The True Endgame

"Look! That"s his ship! It"s Ull"s ship!"

Serra is the first to jump off of the bed, run over to the window to open it up, and peek outside.

Fenrir and Ca.s.siel follow suit.

In the distance, sailing into Port Tugator is a mighty ship – the biggest ship that any of them have seen yet. They know that Blackstache supposedly has the largest ship in-game, but they have never seen it. Just how big is Blackstache"s ship if this latest arrival is as ma.s.sive as it is?

Furthermore, it just looks… odd. If one were to judge the trio"s feelings regarding the ship by their expressions, Fenrir thinks it looks awesome with his wide eyes and huge smile, Serra looks unimpressed going by her disappointed sigh and bored eyes, and Ca.s.siel just – well, she looks like she isn"t sure what to think of it.

"Aren"t they supposed to be like elf Vikings?" Fenrir asks.

"Yeah, but… I guess they"re more elf as far as design goes," Ca.s.siel says.

The ma.s.sive ship pulling into port makes even galleons look small, but what really sticks out about it are the trees. Fenrir can barely believe it himself. Rather than there being regular masts and sails, the ship looks like it is made out of a living tree, and the smaller ones following behind it do as well!

The flagship looks like one mighty tree with its roots twisting and pressing together to form the hull of the ship while the trunk of the tree splits into several thinner trunks, each one reaching high into the air with what looks like huge, green leaves making up its sails.

Looking at the deck, it"s hard to see from where they are, but there are several large cannons that all look just as nature-themed as the rest of the ship does.

Flowering vines hang down all over the ship from the top of its "mast" to its sides, and the final thing to grab their attention is its figurehead. It is a carved, wooden deer head with two mighty antlers protruding forward and sideways. It looks more like a battering ram than a figurehead.

Behind the flagship is several dozen smaller ships that look more like what they were expecting but are still made of trees twisted into the shapes of boats. Rather than look like an oversized galleon, these ones look like Viking longships.

"Come on, let"s get down to the pier and get a better look," Fenrir suggests. The girls nod, and the three hastily dress themselves.

Fenrir ends up helping Ca.s.siel with her breastplate, and Serra discovers that having a complicated outfit with a mult.i.tude of separate parts isn"t very convenient when in a hurry.

This is why she prefers wearing jeans and t-shirts in reality.

They rush to the piers.

Everybody else is in-game and standing by at The s...o...b..ll to watch the fleet of ships roll into the harbor.

Tabitha looks up at Fenrir as soon as he arrives with the girls. The smug smile on her lips says that she knows exactly what they were doing.

But how?

Fenrir looks at Serra and Ca.s.siel. The hair atop each of their heads is messed up, they look like they just got done with some intense exercise, their clothes are a mess, and... they smell like s.e.x.

Oleander joins Tabitha in looking back at them and smirking.

"What were you lovebirds up ta?" Tabitha asks.

"Yeah, Fenny, what were you doing?" Oleander tags in.

"Well," Fenrir might as well be honest, "I won"t have to worry about getting reset if I die."

Serra smiles and leans her head against his side, but he can hear Ca.s.siel struggling to not unsheathe her sword and threaten him with death.

"Look how large it is!" Corwin says, pointing up at the ma.s.sive flagship as it sails past them.

They all stand and stare in awe at its sheer overwhelming size. Up close, it looks less like a ship and more like a mobile castle!

"We should steal it," Serra says.

Fenrir is reminded of how bad of an influence they"ve been on her.

"Want to sink it, see little hippy boat burn," Bonekraka says.

Rock barks. Fenrir isn"t sure which idea she"s supporting, but either way, they"re both horrible ideas even if they do sound fun.

"Look! It"s him! It"s Ull!" one of the crewmembers from a nearby docked boat shouts.

Standing at the top of the deck is a man with just of large and grandiose of an appearance as his ship"s.

"I thought he was supposed to be an elf?" Fenrir asks.

"Well, he started off as one, but he"s a tier seven feral now from last I heard," Ca.s.siel explains.

They can"t see all of him because of how much higher up he is than them, but they can see enough to tell there is clearly more than just being an elf going on.

His looks p.i.s.s Fenrir off since they actually look somewhat similar.

