Book 8: Chapter 11:

“What happened to never missing?” Fenrir teased as the first volley of cannonballs fired by Serra flew over the enemy vessel.

“The waves made me miss,” Serra replied with a hint of red on her cheeks, refusing to look in his direction.

“You mean the waves on the almost perfectly calm water?”

“I only like lewd teasing.”

“You don’t want to be horny anymore, remember?”

“Crap.”

“Ready the starboard cannons, I’m going to turn us and get you a shot.”

Serra nodded and got in position.

It was faster to turn The Shoebill to face her other side to their enemies than it was to manually reload the cannons already facing them. Though, after the cannons on the starboard side were fired, reloading in the middle of combat was unavoidable.

All I’m doing is whale hunting. This isn’t PvP, Fenrir thought as he set his eyes on the monstrous whale.

He was supposed to be taking a fishing vacation. Fishing for a giant whale monster still counted as fishing. He hoped so, anyways.

But it wasn’t that simple. Part of him felt excitement in taking down his enemies. Another part of him had a feeling that Kadi would offer him another challenge, albeit probably an even more difficult one, if he failed this one. He knew that he shouldn’t have counted on being allowed to fail and being granted another chance, but there was also the fact that it was an enemy ship in their territory. It needed dealt with regardless of what deal he made with Kadi. If he let it slip by without issue, then he would be letting down everybody else who lived in the region. It would be equal to turning a blind eye to, supposedly, the worst and cruelest players in the game who might then go on to cause serious damage or inflict suffering.

And that was something that Fenrir couldn’t allow to happen.

“Don’t worry about the structure up top,” Fenrir said. “Focus on the whale. As long as we take it down, there’s nothing they can do.” Focusing on the players would have turned it into PvP, too. But as long as they focused on the whale, it was player-versus-monster. In other words, still technically fishing.

But unfortunately, the whale wasn’t alone. There were, in fact, other players onboard the whale who just launched their first attack. And their first attack came in the form of a shot fired from their cannons designed specifically for causing as much damage to life as possible.

“Duck behind the cannons!” Fenrir shouted.

Serra dropped to the deck as quickly as she could, hiding herself close behind the iron cannon as scattered fragments of metal tore through The Shoebill. They hardly did any structural damage, but they would have made a mess of any body they pierced.

One of the fragments ricocheted and landed near Fenrir’s foot. He didn’t pay too much attention to it until he noticed a sizzling sound coming from it. Looking down at the metal shrapnel, he noticed that it had what appeared to be some sort of green coating on it that began to melt straight into the deck. Fortunately, it stopped after just a few seconds. The coating was quick to burn through itself.

Shit. It won’t do much damage to The Shoebill, but if even one fragment hits us… it’s going to melt our insides around it for a few seconds, Fenrir thought. “Serra! Don’t touch any shrapnel! It’s got some kind of corrosive coating on it!”

Serra gave him a thumbs-up before pulling her feet away from a fragment that almost touched them.

The good news was that the damage inflicted to The Shoebill was so minor that it would easily be healed up on its own thanks to the living wood that made up the hull.

But it wasn’t going to be that easy.

Just as Fenrir finished turning The Shoebill to cross the enemy vessel with their starboard side, Fenrir noticed a particularly large cannon on the front of the enemy’s “ship” that was far larger than anything they had.

And it was aimed directly at them.

Some of the players on the enemy’s deck could be seen standing next to the cannon making vulgar motions with their hands while others shouted profanities and threats.

How classy, Fenrir thought. Too bad the battle maids aren’t here to teach them a lesson in class. Not that I can talk.

Fenrir tried manuevering The Shoebill out from the cannon’s aim, but he wasn’t able to outmanuever a living being. He had more speed when it came to sailing in a straight line, but the monstrous whale’s turning rate was higher and it was fast enough to stay within range for at least a few minutes.

There was only one hope for avoiding that massive cannon.

“Ilo!” Fenrir shouted.

Just as the cannon fired, Ilo bit onto the underside of the whale’s head and rammed its body upward! The last-minute timing of Ilo’s attack caused the cannon’s projectile to shoot right over The Shoebill instead of right into her. Though, something concerning was the fact that it didn’t just fire an extra-large cannonball or anything. It looked more like the cannon fired a rocket with a trail of smoke.

