The True Endgame

Ca.s.siel couldn"t help but sigh when she first heard about it. She wasn"t too happy about being left out of this somewhat important plan, but now she just finds the whole thing amusing whenever she looks over at Fenrir and imagines Azalabulia waking on him while they were kissing.

While they may want Azalabulia to come back since they all feel a bit guilty at this point, including Ca.s.siel by a.s.sociation of dating the people who lead to her waking in a panic, Tabitha and Rao are pretty happy with it. It"s not that they don"t like her, but everybody is much less distracted with her not around. They can actually get a good amount of work done with Azalabulia being out of the game. To even their own surprise, they manage to get Serra and Nell to help them out!

Without somebody to tease and plot with, Serra and Nell have nothing better to do. They could tease Fenrir some more, but they already feel as if they"ve done enough to him for the day. He needs at least a couple of hours to relax before they figure something out to get him involved in.

With the rest of the day to build peacefully – well, as peacefully as possible when it comes to Fenrir and his girlfriends, the group completes the dock for The s...o...b..ll and flatten some land using shovels that Tabitha made on the spot.

This flattened land, according to Rao and Tabitha, is meant to serve as some temporary housing that will later on be upgraded into warehouses for the dock. The dock will also be upgraded into a proper harbor when the time calls for that.

"So, what"s next?" Fenrir asks Tabitha and Rao.

"We"re goin" to have to get our hands on some stone. Havin" a st.u.r.dy foundation is important," Tabitha explains.

"I should be able to get us some concrete going as long as those mountains have everything we need," Rao says. "And last I checked, they do. So, yeah, bro, we"ve got some mining to do."

"Yay," Fenrir says in a monotone voice. "But yeah, alright. Some mining might be fun. Kind of. But, seriously, you can make concrete? Isn"t concrete kind of a modern thing?"

"Bro, humans have been making concrete for thousands of years. Even the Romans used concrete."

"Seriously?"

"You need to go back to school."

"Hey, it"s not like they teach the history of concrete in regular schools."

"They should! What kind of kids these days don"t know that stuff?"

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-seven."

"You"re only a few years older than me."

"Man, a lot"s changed then in a few years."

"You just have a hard-on for architecture. I promise you that teaching kids about concrete wasn"t in regular schools back when you were going through them."

"Did your parents at least teach you about it?"

"Let me guess, your parents love that sort of stuff, too?"

"Yeah, bro. Dad"s an architect, mom"s an electrical engineer. I started learning this stuff when I was a kid."

Fenrir sees Tabitha nodding her head with her arms crossed over her chest. When she notices him looking at her, she says, "Yep, yep. Pa"s an inventor and Ma"s an aeros.p.a.ce engineer. I take more after Pa if it ain"t obvious."

"Sounds like you two are perfect for each other," Fenrir teases them.

Rao and Tabitha look at each other, then back at Fenrir, and cringe.

"Bro, that"s gross. Look at her. She looks like a little girl," Rao says.

"Ya really think I"d want to get with some punk like him who just wants to put his wrench in the first hole he sees? I don"t need romance as long as I"ve got my toys," Tabitha says.

"When you say toys, do you mean, like, you make your own?" Fenrir asks, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Tabitha glares at him as she takes her hammer off of her back, extending it to its full size. "I mean toys like this, ya perverted dog. The pleasure of creatin" new things is the only pleasure I need."

"I mean, technically, s.e.x can create—"

"Oi. Ya wanna keep on talkin" like a pervert to a girl who looks underage?" Tabitha says, twirling her hammer around with only one hand.

"I mean, you just look like that. You"ve got to be at least eighteen if you"re playing this, so I don"t feel guilty. It"s not like I"d have s.e.x with you even if you wanted to."

"Good dog. Ya better not be one of those lolicons or whatever they"re called."

Memories of certain doujins that Fenrir couldn"t resist looking through pop into his head. "Ye-yeah. Definitely not. I mean, just look at my girlfriends," he says.

Tabitha looks over at them, focusing her eyes on Serra who"s lying on her back with her shirt pulled up revealing her slender stomach.

"Ya sure about that?" Tabitha asks.

"Borderline lolis don"t count," Fenrir explains.

"Bro," Rao says.

Tabitha looks at Nell now. While Nell may be taller and actually have a chest, she still dresses and acts like a little—albeit perverted—princess most of the time. She dresses like a girl who never grew out of the stage of pretending to be a princess. "Ya sure about that?" Tabitha asks Fenrir.

"Being mentally childish doesn"t count, and her perverted fantasies make her an adult no matter what," Fenrir explains.

"Bro," Rao says.

Now, Tabitha looks at Ca.s.siel.

Ca.s.siel looks back when she sees everybody looking at her and tilts her head.

"Alright, ya get a pa.s.s on her," Tabitha says.

"Nice, bro," Rao says.

"Thanks," Fenrir replies.

"But I"m still judgin" ya for those other two. If the shortie was an inch shorter then I"d be callin" the cops on ya," Tabitha says.

"Oh no, onii-chan! The lolice are going to come for you," Saya mentally teases Fenrir.

"They"ll never catch me nor my hard drive alive," Fenrir plays along in his thoughts, earning a chuckle from Saya. "Anyways," he says out loud, "want to go get some mining done? I think we"ve still got some time left before it"s dark, and we should be able to get up there in time."

"Might as well!" Tabitha says.

With that, everybody boards The s...o...b..ll once more, leaving most of the logs piled up near the flattened land, and they sail up the river.

The few logs that they bring with them are used by Tabitha to make some pickaxes as they sail. She made those cheap and easy pickaxes beforehand but, now that they"ve got some steel oak, she can make proper pickaxes that are going to last for more than a few swings each.

Unfortunately, the only ones who can actually stomach mining are Fenrir, Tabitha, Rao, and Ca.s.siel. Oleander wants to help but is too weak and realizes he should probably work on that. Serra and Nell just can"t stand the idea of mining. Instead, they help out by carrying any chunks of rock and metal that get mined back to The s...o...b..ll.

Fenrir realizes something extremely important.

"Wait a second," Fenrir says. "Rao… you can shrink stuff, can"t you?"

"Only chests and other containers. Why, bro?" Rao asks.

"Why aren"t we just loading everything into containers then and having you shrink them so we can easily move everything around?"

Everybody stops what they"re doing to look at Rao.

"That"d be a good idea, bro," Rao says.

"And… did we ever even open that chest we got from underneath that monkey boss thing in the water?" Fenrir asks.

Rao digs around in his pockets, pulls the chest out, and looks down at it. "Huh. Completely forgot that was in there. You kinda forget you"ve got stuff like this when you can shrink it down so small. You know what they say, bro. Out of sight, out of mind."

Everybody feels a varying level of need to hurt Rao.

"Well, at least we"ve remembered now. Let"s open this chest to finally see what"s in it. Then we can load it up with stone," Fenrir proposes.
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Rao nods, sets the chest down on the ground, and then places his hands against it to increase it to its original size.

Getting to open a brand new chest right now isn"t even satisfying to any of them. All they can think about is how much trouble they could have saved if Rao would have thought of using his magic sooner.