Book 6: Chapter 40:

The next day, Fenrir found himself approached for a meeting near immediately after getting immersed into Fantasy Tales Online. It was Eva who came to get him, but it was not Eva who wanted to have a meeting with him. Instead, it was a familiar face who didn’t leave his town too often unless it was for some sort of important meeting.

There was somebody else as well with him.

“What brings the king of cats down here?” Fenrir asked with a smile and an extended hand.

King Cat was happy to accept the hand for a shake before letting Marija have her turn. Two of the three local leaders were gathered to come and meet Fenrir all of a sudden, and he had no idea what they could possibly want to meet about.

“We have heard the good news,” Marija said.

“That’s right. Figured we might as well come down and get the details from you ourselves,” King Cat added on. “Rainbow Afro would’ve joined us, but I guess he’s got some work thing keeping him busy right now. We’ll pass the details to him later.”

“Got it,” Fenrir said before looking around to see if he could spot Tabitha anywhere. To his surprise, there was no shortie engineer hanging around in the distance staring at Marija’s muscles. “Well, where to begin? Befriending the dragon people in the mountains, our friendly serpent almost dying from the monsters attacking her, how our defense preparations are going, getting attacked by an early wave of the enemy and barely managing to hold them back, or befriending a giant dragon that is going to help us out?”

“Wait, what’s that about befriending a giant dragon?” King Cat asked. He and Marija looked at each other, each one equally surprised.

“Huge dragon. Lives in the mountains. Made us catch fish for her, get alcohol for her, and massage her. Now she’s our ally. We should probably arrange a meeting between you three and GG, and with the dragon.”

“You… you seriously befriended a dragon?” Marija asked.

“Yeah. She’d probably be willing to be friends with all of you, too.”

“Hold on,” King Cat said. “If you befriended a dragon – one of those giant ones from the mountains, do we even need to do any of this? Or is this going to be like one of those cases where as soon as you get the huge and powerful monster on your side, suddenly it’s as weak as any other average character?”

King Cat had a point. Usually in video games, especially RPGs, befriending some great and powerful ally meant that the ally would suddenly be far weaker than before. It was like whenever a previously antagonistic character joined the main character’s party. Before when they were still an antagonist, they might have had an ability that allowed them to one-shot the entire party. After becoming an ally, that ability would mysteriously go missing and never be brought back up again as the boss-tier antagonist made for only an average-tier ally.

“That stereotype mainly refers to when the bad guy joins the good side, right?” Fenrir asked. “So, by RPG logic, since she – Fraydranth, the dragon, was never our enemy… that means she won’t be weakened.”

“I see. That’s a good point,” King Cat said, holding his chin and nodding his head.

“Besides, Ilo didn’t get weaker after joining up with us. She’s only gotten stronger instead, and she’s already strong enough to handle bosses on her own.”

“Which makes it all the more concerning that she was supposedly brought so close to death,” Marija said.

“We’ve got a plan to deal with the assholes who hurt her. I’ll go over it with you two when we get around to talking about how preparing the defenses has been going.”

Marija nodded, falling silent to allow King Cat to bring up what concerned him. “There’s one major problem with all of this,” he said.

“What?” Fenrir asked.

“Where are all the cats at? You don’t have a single cat anywhere around here! No pet cats, no cat monsters, no girls with cat ears – come on. You’ve got to step your cat game up.”

“What about my dog game? We’ve got Rock and Shogun,” Fenrir paused to look over at the two canines in question. Naturally, they were cuddling together and raised their heads once they heard their names said. “And there’s me,” he said, reaching up to touch his ears, “and some other players around here have pet dogs.”

“A whole lot of words left your mouth just now, but you didn’t say a single thing. I want to know where the cats are. You know, the felines. Or, as my friend Marija here would put it, there’s not enough pussy.”

King Cat’s comment earned him a strong elbow into his side coming from Marija, almost knocking him over.

“Come on!” King Cat groaned as he rubbed his side. “I’m not wrong!”

“While it is something that I would say, I would not say it in the same context as you,” Marija explained.

Fenrir laughed at their interaction with one another which caused King Cat to join in on the laughing, though Marija didn’t look anywhere near as amused as those two did. She simply sighed and shook her head instead.

“Alright,” King Cat said. “Let’s actually get this meeting over with. As much as I’d love to screw around down here, we’re a bit too busy for that. So… let’s start with how you managed to befriend a dragon. Then we’ll talk about all those other things.”

