The Tournament Begins

Now that Sen has a plan to deal with King, he heads to get some food, meeting up with his sister in the kitchen.

"Still holding up fine?" he asks, a bit worried with how worn out she seems.

She simply shakes her head, clearly exhausted from the horror that is the exercise the capsule gives her.

"I think I'm going to take the rest of the day to learn the Flowing Bones skill, I need to do something that won't end up with me completely dead, and the first tier dropped while we were hunting."

"Tier?"

"It's separated into six tiers according to my AI guide."

"Does it not have different names for each tier? The earth and air version do."

Lynna shakes her head in the negative.

"Well make sure to set a timer while you're practicing it. Time sort of disappears if you don't."

Lynna looks a bit skeptical, but agrees anyway. They finish their meal, and head back to their respective capsules to get back in game. Once there, Sen takes an automated vehicle to his school, and trades in all the crystals he has extras of. With his pockets now flush with contribution points, he decides to rent one of the F ranked array rooms until dinner to see how much progress he can get done with his ribs in Bones Like Air.

The time flows by as he tries to control the flow of his energy, and he manages to have it lock into place just a few minutes before the timer goes off for dinner. Waving his hand again, he can feel his sense for the air around him is just slightly stronger, and when he's controlling it it seems to use less energy than he had when he had only finished his spine.

As he logs off to eat dinner with his family, he almost lets out a groan from soreness. He hadn't been moving much during his practice, and that allowed the ache to properly set in. He walks his way to the dining room, where everything is neatly served out, and sits down, waiting for his sister to arrive to start eating.

Once she arrives, they begin to enjoy the chicken fried rice, and once they've slowed down, their father asks them how they're doing in the game. Lynna nd Sen both look uncomfortable, their father has never shown even the slightest interest in their favorite hobby.

"Doing well, My stats are all E at this point, and I've gotten the first part of Bones Like Air done."

"Well I got all my stats up to E with the cores we got from hunting, and I managed to get my first bone done in Flowing Bones." She says with a smile.

Sen feels a bit jealous, if she'd managed to get the first bone in Flowing Bones done already, he doesn't want to know what percentile that places her in. Their father nods, and Sen has no idea how he doesn't look confused about what they've told him.

"Can you tell us what's going on at least?" Sen asks.

Their father shakes his head. "I can say that there will be a lot more players soon."

Sen is surprised, the capsule had been far cheaper than one would expect based on the technology that had to be going in it, but it is still out of the purchase range of most people.

"If you knew that Fifth Dimension would be so important, why were you against buying it for us?"

His father looks annoyed. "Apparently I'm too low on the totem pole to learn what is going on until after it released." His frown fades away after just a moment. "Good job to the two of you, just make sure to keep playing. Sen, I'll be reducing your schoolwork in order to allow you to play more."

Jiu drops her fork in surprise, and Sen is aghast at this. The only way he is even allowed to play immersion games is because he keeps up his schoolwork, and now he's going to get less of that so he can play MORE? Something is seriously wrong. Jiu looks like she's going to be giving Sen's father a lecture, but holds off so as to not argue in front of Lynna and Sen.

"Lynna, when your school gets out, I want you to take a break for a year to play as well." At this point, Jiu grabs her husband by the ear, and drags him upstairs. Lynna and Sen share their utter confusion, and speculate about what's going on, but nothing seems to fit.

After a while, their parents come down, and Jiu looks at them in a sad fashion, before cleaning up the table and going off to do the dishes. Lynna and Sen both wait at the table for a while, before Lynna optimistically says "Well this will be great! I get a whole year off from College!" and practically skips upstairs to her room.

Sen, in a not so optimistic fashion, makes his way to his room, until firming his determination that if his father wants him to do well in this game, he will do well. His family asks little of him, but shows him immense love, and he is going to pay them back. If need be, he will pay them back in the same fashion as he paid back his lady.

He gets in the capsule, feeling determination rather than the simple competitiveness he usually feels when it comes to games, and decides that the best thing to do for the tournament the next day will be to rest, and so the rest of the day is spent working on the Bones Like Air skill. By bedtime, he's managed to get one of his thigh bones, and ignores the alarm that goes off to finish his other leg so as to not be off balance before getting out of the capsule and going to bed.

