The battle was raging on at multiple fronts, but it was the front among the ships that was undergoing the most trouble now.
Fenrir and Saya, exhausted and bloodied, leaned their backs against each other while surrounded by their enemies. They were surrounded by blood, corpses, and the occasionally severed limb, but that all belonged to their enemies. Well, some of the blood was Fenrir’s, and Saya had a pretty mean cut from a blade on her cheek as well.
But despite the two going up against overwhelming odds, they remained more or less undamaged. They were just exhausted instead.
“I just realized something,” Fenrir said between his heavy breaths.
“What… what, Onii-wan?” Saya asked in response, sounding every bit as tired.
“Most of our fights have been over with pretty quickly before. But this… this is like a gauntlet challenge where it’s just wave after wave of enemies.”
“Yeah… we might be strong, but we should probably work on our endurance.”
“I think we’re reaching our limit here. It might be time for an old school, Divine Brigade style, tactical repositioning.”
“You mean time to run away?”
“Don’t call it that. It’s bad for my ego.”
“Just admit the truth, Onii-wan.”
“I admit that I’m awesome, cool, funny, charming, and—”
“Suddenly, I have all my energy back, and I feel like I should spend it all running away from you. How strange.”
The duo laughed a little as another boarding party came onto the ship they were on.
“You know, I’m kind of surprised by how weak they are,” Fenrir said. “I know we’re strong, but we shouldn’t be able to deal with dozens of them like this. Then again… no, it makes sense. The strongest players are the ones they sent to the beach. The weakest are the ones running the ships. You don’t need to be a strong fighter as long as you know how to aim a cannon. Just look at Serra.”
“Yeah,” Saya said in agreement. “But even if this is like a couple of endgame players owning a bunch of midgame noobs… we still have a limit to our energy.”
“We should have brought a third with us. While we hold the enemies off, a third could be manning one of the cannons and taking out their ships with it.”
“Wait… why don’t they try shooting us instead of boarding this?”
“I’m going to guess that these ships are valuable enough that they’d rather not lose them. They’d rather throw away dozens of their players than lose the ships, or it feels that way at least.”
“Whatever it is, we need to make our esca—”
Saya was cut off by a wave that rocked the ships and the beasts they were atop of around. When the duo looked to see what caused it, they saw what was likely the worst possible scenario for them.
Even more ships.
And they were surrounded on all sides.
“Well, shit,” Fenrir said. “I think we got too cocky and overstayed our welcome.”
Saya sighed and said, “I had a feeling this would happen.”
“Well, worst case scenario, I’ll make you an opening and you can get away.”
“No way. I’m not risking running away on my own. I’ll kill myself before I risk one of these edgelords capturing me.”
“Fair enough. In that case, we could always just kill ourselves right now to deprive them the pleasure of beating us. But if we do that… we won’t be able to help out the others.”
“That would require us getting out of here in the first place, and I don’t think that’s happening, Onii-wan.”
“Shit. Then our choices are either go down fighting and hope we get to kill ourselves before they capture us, or just kill ourselves while we have a chance.”
“Things can’t always go our way.”
“That’s a shame. I’d rather they did.”
“So… what’s it going to be, Onii-wan? Are we going to kill ourselves now, or try to kill some more of them first?”
Fenrir looked around at the situation one more time. More enemies were in the process of getting onto their ship and surrounding them, there were even more ships in the water now, and the vessels were so tightly packed together at that point that they couldn’t just jump overboard and hide in the water.
“Alright,” Fenrir said. “Let’s—”
A loud, deafening horn bellowed through the air. A shockwave accompanying it created small waves over the water and blew the hair back of Fenrir and Saya.
More importantly, it was a familiar sound—a sound that only one horn in the world could make as far as they were concerned.
And as soon as the horn stopped blowing, the duo heard a shout from one of their girlfriends at the absolute top of her lungs. “Fen! Saya! I’m bringing her around on the south and it’s your job to be there!”
Fenrir and Saya looked between all the ships to see the most beautiful sight that either of them had ever seen before, excluding the sights of their girlfriends and Rock.
They saw The Shoebill.
Eva was standing right behind the horn and, now that she was done shouting, ran back over to the ship’s wheel to keep the ship on course.
