"Thanks," Lucian sat down, but he knew it wouldn't be for long, they were going to arrive at the station soon. "Now then, I know this is going to either sound very strange or like something out of a strange romance story, I really think it would be for the best if you came with me at this next stop." He adjusted his glasses ever so slightly, "There is a few more of us, and we have recently discovered that we are being hunted and are going to come up with a plan."

Lucian heard the train announcing that it was arriving at its destination shortly, "I know it sounds weird, but I am sure that you have more than a few questions that we may have some answers to, and it really is just a bit safer. You know, safety in numbers?" HE got off of the seat and started for the door, "It is up to you of course though." He stood awaiting a reply.

"One of those 'trust in me things' huh?" she sighed deeply then bit her lip in thought. She didn't want to be involved in anything shady but...if people like them were being hunted, the young man in front of her was right. It was a risk, but so was leaving the temple.

"Alright. I'm in." She stood and followed him, "But this is a trial. I'll run with your group. When I actually understand what is going on, I'll make my final decision whether to stay or not. Sound fair?"

"Sounds both fair and logical." Lucian nodded, normally asking a random stranger to come with him would be a huge do not do in Lucian's mind, but given the circumstances and the events that had just unfolded this morning, he knew that it would be better this way, one for her own protection and two, it would make the group a bit stronger to have another party member. Now he just hoped that the others in the group would see it this way as well.

After walking for a while they eventually made it to Ren's place, "Just a heads up, we gamers don't look like much and we are a pretty mixed up group. Some are in highschool, others in uni." Lucian was trying, but didn't really know how to prepare someone for all the strange things that started appearing In their life, sure as a gamer, and as one who is not just level one, she must have done some training, but its not too likely she has dealt wit the abyss yet, or any other people associated with it.

Lucian knocked on the door in tune with the Mario theme song.

When Erica saw Lucian the following window appeared before her, matching the quest she would have received two days ago and three days after Erica got her Gamer power, the Others Like Me Quest that mentioned that there could be other Gamers out there.



It was a bit of experience, a small nice chunk, but compared to the amount gained from fighting monsters it wasn't really a whole lot. When Lucian knocked on the door in the tune of the mario theme song Ren stood up, looking at his minimap. Apparently the minimap displayed the inside of the house now in a minimap's fashion, not the outside. Still, Ren guessed that it was Lucian. He walked towards the door and looked through the small peep hole in the door, seeing Lucian and... someone else. Ren sighed heavily. Five people have this power now? That was no coincidence. Ren got his a month ago, but judging from this person's level she probably got it the same time as Lucian and the others did, or so was a reasonable assumption anyway.

Ren opened the door, looking at Lucian and now this new other gamer. "So... this is the interesting thing you found..." Ren's tone was quiet, cold, and bored sounding as it always was, but that was mainly cause more gamers was an annoying thing. A good thing, but also irksome. "Come in and take off your shoes." Ren closed the door behind them after the two of them entered, moving back to the living room where Sasha and Silas were. "Lucian's here and so is... Erica... a new Gamer apparently." Ren motioned for the two of them to sit before fetching some tea for her and Lucian, setting it down on the small table near the couches so that Erica and Lucian could take it when they sat down.

After that Ren sat down in the other available seat, which was next to Lucian. "So... we were discussing what we were going to do from here on out about these Hunters that are coming after us. Any ideas?"

"Thank you." Lucian graciously accepted the tea, took a few sips, then began to speak his ideas on the situation. "I do have a few ideas. Obviously we need to train and get stronger. I am sure if we grind hard enough, we can surpass what the hunters expect our strengths to be for the next visit. We need to grind our skills more than levels though in my opinion. We could try to find some type of body guards within the abyss for some time, though this option might be costly, but with how quick money is made, due to our power, this is also plausible." He picked up his cup and drank a bit more tea, letting his thoughts catch up with him, as he had many ideas, and it was just about picking out which ones would lead to the greatest chance of success and ultimately survival. "Concerning training, I also think it would be possible that if one got the id create skill high enough, one could maybe make a zone similar to dragonball's training area with a different flow of time. This could make skill grinding much easier, it is merely a thought though." He placed his cup down again, and held his chin in thought, trying to pull out one more solid idea before passing the table to someone else. "Also, right before you guys got jumped, someone warned me, they told me we need to get stronger and I also received a new quest," He opened the window to view his current quests, "Yeah, I don't know if anyone else got it, or if it is a solo quest or a trap, but it requires going to Gekkoukan at midnight.. Rewards include some answers." He finished going over the quest again and closed the window.

