Book 1: Chapter 25: Patch 5.0: All Your Ship Are Belong To Us

Coastedge comes within sight of the party. It is dimly lit within the night by lanterns hanging on buildings, and only a few guards stand on watch around the village’s borders.

The party is already in position.

Fenrir, Cassiel, and Rock lie low within the grass next to the village. Bonekraka gave Cassiel one of the swords he had so that her only weapon isn’t a makeshift spear.

The rest of the party is spread out in a couple of positions. Each of them has their own missions to accomplish.

Bonekraka is up first. He jumps out from his hiding spot and charges directly at the guard watching the southern end of the beach!

Sure, Bonekraka might still technically be a new player with little in the way of stats and skills, but he doesn’t look like it. He is a massive, brutish orc wearing the skin and bones of the animals he’s hunted on his first day playing, is holding a regular sized sword that looks like a child’s toy within his huge hand, and looks really angry. It helps that he’s shouting like a rampaging monster fueled by naught more than a lust for slaughter.

Regardless of how weak he may actually be, he knows how to be scary. The guard he’s charging shakes in fear and freezes up, gripping onto his spear and bracing himself for Bonekraka’s attack. The guard doesn’t even need to warn the rest of the guards to come and assist him since Bonekraka is loud enough to draw their attention.

Bonekraka gets close enough to throw his sword at the guard! It impales the guard in his chest, sticking right through his torso and partially into the wall of the building behind him. Shock from the attack paralyzes the guard, allowing Bonekraka to move in to not only take his sword back but also to take the guard’s spear from him.

In true orc fashion – or rather, in true Viktor fashion, he finishes the guard off with a solid kick to the crotch. The neutered guard looks like he wants to vomit from the intense pain coursing through his body. No matter what a man’s pain setting is set to, such a powerful blow to his jewels is always going to hurt.

The guard collapses lifeless to the ground.

“Too easy! No real men here! Will destroy puny village by myself!” Bonekraka shouts in his thick, Russian accent.

“It’s the orc from the other night!” one of the guards shouts. More guards were already on the way over, but now even more are coming to get revenge for the other night.

“If I’m right, the sleeping characters should wake up and realize they’re under attack, so the overseer will be taking them over,” Fenrir whispers to Cassiel. They have a perfect spot for watching over a dozen guards rushing toward Bonekraka’s position.

“Looks like it. I was defending against a siege once, and all the logged-out guys I was with started moving around and getting into position as soon as the fighting made its way to us,” Cassiel whispers back.

One of the characters who “wakes up” and runs out of a house in Coastedge doesn’t run to support his allies, but instead runs away into the field.

“If he’s running then that means the overseer believes he would run away if the player was actually immersed, right?”

“Yeah, the overseer can almost perfectly imitate how real players would act,” Cassiel explains. Playing with somebody more experienced with the game has its advantages. He can actually ask questions and get them answered in more detail than what Saya offers. Of course, the legitimacy of the answers may not be on par with Saya's.

“Bet he’s going to get shit for that later,” Fenrir says.

“Good.”

The first phase of the plan is a success. Bonekraka manages to kill one guard and then slows down another by throwing the first guard’s spear into him.

Time to run. Turning around, Bonekraka runs south down the coast and focuses entirely on speed. One of the guards shoots a well-aimed arrow into his back, but it’s not enough to slow him down.

“We’re up. Ready, girl?” Fenrir asks.

“Yeah, I’m ready,” Cassiel replies.

“I was talking to Rock.” He looks over and sees her face overcome with red once more. “Are you ready, Cass?”

“Y-yeah,” she says, slapping her cheeks to snap herself back to the situation at hand.

Fenrir’s assumption of the guards being stupid proves to be correct. The ones watching the rest of the village’s perimeter have abandoned their posts to chase after Bonekraka. This allows Fenrir, Cassiel, and Rock to sneak into the village from the side facing the fields.

Their first objective is to release the giant, caged crabs. They are clearly agitated from being captured and caged. With four cages in total, each one holding two crabs, it only takes a couple of minutes for Fenrir and Cassiel to untie the cages’ doors and allow the crabs freedom.

“Hey! There’s more over here!” one of the villagers shouts.

Fenrir turns to look at the one whom spotted them, but what he sees is Cassiel already charging the villager with her sword in hand. He only gets a quick look at her sadistic grin as she thrusts her sword through the villager’s neck.

Two guards dead, one severely wounded, eight huge and pissed off crabs on the loose – the plan is going perfectly so far.

Fenrir and Cassiel get to work breaking all of the lanterns around the village. Each one gets taken off of whatever they are hanging from and smashed into the wooden walls of the village or thrown inside through windows. Some of the roofs are made of thatch which makes setting the buildings ablaze even easier.

It doesn’t take long for the first building to spawn a blazing inferno. The fire quickly consumes its straw roof and spreads into the rooms below it.

“Fire! Fire! They’re setting us on fire!” somebody else shouts, their voice full of panic.

The giant crabs may not be a large threat one-on-one, but when three of them charge the same villager at once, their pincers make quick work of their limbs.

Rock yelps. Spinning around, Fenrir sees Rock get smashed into a nearby wall from a guard wielding an iron mace. The side of Rock’s body is cracked, and chips of its body lie on the ground.

Fenrir has a better idea than throwing the lantern into another building. With a sword in his right hand and lantern in his left, he charges at the guard whom just hurt Rock.

The guard sees Fenrir coming and gets into a defensive stance. He has a mace, shield, and the same armor that Fenrir is wearing. The shield should be enough of a deciding factor for the guard to win.