“Are… are you crying?” Saya asked Fenrir.
“How could I not be?!” Fenrir shouted, sounding offended that he was even asked. “It’s my girl! That’s my baby over there! She’s alive!”
“I wonder how your girlfriends would feel hearing you talk about your ship that way instead of them.”
“You’re all my women, but she’s my girl.”
“You—you’re so stupid,” Saya said and huffed, her cheeks a hint of red.
“Ah… all my energy is back now. Alright, Saya. We have a grand reunion to make. I’ve been away from my baby far too long.” With that, Fenrir looked around to figure out which direction was which real quick. If Nameless was to his right, that meant that was the west. In that case, straight ahead was south, and he confirmed that real quick just by looking up and seeing the sun in the distance ahead of him.
And fortunately, there were three more ships close by to each other in that direction to jump from deck to deck. Sure, there were some more enemies on them, but all they had to do was break through them.
“Eva asked us out on a date, so let’s try to arrive early so we don’t keep her waiting,” Fenrir said to Saya.
“You’re so lame, Onii-wan,” Saya replied. “But… I guess I feel pretty energized now, too.”
“Ready then?”
“Ready!”
“By the way, do something for me real quick as a virtual assistant. Play some badass hype music for this.”
Saya rolled her eyes but did as he asked in the same instant. With that, the epic, orchestral song playing during action scenes from one of his favorite anime played inside of his head. Nobody else could hear it since it was being streamed to him and him alone, but that was alright. He didn’t need anybody else to hear it in order to get hyped up.
“I’m counting on you, Rod,” Fenrir said, his intent transforming Rod from chains wrapped around his arms into a matching set of shields, one held in each arm. “We’ll clear the way, you shoot the bastards down,” he said to Saya.
“But why two shields?” Saya asked.
“Because they’re cool.”
“They look ridiculous.”
“Ridiculously cool. Also, don’t insult Rod like that. He always looks cool.”
Saya sighed, as she often did around Fenrir, and said, “What happened to getting there early?”
“Right. Let’s get going then.”
With renewed determination brought about by The Shoebill’s return, Fenrir charged forward with his dual shields in hand, plowing right through two of the combatants on their deck before jumping over onto the neighboring ship’s deck. He might not have had much damage potential when using two shields, but he had enough defensive force to plow through enemies without a care in the world, opening a path for Saya to follow.
And while Fenrir might not have killed the enemies he was plowing through, Saya made sure to finish off as many enemies as she could by shooting while running. The only thing stopping her from killing more was how long it took her to grab another arrow to pull back and loose over and over. With Fenrir knocking so many of them over, practically stunning them, Saya had no difficulty in aiming and sending arrows right into the foreheads of her enemies.
But when they reached the final ship in the row of vessels, they encountered a problem. The last ship still had all of its crew onboard.
As reinvigorated as the duo might have felt, they were still physically exhausted underneath their motivation. Furthermore, Saya was down to only a couple of arrows left and Fenrir didn’t have enough strength left in him to handle that many players on his own.
To make matters worse, The Shoebill came into sight on the other side of the last ship. Eva tried getting The Shoebill as close as she could, but her inexperience with steering it meant there was still a good gap between the vessels. They wouldn’t have been able to jump onto their beloved ship even if they broke through the enemies in that exact instant.
There was no time to think.
Fortunately, Fenrir didn’t need time when in a rush.
“It’s not stupid if it works,” Fenrir said out of nowhere.
“What?” Saya asked, using one of her last arrows to put down an enemy spellcaster who was about to send magic their way.
“Bring her around the front!” Fenrir shouted loudly enough for Eva to hear as Rod transformed from two shields into the usual fishing rod.
“O—Onii-wan… don’t tell me. You’re not… you’re not actually thinking of trying that, are you?”
“If I can catch fish, I can catch a boat. Buy me thirty seconds.”
“You’re insane.”
“No, I’m Fenrir.”
Rather than sigh or roll her eyes, Saya groaned and readied her final arrow to shoot at whoever decided to approach them first.
Meanwhile, The Shoebill turned to come around the front of the ships, and the closer look at her revealed just how damaged she was. There were planks missing from her hull, holes throughout her, the mast looked ready to fall over at any instant, and she overall looked like she had no right to even be floating in the water.
