Book 8: Chapter 6:

Once King Cat managed to pull his face out from the ground, Marija had one last thing to show everybody attending the meeting before they could officially wrap things up. That was why she led them to the back of the settlement that Fenrir had never seen before. It turned out that the back facing the northern ocean was essentially dedicated to serving as a shipyard with all sorts of construction projects underway, but there was one project more impressive than all the others.

If it wasn’t for the large, spike-like hill in the center of the island that Spike Port was built on, they would have been able to see the massive ship from any angle. Instead, that hill was just barely large enough to block the sight of the work-in-progress vessel that featured none other than the great serpent’s head over the front of it. The ship was large enough to rival the size of Ull’s and Blackstache’s flagships, and Fenrir doubted that he would ever see another ship large enough to compare to theirs.

“We had to destroy a small forest to get all the wood needed for her, but she’s turning out fine,” Marija said. “Here, there’s something else I want to show you.” She led the group over to what looked like a stack of lumber before taking the axe of one of her passing-by subordinates. With the axe in hand, she swung it from overhead to slam it into the wood as hard as she possibly could. The strike was powerful enough that it blew back the hair of those immediately nearby… but the axe itself barely made a tiny scratch into the wood. “Impressive, isn’t it?” Marija asked, leaving the axe embedded in the wood as she looked at the rest of the group with a smug and satisfied smile.

The owner of the axe had a bit of difficulty taking it out from the lumber while Fenrir and the others looked amazed at the wood’s durability.

“How?” Fenrir asked. “Even steel oak isn’t that durable.”

“This here is regular spruce wood… or it used to be,” Marija answered. “You see, the reason that it’s so sturdy and such a darker color is because of our spoils.”

When the battle against the serpent was over, the giant reward that was the serpent’s oversized corpse was split up among the various villages. Marija was quick to call dibs on the serpent’s head. That was regarded as one of the more valuable parts of the body, so she and those at Skull Port ended up taking less home in exchange for the most valued part of the serpent’s body. The other villages only got massive amounts of bones and scales. There was also plenty of meat but nobody was necessarily interested in eating the rotted flesh of what looked like an undead serpent.

“A boy came by a few days ago,” Marija continued. “I thought he was one of GG’s, but turned out that he was a scholar.”

Fenrir raised an eyebrow. A dragon boy who was also a scholar sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“He wanted to test something out with the serpent’s eyes. Said that some of the game’s dragons store their energy in their eyes, so he was wondering if the same could be applied to the serpents. It wasn’t exactly a pretty process, but we had no idea what else to do with the eyes and I know that scholars can come up with some pretty crazy discoveries, so I let him do what he wanted with one of the eyes. He managed to… refine it into a slimy liquid. Then he started testing it out in all sorts of ways. First, that crazy boy actually drank some of it. Yeah, he drank undead serpent eye slime. Ended up giving him a pretty powerful buff, too. All of his abilities were massively boosted for about thirty seconds… and then he dropped dead. Couldn’t even revive him since his body melted away almost immediately. Came back as soon as he could, completely naked. He was so excited to get back to testing the slime out that he didn’t even get some new clothes before coming back over here.”

“He sounds like quite the eccentric fellow!” Nell said.

“Yeah, he is. Anyways, I’ll skip all the boring stuff and get to the relevant part. He ended up trying to apply it to a few different materials and figured out that it increased the strength of whatever it was applied to, but it always ended up having the same, melting death that he did after a while. So, he tried diluting it. Turned out that did the trick. It killed one of the volunteers here when he tried drinking it, but not for a few minutes. The buff wasn’t as strong, either. So, it’s still not exactly a good thing to drink if you don’t want to end up with your face in the ground and your body melting into ooze. But.”

“But?” Fenrir asked.

“Diluting it stopped it from melting through materials. So, I had the idea of applying a coating of it to the big girl there.” Marija looked up at her newest, massive ship. “We weren’t gonna have enough of the slime to coat every single plank, so we had to dilute it even more. We repeated the process with the second eye to really make sure we’d have enough. Took some brushes and painted over every single plank there. Gave the skull some of the slime, too. Don’t want it breaking on us and ruining the look. Anyways, now we’ve got ourselves a nice, hardened skeleton of a ship. All we’ve got to do is all the internal stuff now and that doesn’t need the same protection.”

