Book 1: Chapter 26: Patch 5.0: All Your Ship Are Belong To Us

Cassiel may not have the personality to match her angelic looks, but her combat style is one of pure grace and form. Fenrir can only watch in awe as he gets his first proper look at her fighting.

She moves around evading the enemy guild leader’s attacks as if she’s weightless. Like a leaf on the wind, she soars around him and waits for an opportunity to attack. Her sword isn’t sharp enough to cut through his armor if it’s made as well as it looks, so she needs to find a weak spot.

Fortunately for the graceful fighter, her opponent is too fueled by rage and a desire for revenge to catch her.

Cassiel stands still. Her opponent is breathing heavily and panting from how much she’s been leading him around. “Finally tired, you bitch?!” he shouts at her, charging straight toward her.

“Dumbass,” Fenrir says under his breath.

Cassiel dodges to the guild leader’s left, ducking underneath the enemy’s blade, and stabs her sword right into where his left arm used to be!

The exposed flesh being stabbed results in him screaming out of pain again. He retaliates with a swift swing of his sword in her direction!

She doesn’t have enough time to jump away, and he’s swinging at a downward angle which will make ducking useless. Her only safe path is up. With her sword thrust deep into his torso, she jumps up onto it as his blade flies underneath her.

Her next move makes Fenrir whistle from just how impressive it is.

Cassiel takes the spear Fenrir made for her off of her back and uses her sword, still stuck in the enemy leader, as a springboard to propel herself upward! She has just enough time in the air to flip herself over, aim her spear downward, and thrust.

Her spear may only have a tip made of stone, and her enemy may have a morion protecting his head, but he makes the mistake of looking up to try and track her.

The stone-tipped spear meets his exposed face and digs right into him. Fenrir doesn’t see much detail given that he has traumatic content disabled, but he does see her spear sink down into his body until it can’t go any farther.

Cassiel swings around the shaft of the spear and jumps off, landing a couple of feet away.

Her opponent falls to his knees with his head stuck looking upward due to the spear impaling him.

To top it off, she flips her hair back over her shoulders and takes her sweet time turning back to look at her slain opponent.

Fenrir has a massive grin on his face. “Cass! That was awesome! Holy shit, I had no idea you could fight like that. You would have kicked my ass even if it wasn’t an ambush,” Fenrir praises her, making her smug expression even smugger.

“Of course I could have,” Cassiel says, hands on her hips in a triumphant pose. She walks over to her dead enemy and picks up the sword he was carrying. It’s simple steel falchion. She looks disappointed with it, but she picks it up regardless before taking her own sword out from the side of his corpse.

Both Cassiel and Fenrir duck when they hear more eruptions coming from the ship. Another volley of cannonballs tear through what little is left of the village. Any members of Stinky Garlic left alive are now running for the fields.

“Care if I leave the spear? I don’t feel like pulling it out of him,” she says.

“Not at all. I think it’s already done way more than we could’ve asked of it,” Fenrir replies.

With a nod, Cassiel stands up and looks around the village. “I don’t think there’s anything else we can do here. Your plan worked, Fenny.”

“Are we on a nickname basis now, Cassy?”

She points both of her swords at him. “Don’t make me kill you.”

Fenrir raises both of his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. Come on, let’s get over to the ship before they blow our heads off. I think they’re having too much fun with the cannons.”

He stops by the dead enemy leader. This is a game, after all, so looting his enemies is to be expected. Unfortunately, he finds the armor to be really tacky. It’s not worth stripping off of him. The garlic-shaped shield, however, would make for a good trophy. He takes the severed arm out of the shield’s straps and tosses it over to the rest of its body.

With the garlic-shaped shield in hand, the duo head for the ship. Fenrir makes sure to pat Rock’s head on the way over. “How’re you doing, girl?”

Rock barks. He can feel her trying to wag her tail underneath his armor.

Oleander sees Fenrir and Cassiel running up the pier. He unties the rope keeping the ship held to the end of the pier but quickly replaces reties it when he sees Fenrir turn around for something. “What are you doing?!” Oleander shouts. Cassiel turns around to look as well.

A single shack is left standing on the beach.

Fenrir runs over to it and looks inside. All Oleander, Cassiel, and Serra can see is his tail excitedly wagging from whatever he’s found.

They are all disappointed in themselves for not expecting what they see next.

Fenrir comes running back up the pier with not only the enemy leader’s shield, but two fishing rods hugged between his arms. That huge smile is back on his face.

“I just knew there were going to be rods in there!” he shouts to them.

Serra is the only one amused.

With Cassiel and Fenrir on the sloop, Oleander unties the ship and heads back to the ship’s wheel. There is a small rise at the back of the ship where the wheel is situated. Before it is a small room with stairs leading down into the hull, and a single mast stands tall from the center of the deck. The front of the ship has a raised foredeck that the bowsprit protrudes from. There are six cannons in total, three for each side, but all six have been temporarily moved to the side facing the beach.

Reloading just three cannons would have taken too long and not allowed them to fire as frequently as they were. By having all six cannons on one side and loaded at once, they were able to fire one set and then the other before having to reload.