But she was.
It was hard for an untrained eye to see, but Fenrir saw what made her seaworthy: the living wood. She might have been in bad shape, but the living wood infused with her hull was regrowing and repairing her all on its own. She was likely in far worse shape before and all the most critical damage was already recovered from. There was still some damage to heal from, but nothing that wouldn’t be healed in another few days of letting her naturally recover.
And no matter how damaged she might have looked still, she still looked perfect in the eyes of Fenrir. “You’re as beautiful as the day I lost you,” he said, prompting another groan from Saya behind him.
Now, The Shoebill might have still been far too far for them to jump onto her… but she was within range of Rod’s line.
Fenrir pulled Rod back and cast the line with everything he had! Then, before the line could even land, he wrapped an arm around Saya, not looking at where exactly he put his arm, and jumped overboard with her.
It was only in the middle of jumping into the water off the front of the ship that he realized he placed his arm around her chest and that he was pretty roughly groping one of her breasts.
But that was okay.
Then, while Fenrir might not have even made sure that Rod’s hook landed on The Shoebill before jumping into the water, he didn’t need to. He had enough faith in himself and Rod to know that the hook was going to reach their target no matter what.
And that was confirmed when, in the water, the duo got tugged through it in the same direction that The Shoebill was going.
All Fenrir had to do then was reel them in. Saya switched to wrapping her arms around him to hold on so that he could use his hand to reel them in rather than grope her, though he would have rather kept on groping her.
Fortunately, even though they were being shot at from the decks of the ships via players’ ranged weapons and magic, The Shoebill was dragging them through the water quickly enough to avoid all the attacks.
One of the monsters being used as a base for the ship built atop it even lunged at The Shoebill to try and take a bite out of it, but Eva managed to steer out of the way just barely in time.
I’m killing you first, Fenrir thought, looking at the monster that dared try to hurt The Shoebill.
The time for that monster’s death would come soon as well since Fenrir and Saya reached the side of The Shoebill.
Fenrir’s cast was absolutely perfect. Rod’s hook landed on the netting over the side of the ship used to climb up onboard in the event of going overboard, allowing him and Saya to easily climb up onto The Shoebill’s deck.
Eva was quick to greet them. “About time! I—I have no idea what I’m doing!”
“You did great, Eva,” Fenrir said before him and Saya simultaneously shook their bodies like a couple of dogs to get rid of as much water as possible, causing Eva to think about how cute they looked doing that.
“A-anyways,” Eva said, forcing her thoughts away from how cute they looked. “Astika found The Shoebill and—”
“You can tell me the rest later. I need you to do something for me.”
“O-oh. Right. What do you need?”
“I need Serra. Can you go grab her and fly her over here?”
“Serra?”
Fenrir looked at the only remaining, operational cannon aboard The Shoebill. “Nobody can handle a cannon like her. If we’ve only got one working cannon, we’re going to utilize it to its highest capability. And for that, I need Serra working it.”
“Right. I’ll go grab her!” Eva didn’t waste any time and flew off as soon as she could.
“Saya,” Fenrir said, “check below deck for any gunpowder and cannonballs. Hopefully, some crates survived down there.”
Saya nodded and rushed below deck, leaving Fenrir alone atop it.
Feeling a surge of emotion wash over him, Fenrir brushed his hand over The Shoebill’s wheel and said, “Glad to have you back, girl. You didn’t think we could do this all on our own, did you?”
Fenrir was ready to take control, but before he did… he felt the ship’s wheel turn against his hand, almost as if it was purposely rubbing against his hand.
“Did I just imagine that?” Fenrir asked. “Maybe the steering is a bit damaged still.”
He didn’t feel anything else, so he firmly grasped the wheel and looked at the ships turning to try and bring him into their cannons’ sight.
“Me and you—we’re going on an extra long fishing trip after this. But for now, let’s start with killing the bastard who dared to even think of hurting you.”
Fenrir looked back at the monster who lunged at The Shoebill and turned the ship toward it.
As the enemy fleet was about to learn, there were grave consequences for trying to fuck with The Shoebill.
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Oh no.. please dont tell me he turns the shoebill into an npc