“Cover your mouth!” Fenrir shouted, covering his mouth with one hand while keeping his other on the ship’s wheel. Meanwhile, Serra lifted up her shirt a little to cover up her own mouth with her hands overlapping on top. Not taking any chances with that smoke, Fenrir thought. If the enemy was willing to coat their projectiles in corrosive materials, it wouldn’t surprise him if there was some sort of dangerous chemical mixed into the rocket’s trail of smoke. He wasn’t about to take a chance and test it out, either. That sort of suicidal experiment was Eva’s thing.

Meanwhile, the players onboard the enemy vessel tried leaning overboard to shoot at Ilo with their ranged weapons, but trying to shoot a serpent under the water from above the water, without a weapon specifically designed to maintain momentum within water, proved ineffective. They didn’t even have any magic that could reach her, though they did try with spells of flame and wind.

“They’re dumb,” Serra said when she saw one of the enemy casters deploy fire against water.

“They’re desperate,” Fenrir said, correcting her. “They have nothing else to do and it looks like the whale can’t fight back either. I don’t think they ever expected to be attacked from below. Probably thought they’d be the only ones capable of doing that with their wannabe subamarine. Alright. Let’s help Ilo out!”

Serra nodded and stood back up. As soon as the cannons were lined up with the enemy, she fired the three on the starboard side. Each cannonball tore straight into the side of the whale. There was enough fat to stop the cannonballs from penetrating all the way through to its other side, but not enough to stop them from getting lodged inside its body right where its organs were.

The monster whale leaned its front half up out of the water, bellowing in pain before bodyslamming itself back down. It was a desperate attempt to fight back against Ilo which failed to do anything since she let go before she could be slammed back down against the surface of the water.

Knowing that disturbing the whale’s riders was the best way to help out her friends, Ilo latched onto the whale’s nearest fin and used the top of her head to repeatedly nudge and shake the rest of the monster’s body. Biting and tearing the whale to death would have taken too long, so her only focus was to keep it busy and its crew shaken around while Fenrir and Serra actually took the whale out.

“Fire!” Fenrir ordered.

The next volley of cannonballs shot out toward the whale. The latest three shots hit near the whale’s spine, two crashing directly into the monster’s vertebrae while the third cannonball crashed into the wooden structure strapped to its back.

Thanks to Ilo’s relentless assault on the whale, the weapons on its back just couldn’t get another accurate shot off against The Shoebill.

“Damn it I love that serpent,” Fenrir said. “Ilo is giving us some safe target practice, so do your best!”

“How big are whale brains?” Serra asked, looking back at Fenrir as one of the missed attacks managed to land close enough to splash water up behind her.

Fenrir was caught up in the sight for a moment. There was something incredibly beautiful about seeing his pirate of a girlfriend standing behind a cannon while water sprayed behind her. If it wasn’t for them being in the middle of a battle – fishing trip, and the fact that Serra was trying to not be so horny, he would have wanted to take her right then and there on The Shoebill’s deck. Instead, he returned his focus to the matter at hand and her question. “I don’t know, but probably pretty big. Why?”

“It’ll die if I hit its brain.”

“That’s going to take one accurate shot.”

“One shot is all I’ll need.”

“Serra.”

“What?”

“You’re too hot right now.”

“I’ll fire your cannon later as many times as you want.”

Perhaps it was the combination of adrenaline from being in a battle, knowing that he could be killed from a lucky shot at any moment, and just how hot he found Serra, but he bit his lower lip and tightened his grip on the ship’s wheel. “I might just hold you to that.”

“Please do.”

Fenrir smiled and sighed. “I’ll get you your shot. The rest is up to you.”

With a nod, Serra stood at the frontmost port’s cannon and prepared it for another shot.

Fenrir steered The Shoebill closer to the monstrous whale, making sure to stay out of range from its riders’ range, and brought the ship around to cross the whale once more. “I’m going to get you right in front of it!”

Serra, standing still behind the cannon with her eyes looking down the simple sight that Tabitha gave it, never took her eyes off her target but did hold up a single hand to give Fenrir a thumbs-up.

