Book 6: Chapter 48:

The Shoebill was not planned to take part in the battle, so the cannons that normally sat on its deck were now placed along the edge of the river right in front of where the captured serpents were. They weren’t the only cannons there, either. A dozen cannons in total were ready to fire at the serpents after some quick aiming adjustments. Fortunately, due to the size of the serpents and a limited area for them to move around in, they were rather easy targets.

And that wasn’t all.

“Now! Fire!” Fenrir ordered, standing behind one of the cannons himself. It was strange giving an order to fire a cannon without Serra around, but she was busy firing upon the enemies invading the beach.

Of the twelve shots that were fired, seven of them managed to hit the trapped serpents. Of the five serpents trapped, three were hit, and those who were hit proved to be even more vulnerable to such attacks than Fenrir had hoped for. The cannonballs punched through their bodies with ease and left sizable holes in the serpents. However, as vulnerable as their bodies might have seemed, they also behaved as if the cannonballs had no effect on them. They were just as zombified looking as all of the monsters coming unto the shore. Covered in bloodied gashes with missing scales, chunks of flesh missing from their bodies, and with one of them even missing each of its eyes, the serpents felt no pain and were unbothered by such attacks.

However, Fenrir quickly learned two things.

One, if these serpents had one of those pressurized water beam attacks like Ilo did, then they probably would have used it already to deal with everybody surrounding them. That was the deadliest attack of Ilo, so, if these enemy serpents weren’t capable of such an attack, then it was safe to attack them from range. Unfortunately, the serpents were happy to thrash around and bite at those who tried to stab them with spears from the shore. A couple of unfortunate players had their bodies ripped into shreds from the deadly fangs of the serpents while trying to thrust their spears into them.

Two, the serpents may not have been bothered by having holes shot through their bodies, but they still had holes shot through their bodies. If somebody fell in the water with the serpents, they were dead. These serpents were fast, agile, and had deadly fangs that could easily tear through a body. But that was all they had going for them. As long as they weren’t fought in the water, they could easily be avoided. And as long as people stayed away from their mouths, they had no true method of attacking.

“Rod, I’ve got no idea if this is going to work, but I think it’s worth a try, right?” Fenrir asked, not expecting an answer even though Rod was giving him one without him ever noticing it. “If their bodies are as weak as they look… all we have to do is chop them up a bit, don’t we? And to do that, what better way than to fish them out?”

Fenrir took Rod off his hip, and Rod instantly transformed into an appropriate version of himself to show that he was ready. And this version just so happened to be that of a fishing rod with a chain for a line. With that, Fenrir cast Rod’s “line” and managed to get it wrapped around the neck of the nearest serpent.

“You’re not breaking through Rod!” Fenrir shouted at the serpent as it tried to tear the chain off from around its neck. When that didn’t work, the serpent switched to try and yank Fenrir into the water by pulling its entire body backward. Fenrir replied by digging his heels into the dirt and calling for help. “You!” he shouted at one of the players standing nearby. “Grab me!” He did good standing his ground considering what he was up against, but the serpent was still managing to slowly slide him closer while digging the dirt up with heels.

And even with the nearby player who looked muscular enough to make a difference wrapping his arms around Fenrir’s waist, the serpent continued to drag them both. It wasn’t too much of a problem since Fenrir could loosened Rod’s line from around the serpent’s neck whenever he wanted to, but he really wanted his new plan to work. It would be the safest way of killing the serpents, especially since now they were being careful to not poke their bodies above the water. That made hitting them with the cannons even more difficult.

It started to look like being risky with thrusting spears into the water from the edge of it was their only choice of reliably killing the serpents without wasting too much time. The rest of the battlefield still needed to be tended to, and there was no way of knowing if the serpents might eventually break out either on their own or with the help of the other monsters. They needed to be killed, immediately, while they were still trapped.

Inch by inch, he was pulled toward the water.

“Damn it, this isn’t going to work,” Fenrir said with a disappointed sigh. “Alright, Rod. Let’s—”

“Got you,” a feminine voice was quick to say. When Fenrir turned to look at who it was, the man who was holding onto him before was gone… and there stood Mister Smiles. With Mister Smile’s assistance, the pull toward the water was completely stopped. If anything, they were even able to take a few steps backward as Fenrir reeled the line in.