Silas still sat besides Sasha drinking his tea. Ugh tea, wasn't his favorite drink. He wondered if coffee would recover some of his mana too. Suddenly he heard the Mario tune on the front door of Ren's house. A tune that was all too familiar to him. Seeing as he played, and still does play, a lot of Mario games. But the classic Mario tune was well-known to anyone who... wasn't locked away or hid under a rock for the last 33 years. Ren went to open the door and came back in the room with Lucian, who he had seen once before, and a new girl. Silas glanced over to Sasha.

"Looks like you're not the only girl anymore." he said in a way that should be funny, but his monotone voice ruined that a bit. He listened to the new information that Lucian had to offer. "Hehe. Trap or not we should do the quest... or actually you. Don't know if Ren already said something to you about our little fight we had earlier?" Silas didn't comment on the grinding, because he honestly didn't care for it. Grinding was effective, but it really was boring as hell. He preferred to do quest to earn EXP (as Silas still called it) instead of constantly hacking and slashing enemies.But it was hard to get quests in the real world so he had to settle with the fact that grinding was the best option.

Erica followed Lucien inside the house. She'd noticed the quest window with a frown and closed it out so she could listen to the others.

The young woman regarded the other three people with a smile before she sat down to listen. She helped herself to a cup of tea and didn't interrupt. It was just a struggle to keep up with all of the terms flying every which way.

Sasha turned her head lazily when Lucian arrived, still entrenched in the sofa. However, he wasn't alone. She raised an eyebrow at the newcomer. Looks like I'm not the only girl anymore.

"Looks like you're not the only girl anymore," Silas echoed her thoughts in a deadpan tone.
"So I'm not," she replied, then grunted a greeting to Erica in a louder voice. The group quickly settled in the living room and they got down to business. Ren kick-started the meeting by asking what everyone's ideas was- why didn't he suggest something? Lucian answered with a whole lot of options they had already gone through. He did mention a couple of interesting things.

"A pseudospace with different time flow? Where did you even get such an idea? And a quest sounds sweet but the rest of us don't have it. Not sure how would that work."

Looking into his cup which he had place down, Lucian watched as his image was distorted as he tapped the cup, "The person who brought me the quest was strange, even by our standards, and he managed to stop time around us, or so it felt, and no one else moved, like they were frozen in time, and as games generally allow for the breaking of most rules naturally, or do everything that exists in the abyss, I assume we should be able to do it as well, if we tried hard enough." he tapped the cup again as the image had finally settled back to normal, then he looked up, "So then I guess I should go forth with the quest then? I am still a bit weary of it though, but we could all go anyways, even if we live through things like a game, unless this void wizard uses telepathy to communicate with only me, when he speaks aloud then it should let everyone know what is going on, and could trigger an event or quest for everyone else as well."

As Lucian discussed the Void Wizard and a few other things about the quest, Ren listened for a few moments, also listening to the others and their own ideas. "Well it seems like this quest is the best way to go. We should ask who we know if they know who this Void Wizard is since he seems amazing enough to create some kind of time freeze space, but I see no problems in doing this quest." As Ren said this, windows appeared for Silas, Sasha, Mike, and Ren reading the following.





Ren looked at the new windows that appeared before closing them away, sighing a little. "I guess just us, or in case me the Party Leader, talking about this quest made me 'accept' it to for the entire party." Ren stood up, collecting any empty tea cups and taking them to the kitchen to put in the sink before returning a few moments later. "If we want to grow stronger more quickly then we should look to those we know for answers. I saw something on the Auction Site called a One to Two Hours Pseudospace Stone. According to the description of it on the site, it creates a Pseudospace that can compress time a bit, allowing for better training. Of course its very expensive, but perhaps we can learn how to create something like that on our own if we ask."

Ren sighed somewhat, rubbing his temples a bit. This was all starting to become a bit annoying. "Leveling up though isn't the only way to grow stronger. Our Skills are just as important. We also need to focus on leveling those through the rest of this week, but... we also need to be careful on how we train as well. If we don't train properly then we won't be strong enough before facing this Quest, which I assume will be of great importance. So... the plan for now is pretty much our old plan. We train with those we know and through the rest of the week grow strong enough so that we can keep our normal lives without fear of those hunters attacking. If we feel like we have gotten strong enough by the end of the week, then we take the quest."

Ren stretched a little, assuming that this idea worked. Everyone who fought would also seem a little less tired now, the break helping to cure fatigue a bit. "Still, we should also make sure we aren't alone, as even one of those hunters was tough and they were underestimating us. Until we grow stronger we are pretty much reduced to noobs who have to huddle in packs to survive, and as annoying as it is, we will have to suck it up until we get stronger. So, the real question is this now. Do we all go to the same place to train together, or do we keep going to where we were going before..."

