Book 9: Chapter 4:

After teasing Azalabulia, Serra came up to Fenrir with excited eyes and a desire to show off. There was no way that he could turn her down when she looked so excited, so he was happy to head out into the fields with her.

Rao caught them on the way out of the village and decided to come along, too, since he didn’t have anything better to do and also wanted a chance at showing off.

Then because both Fenrir and Rao were going, Rock and Shogun decided to tag along.

Then there was Azalabulia who was already with them.

The only one who was there but decided to stay back was Death. Death decided that flying up to the top of the tallest building in the town to take a nap there was a better idea.

Fenrir had never seen such a lazy dragon before. Death was the king of lazy dragons—the lazy dragon king.

Maybe it was because Death already learned how foolish it was to be anything but lazy when it went on that hunting trip where Azalabulia found him. Being not lazy didn’t exactly work out well for him. Well, then again, it did result in finding Azalabulia who was more than happy to pamper him.

But her pampering was often too overwhelming for the tiny dragon.

Once they made it out to the field where Serra wanted to show off, she took a deep breath and said, “Watch me. I’ve got this.”

“Go for it,” Fenrir said. “The stage is all yours.”

Serra nodded and stepped forward to get some distance between her and the others. Once she felt she was at a good spot, she grabbed onto her oversized pirate hat with one hand while holding her other arm out past her side. That was the trigger for her magic. While Azalabulia relied on wordy incantations, Serra relied on a cool pose.

A large, golden portal appeared in the air next to the hand sticking out to the side. It was far larger than anything Serra could manage the last time Fenrir trained with her, so the amount of progress she made was already immediately obvious.

The barrel of a cannon then stuck out through the portal, and the barrel itself was as large as Serra!

“Damn,” Fenrir said. “That’s big.”

“That’s what she said,” Serra said, looking back over at him with a snerk before resuming her concentration.

The barrel might not have been that big, but it was massive when compared to the tiny cannons Serra summoned before.

Now, taking her other hand off her hat, Serra formed a gun with her fingers and took aim. The cannon tracked where she pointed the barrel of her finger gun.

Once she had her target in sight, which just so happened to be a boulder next to some trees, she closed one eye and said, “Fire,” while pretending to fire her finger gun.

The cannon sticking out of the portal erupted with a blast of gunpowder, sending its cannonball toward the rock at high speed.

It missed, unfortunately. The cannonball ended up flying past the boulder and hitting a tree in the distance. Had the target been bigger, though, the lack of accuracy wouldn’t have mattered.

And cannons typically weren’t used against small targets.

“Dang,” Serra said as the portal and cannon barrel disappeared.

“Serra… that was awesome,” Fenrir said.

“But I missed.”

“You just need more practice. The more you practice that, the better you’ll get. Besides, if you can summon even more barrels, accuracy won’t matter as much when you can barrage an area with dozens of cannonballs.”

“I can summon more, but they get smaller with each one I summon. And they get small really fast.”

“That’s what she said.”

Serra snerked again. “I have to practice more to have a bunch of big ones that fire at the same time.”

“Now you’re just purposely setting me up it.”

“What if I can summon a bunch of dicks instead of cannons?”

“I saw a hentai like that once.”

“Ooh. Show me it later.”

“I have no idea if I’ll be able to find it, but I can try. Anyways, seriously, you should be proud of yourself. You’ve made a huge amount of progress. All you need to do is work on either aim or volume and you’ll be set.”

“I guess.”

“Also, your pose and way of firing the cannon was badass.”

“Thanks. I wanted to look cool.”

“You’re cool, Serra.”

“And wet.”

“Of course you are.”

“Now that I’ve showed you mine, you have to show me yours.”

“My what?”

“New tricks.”