His plan was working after all.

As for Mister Smile’s voice, he figured that he must have misheard him. Or Mister Smiles simply had a feminine voice. That was fine. “Thanks for the help,” Fenrir said.

Mister Smiles nodded instead of speaking this time.

“Let’s reel these bastards in. Though, too bad they probably wouldn’t taste any good. Not too sure I want to eat zombie-serpent-fish-monster-things.”

Fenrir heard what sounded like a held-back chuckle underneath the mask of Mister Smiles. That was the first time he ever heard the other make such a noise, so he was satisfied.

“Even worse… this is taking too long. There’s too much resistance coming from the serpent, and we’d have to repeat this another four times.”

“Oh, Fenny, Fenny, Fenny. You really are useless without me, aren’t you?” Oleander asked. “You’re proving why you’re the long-term planner and not the short-term strategician. Let me guess, you want to pull them up onto the shore where everybody can hack away at its body to cut it up into a bunch of little pieces while you keep the head busy?”

“S-something like that.”

“And you were seriously going to try to fish them out all on your own?”

“Being stubborn has worked for me before.”

“It’s also gotten you killed before. A lot.”

“Well, we can agree to disagree.”

“There’s no disagreeing with that, Fenny. Fact is fact.”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

Oleander sighed with a smile before taking a couple of thorned roses from his satchel and holding them toward the serpent that Fenrir was struggling with. A moment later and these plants turned into long, spiky tendrils that shot forth and wrapped around the serpent’s body underneath where Rod’s line was. All Oleander had to do then was constrict the viny tendrils tighter and tighter around the serpent, forcing its oversized thorns through the flesh that gave way underneath the constrictive force.

The two tendrils managed to make it about halfway to the center of the neck before the rest of the serpents realized what was happening and bit onto them to tear them apart.

“Dang. I was hoping that they’d be too selfish to help out,” Oleander said.

“So much for being the master of short-term strategies,” Fenrir teased.

“Did I say I was done yet? Unlike you, I’m smart enough to ask for your girlfriend’s help. Hey! Eva! We need you over here!”

Fenrir tilted his head at first as he tried to think about what Oleander was doing, and then he figured it out. “I would have thought of that if you gave me some more time.”

“Probably, but I thought of it before you which is all that really matters,” Oleander said with a wink before sticking his tongue out at him.

Eva then landed right next to them. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Can you zap that water?” Oleander asked her. “Pretty please? We’re trying to fish but the fish are being too stubborn, so we want to electrocute them and your thunderbird wing is OP.”

“I can, but using enough energy to actually have any effect on them is probably going to leave me dried up for the rest of the battle,” Eva answered.

“There won’t be a better use for your power than now. Probably. So, zap?”

“You’re going to have to be quick with whatever you want to do. I don’t know how long it’ll affect them for.”

“Don’t worry about that. All we need you to worry about is electrocuting them to the best of your ability.”

“I’ll try,” Eva said and approached the water.

“By the way, don’t get too close. They’re very chompy.” Just as Oleander said that, one of the serpents thrust its head out past the surface of the water to take a bite at Eva. Fortunately, Oleander’s warning reached her in time and helped her jump out of the way without taking any damage.

“Thanks, Olly,” Eva said.

“No probs! Gotta look out for my boytoy’s girlfriends since he’s not.”

“He-hey,” Fenrir said. “I’m looking out for them. I just knew that you’d handle it and warn her since you’re taking charge right now.”

“Uh-huh. You’re full of excuses today, aren’t you?” Oleander asked while trailing a finger up along Fenrir’s chest. “Careful, Fenny, or I’m going to steal your girls from you.”

“You’re too gay to do that.”

Oleander let out a loud laugh that left his hands on his gut before shaking his head and saying, “I know, right?”

While Fenrir and Oleanded joked around, Eva flew up into the air over the river and gained enough height to make sure that the serpents wouldn’t be able to reach her if she tried. “I’m going to need to dive for this! Stop any that try to get me!” she shouted.

“We’ll cover you!” Oleander shouted back at her. “Fenny, let go of the one you’ve got hooked.”

“Done,” Fenrir said as Rod unwrapped himself from around the serpent’s neck.

“Let’s intercept any who try to get her. There’s no way that they won’t realize something is up with her.”

“Will do. This time, I’ll protect her before you do.”

