Book 2: Chapter 21: Patch 4.0: The First Round

“Fen!” Serra calls for help as a particularly powerful fish tugs on her line.

Fenrir goes to hand his rod off to Oleander, but before he can help Serra, Tabitha steps in by placing her hands over Serra’s.

Serra goes from looking like the rod is about to fly out of her hands to acting as if the fish isn’t even trying to escape.

Yeah, he definitely does not have to have any thoughts about protecting Tabitha as a father would. If anything, she’d be the one protecting him!

“Let me see,” Bonekraka says from behind the two girls.

“We don’t need your oversized green arse over here,” Tabitha tells him.

“I doubt fish that strong if two small girls handling it,” he replies with an unimpressed tone.

Seeing him doubt her is enough for Tabitha to tell Serra to hand the rod over.

Bonekraka is almost pulled off his feet the moment he grabs the rod! “What fucking fish is this?!” he shouts as he braces himself against the side of the ship.

“Even Serra wasn’t having that much trouble. Wonder if having a higher fishing skill helps out with that,” Fenrir says.

“Shut up! Take this back you orange brat!” he shouts at Tabitha.

With the smuggest smile that any of them have ever seen, Tabitha takes the rod out of his hands and effortlessly resumes reeling the fish in with Serra.

Bonekraka grumbles and heads below deck.

“I think you hurt his pride a bit, Tabs,” Fenrir says.

“Good! I can’t stand punks with inflated egos. Somebody’s gotta bring ‘em down a notch, and I’ll be here to bring yours down whenever it needs dropped!” Tabitha declares.

“Do you think I’ve got an inflated ego?”

“Not after yesterday.”

“Oof,” Oleander chimes in.

“Yeah, that one hurt a bit,” Fenrir agrees. As much as he feels he should be upset by that remark, seeing Tabitha smile and laugh so heartily causes him to laugh at himself instead.

“She has a point. You usually can’t shut up about your old days and how awesome you were and how nobody ever beat you,” Cassiel says.

She has a point. One of his go-to conversation topics has always been the old days of the Divine Brigade and how he used to lead them. Even so, “I – I think Tabs already put me in my place,” he says.

“Dogs shouldn’t have big egos,” Serra says.

“I think you might be in an abusive relationship, Fenny,” Oleander says while patting Fenrir’s back.

A hard tug on Fenrir’s fishing pole pulls his attention away from the bullying and back to fishing.

Roughly thirty minutes have passed since the start of the first round. Without a better job to perform, Oleander has been taking any fish that the four have been catching and placing them in whatever barrels and crates that they’ve got. Only nine fish have been caught thus far. Despite the swarming schools of fish underneath their boats, they seem reluctant to take any bait or lures offered to them.

A feeling that this tournament is more about the player-versus-player aspects than the fishing aspects is growing within Fenrir by the minute.

Looking out over the waters before them, it looks as if hundreds of ships already sank or are in the process of sinking as their crews either jump overboard or go do with their vessels.

One ship grabs Fenrir’s attention.

It is one of those longships that arrived with Ull. Fenrir didn’t hear about any of the foreign visitors participating in the tournament, but it makes sense that some would since they’re already here. What grabs his attention the most is that they’re not even fishing.

Those aboard the longship are covered from head to toe in metal armor and armed with axes, spears, and shields. Fenrir watches as they go from ship to ship boarding them, slaughtering any in their way, and then stealing any fish that their victims have caught.

The maximum amount of allowed members are part of their crew as well – twenty. Twenty Viking-esque elves and monster hybrids in full combat attire are decimating other crews without mercy. One cannon shot flies right through the side of their ship, but the tree that is twisted into the shape of a ship quickly regrows its hull.

…

“Yer champs down there are damn impressive,” Blackstache says to Ull as he watches the longship through a spyglass.

“They are, aren't they? I hand selected them to represent me in this tournament. Truthfully, a single one of them would likely be enough to cut down any opposition most of the vessels down there have to offer, but the more the merrier. It would not be very nice of me to only allow one of my men to have all the fun,” Ull explains.

“Your ships are made out of trees. Wouldn’t fire burn them to ashes?” Rachel asks, standing behind Blackstache with her arms crossed over her chest and an unimpressed look in her eyes.

“It is a good thing that you are the Lightning Witch and not the Fire Witch, then. Besides, all ships are made out of trees, are they not?” Ull teases, flashing her a smile.

She responds with an annoyed frown.

“But yes, conventional weaponry may not be effective against my fleet, but fire remains the bane of all ships,” Ull continues.

Blackstache excitedly gets out of his seat and says, “Speakin’ o’ fire…”

…

A bolt of flame crashes right into the longship’s tree-mast! It erupts into a shower of flames that ignites the longship at several locations.

“Looks like they’re done,” Fenrir says to the rest of the crew whom has joined in watching the conflict.

