Book 1: Chapter 22: Patch 5.0: All Your Ship Are Belong To Us

After having Cassiel shout all manners of profanities at Fenrir for his suggestive remarks, the party sits around trying to figure out what to do to pass the time.

Fenrir, naturally, wants to fish.

Serra is content playing with Rock and keeping an eye on Cassiel.

Cassiel wants to try and hunt down more players from Coastedge.

Rock just wants to do Rock things.

Fortunately for Fenrir, he knows how to get underneath people’s skin. Is it manipulative? Yes. More importantly, does it mean he gets to fish? Yes.

“I suppose I can see why you don’t want to fish. You’re probably just bad at it and let all the fish escape,” Fenrir teases Cassiel. Serra picks up on his plan and lets out a not-so-subtle giggle.

“I’d never let them escape! If I’ve been able to hunt monsters and players down, hunting a fish is nothing!” Cassiel shouts back.

This is going to be easy.

“It takes more skill to lure and reel in a fish than it does to sneakily thrust your pole into a man’s rear. At least Olly will love you for that,” Fenrir continues. Serra’s laugh is even more noticeable this time as she actually does try to hide it instead of just pretending to hide it.

Clutching what remains of her spear in her hands, Cassiel looks like she’s on the verge of snapping it into even more pieces. “How many times do I—”

“I’ll stop if you can catch more fish than me,” Fenrir casts his line.

It’s a bite. She’s hooked.

“Fine! How do I – how are we even supposed to do this?!” she angrily accepts the challenge.

“Go get me a stick and a flat stone so I can make a spear for you. I’ll make myself one while you do that,” Fenrir explains, holding up the stick and rock that he found a few minutes ago and has been working on.

Cassiel storms off to look for the materials.

Now, when it comes to sharpening and shaping the rock that will be used as a spearhead, there is a problem. Fenrir’s trusty rock has been turned into Rock. “Hey, Name Pending,” he says, looking over at Rock.

“Name Pending?” Serra asks.

“Well, yeah. Can’t just keep on calling her Rock. Isn’t that too manly?”

“I – I don’t think she cares,” Serra says, and Rock backs her up by barking.

If Rock is happy with being named Rock, then there’s no way that Fenrir is going to change her name. “Then I guess you’ll stay Rock, Rock. Now, come over here.”

Rock happily runs over to him, sitting down and looking up at him with an obedient desire to serve.

First off, Rock is too cute to not get the top of its head rubbed before doing anything else. It is only after an adequate amount of petting her head that he asks for her help. “I have no idea if you can do this or not, but do you think that you could… I don’t even know how to ask this. Do you think you could bite and chew this thing into shape? Remember how I used you to make those first— wait,” Fenrir pauses and stands up. Walking next to the stream, he finds where he was trying to fish last night, looks into the bush that he was standing next to, and sure enough finds his spear.

“I forgot about this one. Oh well,” Fenrir says, returning to Rock. “Remember how you helped me make this spearhead?” he points at the tip of the spear. Rock barks. “Then do you think you could make this one look like that?” He holds out the flat rock he found. Rock sniffs it, paws at it, and finally looks up at Fenrir to give an approving bark. “Good girl,” he says alongside a rub of her head.

Taking the flat rock into her mouth, she bites down on the edges with her jagged, stony teeth until it’s shaped into a spearhead. Fenrir cringes when he hears her chewing and swallowing the chunks of rock that she bites off. He’s not sure if that’s good for her… but she is made out of rock. He gets an idea. While Rock is busy with the spearhead, he picks up as many nearby rocks that he can find.

He comes back to Rock sitting next to the spearhead with a wagging tail. Its sharpness and shape are even better than when he did it himself! “You’re seriously awesome, Rock. I wish I could take you into reality with me. I’d train you to make and bring me coffee,” Fenrir says.

Serra raises an eyebrow. “Rock isn’t one of those coffee robots,” she says.

“I know, but it’d still be nice. I either need a coffee robot or a cute wife to bring me coffee,” he replies, taking one of the rocks he just gathered and giving it to Rock. While Serra blushes and thinks about highly classified thoughts within her mind, Rock excitedly munches on the given rock and begs for another one when she sees that he’s holding more. “Makes sense. You’re made out of rock, so you eat rocks. Wait, doesn’t that make you a cannibal?” he asks Rock.

