“You’re—” Fenrir starts.

“You were—” Cassiel tries talking as well.

Both of their faces are red at this point, and their jaws hang open from surprise. Rock has no idea what is going on and decides to roll around on her back a little bit to scratch an itch that her stubby little legs can’t reach.

“You were our waitress?”

“You were that guy who punched that bastard?”

They keep on talking over one another. Fenrir waits a few moments before opening his mouth to talk again, and when he finally does open it, she opens hers.

“You first!”

“You fir— tch,” Cassiel loses. “Fine! I… don’t know what to say.”

“Yeah, I don’t really know what to say either."

The only noises to break up the awkward silence are those of the wooden hull creaking as it sails through gentle waters.

“…Cassandra, right?” Fenrir asks.

Cassiel looks away. “Y-yeah.”

“I’m Ryouta. Only fair to give you my name if I know yours, plus we’ve already met in real life, so.”

“First Serra, now you. I thought coincidences like this are saved for movies.”

“You met her too?”

“What do you mean too? You already met her?”

“Last night was my first time seeing her in person, same as you.”

“Next thing I know and your dog there is going to be popping up at work.”

“Rock is pretty full of surprises. Anyways, sorry about causing you trouble last night.”

Cassiel turns away. “Shut up, it’s fine. Bastard deserved it.”

Fenrir sighs. “Sucks that I’m officially banned. Always did like the drinks there, and they have some pretty great wings.”

Cassiel looks at him again. Her eyes are wide as if she’s just seen a ghost or has had her PTSD triggered. “You… eat the wings there?”

Oh god. “Please don’t say anything more than that. I don’t want to know.”

He’s never seen her look so concerned before.

She turns away again. “Hey.”

“What?” Fenrir asks, head tilted.

“Thanks for, you know.”

“Don’t worry about it. Like you said, the bastard deserved it.”

There’s no way that Cassiel is going to let him see how wide she’s smiling right now. “Change the subject already!”

Fenrir’s own smile spreads across his lips. He’s beginning to learn how to read her. “Fine, fine. I’ll have you be an encyclopedia instead of a waitress. Can you tell me more about the Augus Empire? You mentioned stuff like the inner circle, angels, and dragons, so I want to hear more about all that stuff.”

Cassiel slaps her cheeks to regain her composure before turning back around. “Alright. I’ll start from the beginning and give you a quick overview,” she says.

“Hang on.” Fenrir rushes below deck and comes back up with a couple of empty crates. He sets them down next to each other and sits down on the first one, patting the other to signal her. She sits down on it.

“Thanks. Now, where should I start… alright. The Augus Empire started off as the Holy Empire and was led by this guy who just wanted to roleplay like a bunch of Romans. Livia, the current empress, was his top general. She saw how incompetent he was and overthrew him, renamed the faction, organized the land and guilds, then went on to grow it into the powerhouse it is today. It’s mostly made up of humans because she’s a roleplayer at heart and thinks non-human races aren’t trustworthy. They’re allowed in, but they get treated like slaves unless they prove themselves,” Cassiel begins her lecture.

“How do they prove themselves?” Fenrir asks, playing the role of a curious student. Wait, now he’s imagining her dressed up like a glasses-wearing teacher and smacking a ruler against his desk.

It’s a nice thought. She could totally pull it off.

“Coliseum fights, usually. They either fight in the arena and prove that they’re better than everybody else, or they join the military as a slave-soldier and prove themselves during war.”

“Sounds pretty intense. It’s kind of funny how nobody would ever willingly want to basically be a slave in real life, but if it’s a game, nobody cares. Just like how people will buy houses in games and keep them super clean and decorated and stuff, but not care at all about that in real life.” He realizes that he just described himself.

“People like to roleplay. Anyways, there’s thousands of guilds underneath the Augus Empire’s rule. The vast majority are only given the rank of barons. Barons belong to counts, counts to dukes, dukes to kings, and then there’s finally the empress herself. With Livia at the top, there are four kings who control everybody underneath them. Tralin leads The Exiled Hammer. He’s a dwarf that got kicked out of the Conquerors of the Deep and decided to start a crafting guild over here. He’s a king of the territory near the mountains, and all guilds dedicated to crafting, gathering, and trading are under his command. He leads the economic backbone of the empire.”

“Sounds like a cliché dwarf to me. Does he have a beard?”

“Good luck meeting a dwarf who doesn’t have a beard and some bad Scottish accent.”

“What about the other three kings?” Fenrir asks, stretching out and looking over at Rock to check on her. She’s rolling around a loose cannonball on the deck. Fenrir knows he should probably do something about that, but it’s not like he has a better toy to replace that with.

He should probably tell her that she won’t be able to pick it up no matter how many times she tries biting it.

But she’s cute, so he doesn’t say anything.

“Gregory leads the Farmers Union,” Cassiel starts up again.

“That’s a boring name.”

