He’s gotten good enough with his shifting that he can turn his forearms into the larger and more powerful, fur-covered versions whenever he needs to rather than only in combat.
Azalabulia takes a step back and pulls her staff off of her back. “To rebel against me once more?” she asks.
“I told you that I would teach you about matters you have not experienced, but first, you must prove yourself worthy to me! You must prove that you are the one who deserves my loyalty and my guidance,” he declares.
“Have I not already beaten you once, wolf? I would have thought that being felled by my flames once is enough to deter you from attempting to face me once more.”
“It is true, but I must make sure that you are staying ahead of me. A master that I can defeat is not a master – they are a… a slave!” A bead of sweat rolls down the side of his head, hoping that the pause to think of something didn’t ruin the mood.
“Then let me prove to you once more that I am no slave! I am your master, and you are my hound!” Azalabulia declares, obviously not affected by his previous pause.
This is when Fenrir realizes something.
If they have a battle here… there is a strong chance that the beauty of this little clearing in the forest is going to be destroyed.
What is he supposed to do?
Should he have the battle that he was originally planning on having, thus risking the destruction of this spot’s beauty, or should he think up a new plan to avoid nature’s destruction?
He knows that Azalabulia would be happy to see the forest lit on fire, but he’d rather not destroy this world’s environment. That already happens enough in the real world, so he’d like to see at least one world with intact nature.
“Saya, you should have made me think of that sooner,” Fenrir thinks to his virtual assistant.
“I’m not going to do all the mental work for you, onii-wan. This is your fault that you’re in this situation,” Saya thinks back to him.
“Yeah, but you’re part me, so that means that this is also your fault since it’s my fault.”
“It doesn’t work like that. A kid is part of their parents, but that doesn’t mean it’s the kid’s fault if their parents rob a store.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“So, you’re saying that you’re like my daughter? That makes our relationship even kinkier.”
“I – I’m not your daughter! Stupid! Baka!”
“How long until you start calling me daddy-wan?”
“I hate you sooooooooo much.”
“Yep. You already sound like a rebellious daughter.”
“Die.”
“I’ll consider it.”
Fenrir looks Azalabulia over.
He knows that she could defeat him if they fight, so it wouldn’t be unbelievable if he lets her win. The problem is whether or not he could put up a convincing enough fight before letting her win. If it’s too obvious, then he might be in trouble.
“I should have asked Olly for planning help,” Fenrir thinks to himself before mentally sighing. “There’s a reason why I always left him in charge of that.”
But, Fenrir knows that this wouldn’t count as a legitimate date—not by his standards—if he let somebody else do the planning for it. Even when it comes to his other girlfriends, he only took some simple ideas from them.
He’s already got her hyped up, too, so he can’t just kill her excitement by changing his mind about the fight.
Then again, she already has an orb of fire growing larger by the second in her hand.
There was that one thing that Nell suggested before he came in-game. He also knows it would be effective based off of previous times using it against Cassiel.
That’s it.
He’s going to use his strongest, dirtiest tactic.
Rather than have anything resembling a real fight, which he never should have planned on in the first place, he’s going to fight dirty and end this before she has a chance to destroy the forest.
“Never let me think that fighting Azawaza for a romantic date is a good idea again,” Fenrir thinks to Saya.
“I’m not your personal reminder, onii-wan,” Saya answers.
“I was honestly kind of expecting you to call me daddy-wan.”
“Die.”
Fenrir smiles and readies his claws.
“Are you ready to see which one of us is the real master, master?” Fenrir asks Azalabulia.
“Come at me, hound,” Azalabulia answers, raising her hand to him.
Fenrir knows that this is going to hurt even with only fifty percent of pain enabled, but all he has to do is survive a single attack from her. As long as he can do that, he’s confident in his plan working.
He hopes.
“Then here I come,” he says.
Fenrir puts all of his speed into one quick thrust forward, leaping off of the ground to fly straight at her!
“Dark Flame Burst!” Azalabulia shouts, holding the fiery orb out to face him.
Several streams of black fire shoot out from the orb, each one crashing directly into him.
Azalabulia’s eyes widen when she notices that he didn’t even try dodging. Rather than be concerned that she’s open to his attack, since she was counting on him at least trying to evade, she’s worried. She doesn’t want to actually hurt him!
And now it’s time for Fenrir’s counterattack.
With his clothes singed and burning, his face cringing from the pain, Fenrir reaches his target and grabs onto her by her shoulders.