He wakes the next morning, his determination still filling his mind as he gets ready for the day. His tutors try to teach him, but his mind is fully focused on what he can do to maximize his chances of doing well in the tournament, frustrating his tutors to no end.

Once his far shorter than normal classes end, he eats a meal and then goes to his room to play some more. Hopping in the capsule, he shuts his eyes, and opens them in Fifth Dimension. He'd logged out at his school, and so he rents another of the array rooms to try and get some practice with his Bones like air skill, though he can't actually focus on any bone except his skull if he doesn't want to risk ending up off balance.

He doesn't manage to finish his skull by the time his alarm goes off, and before he heads over to the arena, he sends another message to everyone to make sure they're participating. He gets a short 'AH! I almost forgot!' from Lynna, which doesn't surprise him.

Once he arrives at the arena, he sees tons of people, though when you approach within a good thirty feet of the terminals, it appears empty, as everyone is in their own instance. Sen walks around the crowd a bit before spotting Lynna appearing at the edge of one of the terminal instances, and he goes to join her. They talk strategy about the tournament for a while, basically agreeing that the best thing to do is conserve strength in every round, as you actually get tired in this game.

Sen gets the tournament details from Lynna. Apparently, rather than just one big tournament, it's a bunch of 1024 person single elimination tournaments, meaning ten rounds. The top two from each of those tournaments will qualify for another tournament to be held on the weekend, which will be inter-city. For Falan alone, there are twelve tournaments going on, so across the globe there will be a massive number of people.

While they're talking, Sen spots Xue, and just as he waves to her, he is whisked into the arena. Looking at the stands, they are nearly empty, and Sen looks to his opponent, who is using a sword and shield. The ready button is floating in front of him with a one minute timer, and Sen takes out his greatsword, and brings it in front of him before pressing it.

A short countdown starts, and the walls of light that are holding them in place disappear once the countdown ends. Sen instantly engages body enhancement, and uses Earth Step to charge the ten meters in an instant, swinging his sword along with all the added momentum. He sees his opponent's eyes widen a bit in surprise, and he isn't able to get his sword in place before Sen chops entirely through him. Considering the speed he was moving at, his stats are probably still F rank, or maybe even G. Sen snorts, he is probably just participating for the free health salve.

Sen is then greeted by a short victory screen, and asked if he wants to spectate the other rounds or leave the arena until the next match, which won't be happening for another nearly thirty minutes. He hesitates a moment, then sees there's a spectate friends option, but clicking it, it seems everyone else has already finished their own match.

After a bit, he decides to spectate a random match. Clicking on the one that has the most viewers, once he's in the stands of the arena, he's appalled. On the massive screen above the arena, he can see two people who seem to have F ranked stats simply flailing at each other. They each have just a longsword, and neither of them has any clue how to use it.

After watching a bit, he decides it is sort of amusing, in a pitiful fashion, and watches as more and more blue lines appear in their skin from the random swings. Eventually, one of them is victorious, and Sen decides he'll avoid spectating people other than his group until later in the tournament, as if that's the standard, he's going to sweep it easily.

Exiting the stands with a quick press of a button, he's back outside with Lynna nearby chatting at Xue.

"Oh, Sen, it looks like we all were placed in different brackets. I think it's because we're on each others friends list. I wonder how many tournaments we'll be able to win," Lynna says in a bright tone. Sen isn't so sure about the friends list thing, he's pretty sure it's more likely that they are spread out because their stats are higher than the other participants.

"We'll see, but from the match I spectated, the competition was sort of pitiful."

Xue nods at his words, apparently she'd spectated a match as well. "They give out a free healing salve for participating, there will be far more noobs than proper players."

Sen nods back, the downside for accepting anyone means that the good players will be pretty rare in the early brackets. They chat for a while longer, mainly Lynna talking while the other two give short responses. Jennifer manages to find them after a bit, and joins in with Lynna, leaving Xue and Sen to be mostly quiet.

It isn't long until Sen is whisked away to his next match.