“I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know all that much about finding a realistic place to set up a city, but wouldn’t this place actually be pretty nice?” Fenrir asks.

“Going by realism… probably,” Oleander answers. “I mean, setting up next to a river is easy mode. That’s why early civs did it. Then we’ve got a forest for wood, mountains for mining – yeah, this place is pretty easy.”

“I’m used to thinking of it purely from a resource production standpoint. Always had to find places with the right resources or strategic areas.”

“Well, if you think about it, we’re doing the same thing here. Instead of trying to find a spot on a map that has high resource production and some rare made-up metals and resources and stuff, we’re just looking for a spot that has a high production of realistic stuff! Get what I mean? Sure, you didn’t usually have to worry about food and water in our other games, but we’re still trying to find the most strategic and useful spot.”

“Yeah, I get you. It really is the same.”

“We just have to secure a place before it’s too late, ere the giant capybaras get hungry.”

“I have a feeling I’m missing a reference.”

“You are, but it’s fine. I never could get you to play my favorite game about dwarves building fortresses.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, sorry. The graphics are just… I can’t.”

“It’s alright. It’s still being developed anyways.”

“Still?”

“It’s never going to end! It’s awesome.”

“Ah, look!” Corwin interrupts them, running over next to the river to crouch down and examine some of the vegetation. “We already have food growing here! This land must surely be fertile. It would make an excellent spot to settle!”

“You seem pretty excited about this whole thing,” Oleander says. “Like, you’ve almost been as excited about Fenny’s plan as my body lately! I’m going to start getting jealous,” he teases with a playful pout.

“A-ah, my apologies. It is just that I believe in Fenrir’s dream. It would be wonderful to have a place equally accepting of all.”

“Hey, this might be a stupid question, but at what point in rivers does saltwater turn into freshwater? Like, you know? Rivers are freshwater, but oceans are saltwater, so when does that change actually happen?” Fenrir asks.

“Well, think about it! It’s not like it’s going to be all ‘ooh I’m freshwater’ while it’s a river and then suddenly be all like ‘bam, bitch! Now I’m saltwater!’ as soon as it hits the ocean. It’s more… gradual than that. Like, the closer to the ocean it is, the saltier it’s going to be. The farther away, the less salty. It’s all about dat salt concentration, yo.”

“So, in other words, the ocean is like a tentacle monster and the river is like an innocent loli, and the salt is the tentacles trying to corrupt her?”

Oleander looks at Fenrir with a blank expression and sighs. “You know I’m going into law, right? Don’t make me call the cops on you.”

“I’ll hire you to be my defense attorney.”

“I’ll refuse!”

“You know, you’re basically a loli trap right now.”

Oleander looks himself over. Sure, he’s only as tall as Serra and is even more petite than her, he speaks in an even more girly and higher-pitched voice than her, and he acts the most immature out of all of them. “Cor! I’m not a loli, right?”

“A loli?” Corwin asks.

“You know! A little girl!”

“Ah. No, you are not a little girl. That thing between your legs ensures that. You do have a rather small body, though, but I like it!”

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“I – I don’t know how to feel about this now. I just wanted to be cute, but am I attracting pedos?”

“Pedos?”

“You know! Older people into younger people!”

“I always have enjoyed the thought of being with people younger than myself.”

“I mean like, way younger! Like a forty-year-old wanting to fuck a nine-year-old!”

“Nine would be too young. However,”

“D-don’t finish that sentence. Please. Just tell me I’m not a loli.”

“You are not a loli, Olly.”

“Loli Olly… that does have a nice ring to it. It sounds cute,” Oleander says, looking gravely conflicted over this now. “Loli Olly… Olly the Loli… I – I’m so torn.”

“I’ve got to admit that I’m kind of disappointed in myself for not thinking of that sooner,” Fenrir says. “Anyways, let’s keep going while you have some internal debates over that.”

Oleander nods and follows behind him with Corwin.

“You totally would make a great magical girl loli, though,” Fenrir says.

Oleander wants to cringe from Fenrir’s degenerate statement, but he knows that it’s true which makes him want to try it out.

Being cute is the most important thing in the world. And Corwin. They’re equally important to Oleander.

“I’ll have to have Nell Nell help me with that,” Oleander says.