“Oh? You wanna race to see who can protect your girlfriend first? I’ll probably let you win since I’ve already hurt your ego enough, Fennypoo.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Heh, so honest. Alright. Looks like she’s about to start.”

Surely enough, Eva was ready. She soared even higher for a few moments before tightly wrapping her wings around her, turning upside down in the air, and then dived directly toward the river below where the serpents were captured.

Two serpents stuck their heads out from the water to try and stop the woman, but they were each stopped instead by Fenrir, Rod, and Oleander. Fenrir and Rod had their chain-like line, and Oleander had some more of those tendrils of his. However, when a third serpent thrust upward in an attempt to intercept Eva, neither of them could stop it.

But the other players could.

Those who were still at their cannons had reloaded and opened now opened fire on the third serpent. Enough holes were torn into a short section of the serpent’s body that everything above it could no longer be properly supported, resulting in the serpent crashing back down into the water where a couple of players brave enough to stand close thrust their spears into the serpent.

Eva’s path was clear as the remaining two, free serpents didn’t dare try to attack her after seeing what happened to the others. Instead, what they did was swim to the far gate and get as close to it as they could to put distance between them and Eva.

Just a few feet above the water, Eva unfurled her wings with her thunderbird wing pointing downward to transmit a massive shock of crackling energy into the water below. This energy coursed through the serpents’ bodies put them into a seizure-like state as they violently thrashed around without direction. Though, the two serpents farthest away were only minimally affected.

“Now!” Oleander shouted and began to pull back with the tendrils around the serpent he caught. Meanwhile, Fenrir did the same thing with the serpent Rod was wrapped around, albeit via reeling in rather than pulling in.

Both of them managed to get the serpents’ heads up onto land, and they didn’t stop there. They tried to pull as much of the serpents out of the water as they could.

“Chop away, boys!” Oleander shouted to the rest of the players standing around.

A few battle cries later and the nearby players took their weapons and brought them against the grounded serpents. They thrust their spears, sliced their swords, and chopped with their axes until the head of each serpent was separated from its body. The rest of their bodies slid back into the water, pulled by their own weight, while the severed-and-still-living heads remained on the ground.

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“I really hate things that refuse to die,” Fenrir groaned. “Rod, let’s finish this one off.”

Rod released his chain from around what was left of the serpent’s neck and took on his sword form, allowing Fenrir to stab him straight through the serpent’s head between its eyes.

Even that didn’t stop the serpent from trying to take a bite out of Fenrir – at least, it failed to stop the serpent at first. Its struggling came to a slow end thanks to the sword thrust into its brain.

The serpent that Oleander caught was finished off even faster as a couple of the players with heavy, bladed weapons decided to chop away at its head.

“Fenny, you’re not gonna try to feed us these serpents or anything, right?” Oleander asked.

“No. I like fresh fish that was previously alive. Not rotten undead fish,” Fenrir answered.

“What’s the problem?” Eva asked.

Then the two men heard it.

They heard what sounded like fangs tearing into something before hearing a very… squishy chewing noise.

They didn’t want to look at what made the sound. After all, they already knew. It couldn’t have been anything else.

Yet as much as they did not want to look – as much as they knew they would regret it if they did, they gulped in unison and turned their heads to look at the source of the sound.

“It has a bit of a funky taste to it, like it was fermented, but it tastes fine other than that,” Eva said, wiping a squishy and pink chunk away from her lips. When they looked down at what she was holding, they saw her holding up the severed head of the serpent that Fenrir killed. It was too large to completely pick up, so she just had to grab it and hold it upward so that she could lean down and bite into it. “Well, the meat is alright. The brain is nothing special and tastes just like any other brain.”

“Eva,” Fenrir said, “how… how many different brains have you eaten before?”

“In real life? Only lamb. In-game? Uh… probably forty-seven different species now? I like to try and eat every part of the body. It would be wasteful if I didn’t and, you know, for science. I wonder how their eyes taste.”

“Fenny,” Oleander said, “not many things make me sick… but I think I might actually get sick.”

Fenrir rubbed the top of Oleander’s head between his antlers before telling Eva, “Can you please save the eyeball eating for later? Preferably when you’re alone or with likeminded individuals who won’t throw up from you eating zombie serpent eyes?”