Rock tilts her head for a few seconds, tongue hanging out from her mouth, before going back to begging for more treats.

“You’re too cute to say no to. You’re definitely going to grow up and be super spoiled,” Fenrir says, placing two more rocks down while pocketing the rest.

By the time Cassiel returns, Rock is sleepily lying on Serra’s lap with a full belly and Fenrir is holding two spears. He tosses one of them to Cassiel. “Here, made you one already.”

“The hell did you make me gather this stuff for then, you bastard? Did you just make me go and look everywhere for nothing?!” Cassiel shouts.

He expected this. Looking at the stick and stone she’s found, he has to admit that they’re perfect for making a stone-tipped spear. It looks like she really went and tried finding the best possible materials she could instead of using the first ones she found.

“Sorry, you’re right. I’ll make you one with the stuff you found. I promise I didn’t mean to send you off for nothing. I had just forgotten about the spear I made last night is all,” Fenrir explains.

Cassiel’s expression confuses him. She goes from clearly pissed off to blushing and looking away. She looks like she wants to say something again.

“Here, I’ll have your spear ready in no time,” he holds his hands out, waiting for her stick and rock.

She hands them over, but also says, “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing to thank me for. I said I’d make you one, plus it means getting to fish, so I should be the one thanking you,” Fenrir replies.

“I – I mean… tch, you bas— I mean thanks for… apologizing,” Cassiel says, squirming in place and unable to make eye contact. “I was always getting fucked with and nobody ever apologized, so… I just assumed you were screwing with me, so I guess I’m – I’m,” she looks pissed off with herself at this point, gritting her teeth as she clenches her fists, “I’m sorry for assuming you were just fucking with me.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal.”

“Shut up! I’m – I’m apologizing, alright? If you do something wrong then – then you apologize for it! You apologized to me, so… I’m apologizing to you, so just take it!”

“Alright, alright. Thank you for apologizing too, Cassiel,” Fenrir says. She turns away after hearing his thanks.

Fenrir walks back over to Rock and Serra since he needs Rock’s assistance one last time. “Think you can help me out again, Rock?”

Rock looks at the stone and whines. However, when Fenrir holds out a few treat-sized rocks for her, she eagerly hops off Serra’s lap and gets to work.

“She’s actually really nice, isn’t she?” Serra asks, whispering quietly enough so that Cassiel doesn’t hear.

Fenrir looks over at her. Cassiel is still standing with her back turned to them. “Maybe when she’s not going all Olly on me. She’s a total tsundere.”

“What’s that?” Serra asks.

Fenrir blushes and shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.” His answer makes her pout, but he’s already said too much. He can’t allow her to discover just how far he’s delved into the world of Japanese cartoons. Or hentai. He still remembers her aversion to tentacles.

Before the image of Serra getting wrapped up in a bunch of lewd tentacles grows any stronger in his head, he distracts himself with putting together Cassiel’s new spear.

He feels like he has to apologize to Serra just for imagining such horribly lewd things happening to her. She’s too pure for any of that!

But that just makes it even better.

He shakes his head. Bad thoughts, bad.

With Rock done helping out and overfilling herself on even more treats, she lazily crawls back onto Serra’s lap and closes her eyes.

“Alright! This is the best one I’ve made yet. You really picked the perfect stuff to make it with,” Fenrir calls out to Cassiel.

“I put a lot of effort into finding good materials, so… it better be,” Cassiel says.

He swears he can see just a tiny bit of a spark in her eyes when she takes the spear. Whether it’s a good or a bad spark, he doesn’t know. “Alright, let the fishing challenge begin! You know how to spearfish?”

“Of course I do! Anybody can do it. If a bunch of naked cavemen can do it then I easily can,” Cassiel says, walking up to the stream. “There!” she shouts at the first fish she spots.

She throws her spear!

It misses, breaks against the rock it hits, and gets carried downstream.

Judging by the fact that she’s standing perfectly still and not making a single noise, he’s guessing that she’s… less than pleased. He’s almost scared of handing her the spare spear he made.

Cassiel turns around, snatches the spear from his hands, and then turns away. “You first!” she demands.

“Alright, just watch how I do i—”

“I said you first!”

Fenrir tries to look at her face, but all he can see is a bright red cheek.

Guess he’s going first.