“You’ve got it,” Fenrir said.

For about the next couple of hours, Fenrir told King Cat and Marija everything that he could in as much detail as he could to make sure that he didn’t leave a single thing out. This also included all of their plans, both practical and hypothetical, for the upcoming battle as well as the fact that Mister Smiles was a spy. Part of him felt guilty telling them about that since, as far as Mister Smiles knew, Serra was the only one who knew her identity, but Fenrir couldn’t hide something like that from the other local leaders. If there was a known spy in their midst, that was something they all had to keep in consideration. There was always the chance that Mister Smiles wasn’t the only one and that Fenrir’s settlement wasn’t the only target.

Of course, he also made sure to include that Mister Smiles had been nothing but kind, respectful, and helpful to him and the others. And he made sure to only bring it up once the three of them were away from all of the others so that nobody would overhear him talking about her.

There was still the fact that Fenrir had no idea Mister Smiles was actually a she, either. That remained classified knowledge that only Mister Smiles and Serra knew.

“A spy from the Desert Stalkers, huh?” King Cat said. “No idea what he’s doing over here. One, their base is somewhere in the middle of the desert across the ocean. Across the ocean as in way across the ocean. All the way to the western continent.”

“They are said to have informants all over the world similar to how the scholars are present in every region,” Marija said.

“Yeah, but still. There aren’t exactly any scholars hanging around here since our groups are too small for them to care about setting up embassies or whatever within. Let’s face it, we’re basically random nobodies to the rest of the world. If somebody does know about us, they probably think we’re just a bunch of random carebears who want to be left alone to enjoy fishing. If we’re too unimportant for the scholars to hang around us, I would’ve thought we’d be too unimportant for the Desert Stalkers to send a spy our way.”

“Perhaps the spy is not here for us so much as he is for a certain individual.”

King Cat and Marija turned to look at Fenrir at the same time.

“Hey, if you two are unimportant, I’m even less important,” Fenrir said.

“You won that big fancy fishing tournament and befriended a serpent,” King Cat said.

“And now you have befriended a dragon,” Marija added on.

“Well, he arrived before the dragon thing, so I don’t think that’d be a reason,” Fenrir said. “And for the whole fishing and serpent thing – well, I guess you have a point, but I doubt that they send a spy to every player who achieves something even slightly noteworthy.”

“Regardless, what do you intend to do about this spy?”

“Uhh, not really anything right now. Like I said, he’s been great to us. Plus, given the fact that he slipped up so easily and revealed himself, I’m thinking that he’s not exactly a good spy in the first place.”

“Even a bad spy can still transmit information to whoever has sent them. How do you know that they are not purposely pretending to poor at their task to lower your guard?”

“Well, here’s the thing. I know my spies. I know how to spy and I know how to detect spies. Whether they’re amazing spies trying to blend in as seamlessly as possible or purposely acting obvious to lower guards, I know my spies. Mister Smiles… is so bad at spying that he’s actually a great spy because he doesn’t come across as competent and trying to blend in, and he doesn’t come off as purposely acting obvious either. He just… acts completely normal. I don’t think he knows how to actually spy. So, he’s either the most incredible spy ever and pulling off the perfect act, or he’s actually just a really bad spy to the point where it doesn’t warrant any real attention.”

King Cat grabbed his chin again and said, “Huh. So, you’re saying that you can weed out the great spies, and you can weed out the great spies who are pretending to be bad spies, and both of them are more obvious and threatening than spies who are actually just bad at being spies?”

“Basically.”

“Sounds cocky and overly confident,” Marija said. “I do not like the fact that there is a known spy regardless of their competence.”

“Don’t worry. We’ve been careful about Mister Smiles. No topics of any value are brought up around him, he’s not let in on any secrets or strategies aside from the obvious that anybody can see by opening their eyes and looking around, and Cass – my one girlfriend, has been keeping an eye on him. If you’re worried about spies, check out your own people. We can’t rule out that there aren’t spies in your towns. As for Mister Smiles… I’ll handle him myself.”

“Have you considered the possibility that he is a distraction? What if there is another spy hoping that you believe Mister Smiles is the only one?”

“Then they would be a good spy and I would have spotted them by now.”

“Hah,” King Cat chuckled. “It’s still amusing to me that you can apparently detect the good spies with ease but the bad ones completely fly under your radar.”

“What can I say? I’ve got standards for the types of spies I detect.”

