Book 1: Chapter 60: Patch 10.0: The King, the Rod and the Harem

“I never want to go in there again,” Fenrir says, slouching over as he walks out of the Hermetic Scholars’ office.

Both Corwin and Rock are standing away from him.

“You may wish to do something about that fish scent stuck on you, captain,” Corwin says.

Rock barks in agreement.

“I… I didn’t know there were so many things to do with fish… he – he made me, he made a bow out of a swordfish and used fish bones as arrows…” Fenrir stutters, sounding like the PTSD-afflicted soldier from old-school war movie. He’s going to be having flashbacks of everything that happened in there. “Fish… fish scale armor…”

Fenrir loves fishing. Fenrir did not love the embarrassment felt as he wielded all manners of embarrassing fish weaponry and wore flaky fish scales as armor. What is he going to do when the girls log on? Neither of them is going to want to be anywhere near a boyfriend who smells like fish!

“I suppose that it did not help when one of our fellow adventurers went outside to gather a crowd to watch your tests. I must say, Fenrir, you drew quite the crowd,” Corwin says, trying to make Fenrir feel better, but it only makes him feel worse.

“I’m just going to jump into the ocean, let a shark eat me, and then you can tell everybody that I died somehow so that I don’t have to face any of them,” Fenrir says. Both his ears and tail are drooping.

“Apologies, Fenrir, but I do not believe that any of them would believe me.”

Fenrir whines like the part-wolf that he is and walks off toward the fishing shop that he bought the rod from.

Unfortunately, the shopkeeper has unsatisfying information regarding the rod. All he says is that it was dropped off by some cloaked stranger whom asked nothing for it.

The fact that it was dropped off by some mysterious, cloaked stranger only pisses Fenrir off even more. Now this whole thing is even more mysterious, and that really makes him want to get to the bottom of it.

He just hates mysteries and surprises. The only good surprise is one involving a girl and a sweater.

Well, other surprise things involving girls may be fine, too.

Speaking of, they should be getting in-game soon. That means he really has to figure out something to do about the stench permeating from him.

“Hey, Rod, turn into something that can wash me off or get rid of this smell,” Fenrir tries commanding his fishing rod “partner,” but what he gets are two pulses from its gem. “Screw you, too.”

“You got along with a rock well enough for it to turn into the rocky companion you have now, so why do you not just befriend the rod in the same way?” Corwin asks, having heard about Fenrir’s original love for Rock from Oleander.

“Rock never hooked my ear back when she was just a rock, she was helpful instead of making me run all over the place just for the right to use her, and she wasn’t a jerk.”

“You may wish to speak more kindly of the rod. What if it refuses to work even if your Standing remains positive?”

“Then I’ll let Cass throw it overboard so that she finally gets to do that. With how often she threatens throwing me overboard, I figure she really wants to try tossing something over.”

The three make it back to where The Shoebill is docked.

“You two can go onboard. I’m going to take a quick dip in the water and hope that it does something about this smell,” Fenrir says, looking for a good spot along the docks to climb back up onto them at.

He finds a spot where the pier hangs low enough for him to pull himself up onto it from the water, so he walks over to it and jumps right into the water with all of his clothes still on!

He remembers the last time he went swimming.

When he was a child, he and Aiko used to go to the local swimming pool together before everything happened and they moved away. It was always full of people, so he had to learn how to swim and hold his own in the water quickly.

Now he finds himself underwater in some of the purest, clearest blue water that he has ever seen!

Schools of fish swim around in the distance, there is a beautiful coral reef lining the seabed, and there’s also all sorts of stuff that has been dropped into the water! He sees shining coins, some rusted metal weapons, broken fishing rods – even in-game, people still manage to pollute the water. Fortunately, it is not nearly as bad as it is in reality now. The beauty vastly outweighs the waste.

Fenrir wants to swim around and explore longer, but he figures that he needs to get back onto the docks to dry off and get ready for the girls.

Surfacing from the water, he pulls himself onto the pier, stands up straight, and instinctually shakes just like a wet hound to dry off.

“You’re getting me wet, you bastard!” Cassiel shouts, trying to shield herself from Fenrir’s dog-like shaking.

Fenrir opens his eyes just in time to see Serra snerking from Cassiel’s words.

Both of them have water dripping off them now thanks to Fenrir.