Of course, by the time that he asked that, Eva’s mouth was already stuffed and chewing on something. When he looked down at the serpent’s head again… one of the eyes was missing.

“Mmm! It’s good!” Eva said with a bright sparkle in her eyes. “That – that’s a serious delicacy! I bet you could make a ton of money selling those to people as long as you lie to them about what it is! Fen, you’ve got to try it.”

“I’ll pass,” Fenrir said without any hesitation.

“You sure? Well, maybe Cass will like it.”

“I promise you that none of them are going to be willing to try it. Nell is the only one who might try it, and that’s only if you force her to since she could probably twist that into some sort of erotic fantasy.”

“Well… maybe I’ll go fly some down to the Scholars’ place so that they can have a taste.”

“Just as long as you don’t try getting any of us to eat it.”

“Can we please kill the other serpents instead of talk about eating fish eyes?” Oleander asked. “My maiden heart can’t handle this. Well, maiden stomach. Same thing.”

“They’re really not the same thing.”

“Something something, reject reality, substitute my own, something something.” Oleander rolled his eyes.

“Perfect point. You must have learned that from somebody really smart.”

“I’m going to have to suck that ego right out of you someday.”

“I’ve – I’ve never heard that one before. I like it, though.”

“Then pet my head some more.”

Even though they were still technically in the middle of a massive battle, Fenrir returned his hand to the top of Oleander’s head to give him some more head pats.

“Now, let’s hurry up and fish those last two out,” Fenrir said. “Though, we could just ask Eva to vore them to death.”

“No,” Oleander said. “Let’s—”

Before Oleander could finish his suggestion, they heard a new banging coming from the far gate. They were worried since it sounded far louder than when the captured serpents tried to break out of it. Yet, when they looked to see who it was making the noise, they saw Ilo.

“I think she wants the honors of finishing this fight herself now that the numbers are more even,” Oleander said.

“Yeah. I think our favorite serpent wants some revenge. She’d probably be upset if we did all of the serpent slaying on our own,” Fenrir said.

“Think we should raise the gate? It’s still one against three… well, against two. I don’t think that third one is going to be moving around much after getting filled with holes.”

“It took five serpents to wound her before and they didn’t even kill her. I think she’ll be able to handle two serpents on her own.”

“Maybe she’s hungry,” Eva said.

Fenrir and Oleander chose to ignore Eva for obvious reasons, especially since she was still holding onto the one serpent head that seemed to have more and more chunks missing from where it was severed every time they looked at it.

“Let’s raise the gate,” Fenrir said.

“Time for a serpent versus serpent showdown,” Oleander replied. “Hey! You guys!” he shouted at those who were standing near the gate that Ilo wanted to break through. “Open the gate up for her! We’re going to let her kick their asses!”

Everybody was excited to see what was about to happen, so they didn’t waste any time in lifting the gate up to allow Ilo into where the enemy serpents were trapped.

And Ilo immediately got to work.

Just as the last two serpents were finishing recovering from Eva’s zapping, Ilo bit onto the neck of the nearest serpent and crushed it between her fangs. She tore right through the rotted scales and flesh with ease, and then she threw the head out of the water onto the ground.

“Dang… that’s the one that didn’t have any eyes,” Eva said.

“Eva, please,” Fenrir said.

“Please, Eva,” Oleander said.

A subtle smile almost threatened to show itself on Eva’s face, but she held it back. She couldn’t let them find out that she discovered just how fun it was to mess with them when it came to serpent eyes. Their reactions were way too good.

And if she really wanted to be scientific about it, she had to test various other methods of messing with them to determine which resulted in the greatest reaction.

It was time for a new experiment. Well, after all of this was over, anyways.

Back to the serpents, while Ilo may have easily killed the eyeless serpent before it even had a chance of fighting back against her, the final fighting-capable serpent offered a better fight. It managed to coil around Ilo’s body and even latched onto her neck with its fangs, piercing deep into her flesh after shattering through the fangs.

But Ilo toughed toughed through the pain and kept her head turned, her eyes locked on her enemy, without showing any signs of pain. There was no easy way for her to break free from this grappling attack, though, so she did what nobody watched her expected her to do.