“Wh-what are you doing?!” Azalabulia shouts, half-surprised and half-worried.
“This,” Fenrir groans, leaning his head in closer so that he can press his lips directly against her neck to bite and kiss the skin there.
It always worked against Cassiel, and now it’s time to find out whether or not it’s effective against Azalabulia.
He pulls his lips away from her after a few seconds of biting her neck to look her face over.
She’s pure red, her eyes spinning in their sockets as steam escapes her ears, and she drops to her knees.
“Win… y-you win,” Azalabulia mumbles.
The Queen's Hound audience since, at this point, I think most of my TTE readers are pretty chill and have faith in me. But, I'll go ahead and post it here as well anyways since not all of you are reading that story and it still affects you:
Long Explanation with Extra Information
loving the weekly, large chapters over the small, daily ones. Everybody is in agreement that the plot is actually progressing at a much better pace than before, the chapters are more satisfying for what happens and their length (each big chapter is at least the size of 5 normal ones up until now), they have a more consistent and higher quality given that I am dedicating an entire day's worth of writing to focusing on one story instead of splitting that up between multiple stories, and so on. So, basically, everybody loves the new, bigger chapters and they've eliminated pretty much every single complaint that there has been.
However, there has been one major problem upsetting me since making this change. "What do I do for the $5 tier and free readers?" The $10 tier, which is the tier actually getting those bigger chapters, is the only one benefitting from them right now. People were paying to be 20 chapters ahead, and I couldn't just release chapters for the $5 tier and free readers to get them caught up to the new, bigger chapters without fucking over my paying customers at the $10 tier. That would have devalued the $10 tier and cause them to potentially lower their pledges or unpledge, and I'm dependent on my Patreon. After all, I'm a full-time writer and my Patreon is my only source of income at the moment. I know some of you might think I'm greedy or a sellout (I've been called those for less), but I have to put the majority of my patrons (the $10+ tiers) first for my own livelihood.
for each story to boost everybody up to the big chapters (free readers included), I would have had to leave the $5 tier at only getting a single 1k word chapter per story each week and you free readers would have to wait through 20 weeks of single, 1k word chapters. That's just not cool and nobody would like that.
just from switching to daily releases to weekly releases even though everybody voted that they preferred the weekly releases over the daily ones and that feedback has been nothing but positive regarding them.
as much. Look at the numbers below for an explanation.
will be accurate in coming weeks as the current chapters get replaced by big ones and when my newest story gets more chapters released.
Changes
Old $1: no chapters
New $1: 1 chapter | 1 week | 5k words | 20 pages ahead
New Estimated Total Across All Stories: 5 chapters | 1 week | 21k words | 80 pages ahead
Old $5: 10 chapters | 2 weeks | 10k words | 40 pages ahead
New $5: 5 chapters | 5 weeks | 25k words| 100 pages ahead
Old Estimated Total Across All Stories: 50 chapters | 2 weeks | 50k words | 190 pages ahead
New Estimated Total Across All Stories: 25 chapters | 5 weeks | 105k words | 405 pages ahead
Old $10: 20 chapters | 4 weeks | 20k words | 80 pages ahead
New $10: 10 chapters | 10 weeks | 50k words | 200 pages ahead
Old Estimated Total Across All Stories: 100 chapters | 4 weeks | 100k words | 385 pages ahead
New Estimated Total Across All Stories: 50 chapters | 10 weeks | 210k words | 810 pages ahead
have to put my Patreon first. A new, weekly release schedule when it was previously daily means that there's just no easy solution for you free readers that wouldn't severely devalue my Patreon tiers, and it's thank to my Patreon that I'm able to write as much as I do. The only two solutions to making things 100% fair for my free readers would be to either: one, make it so that the $10 tier is only 4 chapters ahead which looks like a laughable amount that people would be reluctant to pay for even if the amount of content is technically the same as before; or two, somehow write an extra 360k words which is equal to 1,384 pages or about an extra 144 hours of writing non-stop so that Patreon could still be 20 chapters ahead while instantly boosting you all up to the big chapters. Like I said, no easy solution. This is the best option I could come up with that my patrons voted in support of, and I considered at least ten other options, got suggestions by at least a dozen patrons, and have been thinking about this non-stop.
Patreon Harem Members: Kyoma, Emojiman, RJ The Wolf, Nakhtichaos, Uli K., Scylla Ho, Eric B., Red Viking, Joshua P., Zachary Se., Benjamin W., Zachary Sp., Loni M., Alexander R.