The battle of Fenrir and Cassiel versus the giant apes raged on along the beach. Though, it wasn’t exactly right to call it a battle. It was more like Fenrir and Cassiel were desperately fighting for their lives, trying everything they could just to survive, against overwhelming strength and numbers. Even just going up against one ape each pushed the two players to their absolute limits, and there were far more apes in reserve ready to step in at any moment.

Not only that, but both Fenrir and Cassiel were bloodied from their battles and clearly taking more damage than they were dealing. They both felt like they were going up against boss-level threats despite just how great in number they were.

Fortunately, after just a couple of minutes, Fenrir noticed Eva return as he rolled to the right on the sand in order to dodge a foot being stomped down toward him.

Eva, careful to not be spotted, flew up behind one of the apes near the edge of their line and threw the mind-controlling plant onto the back of the ape’s neck. It didn’t take long for those tentacle roots of the plant to dig into the ape’s skin and begin to stretch out underneath the surface toward the ape’s brain.

But the ape immediately knew something was going on and tried to reach behind its body… only to get stopped halfway there. It wasn’t able to reach the plant in time before losing control of its limbs.

Fenrir’s lips curled into a smug smile as he felt like that was going to be the turning point of the battle… only for the ape next to the controlled one to notice what was going on and tear the plant off of its ally. It was then crushed between its fingers, and the first ape regained control over all of its limbs. Not only that, but the ape noticed Eva watching from a nearby tree and reached forward to try and grab her, causing her to evade into the air where she became a target for the ranged apes to throw their weapons at.

“You know,” Fenrir said loudly enough for Cassiel to hear since both of them watched what just happened, “it makes sense that the intelligent, giant monkeys living on this island would already know about the threats here and know to deal with them.”

Cassiel looked just as disappointed. “Tch. I have to admit that I like when enemies are dumb better than when they’re smart. I like some challenge, but not this much challenge.”

“Aren’t you the one who wants to parachute into the middle of our enemies for honorable battle?”

“Yeah. Like I said, I like dumb enemies. Those are humans. Humans are dumb.”

“You know, that’s a fair point. These giant monkeys are probably way smarter than the average human. And now that you’ve made me realize that… I have an idea.”

Cassiel jumped out of the way of a club being swung her way before shouting in response, “Yeah?!”

Following a deep breath, Fenrir looked at Cassiel and Eva and shouted, “Drop your weapons!”

Despite the hesitation that both women wore on their faces, they knew to trust in Fenrir’s judgement and dropped their weapons in an instant. Fenrir did as well, letting Rod fall to the sandy beach below.

Fenrir’s opponent raised up its axe, stared Fenrir directly in the eyes, and swung the heavy, primitive weapon down toward his head. Even though it was an axe, the size and bluntness of it would mean that such an attack would utterly crush Fenrir rather than split him in half.

But that was not what happened.

Instead, the axe stopped directly above Fenrir’s head. It came close enough to go between his canid ears but did not reach his scalp.

Thank god it worked, Fenrir thought.

“Oi,” Saya thought to him. “You had no idea that was going to work, didn’t you?”

I gave it a twenty percent chance of working.

“And what if it didn’t work?!”

Then we were going to get wiped out because we’re not winning this battle. Also, don’t you have anything better to be doing?

“What—what do you mean by that?! I’m still your virtual assistant! I’m just commenting like I used to in the old days since I’m not able to actually talk to you…”

You’re too cute, Pupaya.

“Hmph. Baka onii-wan. Anyways, just because you’re not dead yet doesn’t mean you’re not about to die.”

Fenrir looked up at the giant ape and saw eyes not full of rage, but full of curiosity. The creature was clearly confused by Fenrir and the others actually dropping their weapons.

So, it was time for Fenrir to make sure that they weren’t about to get killed after all.

“Can you understand me?” Fenrir asked.

The ape tilted its head before pulling the axe away and crouching down.

Now, Fenrir wasn’t even tall enough to reach up to the creature’s knee.

The creature was also wearing a leather loincloth of sorts.

So, when the creature crouched down right in front of Fenrir, bending its knees… Fenrir found out that the giant ape was, in fact, a he, as he couldn’t help but to stare straight ahead at the thing that was almost as large as he was tall.

Please don’t be hentai monsters, Fenrir thought as he forced himself to look up at the ape’s face instead. “Do you know what I’m saying?”

The ape looked Fenrir over a few times before slowly nodding his head.

“Good. Well uh… for starter’s, let me just clarify that we’re not here to do anything bad. We don’t want to hurt you or this island.”

“Why here?” the ape replied.

Fenrir’s eyes widened as he froze up. He really, really wasn’t expecting an actual response of any sort, yet the ape replied to him.

Meanwhile, Cassiel looked shocked that any of the plan was working and Eva was internally fangirling over the exciting discovery of a new, intelligent race capable of communicating with players.

Eventually, Fenrir managed to speak again. “We came out here to explore, but… then a giant wave destroyed our ship and brought us here.”

“Wave?” the ape asked.

“Yeah. We were out on the ocean and then a giant wave crashed into us and brought us here.”

The ape didn’t say anything for a few moments as he looked around, examining both Cassiel and Eva before saying, “No short men?”

“Short… men?”

“Short men. Hairy faces. None here?”

“Short men, hairy faces? I’m… not sure what you mean.”

