It turned out to be a long day for Fenrir and his girlfriends. Thanks to the arrival of Astika and her island, there were countless rules to come up with and to make sure that all parties understood, players that had to be talked into not raiding the island for loot, others who were concerned about how the island’s arrival would interfere with the local fish, and so on. Of course, there were also players concerned about the fact that what was basically an open world raid dungeon now lived right next to them and was full of potentially dangerous threats who could easily wipe them out if they chose to.

But an agreement was made for both parties, the parties being the citizens of Nameless and the apes of Astika’s island, to stick to their own territory for a week. There would be a week of peace and sticking to themselves just for some time to acclimate to the changes that were in place, and for the initial tensions to die down a little.

Of course, it was also negotiated that Rock would be permitted to visit the apes on the island with the intent of improving relations. Rock was basically going to be Nameless’s diplomatic envoy to the apes. After all, as long as Rock was around, it was impossible for there to be anything but peace and cooperation.

Rock was just that OP.

That aside, Ryouta needed a break from the game, so he decided to spend some time in real life with the ferrets in their room. Well, he couldn’t exactly relax until he changed their bedding, replaced their litter, gave them some fresh water and food, and checked their main hiding spot to see if there was anything important hidden in there that the others weren’t aware of being stolen. Once he did all of that, though, he could finally relax by lying down on the floor and letting the ferrets jump around on top of him.

There was something nice about being used as a playground for small, furry, wannabe sharks. Especially when they wrestled with each other on top of his abdomen or tried to push each other off, basically playing king of the hill with his stomach being the hill.

Ryouta wasn’t completely devoid of non-ferret company, though, and that company came in the form of Saya talking to him through his phone that was on the ground next to his head.

Sometimes, the ferrets would run over to the phone whenever they heard Saya’s voice come from it, but then they would go back to climbing on Ryouta and wrestling with each other.

“We need pet ferrets in FTO,” Saya said.

“And why’s that?” Ryouta asked.

“So I can play with them, too. It’s not fair if you get to hog playing with ferrets all to yourself.”

“Couldn’t you just spawn some in while we’re in that lobby?”

“That’s not the same. I basically control everything in there, and I want to play with ferrets that aren’t, you know, me.”

“What if I turn into a ferret?”

“That’s even worse.”

“Come on, you don’t want to play with me as a ferret?”

“That’d be weird.”

“What if I turn into a ferret boy?”

“I… I think I like you as a wolf boy just fine.”

“Yeah, but I could—wait. I just got an idea.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“I’m scared, onii-wan.”

“You probably should be.”

“It’s even scarier when you admit that I should be scared.”

Ryouta let out a purposely evil chuckle before asking, “What if we use that lobby in VR to create a double of me so that you can have a threesome with two of me?”

“One, no, you hentai onii-wan. Two, that would basically be me controlling your clone which means I would be… basically just masturbating using your clone, and that’s weird, so no.”

“I guess that makes sense. Shame.”

“There’s no shame about it. Who would want to have sex with two of you? One of you is already too much.”

“I feel like that was supposed to be a playful insult, but it just came off as a compliment if anything.”

“Crap. You’re right. We-well… hmph.”

“You can’t just ‘hmph’ to get out of accidentally praising my sex skills.”

“Too late. Already did.”

“Fair.”

Ryouta stretched out and yawned, causing the ferrets to go still and wear shocked expressions from his abdomen moving even a little bit underneath them, and then they went right back to wrestling with each other once Ryouta was done moving.

“So,” Ryouta continued, “what were you up to earlier? I didn’t see you in-game at all.”

“Oh, right,” Saya said, sounding as if she forgot herself. “One of the guys in Nameless, his girlfriend started playing, but since you can’t choose where exactly you spawn… he was looking to get help from some of us to go search for her and lead her back to the town. I got lucky and managed to find her first… which is probably a good thing since we’re both girls and everybody else helping out were men, but… I forgot to bring some extra clothes to give her. I uh… told her to stay where she was. It looked like a pretty safe place… and I knew where she was, so I’d be able to quickly get back to her with some clothes since she was too embarrassed to come to town naked, but uh… you see… when I got back… a bear might have found her, and… uh… you know… may or may not have ripped her apart and ate her and stuff.”

Ryouta stared up at the ceiling with a straight face which was only interrupted when one of the ferrets flipped over and smacked its butt right against his face. “Good work. You did well.”

“Don’t sass me, onii-wan.”

“Too late, consider yourself sassed.”

“You’re the worst sometimes. Anyways, it’s not my fault! She should have just come back to town with me even if she was naked. Also, her boyfriend should have warned her about the spawning naked part since apparently he didn’t. Who’s the bad guy, huh? Not me.”

“Couldn’t you have, you know, gone to her boyfriend or one of the others, told them where she was, and then have them guard her while you went back to get clothes?”

“She didn’t want them to see her. She was too embarrassed.”