Cassiel laughs a bit. “I know, and he’s just as boring as the name is. I met him a few times. I know that he’s some old guy in reality and apparently manages a bunch of farms in the Midwest. Anyways, he’s in charge of the empire’s food. Most players who just want to live normal fantasy lives without fighting or any of that other stuff will join guilds underneath his command.”

“Next.”

She glares at him.

“Next, please?”

“I’m going to throw you overboard,” Cassiel says with a groan. “King Dante the Everlasting Inferno,” Cassiel pauses to look at Fenrir, just knowing that he’s going to have a reaction to this.

She’s right. He looks as if he is putting every last bit of his strength into not bursting out laughing. Even Rock has paused her dream of picking up the cannonball to look at Cassiel with a tilted head.

“He demands that he’s addressed that way every single time anybody talks to him. It’s fucking horrible. He’s also one of the biggest edgelords you’re hopefully never going to meet. Why are edgy guys always named Dante? That and Lucifer.”

Fenrir is really close to laughing his sides into orbit.

She sighs, really not wanting to go any further into detail about the edgiest of edgelords. “He’s the leader of the… the… Dragon Lords.” She cringes and wants to crawl into a hole just for saying that.

Fenrir is suspiciously quiet. When she finally looks over at him to see his reaction, he’s – well, she has never seen somebody literally rolling on the floor before while still not making any noise. Rock is even rolling around next to him! She just hopes that Rock is mimicking Fenrir instead of laughing at her.

Regardless, her face is pure red. “You better appreciate this. Anyways! He’s the leader of the military. Well, it’s more like he’s the second-in-command to Livia. All of the guilds focused on war and fighting are underneath his command. He works the most directly with Livia. The dragon knights are his elite followers who have all tamed dragons from the mountains and ride them into battle. Some people consider them the most elite fighting force in the game. Others consider Livia’s archangels that.”

Fenrir finally regains his composure and sits back on the crate. “Got it, got it. What about the archangels?”

“Livia’s angels, and archangels, are her personal honor guard. I was one of the newest recruits and only a few quests away from earning my wings and halo before that incident with those garlic bastards. The archangels are just veteran angels who wield holy weapons.”

“How do you get wings and a halo?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t make it far enough, and it’s kept secret.”

“Got it. What about the final king?”

“His name is Tennant. He doesn’t lead a guild himself, but he rules over all the guilds that form the empire’s outer territory. He’s basically in charge of the law, politics, foreign relations, and keeping tabs on all of the outer territories. Those are the four kings. Most guilds fall under their control and live within the inner territories, making them part of the ‘inner circle.’”

Fenrir realizes something. This is totally like expositional worldbuilding in a game or book. This would be one of those times when characters discuss information that a few lore-addicted players would care about, but most would probably be smashing whatever button is required to skip through all of the dialogue boxes.

“Thanks for all the information. So, you were close to Livia?” Fenrir asks.

“Yeah. I was almost beginning to think of her as a friend before everything happened,” Cassiel answers.

“What about the other factions?”

“I couldn’t tell you much about them. I already told you about Indra and the Goddess’s Own, you’ll be seeing the Free Sailors soon… there’s the Desert Stalkers across the ocean, but the only way to learn anything about them is to be part of them. Nobody knows where their city is, and we only know of their existence because of traders and spies from their faction. There are the Conquerors of the Deep and the Northern Wardens. Both are across the ocean and have been at war with each other since they were founded. The former is a bunch of dwarfs living in mountains; the latter are Viking elves and monsters. Can’t tell you much about them either since they’re across the ocean. Never paid attention to people talking about them. Then there are the Hermetic Scholars, but you’ll probably learn all you need to know about them when we reach the city. The only other important faction I can think of is the End Bringers.”

“Sounds like Dante has some competition,” Fenrir already wants to laugh again.

“Yeah, Dante might be stupid and edgy, but these guys are actually scary. You don’t want to meet them if you have traumatic content enabled. There are some seriously messed up people in their ranks. They’re a really small faction, but the people who are in it are… fucked up. You’ve never seen anybody as shitty and evil as they are in other games. I wouldn’t be surprised if their leader is the descendant of some genocidal maniac. They live for the traumatic content in this game.”

“So, they’re the kind of people who get off to loli snuff hentai?”

Cassiel looks confused.

He’s said too much. She’s going to catch onto how much of a weeb he is.

“Sure…”

The way she says that makes him cringe at himself.

“Thanks for the information, Miss Encyclopedia.”

Cassiel points at him and then points overboard. The threat is clear.

“Consider us even for last night,” she says.

“Deal. Anyways, mind keeping an eye out for me up here? I’m going to go below deck and count our supplies. Seems like those pricks might have been loading up for a trade run when we stole her. Oh, by the way, she’s named The Shoebill now.”

“Who?”

“The ship.”

“You named the ship?”

“Come on, Cass. Every ship has to have a name.”

Rather than try to break the record for having a blank stare again, she just shrugs. “I’ll yell if I see anything.”