“I… I don’t think I have any.” Fenrir took Rod off his hip and, without even needing to imply it, Rod transformed himself into the usual chains that wrapped around Fenrir’s arms. “This is kind of all we do. We haven’t really been practicing anything new lately. I guess we probably should.” While looking Rod over, Fenrir thought something to himself. Wait. If all the other NPCs got upgraded to be independent from Kadi… what about Rod? And wait again, I didn’t even consider before that he was probably controlled by her. I’m gonna have to try and talk to him again sometime soon. Maybe it’ll be worth setting up a new communication system with him instead of only relying on yes and no answers via flashes.

Fenrir had no idea if Rod was affected by Kadi’s latest change. He did know, though, that it would probably be a good idea to get in some more training with him at some point. It was also probably a good idea to talk to him some more. Lately, the only talking he ever really did with Rod was during fishing. And even then, they both enjoyed staying quiet to fish in peace most of the time.

Then he had an idea.

“Hang on. Cannons. Rod,” Fenrir said, “do you think it might be possible to make a small cannon out of yourself? Like… try transforming into a cannon on my right arm that’s tied to it by the chains.”

Surely enough, Rod was happy to oblige. He brought all of his chains to Fenrir’s right arm instead of spreading them out across both and then shifted the shape of them into that of a small cannon barrel. The barrel was strapped down against Fenrir’s arm by the chains looping around arm and cannon alike.

Serra was clearly impressed. “Ooh.”

“Now,” Fenrir continued, “try to fire.”

Rod’s gem, now on the back of the cannon, pulsed twice. That was a no.

“Dang. Well, it makes sense. Everything you make has to be connected to each other. To fire something would be to basically cut a part of yourself off… unless. Rod, load the barrel with a chain. Let’s fire that.”

Upon request, Rod loaded the newly formed barrel with a segment of chain… and then pulsed twice.

“Why aren’t you firing?”

More pulsing.

“Wait, I’m being stupid again. In the same way that you can’t just shoot a random part of your body off of you… you don’t have any gunpowder to make an explosion or anything with.”

One pulse. A yes.

“Alright. Well, my experiment with turning Rod into a cannon is a bust because I’m stupid. Somebody else do something cool.”

Rock ran ahead and barked.

“You want to go?” Fenrir asked.

Rock barked again as her tail rapidly wagged behind her.

“Alright. Go for it, girl. Show of what you’ve got.”

With determination in her eyes, Fenrir saw another player when he looked at Rock now.

After all, now that Rock was controlled by an actual AI, that meant she wanted to enjoy the world just as much as everybody else. She always had potential for growth before, but that potential was only truly realized now.

Rock raised her head, stuck out her chest, and howled.

Seven pillars of rock the size of an adult human struck out from the ground around her at a diagonal angle pointed in the direction she faced. Next came a single bark, causing one of the pillars to shoot forward. Given the size and weight of the pillar, it would have been enough to break the body of anybody it crashed into. Only, there wasn’t much force behind them. The pillar quickly lost speed and dropped to the ground, breaking into hundreds of tiny chunks afterward. There were still six more pillars, though.

One bark per pillar. Every time Rock barked, another pillar shot forward. The speed behind each one decreased as Rock continued until the final pillar barely even made it out of the ground. Once all pillars crumbled, Rock lazily flopped onto her side with her tongue hanging out from her mouth.

“Good girl,” Fenrir said, crouching down to pet Rock along her neck and side. “I’m impressed. I remember when you first tried this and you only managed to shoot little pebbles from the ground. You’ve made some serious progress.”

Rock’s tail wagged against the ground, making a loud thumping noise each time her tail smacked against it.

“You know… your tail could do serious damage to somebody. Imagine what would happen if you jumped up and whacked somebody in the head with it. You could probably kill them if you did that.”

Rock paused for a few moments as if to think it over before her tail resumed wagging.

Really, any part of her body could kill somebody if it hit their head hard enough. That tended to be an effect of being made out of rock.

“That was pretty sweet,” Rao said, now standing next to Fenrir. “But my bro here isn’t going to be outdone, even if she is his girl. Isn’t that right?”

Fenrir figured there was only one other person there Rao could be talking to and he was right. Shogun was by Rao’s side. “Alright,” Fenrir said. “If you want to show off, go for it.”

