The party officially consists of Fenrir, Oleander, Bonekraka, Serra, Rock, and Cassiel. Together, they have hunted, fished, laughed, and destroyed a village while stealing a ship.

“How can you steer this thing so well already?” Cassiel asks, hanging out near the back of the ship with Oleander.

She can only handle so much of Fenrir’s stubborn indifference at once.

“Compared to a galleon or supercarrier, this is super easy. We’ve played lots of other games before. Pirate games, sci-fi games – you name it. I’ve steered pretty much every kind of ship and vehicle in general that you can think of,” Oleander explains.

Up near the front of the ship, Serra is gently tracing her fingers over where Rock had chips of her body broken off. She whines when touched there, so Serra quickly retracts her hand. “Will she grow it back?” she asks Fenrir.

“Not sure,” he says, sitting down on the other side of Rock. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Just needs rest and food.”

As for Bonekraka, he’s gone below deck to get some shuteye. He really doesn’t like being on open water. His last words to the group were to message him on Fiscord once they are docked at land or a city.

“Bone doesn’t get to play that much, does he?” Serra asks.

“Not really. He’s really busy between his wife and work,” Fenrir answers.

“Is it okay if I ask what he does?”

“No idea. He won’t tell us. Olly likes to joke that he’s in the mafia, and honestly… I wouldn’t be surprised. I know that he works for his wife’s dad, but that’s it. Also, don’t worry. He wouldn’t care about me telling you this since he tells random people that all the time. None of us have enough information to know what he really does.”

“Mafias are cool.”

“Pirates and now mafias. You must be the type to chase after bad boys. Let me guess, your dream guy is somebody driving a motorcycle and wearing a leather jacket?”

Serra blushes and looks away. “Shut up.”

“I think Cass is rubbing off on you.”

Serra looks up at Fenrir and pouts. “I’ll beat you up, punk.”

“So scary.” Something about his voice makes it clear he’s the opposite of scared.

Tall, mossy sea stacks pop up from the water as the ship heads farther south. The coast begins turning in to the east, and Oleander makes sure that they never lose sight of land.

The strait comes into view after a couple of hours.

“This is Indra’s Strait. I wasn’t here for it, but the legend is that Indra herself split the continent in two by extreme erosion which created this strait,” Cassiel explains to the rest of the party.

“Indra?” Fenrir asks.

“Indra is the leader of the Goddess’ Own. Their city, Sumeru, is to the west of here on an island. It’s like a chunk of desert floating in the ocean, and her city is built right on top of it,” Cassiel pauses to make sure everybody is following along before continuing. Even Rock is looking up at her and waiting for her to go on. “Her navy is second only to Blackstache’s, and her followers treat her like a goddess. It doesn’t help that she calls herself a goddess in the first place.”

“What’s she like?”

“Arrogant and stuck-up, but for good reason. She’s the strongest known magic user in the world, and she claims to be the goddess of storms, oceans, and commerce. She’s supposedly taken down entire fleets before by summoning storms to wipe them out. It’s a good thing she cares more about protecting her city and amassing wealth than waging war.”

“I thought the Augus Empire was the most powerful?”

“Only on land. Indra rules the seas.”

“What about the pirates?”

“They have more ships and better sailors, but none of that matters if a storm with fifty-foot waves wipes them out.”

“You sound like a history teacher, Cassy,” Oleander says.

“Shut up! I’m just answering questions,” she shouts at him.

Oleander giggles and goes back to steering the ship.

“How long did it take her to get that powerful?” Fenrir asks.

Cassiel looks hesitant to answer now. “I don’t know, but I’ve heard that she’s been playing since the closed alpha. She’s apparently one of the first hundred people to actually play. Most of the early players are powerful, but she’s something else.”

Serra is clearly the least interested in the conversation. As soon as she realized that nothing “cool” was involved, she went back to petting Rock.

The ship continues on.

Fenrir, at one point, decides to try fishing with his fancy new rod. Alas, there is a problem.

He has no bait.

With no bait nor lures, all he can do is practice casting the line a bunch of times. He gets that sort of satisfaction pinging within him after a while of practice. Every cast after that goes farther, if he tries to cast farther, and splashes down closer to where he aims.

The fishing rod itself seems more advanced than most of what he has seen within the game world as far as technology goes. It looks to be made of bamboo or some other light, flexible wood; has a spinning reel made out of brass; and the line itself looks to be made from some sort of hair, such as a horse’s.

It may not be too impressive, but it just feels right in his hands. This is his very own fishing rod. Well, it might not legally be his, but who’s going to take it back?

The ship comes across a small cove on the other side of the strait. No other ships are parked there, so Oleander and Fenrir decide that it will be a good spot for them to stop in. Oleander has things to do in reality still.

Given how long travel can take in this game, Fenrir is realizing that they’re going to need more than one helmsman.

“Don’t forget about tomorrow, Fenny!” Oleander says before heading below deck to wake.

It reminds Serra and Cassiel of what the two men talked about earlier.

Cassiel is next to log out. With nothing else to do, she tells them that she’s going to get some extra relaxation in before her next shift at work.

Only Fenrir and Serra remain. Rock is there too, of course, but there is no real player behind her.

Serra is content to just watch Fenrir cast the fishing line over and over. She even tries picking up the other rod to mimic what he’s doing, but when she realizes that she is absolutely horrible at it and has no idea what she is doing, she returns to just watching.

