There was no time to waste. That was why Fenrir and Serra ran side by side back to everybody else while Azalabulia was given a ride on Fenrir’s back. As for why she was on his back, she wouldn’t have been able to cast the warning spell that she needed to fire off while trying to run at the same time.
“Messenger of Bahamut! Now is the time for you to relay the message that will bring the forces of this world crashing against the Eastern serpent! Fly as high as you can so that all may see your burning visage! Be the lit beacon that calls for the riders over the mountains! Cursed Flame of Bahamut, I, Azalabulia, call upon you to illuminate these skies!” Azalabulia shouted, pointing her staff directly into the air with one hand while her other arm remained looped around Fenrir to stabilize herself.
The head of a flaming dragon then shot up into the sky with great speed. Its roaring call could be heard for the entire duration of its flight upward until it reached the lowest clouds. Then it was as if the world’s largest firework was detonated. The landscape was illuminated underneath the burning flash of light that reached even across the peaks of the near mountains. All around from Fraydranth’s home to the other villages north along the coast would be able to see the explosive display.
“Fen! Was that good enough?” Azalabulia asked with sparkles in her eyes.
“Yeah, that was one of the best explosions ever,” Fenrir answered. Yet, when he looked over to see the towering serpent who tilted its head to look up at the illuminated sky, he could only think about how small that explosion was in comparison to the serpent.
How were they supposed to beat something so ridiculously massive? Even in the other games he played where boss fights against massive foes took place on top of their backs or featured only fighting a single part of their body, they were never anywhere near as large as this serpent. Not even Fraydranth, as massive as she was, could compete with the serpent’s size.
And if they could only see what of the serpent was above water, then he knew that there had to be even more of its body underneath the breaking waves. It was then that he began to remind himself over and over again that the two largest navies in the game had already tried joining forces to take down the Southern serpent only to fail. He just had to hope that having Fraydranth on their side would lead to a more favorable result. Besides, they had a few advantages. Fighting the serpent in shallow water and on land would be far easier than fighting it in the ocean. Of course, it was also possible that the serpent could simply smash its body against the ground and drag itself along it to destroy everything in its path. It was over if that happened. There would be no way to defend against anything like that.
Essentially, it came down to whether or not the overseer, Kadi, would let them win or not. The serpent had several options available to it that could lead to the instant destruction of all their defenses.
But that wouldn’t be very fun game design, and Fenrir figured that Kadi wouldn’t get too much entertainment out of something like that.
He knew that the battle was going to be hardfought and not without losses, but he also had faith that Kadi at least intended for it to be a winnable fight. Admittedly, that was a lot of faith he was placing in her, but he had to believe it. Now that he could actually see the serpent towering over the coast, he knew that it was impossible without Kadi taking it easy on them at least a little.
Yet, even if it was impossible – even if Kadi truly had no intention of lowering the difficulty for them, Fenrir found himself excited. If anything, thinking about how impossible it was without Kadi lowering the difficulty made it even more exciting.
“The former leader of the Divine Brigade wouldn’t back down from something just because it looks impossible,” Fenrir thought to himself, tightening his grip on Azalabulia’s legs as he picked up the pace toward the defenses. Before long, he got close enough that he could already see everybody else was ready and waiting for the battle to begin. The only ones missing were their reinforcements. And, the closer that Fenrir got, the more he realized that the reinforcements were quite literally the only ones not there already.
The rest of his girlfriends could be seen waiting there for him. They weren’t the only ones, either. Oleander, Corwin, Tabitha, and Rao were both there as well. The majority of borrowed labor from the other villages were all online and hyped up as well. Even Mister Smiles was there. If anything, more of them were online at once than ever before. It was as if the serpent had purposely decided to attack them when they had the most players online to give them as much of a shot at defeating it as possible. Sure, it would have been nice if the serpent waited for a while longer before launching its attack so that more defenses could be prepared, but it wasn’t going to wait around forever.
It really did look more and more likely to him that Kadi was trying to give him and all the players a legitimate chance.
Though, as soon as he arrived with Azalabulia and Serra, Rao spotted him and ran up to him. Between the concerned eyebrows and heavy breathing, Fenrir could tell that something was wrong. “Bro,” Rao said, “something’s up. You know how the overseer would normally take over players when they’re not online to defend against raids and all that, yeah?”