Alas, the guard doesn’t expect Fenrir to bait the shield with his sword, allowing him to swing the lantern around smashing it into the side of the guard’s head! Shards of glass are embedded into the guard's head now.

Fenrir slashes at the guard’s arm as he tries recovering from the blow to his head.

It is now that Fenrir learns not everybody is going to be so easy to take down. With shards of glass stuck in his head and a cut arm, the guard regains his focus and stares Fenrir down. A bash from his shield knocks Fenrir back several feet and opens him up to an attack from his mace.

The guard’s mace slams into Fenrir’s side. He instinctively places his arm against his side to try and shield himself from the blow, but it does more harm than good as he can feel the bone in his arm snap from the force of the attack.

Fenrir lets out a pained gasp and stumbles backward. He tries raising his left arm but fails.

“What now, you cocky little shit? You think you can come in here and take down Stinky Garlic’s elite guard?” the guard taunts.

“You realize that your guild name takes away all seriousness from what you just said, right?” Fenrir replies.

That pisses the guard off even more. He charges at Fenrir.

“Duck!” Cassiel shouts from behind.

Fenrir trusts in her and ducks. Cassiel thrusts her sword over his head and right into the guard’s abdomen, causing him to trip over Fenrir and fall to the side.

“We need to hurry,” Cassiel says, pulling back on her sword so that she can thrust it into the guard’s head. “Half of the ones chasing your orc friend have turned back.”

Fenrir rushes over to Rock and picks her up. He tucks her down into the top of his leather cuirass, leaving only her head poking out from the top of it.

“Hurry and do what?” a man asks. Both Fenrir and Cassiel turn to face the new speaker.

It is the man that Fenrir saw get off from the ship. He’s a tall, heavyset man wearing a full set of steel plate armor trimmed with gold. A golden garlic with stinky lines surrounding it rests centered upon his chest armor.

“You look familiar,” he says to Cassiel. “You that bitch that refused to let us farm you?”

Cassiel’s grip tightens on her sword. She’s glaring at him.

“Back for revenge, and bring your boyfriend with you this time? How about this: you let us farm you in front of him, and we won’t hunt you both down after resetting you? I can make it so that neither of you can play this game in peace. Everybody will know your faces no matter where you go, and they will know to bring you to us so that we can reset you again, and again, and again,” the man says. He looks over Cassiel’s body and licks his lips. “Come on, let me see what’s underneath all that armor again. I still remember the amazing body you’re hiding underneath there. My viewers have missed you, too.”

Even if she never let them defile her, they did still get to see her exposed after killing her and taking all of her gear.

Fenrir rolls his eyes. He's always hated pricks who are so generically evil like this man is. "Bad guys" never know how to actually be bad. They always just resort to talking shit and threatening rape or something else so pathetically cliche. It makes him want to bring back Divine Brigade in force just to show him how to truly be evil.

“You bastard! You were streaming that?!” Cassiel shouts, her sword now shaking just from how violently she’s gripping its hilt.

“That’s right. Even now, I’ve got over five hundred viewers watching all of this.”

Cassiel has the look of somebody who’s about to make a really stupid choice out of anger.

Several guards surround them.

The pissed off frown on Cassiel’s lips turns into a smug smile when she looks past her enemy to the docked ship. She looks over at Fenrir and nods.

Both Cassiel and Fenrir go prone on the ground.

A volley of cannonballs tears through the village and takes out a couple of the guards surrounding them!

“Woah, Serra, that was a great shot! I didn’t think you’d manage to hit them on the first shot!” Oleander praises her as he gets to work reloading the cannons. Serra is right there alongside him getting them ready.

“I like pirate movies,” Serra says.

Two guards rush down the dock to try and make their way to the captured ship, but they see that one of the cannons has been rolled to aim directly down the connecting bridge and dock.

The guards freeze when they see Oleander’s cute, feminine face pop up from behind the cannon. As cute as he may be, the look on his face says that he would be more than happy to watch their bodies get scattered into hundreds of chunks if they don’t surrender.

They surrender.

Dropping their weapons, they jump off the sides of the dock into the water beneath it.

Another volley of cannon fire tears through the village. Some of the buildings which were on fire have their burning roofs and walls scattered about the village from the blasts, causing the fire to spread even more rapidly than before.

Fenrir and Cassiel get up. The guards that were surrounding them are all taking cover. Only their leader remains standing.

His eyes are filled with a burning hatred.

“You have no idea who you’re trying to fuck with,” he says.

“Stinky Garlic, a guild vassalized by the Augus Empire with its only use being to transport crabs north for coin, led by ‘The Garlic Man’ who constantly tries kissing up to Livia so that your worthless guild can be accepted into the inner circle. The only reason you’re not treated like the worthless bandits that you are is because nobody else wants to play with crabs all day,” Cassiel says. “We both know you have no real power. That’s why the only followers you can find are spineless pricks.”

Fenrir looks impressed. Cassiel would have been perfect for the Divine Brigade.

The Garlic Man draws his sword and shield. Even his shield is shaped like a giant garlic. “You think either of you brats can beat me?! I’ll take you both on!” he declares.

“Duck!” Fenrir shouts this time.

Cassiel ducks just in time for a cannonball to tear off the guild leader’s left arm and fly over her. She looks up at the ship and sees Oleander giving Serra more praise.

“My arm! My fuckin’ arm!” The Garlic Man cries out, tears streaming from his eyes.

“Think you can handle him on your own, Cass?” Fenrir asks.

“Don’t insult me with such a stupid question, you bastard. Can you step on a roach on your own?” Cassiel asks, flashing a quick smile toward Fenrir before returning her attention to the charging embodiment of garlic.