She also didn’t like that Fenrir was laughing every single time she somehow cast the line behind her instead of in front of her.

There isn’t much else for them to do. Even Fenrir inevitably grows bored of just casting a line with nothing to attract fish, and the sheltered cove doesn’t look like it has anything interesting in it, so the two head below deck to wake.

There are several bedrolls and a couple of hammocks below deck for them to sleep in. However, Bonekraka and Oleander already claimed the hammocks.

“Keep the ship safe while we’re gone, alright, Rock?” Fenrir says.

Rock barks and licks his face before he lies down and wakes.

He immediately regrets coming back into reality when he is met with his dull ceiling and swishedy-swishing fan. “You get my coffee robot yet?” Ryouta asks the fan.

No reply.

Ryouta groans and kicks his feet.

It’s still light outside, he most likely won’t have anything to do in-game until Spencer is back on, and Spencer isn’t going to back on until after their meeting tomorrow.

That means there are over twenty-four hours before Ryouta can play more.

Oh, god.

Might as well marathon the trashiest, most generic anime shows that there are. Fortunately, there are many of them. Whether it be shows where little sisters act far too lewdly to their older brothers whom may or may not be related to them by blood, generic isekai shows where a character from Earth is pulled into another reality either as himself or gets reincarnated into some odd thing such as a slime or vending machine, or just yet another harem where some guy is lucky enough to get like ten girls all in love with him, he’ll never run out of things to watch.

He’s thankful that harems exist in anime. Why can’t anime girls be real? What he wouldn’t give to have a harem of cute anime girls obsessed with him.

He looks down at his crotch and then over to his computer.

Hentai first.

After at least six sessions of viewing hentai, half of which either end in laughter or disgust from joke-translated doujins or clicking on seemingly-innocent titles only to see real fucked up stuff like loli snuff, and at least eight hours of anime, he’s finally tired enough to sleep.

He’s pretty sure that those loli snuff doujins got him put on a list somewhere.

Why is there so much loli snuff hentai on the internet?

All he wants are some sweet, vanilla childhood friend doujins; doujins with tsunderes who have secret lovey-dovey sides, but still act like brats in the end; and the occasional yandere girl with a happy ending.

And tentacles.

Instead, half of what he finds is fucked up stuff involving lolis or gross, ugly bastards coming in and stealing a girl away in traditional netorare fashion.

Hentai is a mistake.

These thoughts carry him into slumber.

Another day, another session of binge-watching anime while waiting for it to be time to leave. Serra helps pass the time by messaging him on Fiscord, too.

“Oh, I should probably shower,” Ryouta says, looking over to his bathroom with a groan. One of the perks of living by himself and almost never leaving his apartment is that he doesn’t really have to stay totally hygienic. He’s not dirty or anything like that; he just skips taking a shower every other day sometimes.

Cleaning himself up, wearing normal clothes instead of oversized comfort clothes, brushing his hair – it’s all a pain. He cares far more about his appearance in video games than he does in reality. All of these things that are a major chore and tedious to do in reality are enjoyable when he’s immersed in virtual reality – when he’s in a body he actually cares about.

The latest, hottest anime opening song goes off on his phone. It’s his alarm.

Time to go.

With a loud and drawn-out groan, Ryouta leaves his apartment behind and begins the long walk toward New Charleston’s Chinatown district. It would be so much faster to just flag down an auto taxi, but – well, it doesn’t matter. Walking it is.

Despite how many people and vehicles fill the streets, cold air permeates throughout the city. There may not be any snow on the ground yet, but it is getting colder by the day. This means two things: one, girls are going to be wearing sweaters more often; two, winter is coming.

There he is. Standing in front of their go-to ramen shop is none other than Spencer himself.

Many who have met Spencer’s various in-game representations believe that he’s some annoying, overly-flamboyant trap in real life that speaks in a high-pitched voice and annoys everybody with constant sexual innuendo. Just like in-game.

Only Ryouta and Viktor know that this is anything but the truth. Rather than be some feminine trap, Spencer is a tall, handsome man that Ryouta curses for being more attractive than him. Spencer stands at six-foot-three, has short and brown hair that is stylishly groomed, a pair of thick-rimmed glasses which serve no purpose other than to look good on his perfectly masculine face, and has a body that is on par with Fenrir's. Spencer even knows how to dress well and fashionably!

Truth be told, Spencer’s real body was a strong source of inspiration for how Ryouta shaped Fenrir’s.

Spencer waves at Ryouta when he sees him.

He isn’t the only different one in reality. While Fenrir may be the same height as Spencer, Ryouta is still several inches away from reaching six feet, has a slim figure with no muscles to show off, pale skin, and shaggy hair. The only similarity between him and Fenrir is the white hair. Not even their eyes are the same seeing as how his are green while Fenrir’s are red.

Fenrir is also able to walk around without limping half the time.

“Lookin’ pretty tired there, bud,” Spencer calls out. His deep voice is just so perfectly masculine that it makes Ryouta even more jealous. Spencer needs to go get a job as a radio host.

“Shut up, it’s a long walk,” Ryouta says with heavy breaths.

“Come on, it’s my treat tonight.” Spencer wraps an arm around Ryouta’s shoulders and helps him inside the ramen shop.

A cardboard cutout of a famous anime ninja character stands just inside of the entrance.

They know what kind of customers to expect.