Ull has the torso of a toned, muscular man similar to how Fenrir"s looks and he has long, flowing white hair that rolls down his back to his waist, but that"s where the similarities end. Ull has four antlers, two on each side, protruding from his head and sticking backward. A pair of long, elven ears protrude backward as well underneath where his antlers are, and they are covered in golden rings that can be seen shining in the sunlight even from The s...o...b..ll.

The most monstrous part of him is his lower body. His humanity ends at his waist. Below his waist is the body of a deer with fur as white as his hair with a few grey spots dotting it.

Behind his back is an appropriately-elven looking bow that looks two times too large for any human to be handling, and his lower body is covered in some sort of green metal armor with a golden trim.

Fenrir sees it.

He sees what makes him feel really compet.i.tive.

Not only does this faction leader of an elf-deer-thing have the torso of an elf and lower body of a deer, but his tail is that of a wolf"s.

Fenrir"s own tail sticks up as his ears flatten down.

Ca.s.siel looks over at him. "Are you growling?" she asks.

Fenrir didn"t realize it before, but now that she"s pointed it out, he is.

That is… really weird. The feral instinct within him feels much stronger than it usually does, too.

"Ah, that must be his harem," Corwin says as nearly two dozen girls are brought above deck to stand in rows on each side of Ull.

Serra and Ca.s.siel look at Fenrir with expressions telling him not to even think about it.

"What? No way I"d want to date that many people at once," he says. "Besides, I"m not some wannabe elf pretty boy. I bet those girls fawn all over him because he"s got pointy ears. Wait, if his lower body is a deer… does it count as b.e.s.t.i.a.lity?"

Ca.s.siel facepalms.

Oleander looks to be the only one taking Fenrir"s question seriously. "I don"t think so, but I bet a bunch of prudes would still get upset and call it that," Oleander says.

"Yeah, probably – wait," Fenrir pauses.

He didn"t notice it before, but as the ship comes its closest to The s...o...b..ll, he sees that every single one of the supposed harem members has thick, metal collars around their necks.

They look like slaves rather than loving harem members.

"Hey, Corwin or Ca.s.s, either of you hear about what"s up with his harem?" Fenrir asks.

Ca.s.siel shakes her head, but Corwin has something to say. "I have only heard rumors, but the rumors state that he collects girls with unique features in hope of acquiring them for himself. Look, not a single one of those girls is human," Corwin says.

He"s right. When Fenrir looks at the girls" bodies, they all look like they"re anything from plant-based monster girls to girls with cat ears and tiger stripes, and one of the girls even has draconic wings protruding from her back that are shackled to the collar around her neck. "So, he"s some sort of sick collector of rare girls?" Fenrir asks.

"Sadly, that is what the rumors lead me to believe," Corwin answers.

Now Fenrir really doesn"t like this Ull guy.

Then he sees her.

A single girl stands separate from the rest of those in Ull"s harem. Ull holds her up by the collar around her neck as if showing her off to everybody watching from the city.

Her long, straight hair is mesmerizingly beautiful and pearl aqua in color. A pair of slightly curved horns with ridges along them stick up from the top sides of her head, each one dark blue in color and looking like the horns of a dragon – though, given the color of her hair and horns, a sea serpent comes to mind before a dragon does. Finally, there are her tail, fins, and scales. She"s wearing an elaborate dress that looks like it was custom tailored to match Ull, but it doesn"t completely cover the patches of light green and blue scales on her arms and neck. It also doesn"t cover up the long, serpentine tail that sticks out from above her rear and is hanging down behind her. She even has a few beautifully bright and long multi-colored fins sticking out from her back like wings would.

"He found her," Ca.s.siel says with a sigh.

"What do you know about her?" Fenrir asks.

"I only heard rumors about him searching for her. She"s apparently somebody who got extremely lucky and somehow got a blessing from the Western Serpent."

"You mean one of those giant world boss serpents that n.o.body has ever killed?"

"Yeah, one of those. Rumors of her started spreading after she went to an office to get a new card, and they said her race and mutations have never been seen before. She"s supposedly the only player in the entire game with a character like that, and rumor has it that she refuses to tell anybody about how she got blessed by one of the d.a.m.n serpents."

"I"m guessing that the a.s.shole up there heard about the rumors and had her hunted down to collect her?"

"That"s a safe guess."

"So she got some super awesome and special race unique to her, and some a.s.shole captured her, collared her, and now parades her around like a toy while she can"t do anything about it?"