“Shit, sorry, I had no idea you were there,” he apologizes, giving them a slight bow.

Cassiel huffs and crosses her arms.

“Got in and saw you jump in the water, so we came over here to wait,” Serra says.

“Yeah, sorry. I had to take a quick dip to wash off after… after… I don’t want to talk about it,” he says.

Serra and Cassiel look at each other with concern.

“Is it about the fish stuff? Corwin told us,” Serra says.

Fenrir hesitantly nods his head.

Cassiel places a comforting hand on his shoulder.

At least they understand.

Fenrir dries off with a cloth while telling the girls everything that he learned about the rod. Cassiel has heard of the gems before and greedily stares at the rod when he explains that the rod has one of them in it, and then she shouts at him telling him all about how almost all of the most important players in the game have weapons with these gems in them. If it wasn’t cemented in his mind before just how important and valuable the gems are, it is now.

When he’s finally finished drying himself off and talking about how annoying mysteries are, making sure that they both know just how desperately he wants to get to the bottom of the mystery just for the sake of knowing what the history of the rod is, Serra and Cassiel look at one another and nod.

“We want to take you somewhere,” Serra says.

The burning blush on Cassiel’s face immediately takes Fenrir’s mind to perverse places given the context.

“Where?” he asks.

“Love hotel,” Serra answers.

“Oh.”

Oh.

“You need a counter in case something happens,” Serra says. “If you die then we don’t know where you’ll be. We don’t want to get separated from you, so let us do this for you,” Serra explains.

“You – you don’t have to do it just so I have a spare counter,” Fenrir says.

“We also want to have sex.”

…

Oh.

Yeah, Serra’s power level is way too high for the total virgins that Fenrir and Cassiel are. “How… are you able to say that so confidently?”

“I can only talk here. There are lots of things I want to say, but I hate having to use text or my hands. So… I want to be honest and say exactly what I want here. Like, I love you.”

Fenrir’s heart skips a beat. “Are you sure? I mean, we’ve only been—”

“I love you, Ryouta.”

Fenrir’s ears and tail both stand straight up.

Serra’s cheeks finally give in to show the red that she’s been trying to hold back. “I love you,” she repeats.

“I—”

Cassiel cuts off Fenrir, “I l-love you too, you ba-bastard.”

Fenrir looks at Cassiel. She isn’t looking away like she usually would be when this flustered. Instead, she’s looking directly at him – waiting for a response to her feelings.

Both of them are waiting.

It may have only been one month in reality since he’s met them – two months if going by in-game time, but he has spent almost every day with them as much as he could. They have fought together, played together, trained together, fished together, and they have even met in real life and spent a day together there.

This all feels so sudden to him. Serra was just some naked girl in a bush and Cassiel was originally an enemy who stabbed him in the back and tried killing him. Yet, here they are, confessing their love to him far sooner than he thought they would.

“I love you too, both of you. I love you, Serra,” he says, looking Serra in the eyes, “and I love you, Cassandra,” he says, looking into her eyes now. He takes a heavy breath after saying that. His hands are shaking, his heart is racing, and he feels like he's going to be sick but in a confusingly good way.

He doesn’t know if this is true love or not. For all he knows, he only cares about them as much as he does because they’re the most perfect, reciprocative girls that he has ever known. Maybe this is just infatuation or the strongest crush that he has ever felt.

Regardless of what it is, he romantically cares more about these two girls than he’s ever felt towards any other girls before, so he will place his faith in this being love.

Serra tugs on Cassiel’s hand, drawing her attention. “I love you, too,” Serra says to the taller woman.

“Y-you, too,” Cassiel replies. It may not be a proper confession, but Serra knows not to expect much more from Cassiel seeing as how she looks redder than most tomatoes.

“Hotel. Let's do it before the king gets here,” Serra says, pulling them along.

Fenrir never imagined that Serra would be leading not only him, but Cassiel as well, to a love hotel. He didn’t even think love hotels would be a thing in a pirate city, but given that the game is played by a bunch of perverts, he knows he shouldn’t be surprised.

Nothing else is said on the way there, and Serra has to hold each of their hands to make sure that neither of them tries escaping.

In the end, despite him being the first one to confess feelings for the girls and asking them out, it ended up being Serra to really confess the full extent of her feelings first while leading the charge to take their relationship to the next level.

Fenrir doesn't know if this is his harem or hers at this point.