Fenrir doesn’t fully understand why, but when he looks at Rock now, it feels as if he’s looking at his old dog from childhood. He feels the same desire to protect Rock that he did with her.

Even if it’s just a game, even if this is a rock-turned-dog that he has known for a total of less than a day, he refuses to lose another friend. He didn’t stand by back then, and he won’t stand by this time either.

The tiniest amount of strength makes its way back into his body. He is filled with determination.

“Look at you, making a puppy fight for you. What kind of heartless bastard does that?” the woman asks despite being the one to try kicking it just moments ago. “It really pisses me off that I have to hurt an animal just to kick your ass, but it’s no better than its master if it’s protecting you.”

She raises her staff and swings it down toward Rock. The staff was already broken once from hitting Rock, but it’s still possible to whittle down its health with enough attacks.

Only, she hits Fenrir instead of Rock.

What little strength Fenrir could muster is used to throw himself over Rock, protecting the small pup from her staff. A single arm holding himself up is all that is keeping him from falling onto his friend.

“The hell are you doing, bastard? You were lucky enough to get a second chance and you—” she cuts herself off when she realizes just what it is that he’s done.

Rock is standing in front of his face with concerned eyes. He can’t make out any of its facial features other than its eyes staring into his own. It leans its head forward to lick his face. Its tongue may be made out of rock, but its smooth and just as comforting as the real thing.

Fenrir can’t move his body again. For the second time, she has incapacitated him.

“Tch… damn it!” she shouts from behind him. He can’t see what she’s doing anymore.

Then he feels her hands press against where she impaled him. They’re warm – too warm. No, it isn’t her hands that are warm, it’s something coming from her hands that is flowing into him.

The darkness overtaking his vision begins dissipating.

Is she healing him?

“Thought you wanted to kill me?” Fenrir asks, struggling to use his voice.

“Shut up. I’m not going to kill somebody that sacrifices themselves for a dog. The assholes I want to kill wouldn’t even blink,” she explains.

With the darkness disappearing, he’s able to see more and more of Rock’s new features. Its ears are essentially two pointed slabs of rough rock, and its face is more of the same. The rest of its body is made out of the same blocky rocks, giving it the appearance of a low poly model despite the material its made out of being extremely detailed. There are chips in the rock, discolorations, rough edges, and more. While it may lack fur, its surface is mostly various shades of brown with spots of grey and white. The rocks around its silver eyes and on its nose are the only black parts.

“I told you I wasn’t with them,” Fenrir tries explaining again. Somehow, the healing feels more aggressive than it was before.

“Then why the hell are you wearing their uniform? It even has their symbol on it! The only thing making you different is this useless bark you’re wearing on top of it.”

He has to admit, she does have a point about the bark being useless. It really hasn’t helped at all other than to cover himself up, and now that he’s got proper clothes and armor, he doesn’t really need it anymore. “Are you talking about those garlic guys? Because I took this armor from the guy I killed. I only just started playing and was naked, so it was either continue walking around only wearing bark or take his stuff,” he says, watching Rock’s expression grow happier as its master is being healed. Though, it occasionally steps back to peek over him at the woman. It gives her a cute little growl every time it does.

“You should have said that sooner!”

“Were you going to believe me?”

“I – I… tch. You don’t know that I wouldn’t have! Also, I’ll have you know that they’re only black because that’s all the merchant had! I wanted white, but—” she cuts herself off again. The healing grows even more aggressive. “Shut up!”

“I’m not even saying anything!”

“Now you are, so – so, shut up!”

Rock barks at her again. “Good boy, you’ve got my back,” Fenrir praises Rock.

Wait.

He presses his head against the ground to look underneath Rock. He doesn’t see any male bits, but it’s not like Rock has any bits of anything down there at all. “Good boy?” he says, looking at Rock. Rock looks happy, but… “Good girl?” Rock gives an excited bark and wags its tail.

Alright, so apparently Rock is a girl. He suddenly feels guilty for giving her such a masculine name.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t even know what it was,” the woman says.

“Give me a break. Like I said, I only just started playing, and before you decided to randomly shove your pole inside of me, she was literally a rock.”

“Don’t make it sound so erotic! I didn’t – I didn’t shove my pole inside of you, I stabbed you with a spear! Which you broke!”

He can hear her gritting her teeth.

She continues, “You expect me to believe that some new player not only took down a geared player on his own, but also found out how to awaken an artificial companion? Who the hell do you take me for?”

“I take you for the kind of girl who goes around randomly shoving poles into innocent guys,” he says. If this healing could get any more aggressive than it already is, he’s sure it would. “Hey, Saya,” he’s thinking now, “what does it mean to awaken an artificial companion?”

