Book 1: Chapter 18: Patch 4.0: Rocks are a Man's Best Friend

Fenrir had to take a few moments after that to recollect himself. He was getting all worked up and serious about how people are assholes for not accepting her deafness, and then she had to go and say the sort of thing that girls in anime say which elevates them to best girl status.

With little else to do in-game that won’t put Oleander and Bonekraka at a disadvantage, the two decide to go back to the forest to find a nice spot to log out in. Though, they end up not actually doing that. They spot a sloop traveling along the coast toward Coastedge just as they’re about to leave. Fenrir convinces Serra that they should follow it and see where it’s heading.

Surely enough, it ends up docking at Coastedge. They’re able to see about a dozen men get off of it, and one of them is wearing heavy, elaborate armor. A flag decorated with a picture of garlic with several squiggly lines rising from it stands proudly at the top of the ship’s single mast.

Serra looks at Fenrir to try and guess what he’s thinking since he’s been quiet ever since it docked. The look on his face is the same one that she saw when he was killing that guard and then running away through the field.

“I want it,” Fenrir says.

“Why?” Serra asks.

“Because I don’t like these assholes, and because I want a ship.”

“Where did that come from?”

“Seeing the ship.”

“So you see a ship and then want to steal it? It’s as simple as that?”

“Yes.”

It just takes a single second of looking at his face to tell how serious he is.

“I looked up that name Olly mentioned last night – Divine Brigade. There were a bunch of articles about how Divine Brigade was full of horrible people and how everybody is glad that they’re gone. I guess they used to jump from game to game to mess with people and then randomly stopped. Was… was that you guys?” Serra asks.

Fenrir looks at her. He’s clearly surprised and must not have been expecting her to do her research. He looks back at the ship. “Yeah, that was us. I was the leader, Bone and Olly were my seconds-in-command,” he answers.

“But all the articles said you guys were horrible and mean! That’s – that’s not true at all. You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met online, and the others are really nice and fun as well.”

“Nah. I definitely am an asshole and a horrible person, but only to people who I think deserve it. I wouldn’t steal this ship from some innocent guys just trying to fish and have fun, but I would gladly steal it from a group of assholes who disrespected you and Olly.”

“You’re not bad if you only treat bad people like that, so why did everybody hate you?”

“Because being a bad guy is cool. They’re the ones who get all the power and fame, and then everybody wants to join them or at least ally them. It isn’t that the people who help them are bad, they just want fun, and playing with the bad guys usually brings the most fun and action. We stopped them from having fun, so everybody hated us.”

“So you only targeted bad guys and people who worked with them?”

Fenrir hesitates. “I… can’t promise we only targeted bad people,” he says, looking at her to see an unimpressed expression. “Look, sometimes we just wanted some quick fun and the easiest way was to mess with the first people we saw.”

Serra keeps up her false disappointment for a few more seconds before breaking into a giggle. “It’s okay, it’s just a game, right?” They both return their attention to the docked sloop. Large crates are being carried to and from it. “So, how are you – how are we going to steal it?”

“What’s that? You want to live a pirate life now and help us steal ships?”

“It… sounds exciting, okay?”

Fenrir gives the top of her head a pat like a proud father would give his child. It gives her mixed feelings. “We’ll need Bone and Olly. The three of us can steal a ship like that with no problem. If we can steal a supercarrier in Eternal Space with just the three of us, we can steal a small sloop.”

Serra looks at him with a curious expression.

“That’s a story for another time, but let me just say that people were really mad about it. The developers actually patched the game to make the method we used impossible to repeat. Even developers hate us!” Fenrir explains, sounding way too proud of what he’s admitting.

“Are you going to remake Divine Brigade here?” Serra asks.

“Nah, Divine Brigade’s days are over. Bone and Olly don’t have the time to play as much as they could back then, and we cut ties with the rest of our old members. It was getting too toxic for us – I guess you could say our members were trying to turn us into what we hated.”

“Did you just… leave them?”

“Oh, no. We stole everything we could from our own members and then destroyed everything else. The ones we liked still were spared, but most lost everything. We’ve still got secret caches in dozens of online games in case we ever decide to go back to them.”

“Why don’t you try restarting it but be more careful about who you let in?”

“We could, but none of us really care about leading a big group again. We’re just playing more casually now. We want to enjoy the game without being constantly hunted down everywhere we go. Everybody would hate us and target us if they found out we were in this game. Playing would be impossible. Honestly, probably at least a few hundred people would start playing this game for the sole purpose of hunting us down to get revenge. We really, really pissed people off. It’s a miracle none of those guys from last night realized what Olly meant when he brought that name up.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Serra says with a thumbs up and cute smile.

Fenrir gives her a thumbs up back. “Alright, let’s hope that this ship doesn’t leave before Olly and Bone can get on. Ready to head back to the forest?”

