There were too many thoughts racing through Fenrir’s mind as he ran back toward Nameless.

What did Kadi want?

What was she after?

Was she trying to manipulate him?

Why would she actually break her own rules to warn him about the incoming attack?

Why were his girlfriends supposedly being targeted in this attack?

How could a fleet even approach them without being detected?

How come his informant didn’t report anything back to him?

Well, to be fair to his informant… Fenrir did leave the means of communication up to him and never actually established any sort of proper protocol with him, and he wasn’t a hundred percent sure the informant would even follow through on anything.

And before he could even make it back to Nameless, he spotted somebody running straight toward him—somebody large, muscular, and wearing nothing but a speedo and a giant, yellow, smiley face.

Mary, formerly known as Mister Smiles, removed her smiling head once her and Fenrir actually caught up to each other. “Fen!” she shouted out.

“Sorry, but can we talk on the way back?” Fenrir asked. “We’re—”

“An attack is comin’!”

“Wait, you know about it?”

Mary nodded and then asked, “Wait, you know about it?”

“How do you know?”

“Bo brought me a letter about it!”

“Bo? That was the vulture I caught you talking to before, right?”

Mary nodded before realizing that she was probably saying too much given her position as a spy. “A-anyways, they’re comin’ with more of them monster submarines they’ve got. A whole fleet of ‘em. They’re gonna try overwhelming us.”

“Did you tell anybody else yet?”

Mary nodded again. “Ah told Nell. She’s the one who sent me out here lookin’ for ya.”

A sigh of relief left Fenrir’s lips. “Good. She should already be preparing defenses then… but she’d probably appreciate my help, so let’s hurry back.”

With that, Mary nodded, donned her smiling mask once again, and the two ran back to Nameless together.

“By the way,” Fenrir said. “You’re really not good at not acting like a spy.”

“Sh-shush!” Mary whined. “Ya already know anyways! Ain’t no point in hidin’ it!”

“You’re still supposed to try denying it at least. A spy isn’t supposed to blow their cover even when they know that they’ve been exposed.”

Mary didn’t say anything after that, but she did make some muffled grumbling noises from behind her mask that Fenrir couldn’t help but to find cute.

It didn’t take long for Fenrir to find Nell once he was back inside the town. She was right at the center surrounded by people giving various orders to them, trying her best to coordinate the defenses while her maids all stayed close behind her with their weapons drawn and ready to decimate whoever might try to harm her.

Nell might have been a priority target… but Fenrir doubted anybody would be getting past her maids.

“Ah! My hero!” Nell shouted out as soon as she spotted Fenrir moving through the crowd toward her with Mary.

Those who were in the way cleared out as soon as they realized Fenrir was trying to get through.

Then, once Fenrir reached Nell, she said, “My hero, we—”

“I know,” Fenrir said, cutting her off. “Wait, sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

As nervous as Nell might have felt about the situation, it was impossible not to smile and giggle a little when she heard the apology. “Please, my hero. I appreciate the apology, but it is not needed given the circumstances.”

“Stress is no reason not to be a good boyfriend who doesn’t interrupt his girlfriend.”

It took everything Nell had to not go into pampering mode. So, rather than that, she took a deep breath to calm herself down and recollected her thoughts to focus on what mattered. “I love you, my hero. Now, I have called for all non-combatants to wait within the walls farthest from the coast. As I speak, our coastal defenses are being prepared with Serra performing a check on all of our cannons.”

“Love you, too. And Serra’s doing that?”

“She has been wanting to be more involved lately, and who better to check on our cannons than her?”

“Fair point. What about the others?”

“Cassiel, aided by Rao and Pfar, are rounding everybody able to fight up and assigning them to defensive positions, Saya is alarming the players who are not immersed so that their virtual assistants can wake up and take control of their avatars, and Eva has flown over to Astika’s isle to inform them of what is going on.”