“Right,” Fenrir answered. “She takes over, but they’re played at reduced efficiency.”
“Yeah, well, they’re not waking up. It’s not taking over for them.”
“Maybe they just aren’t up yet because the battle hasn’t actually started yet?”
Cassiel had spotted them and rushed over, joining the conversation with a shake of her head. “They should be up by now. Offline avatars are usually taken over the instant that it even seems like there’s a threat. If an army approaches walls, even if it hasn’t launched the attack yet – if somebody’s room is broken into by somebody whose stealth abilities isn’t good enough to avoid detection, stuff like that. This… should definitely count as being a threat immediate enough for the overseer to take them over.”
The rest of Fenrir’s girlfriends gathered around him alongside more of the players. “How many total people are offline? Any ideas?” he asked.
“About thirty of them,” Tabitha answered.
Fenrir looked the group over. They were down thirty fighters but everybody who was present was controlled by their actual player. That meant they wouldn’t be fighting at reduced efficiency while controlled by Kadi. The only thing that he could think of was that she purposely aimed for when the most players were online at once to launch the attack with the serpent… and that she wanted to test the might of the human players against the serpent.
This wasn’t just some important battle in a video game. As far as Fenrir was concerned, this was becoming more and more of a test for him and the others. Kadi was even willing to disregard the regular mechanics of the game for this.
“Then all we’ve got to fight her – them, the serpent, with is our human spirit,” Fenrir said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tabitha asked with a cocked head and raised eyebrows.
“It means that we can’t rely on anybody but ourselves. It’s us versus the serpent. The overseer won’t be helping us out at all.” Well, aside from the fact that she was already clearly helping in some ways.
That wasn’t quite true either, though. After all, he just got hit in the back by a strong burst of water. When Fenrir turned around to look at who had shot him in the back, it was none other than Ilo with as smug of an expression as a serpent could have. There was no player controlling Ilo, yet she was present and ready to fight.
Seeing that caused Fenrir to let out a sigh of relief. If Ilo was still in the fight with them, then Fraydranth most likely as well. He might have started worrying about whether Fraydranth would actually appear or not once he heard that the overseer wasn’t helping out by controlling players.
So, essentially, the battle was to be the players and NPCs more or less controlled by Kadi versus the serpent and its army that were all more or less controlled by Kadi.
Rock and Shogun were there too, of course. Rock ran up to take her place by Fenrir’s side while Shogun waited by Rao, finally separating from Rock’s side for once. Only temporarily, of course.
“You want to help us out?” Fenrir asked Rock, leaning over to scratch under her chin.
Rock barked and tilted her head to rub the side of her face against Fenrir’s petting hand.
“Alright, but you have to be careful.” Fenrir looked up and around. “All of us have to be careful. This is the battle that we’ve been waiting for. This isn’t only going to prove that we have what it takes to be the first players to ever defeat one of the world’s greatest serpents, it’s going to prove that we can do it on our own as well. Anybody who’s not online isn’t going to be taken over to help us out. This is us – players and NPCs, versus the serpent and its legions.” He paused to look toward the beach. The first wave of enemies now appeared from the ocean with water dripping off of their disfigured forms as they walked onto the sandy shore. “I’ve never been too good at speeches, but I am good at one thing. I’m good at being stubborn and fighting against the impossible until the impossible gets so tired of my shit that it gives up. So, let’s resist this oversized snake until it gets so tired of us that it decides dying would be better than trying to kill us for any longer.”
Fenrir may have claimed to not be any good at speeches, but that didn’t stop him from motivating those around him who shouted and raised their weapons into the air. Even Rock and Shogun howled along with all the shouts.
“Alright! Everybody, get to your stations! Help each other out, kill as many of these wannabe-zombie fish as you can, and stubbornly resist death until the end!”
The crowd cheered once more before breaking up as everybody rushed to their stations.
“That was pretty good,” Cassiel said.
“A wonderful speech, my hero! I would love to hear more of such speeches from you. Preferably while you overlook an army of thousands with me held by a collar and chain at your side!” Nell joined in on the praise.
“Cass almost made me feel bashful, but you helped me stay normal. Thanks, Nell,” Fenrir said.
“Ah, perhaps I should have stayed quiet inn that case.”
“But I appreciate you for not.”
“Your appreciation is appreciated, my hero!”
