Book 4: Chapter 22: Patch 4.0: Ferrets and Dogs

Fenrir, with axe in hand, surfaces from the river and walks up onto the riverbank.

“She’s too funny,” Fenrir says to himself, though somebody else decides to chime in.

“Tabs is totally best girl,” Saya tells him.

“Since when do you talk like a weeb?” he asks her, not bothering to stick to his thoughts since nobody else is around.

“I can do what I want.”

“You’re not wrong, but I didn’t think you’d be a weeb.”

“I’m not a weeb, baka onii-chan.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You’re definitely not a weeb. Only normal people use Japanese words in an English conversation.”

“I only do it because you’re a degenerate weeaboo who gets turned on by this sort of weird stuff.”

“You may have a point, but I also know that you’re basically made partially out of my thoughts and personality and all that, so that means I know that you’re actually into it yourself, you degenerate weeaboo.”

“I hate you, onii-chan.”

“Love you too.”

“L-love?! Wh-wh-what a-are you – wh-what are you – lo-ove?!”

“You know what I meant, you tsundere.”

“Let me play around, baka. This is when you’re supposed to push me up against a wall and place a hand next to my head on the wall to keep me from escaping!”

“I didn’t know that this is a shoujo.”

“Anything can be a shoujo if you try hard enough, just like how anything can be yaoi!”

“Olly and Cor already make this enough of a yaoi.”

“And now let me make it a shoujo!”

“Alright, alright. Just let me push your nonexistent body up against the wall to pin you to it.”

“You could just imagine it, you baka hentai onii-chan.”

Fenrir, standing perfectly still and just looking ahead to the forest, imagines pushing Saya up against the wall and putting his hands around her on it.

“O-onii-chan! Wh-what are you doing? This – umm – this – we-we’re siblings! This kind of thing isn’t – isn’t…”

Fenrir continues standing still and looking straight ahead as his little sister of a virtual companion roleplays inside of his head.

“Wh-what are we going to do on the bed, onii-chan?”

“You forgot to go pomf.”

There’s silence for a few seconds before they both start laughing.

“At least we have the same sense of humor,” Fenrir says.

“Like you said, I’m basically part of you, so yeah, I’m going to have the same humor,” Saya replies.

“If you ever do get a body, I’ll push you up against the wall for real, alright? Then we’ll see how you react when it really happens.”

“Maybe someday, onii-chan!”

“You never know. Maybe they’ll decide to be like ‘hey here’s a new expansion where you can play with your virtual assistant’ or something like that.”

“I doubt that, but we’ll see!”

“Oh, wait, I could just do it to you next time I’m immersing or waking. You’ve got a body then.”

“Y-you could, but you don’t need to!”

“You totally want me to, don’t you?”

“I – I never said that, you perv-hentai baka onii-chan.”

“Alright. Next time I go to wake, make the space look like a – actually, we can just do that right now.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“Return me to the lobby.”

“Are – are you sure?”

Fenrir nods and then his in-game avatar falls to the ground. Now, Fenrir finds himself in the game’s “lobby” where it’s just a black space, himself, and Saya.

“You can make it look like anything, right?” Fenrir asks her.

Saya nervously nods.

“Make it look like a high school’s hallway.”

The space around them turns into exactly what he requested, albeit with no students nor teachers roaming it.

“O-onii-chan?” Saya asks him. “Why – why are you looking at me like that?”

With a devilish grin, Fenrir walks up to his “little sister” until she’s forced to walk backward if she doesn’t want him to walk into her.

She walks backward until she hits the wall.

Fenrir continues his approach as Saya looks up at him with red cheeks and quivering, nervous eyes.

The final phase of his kabe-don plan is to slam his hand into the wall and… realize that this isn’t going to work.

Saya is almost half of his height when he’s Fenrir.

“T-turn me into my real body,” Fenrir says and instantly becomes Ryouta.

Ryouta now stands in front of Saya with his hand to the side of her head against the wall, and she looks totally unimpressed.

“The mood was already killed,” Saya says.

“I wasn’t taking our heights into consideration,” Ryouta admits.

The two start laughing again.

“Ready to go back in-game, onii-chan?” Saya asks him.