“Oh boy,” Fenrir says. He already knows that she would be delighted to help him. “Let’s check out the forest. Maybe there’ll be mushrooms and berries growing there. Hey, how do people even farm mushrooms?”

“Uhh, I’m not sure. I just know that increased humidity in real life helps out, but the hotter weather hasn’t been kind to them.”

“It feels… what, maybe like it’s in the seventies here?”

“Do you mean lower twenties?”

“Hey, we’re American. We don’t use Celsius.”

“Unfortunately.”

“We’re not getting into that debate again.”

“Only because you know you’ll lose.”

“I’m going to name the city ‘Fahrenheit.’”

“I’ll impeach you and rename it to ‘Celsius is the Bestius.’”

“You’re a brat.”

“I know.”

The group makes it into the forest, and as soon as they do, Rock and Shogun take the lead.

Rock picks up all sorts of different rocks and other hard items that an animal would normally break their teeth on, but she crunches them all down to dust and eats them. Shogun just makes sure to watch her back while she’s busy snacking on new things, and he occasionally sniffs any new scents that he comes across.

The forest is home to all sorts of sights and objects for them to investigate. There are odd looking mushrooms, bushes full of berries, trees with different looking barks and leaves, colorful flowers sprouting up from the ground, and the tracks of critters in case they want to go hunting for some food.

“The more we see of this place, the more I’m thinking it’s perfect. Seriously, everything is around,” Fenrir says.

“Yeah, we should just really check out the mountains before deciding anything. I’d say we should go do that now, but it’d probably be better to wait for Rao and the rest since they looked a few hours away.”

“Wouldn’t we have to build wagons to carry materials to and from the mountain?”

“Yup! Or, the river looks like it goes up into the mountain, so we could always use that! It’s wide enough for a few boats like The Shoebill to fit in at once, so we could build like, a big cargo boat! That’d be harder to do, but it’d save so much time and trouble in the future. Think Rao and Tabs could build a big boat?”

“I’m sure they could if they tried hard enough, but since that’s not either of their specialties… I am kind of worried how it would turn out. Rao would want to include a bachelor’s pad with a giant bed in it somewhere on it, and Tabs would try turning it into a giant robot.”

“Actually, if I may… I could be of assistance. I spent a good deal of time around shipwrights back in Port Tugator, so I believe that between the three of us – Tabitha, Rao, and myself, that we could build an adequate vessel for the city’s needs,” Corwin says.

“Sweet. Things are coming together one by one. I guess we’ve just got to hope that no powerful monsters come down from the mountain to try and destroy us,” Fenrir says.

“Before we’re ready, that is!” Oleander adds on. “It’d be fun once we’re ready.”

“You’ve always loved your base defense games.”

“You know it! Just think about it. Any big, powerful monsters that come and try to attack us will basically just be providing us with free food and parts and rewards! Assuming we don’t like, you know, die and stuff.”

“I think you need to put some more emphasis on that last part.”

“Nah, we’d be fine! We’re the Divi—The Soaring Wolves! We don’t need to fear anythi—”

Rock’s growling interrupts him.

When they look over at Rock, they see her trying to gnaw on a tree and having great trouble with it.

Fenrir says, “Hey, do you think that’s…”

“It does look like an oak tree,” Oleander says. “There’s a whole bunch of them around here.”

“Watch out, girl,” Fenrir tells Rock. She reluctantly gives up on the tree and lets Fenrir take over. “Yeah, I think this is steel oak,” he says as he examines the wood. “Hey, Rock, try biting that tree.” He points at a nearby tree.

Rock charges at it, latches onto it, and starts shaking her head! The bark easily gets torn to shreds, and she takes a large chunk of wood out from it.

“One for two,” Oleander says. “It’s supposed to be extremely rare, remember? Only like, what, one in five hundred trees?”

“Hey, Rock, try that one,” Fenrir says, pointing at a different tree.

Rock charges at it, bites it, and has trouble again.

“Make that two for three,” Fenrir says. “And that one?” He points at yet another tree.

Rock struggles once more.

“Three for four. Coincidence, or did we just find ourselves a nice forest full of one of the game’s rarest and most useful trees?” Fenrir asks Oleander.

“We’ll have to test more of the trees out,” Oleander says.

“By the way, Rock, since when do you like biting trees?”

Rock looks at Fenrir with a mouth full of bark, crunching on it while tilting her head.