“Aza might be weakened if it’s just her VA controlling her avatar… but even a weakened Aza should still be enough to terrify some of them. Though, I’ve got a feeling she’s going to be sad she’s not able to join us for this.”

“We will have to find other reasons for her to use her explosions in live combat. For now, is there anything I am missing?”

Fenrir shook his head. “You’ve done a great job. But, you’ve also done a predictable job. If we were going against honorable enemies, your plans would be perfect, but we’re not.”

“Well, then it is a good thing I have my beloved hero here to assist me.”

“But for your first time preparing defenses like this, you’ve seriously done better than I could have even imagined.”

“Please, my hero, my ego does not need tending to. I understand you meant no ill intent. I would rather you focus on telling me what else needs doing.”

“Right. Alright. We know that they’re coming with a fleet, but that doesn’t mean we should expect a strictly naval assault. They’d be idiots to do that and they’ve proven before that they like to try and fuck us with underhanded tactics. We should have all the non-combatants spread out through the town to minimize damage in the event of a spy or traitor being among them. If there’s anybody with that gas they tried using on us before, having everybody gathered in one place will fuck us. Aside from that, if they’re even half as good as I was back in the day, then they wouldn’t attack us head on. They’ll use their ships as a distraction to get us to focus on the water, and then they’ll attack from behind with ground, or potentially air, forces. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been dropping soldiers off along the coast while sailing up here to approach us the rest of the way on land.”

Though, Fenrir felt confident that there wouldn’t be any air attacks and that there weren’t any infiltrators within the walls already. If there were, Kadi probably would have warned him about that if she was willing to go so far as to warn him about the incoming attack at all. Why only warn him about the naval approach if she was willing to break the rules in the first place?

But even so, he couldn’t rely strictly on that feeling. It was always possible that Kadi didn’t warn him of every threat.

“Rao should be on Shogun patrolling the sky around us,” Fenrir said. “He can make sure that no aerial threats are on the way and check for any surprise ground attacks from behind.”

Nell looked back at Rachel and nodded, sending the orange-haired maid off to go and update orders for Rao. She then looked at Mary and asked, “Would you please go and spread the civilians out? Simply telling them to wait in their homes until the threat passes should be enough. At least then they will not be bunched together.”

“I—I can do that!” Mary answered, her voice stuttering as she forced her shyness down to run off and do what needed done.

“Also,” Fenrir said, “I don’t know if Mary told you this part, but you and our girlfriends, you especially, are priority targets for capturing.”

Nell raised her eyebrows when she heard that. “Mary did not tell us that. How did you learn about that?”

Fenrir was hesitant to say that it was Kadi while they had a crowd of people around them, so he just said, “I’ll explain later, but my source is pretty credible. That’s why I want you to stay—no, I know you won’t stay back, but I want you to be as careful as possible. Don’t leave your maids.”

“I would not be able to leave them even if I wished to. And if it comforts you at all, Aiko is currently accompanying Serra.”

“Aiko’s immersed? Good. Her and Serra are still pretty good friends… so I don’t think anybody will be getting anywhere near Serra if she’s got Aiko protecting her.”

“Speaking of Aiko, her and that Pfar boy are taking their time getting together. Perhaps another intervention is required similar to the one for Rao and my maids?”

“Let’s not force our way into hooking everybody we know up with each other.”

“But… it is fun.”

Fenrir poked Nell’s nose and said, “Let people hook up at their own pace. We only need to step in when… you know, it’s like with Rao and the maids.”

The remaining maids behind Nell all looked away as they were being talked about.

“Fair enough, my hero,” Nell replied. “It is a shame that we do not have Ilo with us.”

“Yeah, I have no idea where she is,” Fenrir said. “But I’m sure she’ll show up again eventually. And speaking of allies, did you let the other villages know?”

“Ah, yes! I asked one of our fishermen about to set out to go and tell the others about what is happening. Yet… depending on just how close the threat is, he may not even make it to Catsville before they arrive.”