“So, all you had to do was take that slime, spread it over the planks, and now they’re even stronger than steel oak?”

“That’s right.”

“What if it was applied to steel oak?”

“Then it’d be even stronger. That axe probably would have bounced right off it. Or the axe would have broke.”

“Why not try and use that then? There should have been enough steel oaks on the coast for you to get enough wood.”

“Sure. One major problem.”

“What?”

“We didn’t consider that until it was too late. Now we don’t have enough of the slime left for another full coating. You see, as soon as we realized we could make a wood stronger than steel oak, we stopped thinking about steel oak itself. The thought of taking some steel oak and then making it even stronger didn’t occur to us until that dragon boy asked us why we weren’t doing that.”

“I know the feeling. Getting tunnel vision like that sucks.”

Nell smiled and said, “Well, it is a good thing that Tabitha is not here! She would certainly not approve of such an oversight.”

“Yeah, she would be yelling at everybody.”

“Tabitha?” Marija asked. “Who’s that again?”

King Cat sighed and shook his head. “Look at you getting all excited as soon as you hear about another girl yelling.”

“Shut it.”

“You met her before,” Fenrir said. “She was with us the first time we came here. Short girl. Orange hair. Twintails.”

Marija looked shocked. “Her? That little thing yells at everybody?”

Nell couldn’t help but to giggle at Marija’s surprise, holding a hand over her mouth as she said, “Tabitha is the loudest of us all! And she most certainly has no issue with ordering everybody around, and then punishinig them with even more of her voice when they fail to live up to her standards.”

Marija gulped as she looked at Nell with wanting eyes – eyes that wanted for Nell to continue explaining just how Tabitha could be. “I… never expected that sort of behavior from her. I remember looking at her and thinking she was probably another one of those small, shy girls who just want to look cute.”

“That’s the opposite of her,” Fenrir said. “She just looks like that because she looks up to magical girls for being total badasses. She’s the bossiest woman I know and never takes any shit from anybody.”

“Seriously? That girl?”

“Yeah. You must not know about gap moe.”

“Gap… what?”

“Excuse him,” Nell said. “What my hero meant to say was that her appeal is how her fierce personality provides a powerful contrast to her appearance.”

Marija tilted her head a little. “She didn’t show any of that when she was here.”

“Well, she does know how to reign it in and practices good manenrs during important meetings like that one was.” The truth was that Tabitha was simply too flustered at the time and focused on Marija’s muscles to show any of her true self. Nell knew that, but she doubted that Tabitha would be alright with her saying all of that. There was also the fact that she knew Tabitha had since lost interest in Marija because the smaller girl was sure that nothing would ever come from having a crush on the larger one. She didn’t want to potentially get Marija’s hopes up now.

“She was probably too busy staring at your biceps,” King Cat said.

A vein popped in Nell’s forehead. She now understood why Marija kept on wanting to abuse her friend so much. Unfortunately, she couldn’t bring herself to go and abuse a man she hardly knew, not that knowing him better would make it any more appropriate.

And when it was finally a good time for Marija to do something about King Cat… she didn’t. “Was she?” Marija asked with genuine interest.

“Yep,” King Cat answered. “Looked like a dog salivating over the sight of a bone.”

“I don’t think she was that obvious,” Fenrir said, implying that Tabitha was, in fact, checking out Marija.

And that was what caused Nell to shove her elbow into his side and then loudly clear her throat. “Let us return to the topic of your new ship! Have you named her yet? What… ah, how do you plan on arming her? What will she be used for?”

“We… don’t know for sure yet. Probably,” Marija answered, her mind clearly somewhere else instead of where Nell wanted it to be. “We should have another meeting soon. Since we’re switching these meetings to Catsville, it would be a good idea to have one soon just to try it out there. Right?”

“Ah, well, I suppose that could be a good idea.”

Marija nodded along and then looked at Fenrir. “If that girl already came for one meeting, she can come for another. Or – wait. Scratch the meeting idea. There’s no need in having a meeting and making all of us travel if it’s not important. Why don’t you bring that girl up here so that she can look our ship over and give us her thoughts? Maybe there’s something that we’re missing.”

