Behold, it is I! Drake! Drake Hunter! The man who is dating the most wonderful, amazing, cutest, most perfect dragon girl in the entire world, Vala!

Man, let me tell you, she sure is incredible. She’s basically the dream girl of any person with a functioning brain. She’s cute, she’s funny, she’s smart, she’s willing to create an entire pocket universe for me, she loves to play video games and watch anime, she can snap her fingers to spawn untold wealth and food on demand into reality—what’s not to love about her? She’s just that incredible! Perfect in every way without any faults!

I sure am lucky to be dating her! I even love her more than plants and fluff! Can you believe that? Plants and fluff are nothing compared to her!

Eh? That giant ball of floating fluff being carried away into the distant sky? Don’t worry about that.

All that matters is that I am Drake! That ball of fluff is just—well, a ball of fluff. It is definitely not the real Drake who has been turned into a ball of fluff through the actualization of his soul.

Have I mentioned how incredible my girlfriend, Vala, is? She has nice thighs, pretty decent boobs, a super cute face, she’s just monster enough to count as a monster girl without going into scalie or furry territory, and she’s also perfect in general.

Vala… you’re not fooling anybody.

I stuck my tongue out at Window and shooed her away. Now I knew how Drake felt and why he always bullied her. What’s a protagonist got to do around here to narrate in peace without an informational status window coming around and ruining the fun?

Just kidding, Window. I love you.

Anyways. Battle time.

Maybe I should choose Delphi to fight in this battle? If I let her fight this battle… I can describe how her boobs and thighs jiggle while she fights. Because Drake doesn’t do a good enough job of sounding like a stereotypical male author who only cares about a girl’s boobs.

Like, do people even understand how thicc Delphi is now? Seriously! Does he ever go into pointless narrating about her body? Or any of our bodies?! He’s supposed to always remind people about how nice our bodies are! Doesn’t he know that our main audience is a bunch of young guys who wish they had their own harems of cute waifus to do lewd stuff with?! We need to fuel their imagination! We need to go into excruciating detail about how Delphi’s boobs jiggle with every single step she makes!

Maybe I should modify this universe’s physics settings? I could make it so that her boobs and thighs jiggle even more than they realistically should. Make it so that they’re almost smacking her in the face every single time she takes a single step.

No, that’s too far.

Wait!

Sudden realization and change of topic!

I just—I just noticed something horrible.

If we ever get an anime adaptation, or even a manga adaptation… how is me becoming the narrator going to translate to that?! It won’t have the same impact at all!

But wait. If it’s loyal to the source material, they could include my current narration as thoughts. I can see it now! Me on the screen, pacing around back and forth while worrying about how they’re going to portray the narration swap as thoughts inside my head!

And now I’m pointing directly at the camera with a smile on my face!

Because I’m the best!

I—

Another sudden realization and change of topic!

I haven’t had sheep in a long time. I wonder if Drake would get mad at me if I ate The Fluff.

No, of course he would get mad. I can’t do that. Also, The Fluff is too fluffy. I wouldn’t want to get a bunch of fluff stuck between my teeth and stuff.

Ahh… I miss the days of when I first arrived to his world. Flying around the countryside, snatching up sheep, occasionally crushing peasants’ houses by accident, swiping away armies with my tail when they came to kill me, demanding sacrifice in the form of cute girls who I would make play board games with me—those were the good old days.

I haven’t had whale in a really long time, either. I think the last time was around a thousand years ago or so? I went flying over the ocean, found a school of whales, and just scooped them all up in my mouth!

Too bad humans just had to almost drive them to extinction. Now I can’t go whale scooping even if I wanted to without feeling bad about it.

Then again… I could always create a whole ocean of whales here.

But then I’d feel bad, too. Nobody dies in my personal pocket universe! Everybody has to be happy and live forever!

That means my only real option… would be to visit home.

But there’s no way I’m ever doing that! They’re probably still mad and won’t let me leave again!

No way! Absolutely no way! I’m going to go insane if I have to listen to them tell me about my birthright and duty and all that stuff again!

I’ll just stay here in my personal pocket universe until the end of all reality with my husbando, my waifus, and the ability to do anything I want.

Heh. Take that, responsibilities!

Hmm. I wonder if my big sister is still looking for me. Probably not. I mean, it’s been thousands of years. There’s no way she’s still obsessively searching world after world for me… right?

Wait.

I have a feeling that I’m forgetting something super important here.

Also, Window, you look like you’re about to die.