Silas sighed when the window suddenly appeared in front of him. "Another quest..." he mumbled to himself. He continued to listen to Ren. Again he took the role of leader upon himself, something which annoyed Silas a bit for some reason. The most important one was probably because he they weren't even a real team... and Ren was much younger than him. However, he had to live with it. He was right about them leveling up some more and becoming stronger, and not only their own levels must get higher but also those of their attacks. Luckily for Silas most of his were passive, but he did have quite some offensive ones that hadn't reached their MAX level.

Ren then asked that question. Should they train together or in separate groups like the have been doing all this time. Personally Silas liked training at the Ban Dojo along with Sasha and Genji, he had created more of a bond with them then these people. But he was open to the idea of them training together for some time. Eventually he would go solo anyways... when he is strong that is, but he needed to surpass the others for it. Silas looked as Sasha. "What are you going to do?" Silas asked. Maybe it was also an idea for them all to train at the Ban Dojo... but the others possibly also found a place to train.

After Sasha had answered his question he sat straight up and looked to the others. "I do want this 'meeting' to be over quickly. There is someone at home who probably is worried to dead by now. So I'll go with what Sasha wants, we have been training together all this time." he said and went back to being a couch potato.

"Well with what you said before in the pm about getting a discount if we mentioned that one guy in our order, that combined with if we make some money of our own, we should be able to get the stone needed for the pseudospace." Lucian stopped for a moment, looking uowards and rubbing his temples, trying to figure out how to make all the pieces fit together smoothly. "So we can grind against some things for materials to sell, use our connections so as to not put us directly in the line of sight for the abyss, make some money, get the stone with the discount using our combined earnings, continue training. It fulfills all of our ideas in one clean sweep" He leaned forward on his seat, "If we consistently fight weaker things, our experience wont go up as quickly as our skills will, and it will take less time to grind for the goods as well. Though on the other hand, usually hared mobs drop more valueable goods, but again, our levels will go up quicker." Lucian was noticing how much he was talking, but it didn't seem like the others really had much to contribute, not even Ren, who Lucian found himself looking at for a moment, slightly puzzled by his own action, he continued talking, "So maybe we should stay split up for a day or two and grind two different sources? To be honest, I am more keen on training with Saito and doing business with him," Not to mention the tab I have with him for sixty thousand, so I do need to see him shortly anyways...

Sasha threw a puzzled glance at Silas. For someone who appeared so aloof, the man sure seemed to be warming up to her a lot. It didn't feel like he was hitting on her either. "If you say so."

"Everyone seems pretty dead set on continuing whatever they had been doing," Sasha said with a sigh. She cleared her throat and continued. "Can I remind everyone here that there are slave traders after us? Does the word kidnapping come to mind? I know we pushed them back, but fuck, I don't wanna end up as a commodity on the auction."

Sasha was on her feet now, trying to get her point across. And her parents always called her stubborn and reckless. "We'll stick together for now. Until everyone's level twenty, minimum."

Sasha did make a very good point. They were being hunted by the equivalent of slave traders and here they were, arguing over very nonsensical stuff like where to go train. It wasn't really a discussion, but in a way an argument. It made sense, training in a Martial Arts dojo. Sure Saito had a space as well, but learning some defensive techniques would be a good thing. "We also need to tell Mike this, but he's still in school... and I think he mentioned something about learning from someone there, so I think we won't have to worry too much about him." Ren scratched his head for a few moments, not really sure of what else to say as Sasha did indeed make a good point.

"I guess I'm up for training all together. I mean... we are ignoring the fact that the equivalent of slavers are after us, and I would rather not get put into a situation that is apparently worse than death. I guess for now though I'm going to visit Saito. The rest of you can do whatever else you were planning to do today and tomorrow we can meet at that dojo." Ren sighed, standing up before looking at the newcomer and sending both a Party Invite and a Friend Request.





"Welcome to the group I guess... congratulations, now you are probably going to be hunted like the rest of us." Ren said this regardless of whether or not Erica accepted her Friend Request and Party invite. It was a little blunt, but the grimness of their situation was real and Ren wanted this newcomer to know just what she was getting in to. Ren felt awkward with this new introduction, standing up now. "A-Anyway... I'm going now as I think we have rested long enough as there are things that need to be done." Ren walked out, letting the others walk out of his house first before Ren locked up.

"Anyway, I will see you all tomorrow at the dojo. For now though we will just continue the day as normal... just be careful though..." Ren left after that, deciding to head over to Saito's to ask some important questions.

Sasha did make a very good point. They were being hunted by the equivalent of slave traders and here they were, arguing over very nonsensical stuff like where to go train. It wasn't really a discussion, but in a way an argument. It made sense, training in a Martial Arts dojo. Sure Saito had a space as well, but learning some defensive techniques would be a good thing. "We also need to tell Mike this, but he's still in school... and I think he mentioned something about learning from someone there, so I think we won't have to worry too much about him." Ren scratched his head for a few moments, not really sure of what else to say as Sasha did indeed make a good point.

