By the time the party returned to Chrome's house the sun was beginning to set and Lindas was bathed in orange light. A warm wind blew through the town and birds chirped quietly in the trees. Chrome sat with his feet up on the table in front of his arm chair reading the latest newspaper while Kotetsu and Arcadia sat on the couch. Kotetsu sipped a cup of tea that Chrome had prepared while Arcadia was almost drooling over the Axe of Fury that Chrome had traded her.

Her hand rang along the rune engraved handle up to the large black blades curving out from the end. Although the axe lowered her speed stat slightly it had greatly increased her strength, a trade-off Arcadia was more than happy with.

"Well this is interesting," Chrome murmured as he flicked to the final page of the newspaper. The eyes of his comrades turned to him, curious. "It seems that a large group of DGamers were going on a boss raid on floor forty-nine so we could go to fifty, they were all wiped out before they even got to the dungeon except for one of them."

"Wait what? Were they just weak?" Kotetsu asked.

"Apparently they were all level fifty-five or higher. There's no monsters on floor forty-nine strong enough to do that," Chrome replied.

"Maybe it was a group of player killers," Arcadia suggested.

"The report from the survivor said it was a single opponent, he was in the back so he didn't see them." Chrome rubbed his chin as he looked over the article again. It would have to have been an insanely high level player, he thought to himself.

"Well I guess it's less of them for you to hunt," Arcadia said, poking her tongue out at Chrome.

"Wait what?" Kotetsu said, looking at his teacher.

"Oh right, you weren't there. Apparently Chrome here is now the D Hunter."

"Well I suppose he has killed a fair few of them."

Chrome ignored the conversation going on around him, rubbing his chin a little. His mind flashed to the dream he'd been having. The figure him, Arcadia and the other person had been up against was indeed powerful. Surely something from a dream couldn't really happen though, right? He couldn't stop the sick feeling in his stomach though.

"Yo Chrome, you AFK?" Kotetsu said, waving his hand in front of Chrome's face. The sword and shield user snapped out of his trance and shook his head.

"Sorry, was just thinking," he said.

"I wonder if we'll ever be strong enough to go on a boss raid with the clearers," Arcadia said to herself, leaning into the couch.

"If we keep up our levelling the way we have been, we might be able to," Chrome said.

"We're still levelling for the December quest right?" Kotetsu asked. Chrome nodded in response. "Man, I'm really gonna have to get on here more so I don't fall behind you guys."

"Well, the holidays do start after this week so we'll have every day to come on and grind," Arcadia pointed out.

"Speaking of the holidays, there's a whole day event on the first day of it," Chrome mentioned, picking up the newspaper again. "Apparently it's unlike anything the game has done before. From what it says here it looks like they'll be turning off the safety in the towns for twenty-four hours and any towns that sign up for the event will be sieged by monsters for the duration of the event. Depending on how many monsters the players in a town kill and how much of the town they manage to protect, EXP, Col and items will be awarded to every participant."

"That sounds… incredibly fun," Kotetsu said, an eager grin spreading across his face. "Is there a minimum amount of players a town has to have?"

"At least twenty apparently, and the difficulty is greater the higher the floor you participate on," Chrome replied. "So we could either go down onto a floor more suited to our level or we could do it here in Lindas and just play it careful. It says here that if a player is killed during the event they're eliminated for the rest of it. The servers will only be open to event participants for the twenty-four hours it takes place."

"So if we get killed we can't log back in and we won't get any of the rewards," Arcadia said as she took in all of the information.

"I bet heaps of the lower level players are just gonna camp out on floor forty-nine and get the bonus EXP without fighting any monsters. There's no fun in that though," Kotetsu said.

"Well it says here, to obtain the rewards, each player needs to kill at least ten monsters," Chrome explained.

"That's fair," Arcadia said.

"I reckon we should do it here in Lindas, we could probably get that Vakross guy to help and we could horde items here in your place," Kotetsu said, looking to Chrome. The swordsman nodded in agreement. It was a good plan and they still had a week to level up a fair bit.

"Alright, we'll sign up for the Lindas siege and dedicate the next week to grinding our levels and gathering healing items to store here. If all goes well and we all survive we'll probably get some really good rewards. Are you up for it Arcadia?" Chrome asked, looking to the older woman.

"Do you even need to ask?" she said with a huge grin.

"Alright, well I'm logging out for today, I'll see you guys tomorrow," Chrome said, getting to his feet. Kotetsu and Arcadia said their goodbyes, leaving the house as Chrome went to his room.

As Kotetsu and Arcadia left the house, the former spotted a figure quickly leaping the fence and running off down the road. "Hey, you!" the dagger user yelled, running off after them. His boots thundered down the stone pathway as the cloaked figure opened their menu and scrolled through it. "Don't you dare," Kotetsu growled, knowing what his target was doing. The cloaked figure turned with a twisted grin as he raised a teleport crystal. Just before he vanished, Kotetsu glimpsed something on his cheek. The DGamer mark.

"Who the heck was that?" Arcadia panted as she caught up to Kotetsu.

"I'm not sure, they were a DGamer though," Kotetsu replied, a troubled expression on his face.