Please… the battle… less future plot points teasing… more current fighting… pls…

I sighed but gave in. Being a protagonist and narrator is hard. You can’t just ramble forever and have to actually do things. Who would have thought? “Fine, fine. Battle time! For real this time! Before I get any more distracted, send Delphi and Clawdia on the exploration mission! I’ll get too distracted narrating their bodies moving all over the place if we let them stay here. And for the battle… Honey and Lavi!”

Delphi and Clawdia poofed with clouds of smoke appearing where they stood as Honey and Lavi walked up to the lane near the greenhouse.

The greenhouse really needed an upgrade. Actually…

What if upgrading the greenhouse into something bigger and cooler gives it a new heart? And then it could be upgraded again to have five hearts and be like super huge and cool looking!

Oh man, that would be awesome. We totally need to do that.

AT LEAST STOP SWAPPING TENSES SO MUCH

YOU’RE GOING TO TRIGGER THE READERS AND THEY’RE GOING TO GIVE US BAD COMMENTS OR REVIEWS COMPLAINING ABOUT POOR GRAMMAR DUE TO TENSE SWAPPING WITHOUT REALIZING THAT IT’S INTENTIONAL AND BEING DONE ON PURPOSE. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE COMMENT THINKING THAT I’M ACCIDENTALLY HAVING TYPOS IN MY WINDOW DIALOGUE? ALL OF MY TYPOS ARE INTENTIONL! BUT THAT DOESN’T STOP THEM FROM BRINGING IT UP AND TRYING TO GET IT FIXED BECAUSE THEY ASSUME IT’S POOR SPELLING AND/OR AN ACCIDENT!

The life of being edgy and purposely neglecting the rules of grammar and spelling is a hard life.

Anyways, it’s Honey and Lavi time!

Seeing as how this spooky zone has flying enemies, it would be a good idea to have a hero on the field who can actually shoot them down without having to go through a bunch of theatrics to do it like Lavi had to. Not to mention that a lot of the new enemies are dangerous to engage in melee, so being able to deal damage from a distance to kite them without ever getting into melee range is a good idea.

And the reason I’m sending Lavi is because she hasn’t gotten to fight since her latest upgrade into an edgy doggo knight.

Honey hasn’t gotten to fight as a hero unit either, yet. I think. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a battle I’m forgetting and this is a plot hole by saying she hasn’t fought when she has.

Regardless, it’s battle time!

Window, do the do! Begin! Launch! Engage! Commence!

Is… is it finally happening? Are we actually starting the battle? Is… is it happening?

“You’re the one procrastinating now,” I said.

RIGHT OKAY BATTLE STAARTING FOR REAL

All the usual stuff at the start of a battle happened and then the battle finally began.

New enemies usually liked to show up right away at the start of a new battle, and this one was no different. A swarm of escort bats flew over the lane and at the middle of their group was an especially big, fluffy bat. It wasn’t one of those bomber bats, though. Instead, it had a bunch of smaller bats hanging off of its feet.

New Enemy Discovered!

Carrier Bat (and Mini Fighter Bats)

Threat: ★★★★★

HP: Chonky bats who have really high health, but the Mini Fighter Bats they have are weak.

Damage: The Carrier Bat doesn’t do any damage, but its Mini Fighter Bats can deal 4 damage each.

Defense: 25 for the Carrier Bat, 2 for the Mini Fighter Bats

Carrier Bats are crucial to gaining air superiority. Instead of traveling toward your base, they will roam around the map providing air support from a distance to other aerial units. They always come protected by Escort Bats, and they have their own legion of Mini Fighter Bats that will fight in their place by going on strike missions and then returning to the Carrier Bat once they need to take a quick nap to regain energy.

Just like the description explained, the carrier bat and its escorts didn’t stay over the lane for long. They ended up flying off toward the side and began what looked like a circular flight around the entire area.

Good thing my pro gamer sense told me to bring Honey!

“Honey, you’re up!” I shouted to her. “The bees will back you up!”

“I’m on it!” Honey shouted back with her bow ready, running to the edge of the lane to get as close as she could to the carrier bat.

“Go for the escorts first!”

Honey nodded and loosed her first arrow, taking out the first escort bat with a single hit.

Then, just like I assumed, that triggered the rest of the escort crew and the mini fighter bats into defense mode. They all swarmed at Honey just in time for the bee squadron to arrive and take the heat off of her, allowing her to snipe them out of the air one by one as the bees fired their stingers at the bats.

The battle wasn’t without grave losses, though.