The ape looked frustrated from Fenrir’s lack of understanding, but Eva swooped in to assist before the ape could get too bothered. “Do you mean beards?” she asked. Then, to demonstrate what she meant, she crouched down to make herself shorter while running her hands over the front of her body to outline where a long, bushy beard would be. “Like this?”

The ape nodded and mimicked the movements of her hands in front of his own body. “Short men, hairy faces.”

“Dwarves. Do you mean—”

Anger immediately filled the ape’s eyes at the sound of the word “dwarves.”

“I—I think I figured it out,” Eva said, actually sounding a bit scared for once. That was new for both Fenrir and Cassiel to hear.

“Dwarves come here! Kill and destroy! Kill and destroy dwarves back!”

Eva looked at Fenrir and said, “It sounds like we’re not the first players to come here… but the dwarves? Visiting an island in the ocean like this? And they should be on the opposite side of the world from here unless we loop around and they’re right across the ocean. Which, to be fair, wouldn’t be an illogical assumption. But I’m thinking that… seeing as how these islands appeared out of nowhere and weren’t out here before, they must have been brought over here somehow but were originally closer to the dwarves.”

“We’re not dwarves,” Fenrir said to the ape. “No dwarves. We don’t even have any dwarves at our home.”

The ape, still clearly angered and rapidly breathing through his flared nostrils, looked around to confirm that there really weren’t any dwarves before calming down just a bit. “No dwarves.”

“Right. No dwarves.”

“No dwarves… no dwarves. Not here to destroy? Not to kill?”

“Right. I promise. We only fought back to defend ourselves, and because I want to defend my pet—my friend. Rock.” Slowly, Fenrir moved over to where Rock was and lifted her up onto her lap. “She got hurt. I have to protect her.”

The ape came over to where Fenrir and Rock were before getting onto his hands and knees to get a better look at her, bringing his head right above her body. “Rock?” Then he noticed her missing and damaged limbs. “How get hurt?”

“She got hurt during the wave that crashed us onto this island.”

The moment that Fenrir saw concern in the ape’s eyes for Rock, as if he genuinely felt bad for her, Fenrir knew that they didn’t have anything to worry about and nodded to both Cassiel and Eva, letting them know it was alright to let their guards down and relax.

“She’ll be alright,” Fenrir said to the ape. “She’s a tough girl who has been through a lot before. This is nothing to her.”

“Good,” the ape replied. “Want Rock safe. Protect Rock. Make Rock smile.”

Even giant apes know just how amazing Rock is at first sight and want to protect her, Fenrir thought. “So,” it was time to get straight to the point since fighting was no longer on the table, “want to be friends? We’re already friends with a giant dragon and a growing sea serpent. Adding giant apes to the list doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”

“Friends?”

“You know, like… we help each other and are nice to each other, and don’t try to kill each other.” Fenrir made sure not to bring up all the times him, Oleander, and Bonekraka tried to kill each other just for fun back in the old days.

The ape looked down at Rock and asked her, “Can be trusted?”

Rock barked and nodded her head.

“If Rock say so.” Looking back at Fenrir again, the ape said, “Friends.”

Alright. Rock might actually be the most OP one out of all of us if she secretly has some charming power to turn anybody into our friends. I might have to try abusing just how much people love her to see the true extent of her powers…

“Do not abuse Rock’s natural lovableness, Onii-wan,” Saya thought to Fenrir.

Fenrir mentally swatted Saya away before looking at Eva and Cassiel again. The apes around them all seemed to be in a more relaxed state as well, and, fortunately, they weren’t being hentai monsters. It was a stupid thing for him to even worry about in the first place, but that was where his degenerate mind went to after all the hentai he had seen before.

If anything… Eva was the one being a hentai monster seeing as how she was checking out every inch of the apes while taking mental notes of them. That included checking out the more private areas of both the male and female apes. Fenrir knew that she was only doing so out of purely scientific curiosity, and it was hard to not look there given just how bare and large the apes were, but still. If there was anybody who belonged in a hentai on that beach, it was Eva.

At least Nell wasn’t there. If Nell was there, Fenrir was sure she’d be coming up with erotic fantasies involving being ravaged by giant ape monsters while simultaneously making him said giant ape monsters. Her fantasy probably would have been something along the line of Fenrir getting accidentally turned into a giant ape monster incapable of controlling his lust, and so he would ravage the poor, innocent Nell in front of everybody else for them to all watch her get broken by him.

Fenrir didn’t know how to feel about being able to predict exactly what one of Nell’s fantasies would be like even when she wasn’t around.

Then there was Cassiel who was just being cute and coming over to hang around Fenrir where she felt safest given that she was clearly still the most nervous out of everybody on the beach.

That made Fenrir tempted to walk away just so that she would keep on following him. Then every time she caught up, he’d move again.

Tempting, but he decided not to.

“So,” Fenrir said to the ape in front of him and Rock, “can you teach us more about this island? Or… do you have anywhere we can stay by any chance? Someplace safe? We have no idea where we are and we might be stuck here for a while, plus I want to give Rock a safe place where she’ll be protected.”

The ape’s eyes lit up as soon as he heard about protecting Rock. “Protect Rock! Tribe protect Rock! Come! Rock safe.”

With that, the ape stood up and let out a sort of howl which gathered the attention of the other apes on the beach. Then… he lifted up both Fenrir and Rock into his left hand and began to walk off into the forest, leaving Cassiel to play a game of catching up after all as neither she nor Eva were given a free ride.

Rock, Fenrir thought, you’re seriously OP.