Book 1: Chapter 16: Patch 4.0: Rocks are a Man's Best Friend

Richard is able to draw his sword but not before Fenrir crashes into him!

“You’re fucking naked! Get off of me!” Richard shouts, seemingly putting more effort into avoiding letting Fenrir’s plus-three-inches accidentally touch him rather than trying to defeat his opponent.

This whole being naked thing might be a pretty good tactic for fighting homophobes.

Fenrir grabs Richard’s wrists to pin him to the ground beneath his own body. However, Richard is both stronger and faster. It only makes sense for him to be more powerful since he’s been playing the game longer. Yet, while Richard may be able to get his hands off of the ground and be able to occasionally smack the pommel of his sword against Fenrir, he isn’t able to break his wrists free due to the position that he’s in.

The pommel of Richard’s sword smacks into the side of Fenrir’s head again. It hurts, and every attack makes Fenrir feel closer to blacking out, but it isn’t enough to stop him. He just needs to think of a way to defeat his enemy. He cannot run, for he would be caught up to. He also can’t steal the sword because the moment he takes a hand off of either of the enemy’s wrists, it will be used against him.

Fortunately, this man is just as stubborn as Fenrir hoped he was. Any smart player would be shouting for backup right now, but there is no way that an asshole like Richard would ever call for assistance against a weaker—and naked—opponent.

“The fuck are you smiling for, you furry faggot?!” Richard shouts and spits onto Fenrir’s face.

Alright. Okay. So that’s how it is. Calling Oleander a faggot isn’t alright and will result in severe punishment, but he doesn’t care if somebody calls himself that. However, he does care if somebody tries calling him a furry. He isn’t a fan of being spat on either, but that isn’t as important as being called a furry.

Sure, he may be a half-in-the-closet weeaboo, and he may be playing a human male with large, fluffy wolf ears and an even bigger and fluffier tail, but he is not a furry.

Fenrir brings his knee up between Richard’s thighs to press down, hard, into the bottom’s crotch. Richard doesn’t look the least bit pained. “You think that’s going to bother me? I set my pain to zer—” Richard is cut off by Fenrir bashing his forehead into Richard’s face.

By the time Richard is able to focus his vision again, he sees Fenrir baring his fangs and latching onto his neck!

Richard’s eyes go wide when he realizes what Fenrir is doing. “You even fight like a fucking furry!” Richard shouts, finally breaking his open hand free from Fenrir as he tries tearing apart his neck.

Richard grabs onto the back of Fenrir’s head, taking a firm grip of his hair, and pulls him away from his neck.

Fenrir is forced off of Richard. What little advantage he had from the element of surprise is now gone as both men get to their feet. Only one of them is wielding a sword and has armor, and it isn’t Fenrir.

Bloodied bite marks are left where Fenrir was biting away at Richard’s neck.

But Fenrir does see that he has something else. Their struggle on the ground positioned them near his broken shell-pack, and Rock is right next to Fenrir’s feet.

Richard’s first attack is easy to dodge from how telegraphed it is.

Fenrir uses his dodge to duck down and pick up Rock with his right hand.

Something immediately feels different. Similar to how that feral urge builds within him during fights, holding Rock causes him to feel a sort of… bond, with it.

Did he really bond to a rock? Sure, it’s Rock, but at the same time, even he wants to ask himself “really?”

“Got you!” Richard shouts, thrusting his sword into Fenrir’s abdomen.

Fenrir winces from pain and grabs onto the hand holding the sword with his own free hand, keeping the blade in place. He fears that another attack is going to finish him off; his field of view is already shrinking as darkness encroaches from the borders of his sight.

“You’re really fucking annoying. I just fucking got back in the game and you’re trying to kill me again!” Richard shouts.

Fenrir pours every last ounce of his strength in swinging Rock directly into the side of Richard’s head! It would probably be much more satisfying of a sight and sound were traumatizing content enabled for Fenrir, but even without the gore and skull-breaking sound effect, Richard falls to the ground.

Richard’s grip on his sword was lost during his fall, leaving it stabbed into Fenrir.

Darkness consumes more and more of Fenrir’s vision.