Fenrir figured out Marija’s intentions pretty quickly… which was the opposite of what Nell wanted. “Sure,” he said. “I can lend her to you for a few days to help you figure everything—”

Nell cleared her throat again and jabbed him even harder in the side with her elbow, successfully shutting him up. “I will talk to her about it,” Nell said. “Tabitha is a busy woman, so I am not sure if she will be able to come up here. Not to mention that she already has more than her fair share of work at our town.”

“I can come down there then,” Marija said.

“But your ship is not in sailing condition yet, is it? It would be silly to seek her advice on its construction when she has never even seen it.”

“It’s fine,” Fenrir said. “Tabs would probably be happy to help out anyway she can.”

As much as Nell might have normally loved to hear Fenrir’s voice, she wanted nothing more than to gag him, tie some concrete bricks around his feet, and throw him into the ocean. But because that wasn’t an option, she settled for tightly grabbing his arm and telling the others, “Please excuse us for a moment,” before marching off with Fenrir.

Once they were far enough away that she could whisper to him without anybody else hearing, Fenrir asked, “What’s wrong?”

“You!” Nell answered with an angered, hushed voice. “Tabitha has already expressed disinterest in pursuing anything with Marija! You should not play matchmaker when one party does not want to be involved!”

“But Tabs might change her mind if she learns that Marija is interested now.”

“You do not know that for certain! You are welcome to tell her of Marija’s interest once we return, but you should not go ahead and make plans without Tabitha’s input!”

“Oh… I see your point. Yeah, that’s kind of stupid of me, isn’t it?”

“Yes! Do you want to create an awkward situation between them that satisfies nobody?”

“No. You’re right. Is that why you kept on jabbing me? To get me to shut up?”

“Why else would I?”

“I don’t know, maybe becoming a queen put you on a power trip and it went to your head that it’s okay to abuse your boyfriend now.”

Nell pouted and reached up to flick his forehead. “Lower your head,” she ordered.

Fenrir did as she said. Then he felt her press her lips against his for a soft kiss.

“Now, apologize to your queen for your foolish behavior.”

Fenrir didn’t expect his punishment to feel more like a reward. “I’m sorry for my foolish behavior, my queen.”

“Good. I will expect you to be on your best behavior until we’re back. Now, you may take my hand and lead me back to the others.” She held her hand out like a proper royal.

If it were anybody else who wanted Fenrir to treat them like that, he would have spat in their face. But since it was Nell, he was more than happy to serve her.

Once they were back over, Nell smoothed the situation with Marija and explained why meeting Tabitha anytime soon could not be guaranteed. Meanwhile, Fenrir thought to Saya who had been staying silent the whole conversation, How come you didn’t say anything? If anybody was going to scold me for being stupid, I would have thought it’d be you.

“One , onii-wan, it’s not my place to assist you in relations with other players. That would technically count as cheating since I’m still your virtual assistant. If you do something really stupid around another player, and I help you with knowledge that I’m not supposed to know myself, which I’m not since I was never at the meeting in the first place outside from being in your head at the time, then that’s abusing my position and Kadi will probably punish me. Two… I was on your side until Nell said something. Don’t forget that I’m based off of you. If you think something is a good idea, I’m probably going to think it’s a good idea, too.”

Oh god. That’s right. Now there are two people in existence who think like me.

“I know. It’s the worst possible outcome for all of humanity.”

I just remembered that means you like all the same fetishes as me, right?

“Alright. That’s enough of secretly talking to each other with thoughts for now. Goodbye. I’m ignoring anything else you think that isn’t an emergency.”

And so, Fenrir began thinking, in detail, all sorts of perverse things. He thought about his favorite fetishes. He thought about his favorite hentai. He thought about having sex with his girlfriends. Each one of those thought chains made Saya’s cheeks turn a deeper shade of red as she refused to give him a proper reaction. Of course, she knew that simply staying there in silence with burning cheeks was giving him a reaction, but there was nothing she could do about that.

It was a lose-lose situation for her as she underwent the horrible, mental torture that Fenrir subjected her to.

Of course, she could have easily not reacted at all. She could have made her cheeks return to their normal color in an instant and not give him even the tiniest bit of reaction.

But that wasn’t what Saya would do, and Saya wanted—of course—to be Saya.