“And your appreciation for my appreciation is appreciated. Now, I need you to stay with the others and the defenses to shield them from any big attacks that might come their way. Use that barrier of yours that can even stand a chance against Aza’s explosions, but only use it when it looks like there’s a massive attack that won’t be survivable without your barrier. Let smaller attacks happen to save your energy.”
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“I shall do my best, my hero.”
“Cass, Eva, Tabs, and… Mister Smiles,” Fenrir said, looking over at the tall and muscular, ever-smiling, Mister Smiles, “I want you four to join me right before the beach. If the five of us work together, we should be able to hold back the first waves before stronger enemies appear. We’ll deal with any stragglers that make it past the defenses.”
The four women nodded their heads. Well, as far as Fenrir was concerned, it was still four women since he didn’t know about Mister Smiles’ true gender yet.
“Aza, go restore your mana, then I want you to help the others out with reloading defenses and helping the injured. We’re going to wait for the waves to grow larger before making use of your magic.”
“I’ve been saving a stash of mana potions for something like this,” Azalabulia replied. “There will be more explosions today than you have ever seen from me!”
“I’m looking forward to it. Serra, you have your gun to mount. I’ll be expecting you to mow down as many of the incoming enemies as you can. Don’t forget to aim for their heads.”
Serra nodded and gave a thumbs-up in response.
“Olly, help out at the river. If anything goes wrong, I want you there to help out.”
“You know it, daddy.”
Fenrir flicked Oleander’s forehead, prompting the deerish boy to stick his tongue out. “Corwin—”
“Assist in supporting the others however I may?” Corwin asked, already aware of what his role was as a nonfighter.
“You’ve got it. And make sure that you stay as safe as you can, alright?”
“Of course. I shall stay as safe as one can while they are being invaded by such a fearsome foe.”
“Fearsome? You don’t even look the slightest bit scared.”
“Ah, my apologies. It is difficult to be scared when I know that I am on the side that never loses.”
“Hey, you’re going to jinx us.”
“Then we will stubbornly resist the jinx until it gives up, will we not?”
Fenrir couldn’t help but to smile. “You know it. Alright! That’s everybody. The rest of you,” he said, looking over the crowd, “know what you need to do. Let’s get to i—”
“Bro, what about me?” Rao asked.
“Uh… fly around on Shogun helping out however you can?”
“Didn’t you think of anything for me?”
“You’ve got a flying fox you can ride and a spear. You can be our cavalry charger,” Fenrir said, pulling the idea out of a place that received no light. All it ever received was Serra’s groping. “Me, Cass, Eva, Smiles, and Tabs will be the anvil. You’ll be the hammer. Got it?”
“I don’t get it. What do you mean anvil and hammer?”
“Don’t worry about it. Look, just wait until we have the enemy distracted, then fly in from behind to stab them with your spear.”
“Oh, why didn’t you say that sooner?”
“I’m teaching you some battle strategy terminology once this is over.”
“I’m good. I plan on going to sleep as soon as this is over since I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
“Fair enough. Make sure to tire yourself out then so that—”
“Oi, ya know that the monsters are comin’, right?” Tabitha asked, poking Fenrir with the top of her oversized hammer.
“You make a good point. Let’s go!”
Monsters poured out onto the beach. Each one was vaguely humanoid in shape with aesthetics that could only be described as a combination of eldritch and zombie-esque. Many of them stood taller than the players did, but they served as sponges to absorb as much damage as they could by attacking and testing the defenses first.
To the lucky few monsters who invaded the beach first, it would have been similar to the historical landing of Normandy. Fire from cannons and Serra’s pseudo machine gun kept the sandy beach in a constant state of danger. One by one, the monsters fell all around.
Those who were not immediately killed by ranged weaponry then had to deal with the traps. Whether they were unstable stones full of magical energy that were detonated to cause large explosions upon having their triggers stepped on, or they stepped onto pressure plates tha caused rows of wooden spikes to shoot up from beneath the sand to impale their bodies.
If and when any of the monsters managed to make it past both the ranged barrage and the traps, they then had to somehow make it past Fenrir and the four women fighting with him. Each one of them excelled in melee combat and were ready to slaughter any enemy that came anywhere close to them. One lucky monster did managed to somehow make it past all of the threats thus far, even managing to hastily run past the first line of defenders… only to get impaled from behind by Rao’s spear after he soared down with Shogun to slay the monster.