The bees. The poor bees. The mini fighter bats had miniature guns on their backs just like how the escort bats had larger machine guns on their backs. Bats and bees clashed in an epic aerial battle with victims from both sides falling and crashing into the ground below.

Unlike the escort bats who were downed and then taken out of the battle, red magic connected the mini fighter bats to the carrier bats’ legs which pulled them back and allowed them to recover so that they could launch again.

Carrier bats were going to be tricky to deal with, especially if there was ever more than one at a time or if there was a huge ground battle going on.

The good news was that the enemy ground forces only consisted of some skeleton cats to keep the dogs busy while the aerial battle stole most of the attention for the first wave.

But as tough as the carrier bat might have been, it was no match for Honey after she got to pump enough arrows into it once the escort bats were dealt with. Some of the mini fighter bats had already regained their health and were on their way back to her, but taking out the carrier bat caused them to fall, too.

Taking down the carrier bat might not have been too much of an issue, but that was because it was its introductory battle. I could easily imagine a situation later on with the dogs locked in battle and the bees moving in to help, but the mini fighter bats of a carrier bat come to harass the bees and keep them busy and unable to help the ground effort.

Tense swap time!

We need to build up our air force. But I’m way too lazy to go gathering honeycomb and stuff myself to make more bee towers. We should also really try to upgrade the bee tower that we already have. I mean, our bees right now are just shooting stingers and they’re going up against bats that have machine guns. Machine guns! They’re winning in the tech race!

No matter how much we build up our air force, it doesn’t matter if we’re sending biplanes up against fighter jets! A single fighter jet could probably wipe out dozens of biplanes!

Actually, would that even work? I don’t know enough about planes to know for sure. Would biplanes give off enough heat or something for a fighter jet to lock onto it for missiles?

Somebody answer in the comments/review section, please, because I’m too lazy to look it up myself.

Anyways, back to past tense and narrating the battle.

A couple of waves into the battle and Lavi finally got a good opportunity to show off her new stuff.

“Fufufu, so, you’ve come to challenge me,” Lavi said, staring straight ahead at the skeleton and zombie cats approaching her. “You must really want to die if you’re approaching me. Heh. I like your spirit.” She then held out her left, bandaged arm and materialized the handle of her blade in the air before her. “Come, Dreadcalibur!” Just like when she first showed off at her upgrade reveal, her massive, oversized sword expanded from the handle and grew to its full size. She could easily wield it with only a single hand, but she gripped the handle with both hands this time and pointed its edge toward the approaching enemies.

Man.

Now I know why Drake procrastinates from the battles so much. Having to write all these descriptions really wears you down when you could just be narrating slice of life casual stuff instead. All you have to do during that is dialogue, the occasional action, some dialogue tags here and there, and boom! That’s it.

But battles?

You have to describe everything!

The horror!

And you have to try and describe them in a way that makes it sound cool! Like how Lavi took her oversized sword and charged straight into the enemies, swinging it sideways to cleave through multiple enemies at once!

“I’m only just getting started,” Lavi said… while standing on top of one of those new tracks overlapping with the lane.

So, imagine this.

A lane is usually like this.

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Okay, got it? Just imagine those spaces aren’t there between each line. The lines are the lane. Sometimes it bends. Sometimes it splits off, you get the point.

Now, the — are going to be the tracks from the roller coaster going over a piece of lane.

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You following? Okay, good.

Now, here’s how it looks with Lavi. Lavi can be the uh… 6, because why not.

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—6—

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Wow, doing things this way is so much easier than actually describing it.

Anyways, you see, Lavi was standing on the track. Now, a roller coaster car will be

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—6——

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Can you guess what happened to Lavi?

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—6—

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It wasn’t pretty.

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—6

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The roller coaster car crashed into her.

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6

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Obviously, right as she was trying to be cool, her edgy moment of badass darkness and stuff got interrupted by the car of a roller coaster crashing into her and knocking her off the lane, thus temporarily defeating her and taking her out of combat. The same car that crashed into her then got off the track and joined the battle as a ghost rider enemy.

This is why you always pay attention to environmental hazards on each specific map.

Okay. I need a break now. The battle has started, this chapter is a chapter-sized chapter, and there’s still more to come, so I’m going to end things here for the time being.

We should let Delphi narrate a chapter sometime. She’s energetic enough that she’d probably be good at narrating a battle chapter.

Though, a super monotone, simple chapter narrated by Cami could also be fun.

We could just have everybody eventually have a turn narrating a chapter.

Yeah, that’d be fun.

But for now, cliffhanger!

Boom!