The caster who ignited the longship has their head lopped off by one of the axe-wielding boarders.

“Taking the enemy out with him. Wait, what’re they doing?” Fenrir asks.

One of Ull’s men stands at the front of the longship and holds his hands up above his head. Fenrir can’t tell what he’s saying, but he looks as if he’s shouting something.

It doesn’t take long to realize his intent.

A sprite made out of water forms its body out of the water in front of the longship. It is far larger than the ship itself is, and even the fairy-like wings sprouting out from its back are larger than all of The Shoebill.

The water sprite holds its hands out over the ship. Wherever there are flames, water sprays from its hands to drown them.

Any flames on the longship are extinguished within seconds of the sprite’s arrival, and once they are out, the ship is able to shed its burned wood and leaves to regrow.

The sprite looks at its summoner as if waiting for its next order.

Its summoner looks out over the remaining ships nearby, points at one group of them that are close to one another, and shouts.

Turning from a sprite into a wave, the wave barrels towards the group of targeted ships and crashes right into them! The first ship is practically torn apart by the force of the wave colliding into it, and the ships behind it either get capsized or carried away on the remnants of the wave.

One of the ships is unfortunate enough to be carried right into the electrical dome. Everybody aboard it jumps off before their ship crashes right into the dome, instantly evaporating it.

Those aboard the longship waste no time lining their ship up to their next victim. The ram at the front of it allows them to tear halfway through another ship’s hull before getting stopped, and then the warriors aboard board their enemy and repeat the process of killing and looting.

“Well shit,” Fenrir says.

“Yeah,” Oleander says, unable to think of anything else to sum up what they just saw that Fenrir hasn’t already said.

“Bah! Showoffs,” Tabitha grumbles. “Pointy-eared bastards relyin’ on magic and axes. We’ll show ‘em how it’s done!”

“And how are we going to do that?” Cassiel asks.

“I’m workin’ on that part. I figure I can probably take down a few of ‘em on my own, but I don’t know if the rest of you will be much help. No offense.”

“What do you even fight with?” Fenrir asks Tabitha.

“You’ll see,” she replies with a confident smirk.

“Tabs, your power level is really high,” Serra says.

“She has better stats than I had before I got wiped, and I had a couple of months behind me, so yeah - really,” Cassiel agrees.

“We could fire her out of a cannon and onto their ship!” Oleander teasingly suggests.

“Ya know, I wouldn’t be opposed to that if I could survive that, but I’m not that incredible,” Tabitha says. “Maybe if—”

“Wait,” Fenrir drops his rod and walks to the ship’s bow to get a better look. “What the hell are they doing out there?”

A ship with a yellow flag featuring a minnow on it is out on the water.

“Get us out there, now!” Fenrir shouts.

“Engine?” Oleander asks.

“Full speed!”

“O-oi, goin’ from off to full speed right away – I ain’t quite sure that this girl’ll be able to handle ‘at, and I’m not too sure the engine itself can handle that,” Tabitha interjects.

Oleander is already at the ship’s wheel and unfurling the sails.

“What's wrong?" Serra asks.

Everybody but Oleander and Bonekraka are behind Fenrir now looking where he is.

“Oh, is that The Yellow Minnow? I am not surprised to see it out there despite the carnage. Crews such its own have the advantage of not being targeted by adventurers nor each other. Everybody in this city knows to avoid attacking those crews,” Corwin says.

Fenrir remembers hearing Morven say that NPC crews are generally safe from other players and are avoided, and that must be the case for the pacifistic ship to still be out there without any scratches on it so far, but—

“Hurry up!” Fenrir shouts.

The engine kicks on, its furnace erupting loudly enough for all nearby ships to hear as The Shoebill speeds away from the pier.

…

“Ull, yer champs the type to go an’ target NPCs?” Blackstache asks.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t they? I do not recall hearing any rules being announced to not. It is a free-for-all, isn’t it?” Ull answers.

Blackstache lowers the spyglass from his eye. “Yer right, it ain’t an official rule.”

“Besides, it would be impossible to tell which ships belong to NPCs or which crew members may be players or NPCs,” Ull says with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Any vessels with a yellow flag are registered by NPCs, and any flags with a yellow stripe have at least one NPC crewmember,” Rachel explains.

“Ah, so that ship down there belongs to NPCs? I suppose they are about to learn why they are better off running shops and laboring for us than pretending to be alive. A city of pirates is no place for NPCs to pretend that they're human.”

…

“Faster!” Fenrir shouts, looking back to the stern of the ship.

“The engine is already at full power! The wind is against us!” Oleander shouts back.

Fenrir looks up at the sails. Just as Oleander said, they are sailing against the wind rather than into it.

He looks at The Yellow Minnow again.

The longship rams right into its starboard side, causing splintered wood to fly into the air as everybody around hears the crash of the longship’s ram splitting the smaller vessel almost in half.

“Faster!”