I hoped the thorough trouncing the elves inflicted upon the Players would be enough of a deterrent that future attacks could be prevented, but even I knew that was probably wishful thinking. Whatever Pollyanna tendencies I might have had before coming here were being rapidly eroded by the belligerence so many of my fellow Players were continuously displaying.

So much for leaving the elves alone to manage their own affairs.

I spent the next few days doing damage control. I was not about to let a rogue group of troublemaking Players ruin all my hard work. During my efforts to learn the various martial arts of the city's clans, I had gotten to know all the masters of all six dojos fairly well, all of whom sat on the city’s council. With Chow Li’s help, I managed to get an audience with the council, and because I already had most of them on my side I managed to persuade them to invite the elves to a banquet held in the city in their honor. Then with Salvia’s help, I managed to persuade the elves to accept it.

In a perfect world that might have meant my work was done and I could leave the NPCs of both groups to make peace on their own, but that’s not how the game worked. Although the city leader NPCs had no notion of me as controller of the Nature Dungeon, I was still somehow considered the de facto honcho of the elves and thereby obligated to join their delegation.

And that’s how I found myself marching into the city a few days later with great fanfare, alongside Salvia, Petal, several other elf leaders, and an impressively large retinue of Petal’s elite guards, all decked out in their finest livery. The elves had given me fancy elven clothes to wear so I was dressed the same as them, but I still felt like I stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. Me, surrounded by all these gorgeous people. It was horrible.

By this point, as far as the elves were concerned I was one of them but I felt like a weed in a garden of flowers. There was one thing I could’ve done to fit in a bit more with the beautiful elves, but I was loath to do it. When I had received the title Defender Of The Green I also got a certain ability, one I’d used the whole time I had been living in the elf village. It had helped ingratiate me with them then, and the elves probably would have liked it if I’d used it while marching into the city with them too, but I wasn’t at all comfortable with that, not while I had all the Players’ eyes on me. And I do mean all.

Somehow, my little make-friends-with-the-elves dinner party had turned into a city-wide festival as well as a quest for every Player — everyone other than me, of course — and the reward was something nobody would pass up the chance to get.

Quest: Attend the festivities when the city welcomes the elves

Reward: Random Gold Reward Box

Besides, after all that had happened everyone was curious about the elves, so pretty much everyone was on hand to watch us parade through the city. That was a lot of eyes.

I was sorely tempted to borrow Jane’s talent to blink the hell out of there and hide in the labyrinth for a few months, just to avoid the oppressive stares. Then I heard Sigrid’s voice from the mass of people watching our procession.

“Yay, Daniel!”

I followed the sound and saw her at the front of the crowd. She saw that I saw her and waved at me. I waved back. Then Jane beside her saw me waving and waved. Then the others did too. A whole block of my friends were there making entire fools of themselves, waving frantically and calling out to me.

Oh how I wished they’d stop. I had no choice but to draw more attention to myself by waving back. I couldn’t run away now, not after they’d made such a scene.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, because my simple banquet for the top brass idea had ballooned into a full day of festivities involving the entire city, this was only the start of a long, excruciating, and almost unbearably uncomfortable day, starting with this ridiculous parade, then speeches, then ceremonial exchanges of gifts, then a series of combat and cultural demonstrations, and meanwhile there were agonizing meetings of both sides’ muckety-mucks, and only then, after all that was over, would we get to the banquet that had blown up to encompass the whole city rather than just the little meet-and-greet dinner party I’d originally suggested. And I had to go to all of it.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Fortunately, Petal was also in the posse with me, so we went through most of it together. Up to then I had only really seen the business side of Petal — the Captain of the Guard — but now I got the chance to see her other side. It turned out she was a lot of fun when she let her proverbial hair down. I wasn’t sure if she was hanging around with me to help me feel less out of place, or to help herself feel less weirded out by being around humans, or simply as a bodyguard. Whatever her reason was, it worked for both of us.

I admit, I thought it was insane for the NPCs to have taken things this far. I didn’t arrange any of this, it was NPCs who made it all happen. All the decorations around the city. The music. The food. The games. The activities. But renewed ties with the elves seemed to be a major plot point in the game — the end of an important story arc and the beginning of another — so I guess it made sense to make a big to-do about it. All I’d done was suggest that the city leaders make peace with the elves, now I was being swept along by the game narrative, so much flotsam in a wave of world-building.

If there was one highlight to the day’s festivities, it would have to have been the combat demonstrations. The clans had arranged an afternoon of tests and challenges to let people show off their martial prowess. Anyone could enter, NPC or Player. Significant cash prizes were at stake, so lots of Players entered alongside the warrior elves who’d come.

The reason it was a highlight was because it created a stretch of time where I had nothing to do. The muckety-mucks were cloistered in trade negotiations, and since I had nothing to offer there I managed to skip out. Petal was participating in the demos, so for the first time that day she wasn’t with me. I found a place alone in the arena stands where I could ostensibly watch the action, but I was barely aware of the archery contest taking place on the floor below. Really, I was just enjoying being alone with my thoughts, wondering about the design of this strange game we were all playing.

This whole idea of dungeon control put a new dimension into the game. A meta-game, in a way. All dungeons weren’t the same. Some were clearly dungeons that you were meant to crawl, like the Light Dungeon labyrinth, and there were others that required a different approach to solve, like the elves in the Nature Dungeon. Controlling a dungeon meant taking over the entire hex it was in, like owning a space on the game board. That was the meta-game, and at that point I was the only one playing it. But what will happen when other teams start beating dungeons and controlling those spaces? Were controlled dungeons like game cards, each with a different in-game effect that could be played?

I could make the monsters in the labyrinth respawn so it was like a resource card. I could farm it for experience endlessly, and there might be other potential benefits to having an army of monsters under my control. Too bad I didn’t get treasure drops in the labyrinth anymore, though. I wondered if treasure would drop for other people? That had some delightful implications. Unless I was the one who needed to supply the rewards, in which case forget it.

The Nature Dungeon was more complicated. There weren’t many resources in the forest beyond the elves themselves. The trees, I guess, but good luck convincing the elves to clearcut those. With all these negotiations happening with the city, it was more like a political card, or perhaps economic. When I’d ducked out of the meetings they’d been talking about trading the goods the elves made, such as weapons, armor, jewelry, and magic devices, so there was a good chance I’d get a share of the revenue generated by forest hex too. Plus having a bunch of vicious ninjas on your side had its own advantages.

I only got to see a bit of the Void Dungeon and I didn’t know what the hell that was.

Not every hex had a dungeon on it, so I wasn’t sure if those ones could be occupied and controlled. My two dungeons were adjacent to one another. Maybe if there was an empty hex separating them I’d automatically get control of it too. A lot of board games work that way.

There were also lots of other settlements on the map that I hadn’t even got around to exploring yet. I’d been too busy managing the stuff I’d got so far. But if someone could get control over a few towns, and some resource areas, they could have some serious influence over what happened in this world. If that was the meta-game, one where you can collect power and affect policy, you’d be playing a game that could change how the map itself looked. Hell, you could build your own nation. Become a King.

Is that what this game really was?

If so, I wasn’t interested. That wasn’t the game I wanted to play. I’d be a terrible King. But if I was right, there were other things I could do within the scope of that meta-game. When combined with the idea I’d had when I was out for dinner with Morgan, a bunch of gears suddenly slotted into place in my head.

I would need to talk to Chow Li sometime soon.