It was time to show off just how far she’d come.

The target kept on getting shaken around by Ilo.

The Shoebill couldn’t afford to slow down and small waves occasionally bumped her up.

While Serra would technically have more shots even if she missed, her pride was on the line to settle this with a single, final attack.

Yet, she wasn’t even sweating it.

She waited for the perfect moment. She waited for when her chosen cannon was directly in front of the monster’s head, waited for The Shoebill to lift up a little more from the wave passing under her, and… fired! The explosive force of the blast rocked The Shoebill in the opposite direction from where the cannon was fired and the cloud of smoke was quickly left behind as the ship never stopped its advance.

Serra’s sole cannonball tore straight into the whale’s head, hitting it at the perfect angle to penetrate deep into its skull.

Fenrir felt a bit bad for the whale when it didn’t instantly die. It was clearly in the process of dying as its body failed to properly function with a hole in its brain, but Fenrir felt more proud than he did bad when he saw Serra looking at him with a smug smile.

“You’re the best damn pirate I’ve ever seen,” Fenrir said.

“It’s because I know my way around some booty,” Serra replied.

Before either of them could say anything else, they got distracted by the sound of Ilo surfacing as the spikes along spine began to glow. With the whale dealt with, Ilo decided to do something that Fenrir really would have preferred her to do at the beginning of the battle.

She unleashed her signature attack, sweeping a beam of extremely pressurized water across the structure built to the whale’s back. The straps and bolts connecting the structure to the whale were destroyed alongside the rest of the infrastructure. It looked like a couple of players had their bodies cut into halves by the beam, too.

Serra felt much less accomplished after seeing Ilo wipe out all the players with a single attack. She felt even less accomplished when Ilo return to The Shoebill with an immensely smug aura about her. Ilo couldn’t make very complicated facial expressions, but they both knew that the serpent felt smug. They just knew.

It helped that Fenrir could feel her emotions to some degree.

Now, while the building atop the whale’s back fell apart and crashed into the water, Ilo returned beneath the surface.

“I feel one-upped,” Serra said.

“Ilo is OP. Don’t feel bad about it,” Fenrir replied, patting Serra on her shoulder.

“It’s okay. One day I’ll have an ultimate cannon attack even stronger than her.”

Fenrir wasn’t sure how possible that was considering she could at least need to get onto Azalabulia’s level in regard to power just to compete with Ilo, but he would support her regardless. “I believe in you.”

Then, as if wanting to play with the enemies who fell in the water, Ilo sswam back over to where the now-dead whale was to grab on one more with her fangs before dragging the corpse away from all the players trying to swim back up onto it. Without the whale’s corpse, all they had in the water with them were scraps of wooden debris.

Two players managed to get up onto the fin of the whale’s corpse, though.

And those same two players were bumped up into the air when Ilo thrust her head up against the underside of the fin, knocking the players into the water before pushing the carcass even farther away.

“That’s just sadistic,” Fenrir said. He was proud of her.

“She’s stealing the spotlight,” Serra said. Even so, she was also proud of her. “Most of them are still alive. Will they still attack us?”

“Doubt it. It’ll be pretty hard for them to attack us in any way while they’re trying not to drown.”

“Then what do we do now?”

Fenrir looked out over the water where most of the enemy players were trying to stay afloat. The proper Divine Brigade thing to do would have been to laugh in their faces, mock them, and watch them as they drowned. Maybe offer them help and then pull away at the last second. Give them just a tiny bit of hope to cling to before crushing it before their eyes.

Instead, Fenrir sighed. He sighed aand he looked past the struggling survivors to see if there was any loot floating in the water that they might be able to take. “See anything worth taking?”

Serra raised a hand up to her forehead and looked around. Using a hand as a visor was pretty pointless considering that her oversized hat did more than a good enough job at blocking the sun from ever getting in her eyes, but using a hand as a visor was a natural part of looking for things even if unnecessary. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything good.”

“Maybe they’re smart and took a page out of our book.” It didn’t help that there was a good chance Ilo destroyed anything worth looting.

“What?”