“That takes me back,” Fenrir said with a soft sigh, looking over at Cassiel.
“Really?” Cassiel asked. “Even now?”
“I’ll never forget the moment that you thrust into me from behind.”
“Why do you have to be this way?”
Fenrir leapt toward Cassiel with his fist ready to strike. Rather than stand there like a confused deer in the headlights, though, she spun around with her blade to decapitate the monster about to attack her from behind. Fenrir had no choice but to stop his heroic leap to sigh and slump his shoulders. “Why do you have to deprive me of my cool moments? That was supposed to be one of those times where it looks like I’m going to attack you, so you freeze, but I really attack the thing about to attack you.”
“I know. Maybe if you didn’t bring up the thrusting thing again, I would have let you be cool. I’ll handle myself until you behave.” It was one of the rare times where Cassiel actually looked and sounded rather smug.
“You’re so cruel to me, Cass Cass.”
This time, Cassiel was the one who leapt toward Fenrir with her sword pointed forward ready to strike. Fenrir stayed perfectly still, even when Cassiel’s blade went over his shoulder and through his hair to pierce the monster’s heart behind him. “Notice how I actually let you look cool when you want to?” he asked.
“I guess you’ll just have to try harder.”
“You’re really hot when you’re like this.”
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“Sh-shh… this isn’t the time for that.”
“Whatever you say, my hot and heroic girlfriend.”
Fenrir gave Cassiel a quick kiss before noticing that Tabitha was in trouble. Leaving Cassiel behind to handle the enemies near where they were, Fenrir rushed over to the overwhelmed Tabitha who realized that he was on his way.
As soon as Tabitha saw that Fenrir was coming to save her, she put in some serious effort to swing her hammer around in a circle, obliterating the body of every enemy near her.
“Ya really think I’d let ya save me?” Tabitha asked him. “I just haven’t been takin’ this very seriously. Still warmin’ up.”
“I think you’re all determined to just not let me look cool today.”
“Ya had your speech already. It’s time for the rest of us to shine now.”
And shine one of them quite literally did as the lightning from Eva’s thunderbird wing electrocuted several monsters at once.
Then there was Mister Smiles who, no matter how many enemies attacked her at once, just refused to go down. She punched and kicked at every single enemy as they desperately tried to inflict even a single wound on her, only for them to fail over and over again.
“I feel like everybody here is OP but me,” Fenrir sighed. It didn’t help that he was the only one fighting with his fists who also didn’t have some sort of apparent invincibility to prevent him from ever looking harmed like how Mister Smiles appeared to never take any damage. The rest of them all had weapons to keep enemies at bay with. So far, Fenrir was the only one who had some bleeding cuts and scratches on him from the enemy.
His wounds were about to grow even worse as an especially large monster grappled onto him using several tentacles.
It was at that moment that Fenrir realized: perhaps tentacles weren’t as hot as he thought they were. The slimy, pulsating lengths wrapped around his legs and arms, each tentacle covered in putrid pores that released a greenish ooze that burned Fenrir’s skin. The tentacles constricted around his limbs tightly enough to prevent him from easily breaking free, either.
Everybody could see that he needed help, and they tried to get over to him, but they were kept busy by their own threats as the difficult in monsters suddenly spiked.
“I swear if any of you try to touch my girlfriends with your tentacles,” Fenrir growled at the monster behind him, looking over his shoulder. He immediately regretted actually looking at the monster since it was a large man with a dislocated jaw hanging down, bloated eyes, and more ooze dripping down from all over his body. “I don’t recall consenting to being in a tentacle snuff hentai.”
There was only one thing that he could do to help himself, and it really wasn’t something that he wanted to do.
But it had to be done.
Fenrir pulled as hard as he could with his right arm to bring it closer to his face. With the tentacle wrapped around his arm still, he bared his fangs and tore into the tentacle to rip it apart. Some of the ooze got into his mouth and burned him, but he was too pissed off by the monster to care about that. He severed the tentacle with nothing but his fangs and then ripped the tentacle off of his other arm with his now-freed arm.
At that point, it was easy to take Rod and transform him into a sword to slice through the tentacles around his legs.
Right before Fenrir could inflict the finishing blow to the monster, though, his arms were wrapped up by two more tentacles that did their best to pull his arms away from his head.