Rao smirked and smacked Shogun’s side. “Let’s show them how we’ve improved.”

Shogun nodded and followed Rao who walked away to put some distance between them. Only, Shogun acted like he forgot something and came running right back over to Fenrir and Rock. He then nuzzled his head up against Rock’s before licking the side of her face, making Rock’s tail wag even more. Then Shogun reunited with Rao to prepare for whatever it was they wanted to show off.

While Fenrir was well aware of Rock’s efforts in learning how to manipulate the earth, he had no idea what Rao and Shogun were up to.

Rao took a seat atop Shogun’s back and readied his spear in his right hand. “Let’s go!” he shouted.

Shogun nodded and, rather than lift off from the ground with his usual wings, summoned twisting vortexes of wind around its legs that propelled him into the air faster than his wings ever could. He did switch over to using his wings once he was in the air, but that didn’t mean he was done with his new magic.

Those vortexes around his legs traveled to his wings instead, surrounding them before reaching out past the tips to make the wings look even longer than they really were. The magic practically doubled the length of Shogun’s wings, giving him far more lift and speed as well as increasing his ability to make rapid changes in direction as he was quick to demonstrate.

“I’d probably be sick by now if I was Rao, but I guess they’ve been practicing this together,” Fenrir said.

Shogun turned upward and pulled his wings in against his body, making himself as aerodynamic as possible as he shot straight up. He unfurled his wings once his climb ended, spun around to face down toward Fenrir and Rock, and dived.

Fenrir expected to hear a whistling noise or something similar given how fast Shogun’s dive was, but there was nothing. Wonder if it’s because of how owl-like his wings are, Fenrir thought.

That was when Fenrir noticed something else.

Rao was staring straight at him with his spear held out like a lance.

Of course, Rao didn’t actually mean to attack Fenrir. That was why Shogun pulled up just a tiny bit to shoot past him, instead going for the nearby tree behind him.

Rao’s spear tore through tree with a single blow. Despite the fact that the spearhead was small and meant for stabbing, and certainly not meant for felling trees, it tore a hole large enough through the tree’s core to sever it from its trunk.

Shogun flew straight up afterward to avoid crashing into one of the other nearby trees, did a little spin, and extended his wings to show off. However, while Shogun’s show might have been over, Rao’s wasn’t.

Rao stood up atop Shogun’s back with perfect balance, spun his spear around, and jumped off. Pointing his spear downward, he reminded Fenrir of those knights from classic fantasy games who specialized in jumping and hunting dragons with giant spears. The comparison became even more obvious as Rao only increased more and more in speed during his fall. He surpassed his own terminal velocity and cracked the sound barrier just before thrusting his spear into the ground, creating a large crater and blowing the ground below away.

Fenrir couldn’t help but to whistle a little when he saw that. “When’d you learn that?” he asked once the dust cleared.

Rao, with a massive grin on his face and a hand on the back of his head, said, “Been practicing almost every day with Sho’. We’ve got ladies we have to impress!”

“Right. How are things with the maids going?”

“Well uh… every time I try and talk to them, they’re busy with Nell, but I’m trying. Heard them talk about their favorite flowers the other day, so I went and spent a few hours researching flowers and hunting down the closest ones I could find in-game. They were all real quiet after I gave them the flowers though, so I felt pretty awkward and uh… left before they said anything. Guess maybe they might have thought I was weird for listening to their conversation… so I might have screwed things up.”

“Uh-huh. Do anything else?”

“I always try and say hey whenever I see them, or at least wave, but they usually look away whenever I do. But then sometimes, it’s like… I don’t get it, bro. I swear they don’t even like me half the time, but then I’ll do something like come back to the town all dirty after training, and they swarm me to clean me up. They dust me off, fix up my hair, and wipe my face off, then they just… leave. I get really happy every time they do it but, at the same time, it’s like… they’re probably just doing it because they hate me being dirty.”

“Do they do that for anybody else?”

“Just Nell.”

“So if the only other person they do it for is Nell, why do they do it for you if you’re worried they hate you?”