Fenrir and King Cat shared a laugh while Marija sighed and shook her head, thoroughly unimpressed by the two men.

“Anyways,” Fenrir said, “is there anything else that either of you would like to know about? I think I’ve told you everything there is to tell you, but if there’s anything else you want to know, feel free to ask away.”

“I think we’re good, but I’m expecting to see more cats the next time I come around,” King Cat said.

“With the dragon on our side, this battle may be easier than expected,” Marija said, “but we cannot let our guard down. There are still too many unknowns that we must prepare for.”

Fenrir nodded his head. “You’re right. That’s why, even with the dragon’s support, we’re going to continue preparing as best we can. There won’t be any slacking down here even if we get an army of giant dragons pledging to help us out.”

“Good. That is one of the only things you have said today to make me feel more confident about this.”

“Too bad Rainbow Afro won’t be happy,” King Cat said.

“Why not?” Fenrir asked.

“You know how disappointed I am about the lack of cats? Now imagine my disappointment about a hundred times stronger because there aren’t any rainbows.”

“He… he really likes rainbows, doesn’t he?”

“If we meet that new dragon friend of yours, he’s probably going to try and convert her into a rainbow lover. Painting a dragon into a rainbow would be the best thing in the world to him.”

“I think he’d need a lot of paint for that.”

“Trust me, he has a lot of paint. You know how many cats are in Catsville? Well, imagine the cats I have but about a hundred times more of them. That’s how much paint Rainbow Afro has.”

“That sounds like a really excessive amount of paint.”

“You saw him yourself. Did he look like a man who cared about whether something was excessive or not? If it were up to him, this entire world would be painted as a rainbow. Rainbow sky. Rainbow sun. Rainbow grass. Rainbow water. Rainbow blood. Rainbow serpents and rainbow dragons. Seriously, if he ever asks you in private whether you’re interested in some decorating assistance, turn him down unless you want this entire place looking like a rainbow by no more than an hour later.”

Feeling that King Cat might have bene exaggerating just a tiny bit, Fenrir to Marija to get her input on the matter.

“He’s right,” Marija said. “He offered to paint some of the buildings in my town once. They were turned into rainbows. Somehow, it took a week to replace the paint with something else. It was as if his rainbow paint was powerful enough to overpower all other paints that tried to cover it, and almost nothing could remove it.”

“Him and his paint sound more powerful than a dragon.”

“It would not surprise me if it was.”

“Hey, maybe that’s a good idea,” King Cat said. “What if we paint everything with his rainbow paint? If it takes a miracle to remove, what if the paint creates a barrier that can’t be penetrated? The paint’s sheer will to persevere would force whatever it is painted onto to stay together.”

“That is incredibly stupid,” Marija said, “but there is a part of me worried that it may just work as much as I would prefer it not to.”

“You’re making me really want to visit his town to see what it’s like,” Fenrir said.

“I recommend it,” King Cat said. “Just, you know, keep in mind that at least your tail will be a rainbow by the time you leave. Anyways, we’ve already spent more time here than we should. I think it’s about time we get back. Right?” He looked at Marija.

“Most likely. I would not be surprised if there is already a brawl to determine who the strongest is in an attempt to replace me,” Marija sighed.

“That sounds important,” Fenrir said.

“It happens every time I leave for any extended period of time. I always return and have to beat down whoever claims to have replaced me. Every time, I must prove my strength.”

“I’m pretty sure they only do that because they enjoy getting beat up by you, if you know what I’m saying,” King Cat teased and promptly earned another elbow from Marija into his side.

The meeting ended and Fenrir made sure to wave his neighboring leaders off. He ended up being left with a desire to visit Rainbow Afro’s town, but he was filled with just as strong of a desire to never go anywhere near it. He really was never a big fan of rainbow color schemes in the first place. To Fenrir, rainbows were something to annoy people with.

Enemy leader who prided himself on being super masculine or something? Relentlessly kill him over and over while wearing a pink or rainbow dress. Discover a bigoted guild in some other game? Surround their territory with rainbow flags and then proceed to kill them and raise a rainbow flag where they once ruled. Somebody just really didn’t like rainbows in a similar way that Fenrir didn’t like rainbows? Harass them with rainbows.

Essentially, to Fenrir, rainbows represented trolling. He preferred doing the trolling rather than being the one getting trolled, so it was fine for him to use rainbows, but he did not want anybody to use rainbows against him.