“Right,” Marija said, now back to her usual self. “You asked me something about the ship, didn’t you?”

“Indeed I did!” Nell answered. “What are your plans for her?”

“Well, given that we’re all in this together now, she could serve as our new flagship. Without that serpent around, the role of biggest monster in this part of the ocean is open for the taking. I figured we’ll create our own monster to take that position. Make her powerful enough that she can ram straight through any other faction’s flagship like it’s nothing and load her up with enough cannons and utilities that nobody will ever be able to sink her.”

“Sounds like the ultimate warship,” Fenrir said.

“That’s the point. She’ll be enough on her own to scare off anybody from even thinking about bringing their navy up here. She won’t be that great against any land forces – at least not any greater than taking a floating platform and covering it in cannons, but she’s going to rule this ocean.”

“It’s hard to imagine any sort of ground invasion marching all the way up here, but it’s something we should think about and prepare for just in case. We’ll figure that out part out so that you can focus on the ocean.”

“That’s what I want to hear. I never have been one for ground stuff. The ocean is where I like to dominate.”

As much as Fenrir might have wished that they could switch positions since he much preferred being out on the water instead of spending his time on land, he held back nodded instead. It made the most sense for him to focus on the ground. Practically any ground force, unless they planned on literally climbing over the mountains or going all around the entire northern half of the continent which would be an insane idea and logistical nightmare, would have to march up from the south which would bring them to Fenrir and his town first.

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” Fenrir said.

“We’ll support you however we can,” Rainbow Afro spoke up. “Me and King Cat don’t have to do much at our places.”

“Hold on,” King Cat said. “Now, I don’t have any problem with you volunteering me to help them out, but… what about my name? If Nell here is our queen now, then me being called King Cat implies we’re a thing, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think so.”

Marija shook her head. “Nobody would be confused over that since nobody would think it’s possible for you to find a girl who can tolerate you.”

“I don’t think it’d be an issue either,” Fenrir said. “There’s a difference between a player name and a political position.”

“I like your answer, Fenrir,” King Cat said and then looked at Marija. “I don’t like your answer.”

King Cat might have been worried about people mistaking him and Nell for a couple, but he really should have been worried about people mistaking him and Marija for a couple given just how closely they resembled a bickering married couple.

While they went at their bickering again, Nell tugged on Fenrir to grab his attention before whispering, “It would be alright if you felt at least a little bit jealous at the idea of people mistaking him for my husband!”

Fenrir smiled and whispered back, “Trust me, I absolutely hate the idea and would be extremely quick to correct anybody who dares to think it. I get jealous pretty easily, I’m just good at hiding it when there’s no good reason for it.”

“Oh? I would love to see you put less effort into hiding it sometime.”

“I’d rather not look like a clingy, controlling boyfriend to everybody.”

“Then how about showing me some of your jealousy when it is only the two of us?”

“You’re probably imagining my jealousy as something hot and dominant when it’d really be pathetic and whiny.”

Nell’s own lips curled into a smile now. “That sounds just as good! It may not have been what I originally hoped for, but I will gladly accept such adorable behavior.”

Fenrir narrowed his eyes at her. “We’ll see. Anyways, once they’re done being themselves, we can wrap things up and go back.”

Nell nodded and then turned her attention to Saya. “You are most certainly welcome to feel jealous over me as well!”

“I have nothing to be jealous of,” Saya said, quickly shutting Nell down and causing her to take a couple of steps back as if she were just punched in the chest. A hint of red then colored Saya’s cheeks. “Besides… it’s – it’s not like I like you enough to get jealous or anything. You’re always trying to cling all over me and won’t stop looking at me. There’s… there’s no way I’d get jealous over somebody as gross as you.”

Fenrir felt like calling Nell gross might have been a bit harsh… but, when he looked at Nell, she looked like she was fuller of life than ever before. The injury she took from harshly being told that Saya had nothing to be jealous of was completely healed once she heard Saya act so tsundere toward her. Not only that, but the tsundere act went above and beyond in healing her. It might have even healed her to the point where Nell looked younger as a result. Saya’s attitude was perfect enough to Nell that it could even reverse the aging of a virtual avatar.

Not to mention that being called “gross” was the meanest thing that any of Nell’s love interests had ever said to her.

And Nell always was a masochist.