“I can’t tell you anything other than that the overseer decided the requirements were met, and that Rock now has a custom AI based off of your memories and personality controlling it, Onii-chan,” Saya explains. The little information she does give him is less than he was hoping for, but it’s enough.

“Thanks, Saya,” he thinks before switching back to talking. “You said something about getting a second chance. What did you mean?” he asks his enemy-turned-healer.

“You really are new,” she says with a sigh. “You might be able to get a tiny amount of your health back if you have a strong enough willpower to do something. Protecting somebody, running away, surviving – if you’re determined enough, you get a second chance. It never makes a difference since you’ll still only be a single attack away from getting incapacitated again. Your best option is to run away if your opponent is distracted. It’s also believed there’s some sort of time limit on how often it can happen, but nobody knows for sure,” she explains.

So basically, the game has a built-in mechanic to allow players to try and pull off epic final moments, but it’s only ever used for running away. Fenrir can’t even imagine being able to run away given how much pain he was still in after getting that second chance.

The aggressive flow of healing magic finally ends. Fenrir feels as great as he did when he first started playing! He looks down at the torn fabric where the spear came through, and surely enough, the wound is completely closed. All that is left is a scar.

As soon as Fenrir sits up, Rock jumps into his lap and excitedly wags her tail with enough force that her entire body is shaking with it! He lets each of his hands stroke along her body from her head to her rear. “I’m going to need to give you a better name now, huh?” he asks, looking down at her with a wide smile.

The woman walks to the front of him. “The hell are you crying for? You one of those masochists who set their pain to max or something?” she asks.

Fenrir brings one of his hands up to his face. Surely enough, when he wipes his eyes, there are tears. “That’s embarrassing. I’m just… really happy right now. Thank you for not killing us,” he says, looking up at her face with a genuine smile.

She looks away with red cheeks. “You better be grateful,” she says, scratching the side of her face. “By the way, you know which one of the bastards it is that you killed?”

“Yeah, Richard. Killed him twice. I think he was out of rebirth counters this last time since I heard him talking about how he was out, or something like that.”

She looks back down at him with a huge smile. “Seriously? You reset Richard? If you’re not fucking with me then I owe you a drink! That’s the bastard who tricked me and reset me.”

“What happened?” Fenrir asks, petting Rock whom is also looking up at her and waiting to hear the story.

She looks pissed off just remembering it. “They gave me permission to sleep and set a spawn in their village since I wouldn’t be able to immerse for a few days, and when I finally came back, I respawned without anything on me! The bastards killed me while I was gone, took all of my clothes and weapons, and then locked me inside of the house! That asshole, Richard, is the one who told me that they would keep on killing me until I reset unless I let them farm rebirth counters off of me. Told me I’d have to enable traumatic content and everything so they could even farm me while I wasn’t immersed,” she explains. Her smile is gone and replaced by rage. “I refused to let them have their way with me, so they just killed me over and over again until I eventually reset. Really pissed me off.”

Yeah, Fenrir can’t really judge her for jumping at the opportunity to kill him now. He would do the same if that ever happens to him. He’s taken out revenge on people before for far less than what happened to her.

Looking over her, Fenrir realizes that her looks completely betray her personality. He was expecting some brutish orc-girl or something from how savage she was and from how angry she always sounds, but she instead looks like some sort of holy maiden! With bright blue eyes and beautiful, golden hair that hangs down past her waist, she looks like the kind of girl that should be riding a white steed and going around helping starving children and hunting demons. As far as armor goes, she’s wearing a simple set of slim, iron armor that hugs her curves. Her greaves end halfway up her thighs, and there is the slightest amount of skin visible between where her greaves end and where her plate skirt begins.

Absolute territory is the best kind of territory.

Between her armor and now-broken spear, it looks like she bought the first set of gear that she could save up for so that she could come back over here to get revenge. The armor itself looks either poorly made or heavily used.

“Yeah, we stopped by there the other night. That asshole wanted to do to my one friend the same thing he wanted to do to you, I’m assuming, and was insulting my other friend. Killed him, ran away and killed myself before his friends could do it, and then just came back earlier today and killed him again,” Fenrir says, trying to take his mind and eyes off of her thighs.

Thighs are second only to sweaters.

“Hey, I think I just got an idea you’d like. I just wanted to steal their ship before, but if you help us, I think we might be able to take them all out. Interested?” he asks.

The woman crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow. “If it’s screwing those bastards over then I’ll at least hear you out.”

Fenrir holds a hand out. “Before I say anything else, I’m Fenrir. Do you have a name that I can call you?”

She looks down at his hand. He can see a bit of a blush returning to her cheeks. “I’m Cassiel,” she says, giving his hand a quick shake before huffing and pulling it back.