It was all very silly. So, rather than think about rainbows any longer, Fenrir decided to do something that he had not done in a while.

He walked up to Rock and Shogun, looked down at them, got onto his knees, and… joined the cuddling canines in their cuddle puddle. This was something that he wanted to do with their ferrets in reality, but he usually ended up being bitten instead of cuddled. Rock and Shogun, however, were more than happy to cuddle him in response.

And then somebody else decided to join in.

Fenrir made sure to leave some space, focusing his cuddles on Rock, so that none other than Shogun’s proper owner could come and cuddle him.

“Good idea, bro,” Rao said, resting against Shogun. “We can’t let them lie around on their own all the time, right?”

“Right. We’d be horrible owners if we didn’t come and cuddle them every now and then still, even if they do have each other now,” Fenrir said.

“Exactly. So, how’d that meeting go?”

“It was a meeting to catch up on things. It went about as well as it could.”

“How about them? Find anything out about how their prepping is going?”

“They assured me that everything is going well on their ends. Though, the whole point of setting up down here and borrowing workers from their villages is so that they don’t have to be at risk. They won’t be preparing defenses nearly as much as we are.”

“I guess we better hope the monsters actually decide to attack us instead of them.”

“They will.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t, really. We just have to try our best to lure them here. But I just got done talking about that stuff for the last two hours. How’ve you been?”

“Good, good, bro. Thanks for asking. I mean, I got stood up a couple of nights ago, but I’m happy I lasted long enough to the date planning phase instead of screwing up during the first chat.”

“Ouch. Sorry.”

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“It’s all good. My waitress felt bad for me, so she told me all her favorites on the menu and even gave me a discount at the end. She was really nice. Pretty, too.”

“Hey, maybe she had a thing for you. If she went that far for you, maybe there’s something there.”

“I was kinda hoping that, but I remembered it’d probably be creepy if I tried asking her for her number or anything just because she was nice to me.”

“Well… I mean, it’s all about tact – about how you ask. If you started flirting with her in the middle of her shift and asked for her number, that probably wouldn’t work out too well for you. But maybe…”

It was at this point, while trying to help out Rao with his love life, that Fenrir realized he had no idea how to actually approach a woman first. Especially not in real life. What was considered tactful? What was rude or creepy? Would it be taking it too far to leave a note with his number asking her to text or call him on it after her shift?

“Maybe… well, one, prepare yourself for the worst. It’s completely likely that she’s just nice to everybody and that there’s zero actual interest from her,” Fenrir said. “What I’m thinking… is you leave a note with your check when you’re getting ready to leave. Maybe say something like, ‘Feel free to do whatever you want with this, whether it’s throwing this note out or texting the number on it,’ or something. That way, she knows you understand she might not be interested, you’re not pressuring her, you’re not doing it while she’s still serving you which would make it awkward, and you’ll probably know within twenty-four hours whether she’s actually interested in you or not. In other words, make it as non-creepy and pressure-free as possible for her since she probably has to deal with guys flirting with her all the time.”

“Woah, bro, you’re great at this stuff,” Rao said.

“Keep in mind I just came up with all of that. I have no idea if it will actually work or if somebody would find it acceptable or not. We can run it by Cass later since she used to work as a waitress.”

“Sounds good, bro.”

“So, anything else up with you other than that?”

“Uhh, not really. I’m thinking I should build a doghouse for these two, but that’s about it. My life is more boring than I’d like it to be.”

“Well, maybe it won’t be after you leave that waitress a note. Oh, another idea. Maybe go there a few more times by yourself and hope that she ends up being your waitress again. Maybe try to subtly, and I mean subtly, flirt with her and see if she reciprocates at all. Then you can leave her the note.”

“That sounds smart. Yeah, maybe I’ll go there every night.”

“Well… maybe not every night.”

“But if I spread it out, what if some other guy ends up with her first?

“That’s… yeah, we’re going to have to talk to Cass about this. For now, let’s not worry about that and just give these two some attention.

“You got it, bro. I’ll go with whatever Cass says. She should know way more about this stuff than us.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Do you think she’d be alright with me asking her for advice sometimes?”

“I don’t think she’d mind. I can’t promise that she’d be excited to give you advice or anything, but I don’t think she’d mind at least.”

“Good enough for me. So, how about you? Anything new?”

“I found out Cass is a sniper with water guns. I’m surprised she uses a sword instead of a bow here.”