"Sadly, that seems to be the case," Corwin says.

Yeah, Fenrir really doesn"t like this Ull guy.

In fact, he already dislikes Ull more than he"s disliked other guild leaders who he has screwed over before for far less.

The elven ship sails by, taking both Ull and the serpent girl out from their sight.

Now coming into the harbor are the dozens of fully-crewed and armed longships.

Oleander has the largest grin on his face. "I know that look, Fenny," he says.

Serra and Ca.s.siel look at his face and see a more intense look than anything they"ve seen from him before.

"We"re going to have one h.e.l.luva tough last mission together, Bone," Fenrir says.

The orc nods and grunts. "Good."

"O-oi, what"s goin" on?" Tabitha asks. "You"ve got the same look in yer eyes that I get when I"m about ta do somethin" really stupid."

Serra confidently crosses her arms and takes her spot next to Fenrir. Rock joins in with an approving bark.

Ca.s.siel and Corwin join Tabitha"s club of being concerned for whatever Fenrir is thinking up in his head.
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"I guess it was pretty stupid to try and leave the Divine Brigade"s name behind," Fenrir says.

"Duh. How could we ever leave it behind when you get triggered as soon as you see somebody being an a.s.shole? The world is full of a.s.sholes, Fenny – the bad kind. Well, it"s full of the good kind as well, but you get my point. Anyways, until we get rid of all the bad a.s.sholes, I don"t think you"ll be able to leave Divine Brigade behind," Oleander says.

"You got me there."

"But are you sure, Fenny? What about doxing?"

Fenrir hangs his head. He got caught up in the moment and forgot about that. Not only is getting doxed dangerous enough as is, but now he has two girlfriends who could get caught up in it and be in danger.

He can"t be selfish. He"s sure that Serra would be fine with it, but even if Ca.s.siel is as well, an in-game name isn"t important enough to justify a real-life risk.

"Yeah, you"re right. We can"t go back to that name… so what about "Fallen Divinity?"" Fenrir asks.

"It sounds pretty edgy, but I kind of like it. If we used to be kind of evil as the Divine Brigade, and now you only want to do good things, then it"d make sense for us to be fallen. People will probably a.s.sume we"re a bunch of wannabe evil edgelords, though," Oleander says.

"Fallen Divinity and The s...o...b..ll? Doesn"t sound much like a good crew name to me," Tabitha chimes in.

She has a point. They don"t work well together at all and Fallen Divinity does not sound anything like a group that is based out of a ship.

"The Wolf Brigade," Serra suggests, poking Fenrir"s tail as she says it. The poke makes him jump a bit from how sensitive his tail is.

Everybody shakes their heads at first. "Fen is our captain and a wolf, and Rock is like our mascot and a wolf, so I think it makes sense," she tries explaining herself.

Fenrir debates it. It sounds cheesy, cliché, and makes him think of either a bunch of furries LARPing as wolves or neckbeards that non-ironically wear that one shirt with the three wolves all howling at the moon. It either reminds him of those, or what a bunch of wannabe tough guy bikers would call themselves.

Yet, as horribly unoriginal as the name is, he likes it. It keeps the "brigade" part from the Divine Brigade while making it new, and it sounds like a something that could be pa.s.sed off as a legitimate crew name.

"If I may… pardon, I know that I am the newest one here, but what about The Soaring Wolves? It is my understanding that The s...o...b..ll is named after a flying bird, and the engine that Miss Strism installed below is going to make us soar across the water as if we are flying, so do you think that name could work? It also keeps the wolves part as Serra has suggested," Corwin offers his own attempt at naming their crew.

It might not be the coolest sounding name ever, and still sounds a bit cheesy, but it just works.

"All in favor of The Soaring Wolves?" Fenrir asks.

Everybody but Bonekraka raises their hands.

"Then there we have it. The Soaring Wolves flying across the waves...o...b..ard The s...o...b..ll," Fenrir says. "Now, are you ready for details on The Soaring Wolves" first mission?"

The rest of the crew nods and gathers around him.

Fenrir is not only going to win the fishing tournament, but he"s going to save the day for a bunch of innocent players while he"s at it.

They may not be named the Divine Brigade anymore, but it"s time for them to pull off a grand strategy that would put the old Divine Brigade"s plots to shame.

It"s time for The Soaring Wolves" first mission with its new members and name.