“I really, really hate you for making me do this,” Fenrir growled at the monster before leaning forward to tear into his neck with his fangs.
Pained gurgling sounds could be heard coming from the monster as more tentacles extended from his body to try and get Fenrir away from him, but it was too late. Fenrir tore into the monster’s neck until he almost severed it, resulting in the head rather gorily falling to the side, only connected by half of its remaining neck.
Fenrir spit out what chunks of flesh he got into his mouth before peeling the now-limp tentacles off of him. Once the monster finally fell to the ground, Cassiel was revealed to be standing behind him.
“You… are so not bringing that mouth anywhere near me,” Cassiel said.
“Hey, I did what I had to. Do you really think that I wanted ooze-covered-zombie-fish-man flesh in my mouth? It tastes even worse than it looks.” Fortunately, the game didn’t force him to feel nauseous or to vomit after doing that. If it were in real life, though… he never would have managed because of those two things.
“You just ruined biting for me.”
“You’ll say that until I bite your neck again.”
“I’m going to remember what I just saw whenever you try. Thanks.”
“Cass, there’s smoke coming out from my mouth because of that disgusting ooze burning the inside of my mouth still. Be nice to me. I don’t want to feel bad about ruining one of your favorite things while I’m fighting for my life here.”
“I – sorry. I guess it is kind of screwed up to—”
“I’m just teasing you, don’t worry.”
“Too bad. Now I actually do feel bad.”
“I’ll make sure to make it enjoyable for you again. Don’t worry. Now, let’s get back to—”
“Fen!” Oleander shouted. “They’re coming!”
Fenrir looked out over the water in front of the river’s mouth and saw several lines of disturbed water approach the river where Ilo was stationed in and shooting water at them from.
The rest of the enemy serpents arrived.
“Think you can handle things over here?” Fenrir asked.
Rather than get an answer from Cassiel, Fenrir felt a heavy enough smack on his back to almost send him tumbling forward.
“If I get serious, ya know it!” Tabitha said. “Besides, the rest of us have barely had to break a sweat so far with how much ya’ve been carryin’ us. I think it’s about time we put in some effort to match yours.”
Fenrir didn’t quite understand what Tabitha was talking about, but he did know that she was being suspiciously nice. “Since when are you so nice?” he asked her.
“Since I saw what ya had to do to that last monster. I think ya had enough bullying for the day thanks to that. Anybody who turns a fish-zombie-thing into a snack is somebody who I’d rather not get on the bad side of anyways.”
“I have a feeling that you’re still bullying me.”
Tabitha clicked her tongue at Fenrir with a smile and gave him another smack on the back. “Go deal with those serpents. My contraptions won’t let ya down.”
“I want a refund if they do.”
“Hah! I don’t do refunds.”
“What a stingy engineer you are.”
“I might be stingy, but I’m also the best you’ll find. Now get goin’!”
Since he really did need to get going, that was exactly what he did. Fenrir left the girls to hold the frontline so that he could deal with the serpents who were set on killing Ilo. They already heavily wounded his favorite serpent once, and he wasn’t going to let them do that again.
Fortunately, Fenrir already had an idea for how to deal with the serpents, and Tabitha finished constructing his idea in advance.
“Ilo! Fall back to The Shoebill!” Fenrir shouted.
Ilo finished shooting her beam of pressurized water at the incoming serpents before turning to swim upstream toward where The Shoebill was docked. Just as she made it past the second of two constructions, the enemy serpents made it into the river past the first construction.
Fenrir waited for the perfect moment, tracking the movement of ripples the serpents made in the water as they swam underneath it toward Ilo.
As soon as the serpents were between the two constructions, Fenrir gave the order. “Now!”
The players stationed at each construction released the ropes, dropping the wooden gates into the river to trap the enemy serpents. This didn’t stop the serpents from trying to bite their way through the gates, but they quickly found their fangs shattering from how they were made of a combination of the trees as hard as metal found in the nearby forest alongside some living wood that was grafted from The Shoebill.
The first phase of Operation: Serpents in a Barrel was a flawless success. Tabitha once more proved that she really was the best engineer around.
All they had to do now was kill the serpents that they trapped. He might not have known how to kill the massive serpent still towering over them yet, but he at least had a few different ideas for how to kill the significantly smaller serpents that dared to hurt Ilo.