“I’ve seen pictures of cartoon character shooting swords from their bows before. Maybe she could do that.”

“You’re probably talking about anime, not cartoons.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Rao… Rao, please.”

“Bro, what? I don’t know. Seriously, what’s the difference?”

Fenrir sighed and prepared himself to be a teacher.

Rao did not expect to be pulled into quite the lengthy conversation regarding the differences between cartoons and anime. Even at the end of the conversation, he still didn’t quite understand, but he knew that Fenrir wasn’t going to change subjects unless he pretended to understand.

Admittedly, Rao spent most of the time rubbing Shogun’s belly and petting his side rather than closely listen to Fenrir who did the same thing but with Rock.

Rock and Shogun were just happy to be getting some attention and love from their owners regardless of whatever strange topic they were discussing.

Now, after hanging out with Rao, Rock, and Shogun for a bit, Fenrir decided to actually get some work done around the place. Construction work was still going on and those doing the heavy lifting were always happy to receive helping hands, so Fenrir tried his best to help them to the best of his capabilities. Whether it was hauling lumber or stone, holding something in place while one of the workers hammered nails into it, or fetching food and drinks for the workers, Fenrir helped however he could.

He also got exhausted much more quickly than them. Even though the others were doing most of the hard work, it was Fenrir who became drenched in sweat before long. Fortunately for him, there was an Eva sitting nearby for him to sit down with.

“I don’t get it,” Fenrir said, sitting down next to her.

“You don’t get what?” Eva asked.

“How people can work so hard on things so… honestly, kind of boring, in a game every single day. I mean, I understand grinding, but construction work?”

“I think it makes sense. It’s like how people who play farming games have fantasies about being farmers. People who play hunting games want to go hunting. I’m sure there are plenty of people who idealize construction work, and this lets them do it in a safe and legal way. They don’t have to worry about buying supplies with real money, getting building permits, potentially hurting themselves, etcetera.”

“Yeah, but… I guess I just struggle to see how somebody could want to do that more than going hunting for monsters, exploring, fishing, and stuff like that.”

“You should be grateful for them. If they weren’t passionate about construction, we might be screwed.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I am. I’m just also worried that maybe they’re not actually having as much fun as they could be having. I feel bad thinking that they don’t want to actually do any of this.”

“And maybe they don’t understand how you could like fishing more than building. A fantasy is a fantasy.”

“I know. Maybe I just feel guilty that I don’t help out as much as I could be.”

“Didn’t you secure new allies, lead the defense against an attack, and befriend a dragon to help us?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not here doing the hard work that everybody else is – not as much as they are, anyways.”

“Yeah, and they’re not running around leading people, finding new allies, nor befriending giant dragons.”

“But that stuff is fun. It doesn’t even feel like hard work to me. It’s just… playing the game.”

Eva sighed. “For somebody who plays games so much, you don’t seem to comprehend they obvious. Do you think that they would rather be doing what you’re doing? Do you think that every single one of them wishes that they had the pressure of leading them, running around finding new allies, and turning dragons into friends? They probably pity you more than you pity them, but none of you should be pitying each other in the first place. As long as you play how you want, that’s all that matters.”

“I know. You’re right.”

“I mean… I get it. I help out with the construction even less than you do, but it’s not fun to me. I feel guilty about avoiding it just because it’s not fun. But, look at how happy they all look. They are having fun. I doubt they’d want somebody helping out who isn’t enjoying it just as much as them.”

Surely enough, upon looking around, it was clear to Fenrir that all of the players doing the heavy-duty manual labor around the settlement, even those who had been doing it every day for weeks already, still had smiles on their faces. They all looked genuinely happy despite doing what might normally be considered tedious.

“I guess I was overthinking things. Maybe I’ve just been too happy lately and some subconscious part of me wanted to give me a reality check or something,” Fenrir said.

“That sounds masochistic,” Eva said. “Are you sure that—”

Her words were cut off by Fenrir pressing his lips against hers for a few moments. “Thanks, Eva. I needed a reminder that my brain can be stupid sometimes. Now, if everybody else is helping out in ways that makes them happy, it’s only right for me to go and help out in whatever way that makes me the happiest, right?”

A slight blush tinged Eva’s cheeks. “Don’t – don’t get too self-indulgent.”

“If I do, it’ll be self-indulgent in a way that makes everybody happy. Like fishing enough fish up for everybody,” Fenrir explained, his hand already resting on Rod ready to go.