Ilo threw herself onto land to smash the serpent between her and the ground before thrashing and rolling around. The back half of her body stayed submerged, but her upper half—which was what the enemy was clinging to—rolled around on the ground like an alligator would with a death roll. Every roll weakened the serpent’s grip on her neck until it was eventually forced to let go. Before it could escape back into the water, she was the one who grabbed onto its neck now, but she didn’t bite all the way through like with her first victim. Instead, she clamped down just enough to keep the serpent’s neck between her jaws as she rolled around some more in true death roll style. The serpent desperately thrashed around to try and break free before giving up on that to instead try to roll with Ilo, but neither plans worked. Ilo’s body was long enough to trap some of the serpent underneath her length as she rolled with the rest of the serpent, twisting its body more than it was ever meant to be twisted.

It didn’t take much effort after that for the head to get twisted right off from the rest of the serpent’s body. That made two serpents who were beheaded by Ilo, and the battle against the smaller, enemy serpents was officially won. There was only one serpent left with its head connected to its body, but there were so many holes blasted into it that it could no longer move properly and was stuck at the bottom of the river.

Ilo dove into the water for a few moments before resurfacing with the crippled serpent. It took all of the strength in her body to do so, but she managed to actually swing the entire serpent into the air to come crashing down on the ground. She did so on the opposite side of the river, too, so as to not accidentally crush any of her friends with its body.

Now, to finalize her revenge and to put on a good show of it, she raised herself up over the water and began her signature move that everybody loved so much.

Following a load roar, Ilo unleashed a beam of pressurized water that traveled across the ground as it approached the final serpent. This beam first tore through its tail, then its twisted body, before finally cutting clean through the serpent’s head. With the beam still ongoing, she then lifted her head and pointed it toward the massive serpent overseeing the battle.

But her most powerful attack did absolutely nothing against the overwhelming serpent. There was the problem of distance with her attack being less effective against targets that were farther away, but the grand serpent didn’t even look at her. It stayed motionless as it watched the battle below, paying not even the slightest bit of attention to the harmless attack.

Any cheering that there would have been from watching Ilo utterly annihilate the final serpent was prematurely ended when they saw how ineffective her attack was against the greatest serpent of them all.

Even Eva, who wanted to joke about the massive serpent’s eyes, found herself unable to do so.

“The real battle hasn’t even begun yet,” Fenrir said. “All we’re doing are basically fighting trash mobs. The actual boss battle hasn’t started.”

“Yeah, basically,” Oleander said. “But let’s appreciate a win when we get a win. We finished those serpents off, so now Ilo can help us out at the beach without worrying about any more serpents coming for her, right? As long as she doesn’t get swarmed by serpents, there aren’t any ground forces that can pose a risk to her. Also, Fenny, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“What is it?”

“Why is uh… why’s that guy been holding onto you this entire time?”

Fenrir looked down at his waist only to see that a pair of strong, muscular hands were still holding him. Then when he looked behind him, he saw that creepy, smiling face of Mister Smiles directly behind him. Naturally, this caused him to jump straight out of Mister Smile’s grasp.

Mister Smiles reacted in a similar way by jumping backward and raising her arms in front of her as she frantically shook her costumed head. “Did-didn’t mean ta!” she shouted, her feminine voice and accent slipping out which caused her to hold her hands over her costume’s mouth. The voice caused Oleander to raise an eyebrow, but Fenrir didn’t seem to think anything of it.

“It’s uh – it’s alright,” Fenrir said. “Both of us just must have been really distracted by everything that was going on. Thanks for helping me out earlier. Anyways, uh, you and Eva should probably get back to the beach. Me and Olly are going to brainstorm some things and then we’ll head over.”

Mister Smiles nodded her head and hurried off without saying anything else. Eva followed behind her. Even if she could no longer use her thunderbird’s wing, she still had a powerful body capable of physically beating down most enemies.

As for Oleander, he looked at Mister Smiles and stroked his chin. “So, that’s how it is,” he said.

“What?” Fenrir asked.

“Nothin’! So… any idea on how to defeat that oversized snake?”

As if she was waiting for such perfect timing, a booming roar came from over the mountains that demanded attention. Even the grand serpent who was previously unbothered by everything else turned its head to look up at the mountains.

“Yeah,” Fenrir answered. “Her.” He pointed to the mountains.

The cavalry finally arrived, and the cavalry consisted of one, massive dragon named Fraydranth.