“What the fuck! Seriously?! You KO me with a fucking rock?! Since when were rocks so fucking OP! " Richard shouts, voice full of rage and hatred for the game that just let him get wrecked by a rock only slightly bigger than an apple. "Fine! I give up, alright? I don’t want to get fucking reset by a furfag. Let’s just call it even and I won’t make every single fucking one of our allies hunt you down,” Richard says, rubbing the side of his head. He may not have pain enabled, but that just makes the entire side of his head feel as if it isn’t even there from how numb it is. He feels as if he’s missing half of his head! The eye and lips on the numb side can’t even move. “We’re part of the Augus Empire, so if you kill me, I’ll have you labeled as an enemy of the faction! Millions of players will kill you the moment they see you! And put your fucking dick away, nobody wants to see that shit!”

Fenrir pulls the sword out with his free hand, points it down, and thrusts it into Richard’s chest.

Sure, killing Richard with Rock would have been nice, but it’s much more satisfying to kill him with his own sword. Again.

Fenrir leans down over the pommel of the sword to look Richard directly in the eyes as life begins leaving them. Fenrir utters a single phrase that, no matter how stupid and old it may be, never fails to maximize sodium levels.

“You mad?”

Richard’s expression twists into one of pure fury before life leaves his eyes and he is kicked out of the game for another twenty-four hours. Going by what Fenrir heard him talking about, he’ll be starting completely over next time he can immerse.

Fenrir doubles over, clutching where he was stabbed. This is different from the damage he took from the crab the other night. The pain from that fight was gone almost immediately, but this pain feels like it’s here to stay. At least the darkness isn’t consuming his vision any further than it already has.

He looks over at his corpse. It’s his first time getting a good look at it. His bark armor is still intact for the most part, but a few chunks of it have been broken off from getting kicked by Richard. More concerning is his body itself. It has already deteriorated to nothing more than a skeleton. Oleander’s corpse is the same: just a skeleton. Fenrir looks at Richard’s latest corpse. Nothing is happening to it yet. Fenrir sort of wishes it would hurry up and turn into a skeleton since it would make this next part less... personal.

Fenrir strips Richard of all but his briefs. He doesn’t want to wear the same underwear that another man was wearing, even if it’s in a virtual game, but he has no issue with wearing the other clothes and leather armor that Richard had. Of course, he places his bark armor on over the leather armor. He can’t just leave behind his old armor!

Now he looks like the strapping image of a noob adventurer. Being naked felt nice and all, especially when the breeze would brush against him, but this is much better. The clothes and armor even fit him almost perfectly! They're a bit tight around his biceps and chest since Fenrir is a slightly bulkier character than Richard was, but it's not an issue.

The only annoyance is that he had to cut a slit in the pants for his tail to squeeze through.

With Richard’s latest sword and armor, and Rock, Fenrir can finally meet up with Serra. His tail excitedly wags.

He follows the particularly wide track that Bonekraka made through the field into the nearby forest. He’s surprised that they weren’t followed and tracked down, but it was pretty dark when it happened and none of the pursuers had torches that he could remember. He doubts anybody wants to chase after a giant orc into a dark forest with no way of spotting an ambush.

Walking through this section of forest is nice. It isn’t nearly as dense as the one he met Serra in, so he can just enjoy all the sights and sounds that it has to offer him.

That is, until something reaches out from behind a tree and grabs him!

Fenrir jumps with a lowered tail and perked ears, readying his new sword and—

Serra’s expression is the definition of smug.

“I’m already wounded! You’re going to finish me off if you hurt my heart like that,” he explains, but he can’t help smiling. It was a pretty good jump scare. His heart is still racing from it!

Or is it racing because he knows she looks this cute in real life and also lives in the same city as him?

Her expression turns from one of smugness to worry when she sees the blood dripping and staining his new clothes. The shirt, leather armor, and bark do a good job of actually covering the wound up, but it doesn’t stop it from bleeding and staining the shirt's fabric.

“What happened?” she asks.

“I killed that asshole again.”

She blinks a few times. “Oh. Why – why aren’t you healing?”

“I think I’ve healed a little bit. My vision isn’t so dark anymore, but it’s taking a really long time. I guess PVP damage lasts longer?”

Serra does a double take. It looks like something has caught her attention. She’s closely looking at his hand and jumps when she confirms what she saw the first time!

“What are you jumping for? Trying to make me feel better for making me jump? Don't worry, I'll be getting my own revenge eventually,” he teases.

“Your – your rock, I saw it… move.”

Fenrir looks down at his hand holding the rock. Surely enough, it's moving.