Fenrir’s stomach grumbles just in time for the fish to finish cooking. Alas, he’s already promised the fish to the girl sitting with him on the other side of the firepit. She obviously looks guilty when she hears his stomach, but he gives her a look that says I’m not letting you turn this down, so eat up. He takes the fish and places it on a flat rock for her to use as a plate. That feeling of learning a skill hits him again.

“How am I supposed to – supposed to,” she stares at the fish with a confused expression, “eat it?”

He looks down at it. It’s covered in charred scales, still has its tail and head on – he can’t blame her for not knowing how. Unless she’s watched a bunch of random survivalist videos on the internet to pass the time while avoiding responsibilities like he has, he doubts she would look at it and know what to do.

Taking the end of his spear, he cuts into the fish along its back and carves the layers of scales off from the white flesh inside. “You’ll just have to pick at it with your fingers, and be careful with the bones,” he explains, holding the plated fish to her.

“Can we choke?” she asks.

“Probably. This game is doing everything else realistically, so it wouldn’t surprise me if we can choke. Just be careful and it won’t be a problem. Spit out any bones you get,” he says. Saying “bone” and telling a girl to spit in the same sentence immediately brings dirty thoughts to his mind. The desire to make a perverse joke is almost overwhelming. But, he resists.

“I thought guys like girls who swallow?”

Fenrir blinks a couple of times. Did he – did he really just hear that correctly? He looks down at the girl to see her with a content expression and mouth full of fish flesh. Alright, he must have been imagining it. It sounded like her voice, but it was just in his head. She’s too cute to be making jokes like that.

He hears her snicker as soon as he turns his back to her. When he looks at her again, a hand is held over her mouth as if she’s trying to hide a smile.

“Alright, I’m going to try catching myself a fish, and then I need to meet back up with my friends,” Fenrir explains. He swears that he can see a quick glimpse of disappointment when he mentions leaving. “Do you want to hang out with us? They’re pretty nice. Plus one of them is gay and the other is married, so you don’t have to worry about being surrounded by a bunch of sausages being thrown at your face.” He may not know whether she’s a real girl or not, but anybody who has ever played a female character in an online game before—being a guy or girl in real life not mattering—knows how it feels to be swarmed with sausage. Even Fenrir has experienced it once before, and he has since vowed to never play another girl character.

It turns out that having a parental personality in games while playing a cute girl is guaranteed to attract all manners of sausage. If only he had a penny for every single time he was called “wife material” during those days.

The girl looks to the side and nods. “Is it okay if – if… I don’t talk a lot around them?” she asks.

“Don’t see why it’d be a problem. The big guy might be curious why you don’t talk, but my other friend won’t have any problems with it. He’s the most tolerant guy I know. By the way, what’s your name? I’m Fenrir,” he says, holding out a hand for her to shake. However, he’s holding his hand over the firepit which is still burning.

It only takes a couple of seconds for his arm to get burnt and for him to pull it back.

“Serra,” she replies with a smile that looks like she’s trying not to laugh. Instead of holding her hand over the firepit, she reaches around to give him a much safer handshake.

Fenrir is still patting his arm and waving it around when he sees her hold her hand out. He gives it a nice shake, gently holding her hand within his own, and lets go to head back over to the pond.

He got that supposed feeling of learning a skill twice earlier while fishing. He got it once when trying to catch fish, and then again when he actually caught it. It felt like he could better track fish after that first skill, but the second one doesn’t seem to have affected anything. Was the skill from actually catching the fish something else – maybe specific to catching a fish with a spear? If that first skill allowed him to track fish better, maybe this one increases his ability to catch them specifically with a spear? He ponders over it, but when he remembers that he does have friends waiting for him, he returns his attention to the shallow waters before him.

There may not be any more fat fish like that first one he first caught, which he looks back to every now and then to see Serra happily picking at its flesh, but there are plenty of smaller ones. Every thrust of the spear grabs Serra’s attention. She eventually brings her fish over closer to the water to watch him try fishing as she eats.

Feeling her eyes on him makes it even more challenging. He feels like an incompetent loser every single time he fails, and he would much rather look cool in front of her.

Another thrust!

And another miss.

He peeks at Serra through the corner of his vision. She doesn’t seem to be watching him as much as she is watching his spear. It’s less like she’s judging him and his incompetence and more like… she’s watching for the sport of it? She gets tense every time he’s about to thrust and looks just as disappointed as he is each time he misses. But then, when he finally does spear a fish, she’s sitting there with a thumbs-up and a smile that warms his heart. She actually looks like she’s having fun.

Fenrir is quick to take the fish off the spear to smack it against a rock. It’s a pretty small one, though. He’s going to need more. Fortunately, another fish is near the edge of the pond.

Another miss.

He’ll settle for just one fish.

“You’re fun to watch,” Serra says, sounding more confident in her voice now. She’s still quiet and doesn’t say much at once, but it’s charming in a way.

“I’ve got to put on a show for my audience, after all,” Fenrir says. “Can’t have a new friend already getting bored on me.”

Serra gently shakes her head. “I won’t get bored of you.”