Serra nods, thus the two of them head back to the hiding spot she found with Bonekraka.

A small cave entrance can be spotted on the side of a mound within the forest. Though, it’s less of a cave and more of a den – like for a bear. Inside of it is Bonekraka’s sleeping body being tightly squeezed between its walls. It’s a miracle he was able to fit himself inside of there.

“How did you sleep in here if he’s taking up all the space?” Fenrir asks.

“I had to sleep on top of him,” Serra explains, watching his face for a reaction. She gets the reaction that she was hoping for when she sees him blush and look jealous. Naturally, she’s going to take advantage of this. “Are you jealous?” she asks with a smug smile, giving his abdomen a poke.

Fenrir realizes what she’s doing. He knows that Bonekraka would never touch her nor even think about it, and he doubts that a giant green orc is her type, so she’s just trying to mess with him. Sleeping with Bonekraka is more like sleeping with a giant, Russian teddy bear than a man.

Alright, two can play that game. If she wants to bully him, he’s going to bully her right back. Fenrir’s revenge finally begins.

The easiest thing to do would be to tease her for her petite body. She’s short, the bark armor he made her hangs straight down over her chest without anything to bump it outward, and – wait, has she always had such defined hips? Now that he’s looking her body over, he’s noticing that while she may be flat and have slim thighs, she has some of the widest hips he has ever seen. Well, they may not be the widest ever, but they give that illusion when contrasted against the rest of her body. He’s pretty sure that they’re wider than her shoulders are.

They look perfect for holding onto while—

“How… how long are you going to stare at me for?” Serra asks.

Fenrir jumps and looks up at her face to see her blushing and looking away.

He doesn’t know if that counts as a victory for teasing her, or if this counts as another victory for flustering him.

He covers his lower face with his right hand and copies her by looking away. “We’ll call it a draw today, alright?” he asks, peeking at her to see her nod. “An-anyways, I think there’s enough room for us all in there, but it’s going to be a tight fit.”

Serra is quick to say, “You have to go first!”

“You’ve gone from being shy and quiet to shouting orders at me in a day! What’s next, are you going to reveal that you’re a closet dominatrix?”

“That depends on if you’re an S or M…”

“I’m going into the cave now.”

As much as Bonekraka would likely despise it, Fenrir has no problem climbing in over top of the orc and lying down against him. Fenrir just has to make sure to keep a hand over the pocket Rock is in to make sure that it doesn't fall out as he squeezes in between Bonekraka and the den's ceiling.

He assumes that the overseer isn’t taking over for Bonekraka since it knows they’re friends and that there is no ill intent, but given how this game is run by a bunch of AIs, he has no idea if that’s really why Bonekraka remains sleeping or not as he climbs aboard.

“Now – now you have to log out first!” Serra orders him from outside of the den.

“Alright, mom, I’m going,” Fenrir says.

He can feel Serra’s cringe. “Please don’t call me that again...”

“Whatever you say, Serra Berra.”

She’s silent now. When he peeks out at her, he sees her covering her face with her hands and squirming.

He wins.

“Alright, I’ll be on Fiscord if you need anything,” he tells her before switching over to his thoughts. “Saya, I’m ready to wake.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n Onii-chan!” Saya replies.

“What’s with the sailor play?”

“You’re going to steal a boat, aren’t you? That makes you a captain! Well, a soon-to-be captain, and only if you don’t mess up.”

“Divine Brigade never messes up.”

“I thought you said Divine Brigade isn’t coming back?”

“You know what I mean.”

With that, the environment around him turns black as he is transported back to reality.

Ryouta opens his eyes. His ceiling fan is as swishy as ever.

It takes a few moments for him to regain full control of his body.

A thought pops into his head. What if somebody breaks in while he’s immersed? He knows that Saya can warn him in case anything like that happens, but what use is being warned if his body is essentially going to be useless for several minutes after waking?

The urge to use the bathroom overwhelms the numbness in his legs.

After relieving himself, he grabs some more chips, a glass of water when he remembers that he never did order more booze, and heads over to his computer. Serra has already sent him several messages.

>HushedVoice: Thanks for playing with me again! You might have made me wait so you could play with crabs, and forgot that you didn’t have a fishing rod, and then sexually harassed me with your eyes, but I had a lot of fun.

>HushedVoice: I can’t wait to play with you again!

>HushedVoice: Ryouta.

What’s with this girl? He can’t help but be reminded of the last time a girl warmed up to him this quickly. That ended up with him just getting taken advantage of, but there’s nothing for her to gain from doing that. Does she – does she actually like him? No, he can’t forget that some girls are just friendly. She’s going to think he wears a fedora and trench coat if he assumes she likes him just because she’s being friendly.

>TheMemeStruggle: You’re a dork, Serra.

He can already see her typing a reply.

While waiting for her to finish typing, which he doubts will take more than a minute, he opens up a browser window to search for a sign language guide.