“Well, I figure that maybe it’s because I spend time around her sometimes and they’re worried about me getting dirt on her or something.”

“Then why wouldn’t they do that to me?”

“Because you have girlfriends. They’re probably being considerate and trying not to cause issues or something. They’re really nice girls like that.”

Fenrir sighed and lowered his head. He was more than familiar with dense harem protagonists from all the anime and manga he read, but he never believed he would actually find one in real life. He was sure they didn’t exist because who could actually be that dense? It was clear to everybody around that the maids were just as into Rao as he was into them. The maids even knew that he was into them due to how he always flirted with them in ways that were nowhere near as subtle as he believed they were. However, he had no idea that they felt the same way about him.

Telling the maids to take the first step was pointless, too. Fenrir was aware that Nell already talked to the maids about how they’d need to be more blunt with Rao… but they refused.

They were already happy with their relationship with him and found him adorable.

I kind of feel bad. Everybody knows but him, and it’s not fair if it’s this one-sided. But at the same time, I don’t want to outright tell him that they like him… because I really want to see him figure that out himself. It’s his mission as a harem protagonist to figure this out on his own. That means… wait. That means I have to be the cool wingman bro of the harem protagonist! If it’s like that, then I’m allowed to give him advice!

Fenrir knew what he had to do. “Why don’t you try asking them out?” he asked.

Rao shook his head. “Bro, there’s no way my heart can handle it if I get rejected. At least right now I can pretend there’s a chance with them. If I try to legit ask them out, they’ll probably reject me and then things will be awkward. At least if things keep on going like this, I can dream about having a chance, you know?”

“But what if they say yes?”

“My heart would probably explode or something. Seriously, I have no idea what I’d do. Like, how do you even manage having so many girlfriends? I’m not you.”

“Of course you’re not. I’m Fenrir and you’re Rao.”

“Yeah, but I mean like, I’m not… I don’t know how to put it. I guess I’m not as cool as you. Or capable or something. Smart?”

“One, you’re awesome and cool is subjective. Two, you’re every bit as capable as me. Three, you’re an architect, so I’m pretty sure you’re smarter than me. Come on, have some more confidence in yourself. I’m not special, I promise. Hell, before I had even one girlfriend, I was awkward, had no idea what I was doing, and figured that the only girl I’d ever get in my life would be an anime figurine. You already started off with way more confidence than me. Maybe… a bit too much confidence going by how you were when we first met, but the point stands. If somebody like me can manage multiple girlfriends, and trust me when I say how insane it is that I’m managing, then somebody like you definitely can.”

Rao’s nose sniffled as he wiped an arm across his eyes. “Bro… you’re the best. You’re seriously the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Fenrir forgot how easily emotional Rao could get. He wondered if the maids had any idea how prone Rao was to crying over things like this. Fenrir easily imagined the maids pampering and spoiling Rao with the intention of turning him into an emotional crybaby who couldn’t handle all the love and care. Heck, even Fenrir was a little bit tempted to do that albeit in a friendly way rather than a romantic way. “I’m just trying to be a good friend. I love you, so I want to see you happy. That’s why I think you should go for it. And look. Let’s say they do turn you down. Wouldn’t you rather know there’s no chance at all as soon as possible so that you can keep your eyes open for others who will appreciate and love you back? And if they do say yes, then that means you get to do all that cutesy romantic relationship stuff with them even sooner, so you get more of that total in life. It’s a win-win situation for you even if you get rejected.”

Rao sniffled again. “First, love you too bro. Let me hug you.”

“You don’t even have to ask.”

Fenrir and Rao opened up their arms at the same time and hugged one another.

“Alright,” Rao said, not breaking the hug off. “I’ll do it. I’ll… figure out a plan and confess to them. You’ve convinced me.”

“Glad to hear it. And if they turn you down and you feel like crying to somebody about it, I’ll be here to listen to you. We can go out on The Shoebill. Just me and you.”

“Rock and Shogun can come.”