“Back in the day, whenever we’d go scouting or raiding, we made sure to never carry anything good on us. Because if we died, we wanted to make sure that all we did was waste the enemy’s resources. It wouldn’t be a waste if they actually profited from killing us. I mean, our intent was to not die in the first place, but we made sure they’d get nothing material when they did kill us.”

“Oh. Makes sense.”

“There was one game that even allowed players to bury little caches of items and gear underground almost anywhere in the world. We got chased and surrounded by overwhelming forces, so we found some real quick hiding spots, took all our equipment off, and buried everything before letting our enemies find and kill us. They were pretty pissed off they didn’t even get to break or steal our armor. Then we came back a couple of hours later, dug up our caches, requipped our gear, and harassed their base some more.”

“Did the same thing happen?

“Nope. They were stupid and most of them logged off because they didn’t think we’d be coming back. We destroyed their base and made off with their loot.”

“Sounds fun. Maybe I should start my own pirate fleet.”

“Maybe Nell can make you the grand admiral of the navy. Though, I think you might have some pretty strong competition for that position.”

“Yeah… oh well. This is fun enough.”

“But you know what I’m thinking about right now?”

“Lewd things?”

“Stop being horny.”

“But it’s so… hard.” Serra snerked.

“I’m going to have to throw you overboard to quench your thirst.”

“You want to make me all wet?” She snerked again.

“You’re horrible at not being horny.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ll forgive you because you’re cute.”

“Yay.”

“Anyways, what I’m thinking about is – well, we basically just killed a giant fish monster. Well, whale monster, I guess. Are whales fish?”

“I don’t know, but they both live in the water, so aren’t they basically the same thing?”

“That’s like saying octopi, whales, fish, and crabs are all the same thing.”

“It’s easier to call them all fish. Plus they all taste like fish.”

“So, we should classify things based off of how they taste?”

“Yeah. Makes sense.”

“You know, apparently, humans taste like pork. Does that make us pigs then?”

“Oink.”

“Or I guess it makes pigs humans.”

“Bonjour.”

“Wha-what? If oink was supposed to be a pig noise… is bonjour a human noise?”

“Yeah. Bonjour.”

“I had no idea that ‘bonjour’ is the noise humans naturally make.”

“Hon hon hon. Bonjour. Baguettes.”

“I’m surprised you said baguettes instead of cocks.”

“They’re both long and hard. Same thing.”

“Are they hard?”

“I don’t know, is yours?”

Fenrir stared at her for a few moments and blinked before clarifying. “I meant the baguettes.”

“Oh. I don’t know. They look hard.”

“But they’re bread. Wouldn’t they have to be burnt to be hard?”

“Bread can have a hard crust… layer, thing, and a soft inside.”

“I think the only way we’ll know for sure is if we go and buy some baguettes.”

“I’ll give you a blowjob if you give yourself a fake, curly mustache and swing around the baguette while going hon hon hon.”

“Wouldn’t you do that even if I don’t?”

“Yeah, but now you’ll get two of them.”

“Wouldn’t you give me two even if I don’t?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how to bargain outside of offering lewd things.”

“I want to do it while you’re wearing your penguin kigurumi.”

Serra’s eyes widened at the idea. “That’s… super lewd. But it looks so cute and innocent… how could you want to defile that?”

‘That’s exactly why I want to. The cuter it is, the more I want to lewd it.”

“Is that why you fell in love with me?”

“It’s part of it.”

“Heh. I knew it. But okay. I’ll be a penguin while you be French.”

“That’s some kinky roleplay that I bet Nell has never even thought of before.”

“We have to one-up her to prove that she’s not the only one with fun ideas.”

“I’m afraid that if we try to one-up her, she’s going to come at us with some sort of super degenerate fantasy that blows all of her previous ones out of the water. She’ll put us in our place and teach us to never even try one-upping her.”

“Probably. But that makes me want to do it even more.”

“Yeah, same. I’m scared, but I want to see just how depraved her mind can get.”

“Scared and horny is the third-best combination of feelings.”

“What’s the first-best and second-best combinations?”

“Happy and horny is the second best. Horny and horny is the first best.”

“I should have figured as much. Anyways, again, what I was trying to say was that – wait. I just realized how sidetracked we got from what I wanted to say.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Right.” Fenrir gave his cheeks some smacks to keep himself focused. “I want to eat it. The whale monster fish thing.”