That one sentence makes him feel as if she’s just lassoed his heart. How is he even supposed to respond to that? Does he make a self-depreciative joke and tease her about how she’ll definitely get bored? No, almost every time he does that, girls stop talking to him almost right away. Does he act confident and cocky? No, he’s bad at that without making it sound too forced. It kind of feels like she’s flirting with him. Is she really flirting, or is it just his virgin mind thinking that the first sign of a girl being nice to him means that she’s interested?

He fears that he’ll be wearing a fedora and trench coat in no time if he believes that she’s flirting just from that.

“Thanks, I try,” he replies. Really? That’s it? He already wants to smack himself in the head for such a weak response, but when he looks up at her, he sees her smiling at him.

Fish. Right, fish. Just focus on cooking the—

His stomach grumbles the loudest it has yet. He is very, very hungry and would much rather not wait for the fish to cook. Just looking at it on its own is enough to make him drool, and he can feel a primal urge to just sink his teeth into the fish and tear away at it. It’s an almost animalistic sensation. Is this also because of how his subconscious believes he should be acting?

He looks up at Serra. “Hey, you won’t uhh, judge me if I just eat this raw, will you? I mean, I’d never do it in real life if it wasn’t sushi, but I figure I could try since it’s a game.”

She shakes her head again. “I’ll never judge you.”

What – just, what – why, how? What is she doing? Why is she like this? Does she want him to be throwing his plus-three-inches sausage at her? This is how she gets sausage thrown at her! No, she might be a guy. She could really be a he who is sitting in his mother’s basement at five hundred pounds with a diaper on.

Alright, he’s going to lose his appetite if he continues that line of thought. “Al-alright, I’m digging in then,” he says, using his nails to peel off patches of scales and skin before sinking his teeth directly into the raw fish flesh.

His ears twitch. What is this? This is… actually really good! He was wary of how it might taste, but it tastes even better than prepared fish do! He doesn’t even mind getting the occasional scale stuck in his teeth when he accidentally bites through a section of skin. In fact, the skin itself tastes pretty good as well. The texture leaves something to be desired, though.

He recalls hearing about how much of a fish’s nutrition and fatty acids are inside of their skin. The only problem is the scales stuck to it. Using his nails, he carefully scrapes at the scales until he gets as many of them off as he can without taking the skin with them. Now he can properly dig in.

Little more than bones, the fish’s head, and its guts are left by the time he’s done eating it. He tosses its remains back into the water to let any scavengers in the pond make use of the scraps.

Do they even need nutrition if they’re NPCs? He wonders how many of the NPCs in this game are simply programmed or being controlled by AIs. He decides to think his question to Saya.

“All NPCs follow standard behavior procedures until interacting with a player, and then the overseer controls them from there, Onii-chan,” Saya answers him.

“Thanks, Saya,” Fenrir mentally thanks her.

Turning around, he sees Serra pointing at the left end of her lips while looking straight at him.

He raises his hand to his own lips and wipes away a stray piece of fish flesh. Well, this is embarrassing. Even so, instead of being disgusted like almost every other girl that he's known would be, Serra just smiles and gets up from her seat.

“The fire is already dying down, so I think it should be fine if we leave it. Ready to go?” Fenrir asks.

Serra replies with a nod of the head and stands behind him. He’ll need to be careful to not accidentally whack her with his tail.

The two head back to where Fenrir told his friends to meet up. All he brings with him is his spear and that trusty, jagged rock.

On the way there, they see a deer repeatedly walk headfirst into a tree, get teleported a couple of feet backward, and then walk into the tree again. Eventually, it manages to walk straight through the tree as if it isn’t even there.

Fenrir thinks to Saya, “Uhh, Saya? I think there's a glit—”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Onii-chan,” she replies, sounding the most embarrassed he’s ever heard somebody sound before.

Apparently, the AIs of this game are very sensitive about its coding.

“Bug report sent,” Saya says with a depressed tone.

“Hang on, Serra, I want to test something,” Fenrir says. Serra nods and watches what it is he wants to try. He carefully stalks the deer with a random stone in hand. Watching it, he sees some repeating patterns in its movement and idle stances. It doesn’t look completely sentient when he looks at its eyes either. However, as soon as he throws a stone near it—not at it—the deer’s eyes fill with life as it takes off as realistically as any deer would. Seeing that change in its eyes confirms what Saya explained to him. The NPCs may follow simple patterns and rules when on their own, but the moment interaction begins with a player, they get taken over by something much more intelligent: the overseer.

Most games get boring once all the patterns and behaviors are figured out, but this is a game where such things can be changed whenever the overseer wishes. What is even better is that the overseer can directly control the NPCs whenever it is appropriate, meaning that there will forever be a challenge. This isn’t just some game where players can learn the movesets of NPCs to flawlessly defeat them. Players constantly have to adapt and improvise, for every single fight against an NPC is a true fight to the death for them. Even things as simple as hunting and fishing are realistically challenging as a result.

Fenrir may not have been totally convinced before, but now he is. This is the best game of all time.

He already loves it here!