“Sure. Me, you, Rock, and Shogun. We’ll go fishing out on the water and get drunk together, and you can complain to me about everything, and I’ll pretend that none of it happened the moment we back it back to town. Deal?”

“Deal. You really are the best, bro.”

“No you.”

Rao chuckled. “Alright. Dang, I really didn’t expect a little training trip together to end up like this.”

“Things happen when they happen.”

“That’s deep, bro.”

“I know, bro.”

“I love you, bro.”

“Love you too, bro.”

Fenrir and Rao stood there, still hugging, patting each other’s backs while Azalabulia and Serra stood off to the side watching the entire thing. That was when Serra had an idea and looked up at Azalabulia to say, “Let’s try that.”

“Try—try what?” Azalabulia asked.

“Hugging like that.”

“You just… want a hug?”

Serra nodded.

Azalabulia felt a little confused, but she opened her arms up for Serra.

Serra was quick to take advantage of the opening and wrapped her arms around the taller woman. Of course, given the height difference between them, it just so happened that Serra got to plant her face right into Azalabulia’s cleavage.

Azalabulia only realized Serra’s true intentions once it was too late. The smaller girl tightly wrapped her arms around her, burying her face even deeper into Azalabulia’s bust.

Rock and Shogun were the only ones left out still, so they decided to join in on the fun by—well, it was more like Shogun decided to join in on the fun. Rock was still too lazy to move, so Shogun landed on the ground and flopped onto his side next to her. With their backs against each other, they panted and wagged their tails against one another. Rock made sure to be careful with the intensity of her tail’s wagging so as to not accidentally break Shogun’s tail via whacking it.

Then, despite Azalabulia being flustered from Serra being Serra, she had an idea. “Rao!” she shouted out.

“Yeah, sis?” Rao asked, finally breaking off from the hug with Fenrir.

“We can combine our powers!”

“What do you mean?”

“Trust me,” Azalabulia said with the face of somebody who probably shouldn’t have been trusted.

“Alright?”

Azalabulia explained the plan which required Rao to get back atop Shogun for another lance charge. However, before Rao took off with Shogun, Azalabulia had something special in mind for his spear. She imbued his weapon with her magic, causing the spear to take on an appearance much more like a lance as the dark flames of her spell stretched out in front of the spear.

All Rao had to do after that was repeat what he did before, albeit with a tree that was still standing.

With a spear enhanced by the dark magic of a questionably mad woman, Shogun lined Rao up for a perfect strike at full speed!

Only, there was a problem.

Well, a successful experiment and a problem.

Azalabulia’s magic successfully worked to enhance Rao’s spear, resulting in causing it to create a huge explosion that absolutely annihilated the tree upon contact.

Shogun was fast enough to fly past all the debris, mainly giant, wooden splinters, so he avoided any danger.

However, there was enough knockback from the explosive spear that it sent Rao flying backward off of Shogun, completely reversing the momentum he had with Shogun to instantly knock him out.

Rao landed dozens of feet away from where he was when he struck the tree. Fortunately for him, he wasn’t conscious to see a massive, wooden splinter land just inches in front of his crotch between his thighs. And fortunately for the maids, it didn’t hit anything important.

“Aza, I’m not sure you should be trusted to enchant weapons,” Fenrir said.

“We-well… it’s probably fine… as long as I only enchant ranged weapons,” Azalabulia said. “Anything physical… might be a problem.”

“Is he even alive? Wouldn’t being reversed that quickly all of a sudden or something put his body under a bunch of g-forces?”

“Well… we can’t tell if he’s alive or dead from here.”

“I think you owe him a massage after this.”

“That would… probably be a good idea.”

Serra tugged on Azalabulia’s arm and asked, “Can I go back to hugging you now?”

“I should really go check on him first…”

“It’s fine,” Fenrir said. “You can go back to hugging. I’ll go check on him.”

Without waiting for anything else, Serra clung back onto Azalabulia while burying her face between her breasts.

Meanwhile, Shogun went back to cuddling with Rock, leaving Fenrir to check up on Rao by himself.