Everything went exactly as planned.

Fenrir hears somebody jump down behind him. Turning around, he sees Serra holding the Stinky Garlic’s flag that she removed from the top of the mast. He looks up to the top of the mast and then back down at Serra. “You got that already? Nice,” he praises her.

Serra looks satisfied. “I like pirate movies,” she explains.

“How’d it feel to fire some cannons?”

She gives him a thumbs-up. “I want to do it again.”

“I thought you didn’t want to fight?”

“Firing cannons is different.”

“Alright, then you can be in charge of firing the cannons. Congrats on your promotion!”

Serra’s smile grows even wider.

“First Mate Serra, set sails!” Oleander shouts from the back.

Serra drops the flag and unfurls the sails.

They sail south, but there is still one crewmember that needs picking up.

“I see him!” Cassiel shouts from the bow of the ship.

On the coast, running and looking as if he’s going to trip from every second stride he takes, is Bonekraka. Behind him, just as exhausted, are five guards unaware that their village was just leveled and razed.

The guards wave the ship down and point at Bonekraka. They have no idea who’s manning it.

Every cannon has been reloaded. Cassiel, Fenrir, Serra, and Oleander stand behind four of the six cannons with matches ready to light the cannons’ linstocks.

The four cannons go off at the same time, sending cannonballs barraging the guards’ position! Only one of them gets hit, and it’s a direct hit. It is a very gruesome sight when Bonekraka turns around to look at what just happened. The four remaining guards run for the fields.

The Divine Brigade has won another day.

Oleander pulls the ship up as close as it can get to the shore without beaching it. Bonekraka isn’t happy about having to swim the rest of the way, but he does so.

Fenrir and Cassiel help pull the hulking orc onboard.

“Stupid guards. Could hear cannons from here but never ran back,” Bonekraka says, taking deep breaths between words.

“Yeah, they were all really stupid, but I’m not going to complain,” Fenrir says. “Good job being the distraction.”

Cassiel tosses the falchion to Bonekraka. “This is for giving me this sword.” She taps the one sheathed on her waist that Bonekraka gave her. “It looks more like your style than mine,” she explains.

“Spasibo.”

Cassiel looks confused.

“It means thanks,” Fenrir explains.

“Oh. It’s nothing,” she says, returning to the bow of the ship to keep a lookout.

“Another victory for the Divine Brigade!” Oleander declares, jumping onto Bonekraka and nuzzling his cheek against the orc’s face. Naturally, a large and green hand is raised up to push the deer-trap-boy away.

“Great work, all of you. Couldn’t have done it without every single one of you. Even you, Rock,” Fenrir says, patting Rock’s head. She’s still safely seated inside of his chest armor and only poking her head up out of it.

“So, where to?” Oleander asks.

“Hey, Cass, where’s that pirate city at?” Fenrir shouts out to her.

She comes back to the group. “Port Tugator?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“We’ll reach it as long as we follow the shore south and skip the strait.”

“We? Going to stick around with us, Cass?”

“What else am I supposed to do? I’m a traitor to my old faction, so unless I want to quit playing, I might as well stick around.”

“By the way, he said he’d have us hunted down and reset over and over. Could he actually do that?”

“Yeah,” Cassiel says, sounding guilty.

“I thought you were implying he was basically a nobody with no real respect or power?” Fenrir asks.

“We-well, I just wanted to piss him off more.”

“So in other words, now he’s really going to have us hunted down.”

Cassiel looks down. “I… got ahead of myself, sor—”

“That’s exactly how we like it. The more pissed off they are, the better,” Fenrir interrupts her apology.

She looks up at him confused. “You – you enjoy being hunted? What kind of masochistic bastard wants to be hunted down by the most powerful faction of the world? Do you even understand how powerful the Augus Empire is?”

“Yup, I’m only a masochistic sometimes, and nope. But, the more powerful they are, the more fun they are.”

“We’re talking about the Augus Empire. They have over ten million players alone and control the largest territory in the game. Everybody wants to join them to be a part of the strongest faction, and here you are happy that our faces are going to be spread through every single one of its vassalized guilds?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“They have dragon knights! Archangels! Entire fleets of ships! Blessings! Livia is considered one of the smartest game strategists of all time! Real governments have even tried recruiting her!”

“Meh,” Fenrir says with a shrug. “We’ve dealt with worse.”

“No, no you haven’t. They are the strongest enemy you could make in any game, ever!”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“How – what are – you’re,” Cassiel looks around to the rest of the crew. Bonekraka is picking at his teeth, Oleander is steering the ship while swaying side to side and humming, and Serra is casually lifting Rock out of Fenrir’s armor to pet her.

Not a single one of them look bothered by anything she’s saying.

“You’re not planning on trying to take down the entire empire, are you?” Cassiel asks.

“Of course not,” Fenrir answers.

“Then what are you going to do?! Why don’t you care about any of this?! What the hell is your plan now, you bastard?”

“I want to go fishing.”

If there was a world record for having the blankest stare of all time, Cassiel just broke it.