"I guess I'm up for training all together. I mean... we are ignoring the fact that the equivalent of slavers are after us, and I would rather not get put into a situation that is apparently worse than death. I guess for now though I'm going to visit Saito. The rest of you can do whatever else you were planning to do today and tomorrow we can meet at that dojo." Ren sighed, standing up before looking at the newcomer and sending both a Party Invite and a Friend Request.





"Welcome to the group I guess... congratulations, now you are probably going to be hunted like the rest of us." Ren said this regardless of whether or not Erica accepted her Friend Request and Party invite. It was a little blunt, but the grimness of their situation was real and Ren wanted this newcomer to know just what she was getting in to. Ren felt awkward with this new introduction, standing up now. "A-Anyway... I'm going now as I think we have rested long enough as there are things that need to be done." Ren walked out, letting the others walk out of his house first before Ren locked up.

"Anyway, I will see you all tomorrow at the dojo. For now though we will just continue the day as normal... just be careful though..." Ren left after that, deciding to head over to Saito's to ask some important questions.

"Being hunted by slave traders or not, I'd assume that they wont be back for at least a day or two," Lucian shrugged the two comments off, with what had happened that day, it would be the best thing to train, and even though it would be tactically the best move for the slavers to attack again the next day or two before they could really make much progress, odds are that they wouldn't as they wouldn't be prepared enough either. "Well thanks Ren, this meeting was semi-productive I suppose." Lucian scratched the back of his head, trying to think if he actually learned anything aside from how to get the party to receive quests.

"I also have some business to attend to with Saito, and a few things I wish to discuss with him." Lucian looked over at Ren after they stepped out of his house, "But it will be interesting to be training with everyone one again, we haven't really done that for a while, I look forward to seeing the development that you both made." He looked at Sasha then Silas, "See you both tomorrow, don't get caught before then." He knew it might be a touchy subject, but with a mix of both sarcasm and legitimate concern, he trusted that they wouldn't take offense to it.

"Inventory." Lucian muttered, as he looked at his goods to confirm again that he had enough to pay back his current debt with Saito. Hopefully he would be at his shop.

Erica finished her tea quietly and accepted the Friend and Party Requests. She'd been listening the entire time, and figured that since she probably had the least amount of understanding with what was going on...silence was the better part of stupidity.

"Who is Saito?" she asked the remaining people. "And...why are slavers hunting us?" she frowned at that. "Who are the slavers?"

Finally they were seeing some sense. Guys and their thick skulls. Next time she was bringing a pile-driver to a meeting, if that's what it took. However, it was still very difficult to stick together at all times, so Sasha had to concede that they group up tomorrow. With luck, none of them would be missing by then.

Erica, the new girl, was utterly dumbfounded by their discussion.

"Right, you haven't heard. Earlier today we were attacked by two men. I don't know how we've become famous in the Abyss- that's the name for the supernatural community around here- but we are. And at this stage we're too weak to defend ourselves to people who deal in the slave trade. You could say that there's a swarm of vultures out to get us." Sasha explained, her voice level and cold. It was a grim situation, even if she wasn't too bothered by it personally. If anything, she felt a spark of excitement.

She accepted the party request, musing at Ren's odd choice of party names. She glanced at her health and mana levels. They were full. It was still early in the day, and with their current predicament there was no reason to do anything but train. "Silas. Same place again? Oh, Erica, you can come along if you want to. We're going to the Ban Dojo."

"'Ban'?" she asked quietly. She rubbed her thumb over her chin before nodding, "Yeah, I'll come with you. I believe I have some business there anyway." She replied to the other young woman. "Thank you for letting me tag along."

She stood and stretched before checking over her own health and inventory. Erica cracked her neck with a sigh, she was ready to get back on the road.

It was a difficult situation the group found themselves in. People were hunting them down and they couldn't really do anything about it. They couldn't get rid of them. They defeated two of them but more will come. The new girl, Erica, still seemed shy and confused. However her level matched the one they all had, she must have been training too... although she was still wary of what was going on.

Sasha suggested to go to the Ban Dojo again, this time taking Erica with them. "You girls go ahead. Still have to drop something off back at my place. Just have some girl time together... or whatever." Silas said monotone. He felt in his pocket, the ring was still there. "See you guys later." he said after he had turned around. He waved back with his other hand in his pocket. It might be dangerous to go alone, but he didn't want to come home with two girls at his side. Tomoyo was already worried enough as it is. He shouldn't make the impression that he was cheating on her or something... maybe he just should tell her what was going on.