“Then couldn’t you have given her some of your clothes? You have enough layers for your ranger look that you could have given her some without leaving yourself exposed.”

“But… but they’re my clothes.”

“Wow, Saya. I didn’t know you were so selfish.”

“I… I won’t deny it, I am. I… actually realized that earlier since I had the same idea after finding out she was eaten. But… those clothes are mine. I don’t exactly have any possessions or anything in the real world like you do. To me… FTO is my real world, and those clothes are mine. I know it’s selfish and greedy, but I don’t want to share them, even if it’s only for a little.”

“I think that’s fair. Besides, they’re your first real belongings. If I was given my first ever… anything, in life, then I probably wouldn’t want to share it, either. Especially not with some random guy’s girlfriend.”

“I still feel kind of bad.”

“Don’t. Also, I just thought of a different response I could have used.”

“What?”

“I should have said something about how I’m your first belonging.”

“The worst.”

“I know. Anyways, now that you know the general area of where she spawned at, you’ll be able to wait over there for her with some new clothes to make it up for her.”

“Uh… about that.”

Ryouta couldn’t help but to smile when he heard the tone in Saya’s voice. “You make it sound like there’s an issue.”

And his amusement made Saya sigh. “Why do you sound happy about that?”

“Because I bet it’s funny.”

“It’s not! They… uh… kind of broke up.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah… when I told the boyfriend about what happened, he woke from the game to go send her a message, and she was really pissed at him for not warning her that she’d be naked, and I guess also yelled at him for not warning her about how scary the game was. I guess he told her that she could just… farm and take care of animals and stuff, so… she was expecting something totally different and may or may not have gotten traumatized, so she dumped him.”

Surely enough, Ryouta started laughing. “Neither one of them sound fit for a relationship.”

“What—what makes you say that? How do you judge whether somebody is fit for a relationship or not? Shouldn’t we feel bad they broke up?”

“Nah. It’s probably for the best. I mean, look. One, if they broke up over something like this, then they weren’t going to last anyways. They probably never had any fights before, and the first fight over something important would break them up. Two, the guy will learn from this to not be an idiot who misleads future girlfriends to try and get them to game with him, hopefully. It will also teach him to actually consider the other person’s feelings and appropriately warn them about stuff like that. Again, hopefully. And three, even if it’s on the guy for not appropriately warning her about what it would be like, she still dumped him over a video game. Also, even in a virtual body, she apparently either didn’t trust her boyfriend enough or wasn’t comfortable enough with him for him to protect her while she was naked, so… that sounds kind of immature to me. Either that, or their relationship was pretty new in the first place and nothing of great value was lost.”

“I… guess that makes sense.”

“And wouldn’t the virtual assistant have protected her from actually getting traumatized?”

“It would have done its best to, but virtual assistants aren’t perfect.”

“You are.”

“I—wha—that… that’s too smooth, onii-wan… you can’t just do that to me,” Saya whined.

“Too bad. I already did it to you.”

“Hmph.”

“Your ‘hmphs’ are the best.”

“Then I’ll never do them again.”

“Yes you will.”

“H-hmph…”

Eventually, the ferrets stopped their wrestling and settled down on top of Ryouta’s stomach, each one stretched out and lying down right next to one another.

“I guess I should be more proactive in dealing with the edgelords, huh?” Ryouta asked.

“Well… if you want to make sure they don’t cause any problems, probably,” Saya answered.

“I really wish I could bring myself to ask for Astika’s help and use her island as a mobile base, but that wouldn’t be right. They have no reason to participate in our fight.”

“Yeah…”

“That just means we have to deal with it ourselves! And with Tabs working on our new ship, we should be able to fuck them over pretty good.”

“Speaking of ships… what about The Shoebill?”

“Oh, right. Eva got permission to travel to the island whenever she wants during this week, so she’s going to fly around and look for it. She also gave herself a secret mission to collect some of those body-controlling plants so that she can take them back to the Scholars’ headquarters. Don’t let anybody know about that, though. It’s between us for now.”

“Ryouta.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re going to weaponize it, aren’t you?”

“What—what makes you think that?”

“My mind being somewhat based off your own is what makes me think that. I know how you think, and I know that there’s no way you would pass up the opportunity to try and weaponize those plants.”

“Well, you’re not wrong. I may or may not want Eva to look into whether or not it’s possible to create a chemical gas we can bomb the edgelords with to turn them against each other.”

“You really are the worst. You want to bring chemical warfare missile strikes launched by fantasy submarines into FTO.”

“You know it.”

Saya let out an exaggerated sigh, causing the ferrets to lift their heads to look at the phone, and then they started wrestling again, resulting in them coiling up into one large ferret ball which proceeded to roll off of Fenrir’s stomach.

“I still want ferrets in FTO,” Saya said.

“Well, if we ever find some, you can tame them,” Fenrir replied. “Deal?”

“Deal.”