“I think so. Next time, though, I’ll remember the height difference,” Ryouta says.

“Go chop some wood, you hentai onii-chan,” Saya says as she sends him back into the world of Fantasy Tales Online as Fenrir.

Fenrir stands up from the grass and brushes himself off. His axe is lying on the ground next to where he fell. “I probably should have been a bit more careful. Wouldn’t want to accidentally split my skull open on it from falling,” he says.

“You prooobably should be more careful, but at least you’re fine this time!” Saya says, her voice back to being solely inside of his head.

Fenrir looks out to the treeline. While farming for materials in previous games that he has played was never too fun for him, something about this excites him. Maybe it’s the fact that the game is just so realistic that it’ll be like getting to go wild in a forest in reality with an axe. It’s probably that. Who wouldn’t want to take an axe into a forest and have tons of fun chopping down a bunch of random trees?

Though, now that he remembers it, he’s supposed to prioritize steel oaks and he’ll probably need help just to deal with a single steel oak tree.

Fortunately, the rest of the group is being ferried onto land via Shogun.

Rock was the first, of course, and she has already run up to Fenrir to nuzzle against his legs almost like how a cat would.

“First, you were a rock. Then, you were a dog. Now you’re a cat?” Fenrir asks Rock, petting her on the top of her head.

Rock barks at the accusation of being a cat. Even she understands that cats are the inferior animals when compared to dogs.

“Who’s a good girl?” Fenrir asks her.

Rock wags her tail and barks!

“That’s right, you are!”

Then it hits him.

This feels dirty.

After saying that to his girlfriend in reality, treating her like a puppy and saying the same things that he says to Rock, he realizes that he has corrupted those words.

Rock is looking up at him, expecting more praise.

What’s he supposed to do? Continue praising her while being reminded that he was abusing these words for sexual purposes? Rock would probably judge him or be horrified if she found out about what he did to her favorite words!

But, more important than his comfort is praising his dog.

“Who’s a good girl?” he asks Rock again, earning a pleased bark as she spins in a circle before rolling onto her back for a belly rub. “That’s right. You’re a good girl, and good girls get belly rubs.”

Cassiel is the next to reach him.

Fenrir gets an idea. A horrible, horrible idea that will only make him feel even more guilty about this, but he’ll get to praise Rock and tease Cassiel at the same time.

“Who’s a good girl?” Fenrir asks Rock.

“I a—” Cassiel answers and immediately shuts her lips.

Rock looks up at Cassiel with wide eyes expressing how betrayed she feels for having her status of good girl taken away from her.

Fenrir looks shocked as well. He was expecting Cassiel to just pout and be embarrassed if not maybe a bit jealous.

“Is this what it’s like in those memes when a girl asks her ‘daddy’ to pass her something during dinner, and then both the dad and boyfriend try doing it?” Fenrir asks.

While Fenrir might be joking about it, Cassiel’s face has taken on the color of a tomato and Rock looks as if her entire reason for living has been taken away from her.

“Y-you’re a good girl, Rock,” Cassiel tells Rock. “And shush!” she huffs at her boyfriend.

Rock goes from looking suicidal to as if it’s the best day ever! Even her tail is wagging again.

“Hey, Cass, have you ever tried rubbing her belly before?” Fenrir asks.

“No… why?” Cassiel asks.

“Try it. She deserves it after that.”

Cassiel still looks embarrassed, but she crouches down next to Rock and places one of her hands on Rock’s belly.

“It’s… I don’t really know what I expected, but she feels smoother and warmer than I thought she’d be. Not soft, but… smooth,” Cassiel observes as she rubs her hand up and down Rock’s belly.

“Try scratching by her leg there,” Fenrir says and points.

“How am I supposed to scratch smooth rock?”

“You get to file your nails and scratch a dog’s belly at once. Win-win situation.”

Cassiel shrugs, not caring about her in-game nails, and scratches Rock’s belly in the spot that Fenrir pointed at.

Hearing her nails scratching against rock is an unpleasant noise for all involved, but it makes Rock frantically shake her leg while her tongue hangs out from the side of her mouth.

Worth it.