“Won’t it mostly be fat?”

“I mean, probably, but look at how big it is. Even if it’s mostly fat, there’s still going to be more than enough meat under it for us.”

“Good point.”

“But first, we should make sure it tastes good before going through the effort of taking it back.”

“How?”

Fenrir smiled and leaned over the side of The Shoebill. “Ilo!”

The serpent, still with a smug aura after so easily taking down her opponent, rose her head out from the water right in front of Fenrir.

“Want to go take a bite out of that monster and let me know if it tastes good enough to drag back to shore?”

Ilo retreated back under the water before surfacing again near the floating corpse of the whale where she took a decent bite out of its side. After swallowing, she turned to look toward Fenrir and nodded her head. One thumbs-up from Fenrir later and she went back beneath the water’s surface.

“It has Ilo’s approval, so it must be pretty good,” Fenrir said.

“What if she has a weird sense of taste?” Serra asked.

“Have some faith in her. A serpent of the ocean is obviously going to know what tastes the best. It’s like if you visit a foreign country. You count on the locals to know what the best food there is.”

“Oh. I get it. That makes sense. It takes a fish to know what the tastiest fish are.”

“Well, except for Ilo not being a fish.”

“We’re counting crabs as fish but not sea serpents?”

“Being labeled a fish is beneath her.”

“Oh. Makes sense.” Serra looked back at the floating carcass. “How do we take it back? Can Ilo drag it?”

“Ilo’s done enough for us already. We’ll harpoon it and drag it back with The Shoebill.”

Serra’s eyes sparkled a little bit. “It’s been too long since we’ve used her.”

“Well, outside of the fishing tournament we built her for, we haven’t really had much reason to. Until now.”

Nothing else needed to be said. Serra was already taking her seat at the back of their custom-built ballista to load up a bolt with a chain attached to it. Even though they rarely ever used the ballista, they still always kept some bolts for it next to it so that they would be prepared if they ever did need to use it.

A moment later and Serra fired the bolt. It wasn’t like much aiming was needed given that her target was already dead and still in the water, after all.

Once the tip of the bolt penetrated the monster’s flesh, its hooks expanded outward to keep it stuck within.

“Nice shot. That should be enough to keep it stuck,” Fenrir said. “And if it comes out, well, I’ll bribe Ilo to bring it back for us.”

Serra looked back and gave him a thumbs-up. “Are we leaving the guys in the water still?”

The whole time that Fenrir and Serra were talking, there were shouts and insults being hurled at them. Some of them switched to shouting for help once they realized they were being completely and utterly ignored.

It would be the DB thing to torment them. It would also be the DB thing to save them just to turn them into prisoners for interrogation. I’m supposed to take a fishing vacation this week. Doing anything with the players wouldn’t be fishing. Killing and taking their monster-boat can technically count as fishing, Fenrir thought, doing his best to justify what he did as still satisfying the conditions of his agreement with Kadi. “We’ll leave them. After all, they’re just random people who got in our way while we were fishing for the monster. They have nothing to do with us.”

Serra smiled and nodded before pulling on the mechanism to lock the bolt’s chain in place. “Ready to go.”

“Then let’s return home with our catch. I’d say this was a pretty successful fishing mission. Absolutely nothing but fishing was done. Just, giant monster fishing.”

Serra tilted her head, a bit confused as to why he was talking like that.

All Fenrir cared about was being technically correct. An all-powerful AI should appreciate things being technically correct, he figured.

As for the other players trying to stay afloat in the water – well, there were plenty of monsters out at sea who needed some fresh food. In fact, Ilo even went and swallowed a couple of them after Fenrir turned around with The Shoebill.

She was, after all, still able to sense his feelings to some degree in the same way that Nell could. That meant she could sense his reluctance to do anything to them.

And that was why she waited until he had his back turned to her to enjoy a quick snack.

The monstrous whale might have tasted good, but it was nothing compared to a living human. Of course, neither could compare to the taste of rowboats.

As Ilo went from desperately struggling player to desperately struggling player, she imagined taking a rowboat hunting expedition to the south in waters where she wouldn’t get in trouble for it.

That sounded nice.