Book 4: Chapter 45: Patch 8.0:

While King Cat’s house may be small, it has a dining room large enough to fit a massive table with enough chairs around it for over a dozen people!

“This here is my office!” King Cat explains as he pours cups of coffee and then takes them over to Fenrir and his group. “All the magic happens right here. By magic, I mean card games and eating. Any of you play cards?”

“I’ve tried before, but I’m horrible at it,” Fenrir answers.

Serra and Oleander shake their heads, but Corwin speaks up and says, “I love card games! I was never too good at them, but I have always enjoyed playing them.”

“That so?” King Cat asks. “Then we’ll have to have a game sometime! How about it? We have ourselves a gathering here every Tuesday and Friday, and we’re always looking for more to come and join us for some cards! Can you handle your alcohol?”

“I can handle small amounts of it, but I do easily get overwhelmed by spirits.”

“No worries there! We tend to just pass a few beers around. Nothing too heavy.”

“Then it does sound like a pleasant time! Are we allowed to bring guests?”

“Course you are! Plenty of the boys bring their gals to socialize over in the living room there. You got yourself one?”

“W-well, not a ‘gal,’ but yes,” Corwin says as he takes a hold of Oleander’s hand.

King Cat smiles and says, “Hey! Nothing wrong with that. We’re accepting of all folk up here. When you live so far away from the main regions like we do, it’s best to play nice with all of your neighbors.”

Oleander, with a smile on his face, scoots his chair closer to Corwin’s to cuddle up against his boyfriend’s side.

“You’re welcome to come and play even if you aren’t too good at it, too,” King Cat tells Fenrir.

“A-ah, I think I’ll pass. I like to spend my spare time fishing instead,” Fenrir answers.

“Great! Then we can go fishing sometime. I’m assuming you’re the leader of your group, right?”

“I guess you could say that, yeah. We’re pretty much all equal, though, so I’m really just the leader by name.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Oleander says. “He’s our one and only leader! We might boss him around sometimes, but we always listen to him in the end.”

“Close enough!” King Cat says. “Either way, us village leaders like to hook up and go fishing every Sunday. You should see Spike Isle’s mayor! Let me tell you, that woman knows how to cook. Whatever we catch, we’re all more than happy to hand them over to her for cooking.”

“Sounds like a fun time, sure. I’m in to go fishing with you all sometime,” Fenrir says.

“But first, there’s some things I’d like to ask you about,” King Cat says with a tone more serious and lower than before.

“What would that be?” Fenrir asks, resisting the urge to gulp.

“That boat of yours. I was told from one of the men who brought you to me that it’s a pretty special boat. Living wood, steel oak, some pretty fancy looking horn on it, pretty well armed despite being a smaller vessel – pretty curious boat.”

“He could tell all of that just by looking at her?”

“He’s a bit of a fanatic when it comes to boats, you see. He could tell you everything about any boat that he sees within just a few seconds. So, how’d you manage to get living wood when, from my understanding, those elf folk way across the ocean are the only ones with it?”

Fenrir looks over at Oleander who nods in return.

“Alright. I’m going to be honest with you about everything,” Fenrir tells King Cat. “I don’t want there to be any future misunderstandings.”

While Fenrir goes over everything from stealing The Shoebill from the Stinky Garlic guild to winning the tournament and befriending a serpent, Serra sips at her coffee to try and be polite but cringes every single time the taste of it hits her tongue. She keeps on looking around the table to see if anybody else is having difficulty with the coffee, but not a single one of them looks as disgusted as she feels as she downs her drink.

It is at this moment that Serra decides coffee is gross and, apparently, a man thing. She would much rather be drinking some sweet tea, or sugary juice, or pop, or flavored water, or… pretty much anything else that’s sweet instead of bitter.

If only Rock was here. Then she could try to sneakily give the coffee to Rock to dispose of it. She knows that coffee isn’t good for dogs in reality, but that probably doesn’t apply to a dog that’s made out of rock, right?

She looks back down at her mug. Despite how hard she’s trying to drink it – despite her summoning every ounce of her strength to be polite and drink King Cat’s brew, she’s hardly a fourth of the way through the mug.

Then a miracle happens.

King Cat gets distracted by one of his cats pawing at his legs, and that’s when Fenrir sneakily switches his emptied mug with Serra’s.

Serra looks up at her boyfriend with wide eyes full of love and appreciation.

She’s totally going to do sexual things to him later for saving her.

“So, yeah. We’ve kinda been busy lately. Any questions?” Fenrir asks King Cat now that his retelling of events is over.

“Huh. That really was some story,” King Cat says. “That also explains why we could hear some horn blowing a couple of weeks ago.”

“You could hear that from all the way up here? I guess they weren’t joking when they said you’d be able to hear it from across oceans.”

“So, let me ask you something. I doubt you’d have been able to do all of that if you were just some nobody. You got experience with these sorts of things in other games?”

Fenrir turns pale. While he may have gone over all their actions in this game, he completely left out everything regarding how he used to be the leader of the Divine Brigade in games before Fantasy Tales Online.

Oleander is looking away and whistling whenever Fenrir looks over at him.

“We-well, you see… kind of. I’d rather not go into specifics, but I will be honest and say that we used to be major assholes and griefers. Well, only two of us. Me and Olly here. The rest of our friends were all made here and have nothing to do with us from back then. But, yeah. Me and Olly used to be… probably the nightmares of towns like this. But, I promise that we’re done with that. We only burned down that one village since they were assholes and deserved it, and everything we did during the tournament was for the right reasons,” Fenrir explains.

“Well, if you’re lying, you’re one heck of a good liar!” King Cat says, relaxing now that his questions are over with. “Don’t worry. All we care about are your actions now. Lots of folk in the villages here are in the same boat as you, no pun intended. Used to be griefers, raiders, and general cockheads. We offer a sort of… starting over up here, you could say. So, as long as you stay true to your stated intentions, I’m sure we’ll all get along just fine.”

Fenrir lets out a sigh of relief and smiles. “Glad to hear it. I always get worried when telling people about how we used to be the ‘bad guys.’”

“Well, as long as you weren’t in the Divine Brigade or anything like that! Lost an entire city to them in a game before. If there are any folk who I believe are beyond redemption, it’s – hey! What’d’ya think you’re doing?” King Cat gets his attention torn away by one of the cats clawing at his leg again.

Fenrir may not like cats, but he loves them in this moment as the cat is distracting King Cat long enough for Fenrir and Oleander to both regain their composure after what he was just saying.

“Anyways! I was also told you’re looking into getting some of our horses. While we won’t lend them out forever without something in return, I’m sure we wouldn’t mind letting you use them for a week or two to help you get set up. I’m assuming that you want them for hauling materials?” King Cat asks.

“Yeah, and it’d be easier to come up here than sailing The Shoebill up here every time we want to visit or trade,” Fenrir answers.

“Sure! Just remember: don’t screw us, and we won’t screw you. That’s pretty much the motto of this whole coastline and the villages on it.”

“You’ve got it. Also, I heard that fish can be used to trade for items here?”

“Yup! Plenty of folk here love fishing, but they make up the minority in the end. The ones who don’t fish love to eat fish, so fish is pretty common to use instead of coin around here. Nobody has any need for coin in the first place. Just a shiny piece of metal we give value to! Wouldn’t you rather get something you could eat and live off of in exchange for something rather than some metal coin that’d probably break your teeth if you try to bite it?”

“I can’t argue with that.”