Book 2: Chapter 57: Patch 10.0: Something Stupid

Yet, as much as Fenrir wants to tear out Alexander’s neck from the feral instinct urging him onward, Alexander is not so easily defeated.

Alexander lets go of his sword to repeatedly punch Fenrir in the side of his head. His metal gauntlet only adds to the pain that Fenrir feels with every blow. Swordplay is not all that Alexander knows either as he manages to use his legs and single available arm to reverse positions with Fenrir and pin him down to the ground instead.

The only good thing about getting pinned down is that the sword is forced out from Fenrir’s abdomen. Aside from that, Fenrir is quickly turning into a bloodied mess as Alexander relentlessly slams his fist into Fenrir’s face.

Nell lifts her head and looks at what is happening.

Her beloved hero is pinned down on the ground with blood puddling beneath him and covering his face. This may just be a game, and she may have traumatic content disabled, but that does not prevent her from seeing the aftermath of Fenrir’s face getting brutalized.

But Fenrir has not given up yet as he struggles against Alexander, grabbing his fist to stop him from punching him any further, and Nell has not given up either.

Nell uses her tail to get up onto her feet. Walking is difficult with how tightly she has been chained up, but with how distracted the men are, neither notice her approach until it is too late. She whips her serpentine tail around right into Alexander’s head! The rough scales coating it grate against his flesh as the force of the blow knocks him off of Fenrir.

Alexander immediately gets back up and looks at her. The cloth that was previously tied around her head has been loosened enough to reveal her left eye, so he looks away from her before she has a chance of controlling him.

She may be chained up, but Fenrir is the one on the verge of death. Alexander is torn between which one of them he should kill first. Killing Fenrir would be the easiest but killing Nell while he still lives would piss off the wolf even more. Plus, killing her first will prevent him slipping up and accidentally looking at her. Killing her without looking at her might prove troublesome, but with the wolf hardly alive on the ground and her chained up, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

But first, Alexander grabs the nearest sword on the ground and cuts apart the fishing line that has been holding back his right hand.

He then charges at Nell with the intent to finally kill her. Not letting her see his eyes means not looking directly in front of him, though, which means that he doesn’t notice that Fenrir is the one standing before him.

When he looks up at Fenrir’s eyes, he sees eyes glowing green and his forearms twisted into canid form, large claws protruding from his fingers.

“I got you up, now it is your duty to finish the fight, yes?” Nell asks, releasing control of her hero.

“Thanks for the assist,” Fenrir says, hardly able to stand on his own, but he doesn’t need to stand. He just needs to fall forward while swinging his arms as powerfully as he can.

Alexander stops his charge but does so too late. Fenrir’s monstrous arms have already reached him. With Fenrir’s left arm grabbing onto Alexander by the neck, his right arm swipes down at Alexander’s chest and pierces through the armor with his wolfish claws.

Alexander’s eyes go wide when he looks down at his chest. Five feral claws have punctured his armor and tore into his chest. The arm attached to those claws looks like a wolf’s leg, but the rest of Fenrir aside from his ears and tail are clearly human still.

Fenrir is only able to stay standing by leaning against Alexander’s body.

Alexander takes a few steps back, bumping into the wall of the captain’s quarters, and then tries to raise his arm wielding the sword.

Fenrir takes his hand away from Alexander’s neck and stabs its claws into his opponent’s arm, causing Alexander’s arm to fall limply to its side and the sword to the ground.

“Nell, do me a favor,” Fenrir grunts, looking over at Rod. He may not feel the full extent of the pain from the damage inflicted by Alexander, but he still feels half of it. “Hand me Rod.”

It takes Nell a couple of moments to walk over to Rod, pick him up, and then bring him over to Fenrir, but she does and Fenrir takes Rod into his hand with the hand that just disabled Alexander’s arm.

“You’re lucky that I don’t have my blessing, wolf. Your Feral wouldn’t be able to stand up against an angel,” Alexander says, spitting blood onto Fenrir’s face.

“That’s a boring way of saying that you’re mad you lost,” Fenrir says, spitting some blood onto Alexander’s face to make things even.

Before Alexander can spit even more blood onto Fenrir’s face, Fenrir presses Rod against Alexander’s neck. The claws embedded into Alexander’s chest get pulled out so that Fenrir can grip Rod with both hands to press with as much force as he can muster against Alexander’s neck.

“You’d get along with Olly with how you take rods into your throat,” Fenrir says and manages to get a giggle out of Nell.

While those two enjoy the somewhat comedic situation of Alexander being choked to death by a pole, Alexander tries pushing Fenrir away with his only working arm as he desperately struggles for air.

“Now that is a good expression, Alexa. It’s almost good enough to make me want to release you since I feel bad for you always losing, but you hurt Nell’s tail, and I really like that tail,” Fenrir mocks Alexander even more. His arms are back to their humanoid forms at this point as he is no longer giving in to his feral instinct, instead relying purely on his human side to cruelly choke Alexander by caving in his throat.

But then something is different.

The look in Alexander’s eyes changes as if some other soul is within him now. He is still struggling to survive, but that defiant spirit is gone and replaced by an imitation.

“He quit!” Nell says, trying not to laugh.

Not being able to kill Alexander himself isn’t that satisfying, but it’s more than made up for by knowing that he ragequit in his final moments.

Fenrir uses all of his strength to give Rod a final push against Alexander’s character’s neck, caving it in and killing the avatar that was just being controlled by the game’s overseer.

He hears fighting still raging on out on the ship’s deck, but he finds himself too weak to go and help out. Instead, he leans against the wall and slumps down onto the floor.

“I win, asshole,” Fenrir says.

“The hero always wins at the end of the day, does he not? A story without a victorious hero is not a very good story,” Nell says, crouching down in front of him.

“Surprising words to hear coming from you. I thought you loved tragic stories? The heroes never win those.”

“I may love tragedy, but I want only a happy ending for my own story, my hero.”

Their reunion is interrupted when a man is sent flying through the wall into the room! Going by the fact that he is bent in a way that no human should ever be bent, it is safe to assume that he is dead. But, what killed him?

Both Fenrir and Nell look through the new hole in the wall. Tabitha is standing on the other side of it with a proud smile and her bloodied, oversized hammer resting on her shoulder.

“Ya lovebirds done yet? Oi,” Tabitha says when she looks at Fenrir’s face, “ya ain’t goin’ to expand your harem if ya look like that. You are alive, right?”

“I can’t die until I get to pilot a mecha,” Fenrir tells her.

“Yep, you’re alive and the same old captain as ever.”

Behind Tabitha is Bonekraka brutally swinging his axes into a terrified, helpless man. The axes are not powerful enough to cut through the man’s armor, and they break more with every swing, but it doesn’t stop Bonekraka from violently shouting in the man’s face while trying to slash through his armor.

Then there’s Cassiel. She looks injured and bloodied, making Fenrir want to stand up and go kill whoever did that to her, but he sees who did it to her impaled onto the ship’s mast by her sword. She’s already healing herself, but when she sees Fenrir, she comes over to heal him.

“Sorry, my face got messed up,” Fenrir says.

“Just don’t let this happen to your real one. I like that one better, you bastard,” Cassiel replies.

“Come on, calling me a bastard while I’m almost dead here? I got a long pointy thing stabbed through me again. Only you’re supposed to do that to me.”

Cassiel stops healing him to heal Nell instead.