“That’s alright. If it’s a prolonged battle, they might be able to make it here in time to help us out. Better to have late help than no help. By the way, remember that barrier you used before to protect us from the serpent?”

Nell tilted her head to the side a bit. “Yes?”

“Would it be possible for you to… well, make that about a hundred times bigger to completely cover Nameless with it?”

“I… am not sure. Even at the size it was at before, it took a great deal of energy and concentration. Why?”

“Well, I was just thinking, it’d be a great defensive measure against artillery or air attacks. We should look into that sometime.”

“Oh! I see. In that case, I would be glad to be of service!”

“We can try to figure that out later. For now, just… keep doing what you’ve been doing. I’ll go check up on our defenses.”

Nell nodded, so Fenrir turned to leave… only to get stopped by Nell grabbing onto his arm.

“Something wrong?” Fenrir asked.

“Most certainly,” Nell answered, pointing up at her lips. “I know the situation is serious, but you are not so foolish as to believe you are allowed to leave without kissing me, are you?”

While Fenrir would normally never object to kissing one of his girlfriends in public, them being around so many people close by… resulted in a few whistles and giggles from the crowd that actually managed to redden his cheeks a bit. Even so, Fenrir brought his lips to Nell’s for a quick kiss. Of course, when he tried to pull his lips away from hers, she leaned her head forward to prolong the kiss for just a couple seconds longer.

“There,” Nell said with a satisfied smile, “now you may leave.”

“I’m getting you back later for that,” Fenrir said, though he had no idea what he even meant by that. He just felt like regaining control of the situation and that was the first thing that came to mind.

“Oh? Then I will eagerly look forward to it.”

But alas, Fenrir was up against Nell, and Nell was much better in a crowd than he was.

It didn’t help that when he turned to leave, he saw several people in front of him who he was going to have to walk by smirking with smug smiles from the display.

Fenrir had no idea how he was going to get back at Nell, but he was definitely going to do so in one way or another.

Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to think of his revenge anytime soon.

Bells from the walls rang which signaled to everybody in Nameless that there was an immediate threat, prompting Fenrir to run toward the beach-facing wall as quickly as he could. Once there, he ran up the nearest stairs to get atop the wall so that he could look out over ocean and see just what they were going up against.

Fenrir knew that there was a fleet coming for them… but he had no idea just how large it was.

Seven of those monster-bound vessels had surfaced between Astika’s isle and Nameless’s beach. Another two were closer to the isle and had rowboats with players heading over there already. No such rowboats were on the way to Nameless’s beach, but Fenrir was sure there’d be some attempt at a ground attack before long. More importantly, those vessels near the beach were lined up for broadside barrages, and it didn’t take long before the first barrage began.

And to make matters worse, those who were manning the invaders’ cannons had excellent aim as every single one of their shots pounded Nameless’s walls, a few tearing straight through and crashing into the buildings behind them.

But no matter how precise their aim was, the city of Nameless had somebody with even greater aim when it came to cannons, and she was responsible for the first counterattack.

Serra’s first target was none other than the head of one of the vessel-carrying monsters, and her shot went straight through its skull and more or less exploded its head, resulting in an instant capsizing for the vessel built atop its back.

Fenrir expected her to look toward him and flash him a thumbs-up, but Serra was already running over to the next nearest loaded cannon to get in another shot while the others manning their respective cannons returned fire as well.

As much as Fenrir wanted to join in on the fun of returning fire with the nearest cannon, he quickly realized that they were in way more trouble than he was aware of.

Green gas began to drift out from the impacts where the cannonballs hit the walls, and the same gas could be seen coming out from the buildings that got hit.

The walls weren’t going to be mannable if they had to deal with toxic gas reaching them, and those hiding behind the walls weren’t going to be safe either if more cannonballs broke through.

“These bastards are better than I gave them credit for,” Fenrir said to himself as he took Rod off from his side. “Time for us to get serious and put them in their place.”