After meeting with Chow Li, Sigrid and I spent the afternoon wandering our designated part of the city in search of potential new members for Team Maple Leaf. I didn’t mind, I wasn’t ready to recruit my new Team Player teammate yet, not until I knew whether or not the Players Guild would fly. Besides, I got to hang out with Sigrid, which was always a blast.

  We made a great team — I spotted candidates, she talked to them — and it was a lot of fun hanging out with her in the city again. We hadn’t had much chance to do that lately because even though we spent a lot of time together, it was always in and around the elf village or at the dojo, and I missed it.

  We garnered a lot of attention. She seemed to think it was because of me, but I couldn’t imagine anyone having any interest in me when a resplendent Sigrid was glittering in her armor right beside me.

  At one point, we came across the young group I’d rescued from the Silver Sword. There were five of them, too many to invite to join Maple Leaf, but I did know someone else who needed an influx of good people so I told Peter and his friends to look for a certain someone and mention that I’d recommended them.

  Sometime mid-afternoon, a runner from the Dragon Clan tracked us down to give me a message. Chow Li had pulled some strings and managed to arrange a special council meeting that evening so that I could present the Players Guild idea to them.

  Sigrid replied with an emphatic “no” when I asked her to make the presentation for me, and I didn’t even bother approaching Jane about it. I’d just get cuffed on the back of the head, or worse. So after some words of encouragement from Sigrid I went alone to pitch the council using the same presentation I’d given to Chow Li.

  Apparently, idle Players had been causing a lot more problems than I’d known and the council was ready to jump at any plan that could curb their anti-social behavior. It didn’t hurt that I was on very good terms with not only the six martial arts clans, but also most of the commercial guildmasters on the council: the re-opening of trade with the elves after so long was an economic boon for the city, and my connection to the elven village was a big notch in my favor.

  By the time the council meeting ended my Players Guild was a go, with the city’s full blessing to rebuild the Cathedral as our guildhouse. As for using the arena for guild purposes, I’d have to talk to Annabelle. I wasn’t worried about that, though. I was pretty sure what she’d say.

  I even walked out with a completely unexpected boon: another medallion, this time given to me by the council. It was just like the one I got from Annabelle, only it had an image of the Cathedral building embossed on it instead of the arena.

  I waited until I was outside before pulling out the arena one and comparing them. Holding them side by side I realized something, and when I pressed them together in a certain way that aligned the round indentation they both had in one corner, they clicked together to create two-thirds of a larger hexagonal medallion.

  Interesting.

  Pleased with how things were starting to come together, I headed out for my next stop: recruiting the new member of Team Player.

  I was so nervous I thought I’d vomit. I really could’ve used Sigrid’s charm right about then to smooth the way, but it was just me, ineptly struggling to make a good impression.

  My potential teammate didn’t make it any easier, her attitude had been prickly from the start. Then again, perhaps starting off by coming right up and saying “I want you” may not have been my best opening gambit. It left me scrambling to salvage the situation.

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” I said, a few moments after telling her I wanted her. “Honest.”

  Lianna, the Player who’d served Morgan and me on our dinner date, examined me with cold, piercing, skeptical eyes from behind the restaurant’s counter. “Then what is it?”

  “I want you to join Team Player,” I said.

  She kept giving me the stink eye. “You wanna maybe start off with a coffee?” she said, gesturing at the steaming contraption behind her that ostensibly could be coaxed into producing a passable cup of caffeinated bitterness. Calling it coffee was exceedingly kind, though not to coffee.

  “Um, sure. Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yeah, I heard. Cream? Sugar?”

  “Double cream,” I said.

  She grunted acknowledgement then turned away to prepare my drink. I took the opportunity to check her Status again, even though I knew perfectly well what it said.

  Yup. She was exactly what I wanted. A diamond in the rough. That prickliness was even a desirable quality; I knew I was a pushover so having someone with me who would not be pushed was a good thing. I just needed to get her to trust me, which I knew was going to be an uphill battle.

  Some whizzing and clanking later, the machine’s udder dribbled out something steaming into a cup and when Lianna turned back to face me she wore a much kindlier expression. Scarily kind, to be honest, almost pitying. She set down the cup and poured a long measure of cream into it, then looked up at me from under her long eyelashes.

  "What’s wrong with you?” she said.

  “That’d take too long to answer, ask me an easier one.”

  She almost smiled but caught herself and maintained her gruffness. “Okay, why me?”

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  “Because you have the abilities I need.”

  She grimaced at that. “There is something wrong with you. My abilities are trash.”

  “No they aren’t. You just haven’t had the chance to use them properly. And your abilities are not limited to what’s in your Status.”

  “How profound. You do know I can’t fight, right?”

  “Just because you haven’t doesn’t mean you can’t. You don’t have the skill yet, but that’s an easy fix. Especially if your fast learning gift works like I think it does. Besides, fighting isn’t why I want you, anyway.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me.

  “On my team,” I added.

  “Who else is on the team?”

  “Just me.”

  “So you are that guy.”

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  “I thought so, but I wasn’t totally sure." She must've been the only Player on the planet who didn't go to my arena fight with Flint and recognize me on sight. It was refreshing, honestly, and not a little ironic. "So if not to fight, why do you want me then?”

  “There's more to this game than fighting, a lot more. I want you to be the business manager.”

  “Say what?”

  I explained to her my idea for the Players Guild, how I’d just received approval from the city council to open it, and how I wanted her to be my teammate and run it.

  “It’s a good gig,” I said.

  “Is the business part all there is to being on the team, or would I also adventure with you on quests and stuff?”

  “Don’t you want to?” I said, disappointed that she didn't seem interested in the adventuring. Guess I pegged her wrong. She didn’t answer, just kept looking at me expectantly. “Fine. You don’t have to, although I wish you would.”

  “I never said I wouldn’t want to, I only wanted to know if it was an option." Something in her voice told me she actually did want to be an adventurer, very much, but had resigned herself to being unfit for it because of the powers she'd been given.

  "It is definitely an option!" I blurted, which made her smile. Whether is was because of what I said or the way I said it was anyone's guess.

  "Tell me more about your plans for the guildhouse. I could’ve sworn you said it was going to be in the Cathedral, but that’s just...” I looked at her with the hint of a shrug and she frowned. “You weren’t joking, were you?”

  I tried to hide my smile when I pulled out the blueprints for the Cathedral guildhouse and showed her.

  She leaned over and studied them for a while, then stood up straight and studied me again. “Just who are you really?”

  Another question I was beginning to grow sick of. I was not a freak, dammit. This was not the time to get bristly about it, I could see her growing more interested so I continued my pitch.

  “It’s going to make an awesome guildhouse. Look.” I pointed to a suite of rooms on the top floor. “This would be your living quarters up here. Do you like stained glass windows?”

  She leaned over again to get a look, bringing her head close to mine. “I only see one suite."

  "Is that a problem?” I said, leaning back. Her hair had tickled my cheek and that made me super uncomfortable. "If you need more space we can make it happen."

  "It's not that," she said, "I was just wondering where you were planning to live."

  “Not there. I have a place in the elf village where I stay most of the time.”

  “I think I’ll keep my door locked anyway.”

  Oh, now I got it. She was worried I was planning to share that space with her.

  “You really aren’t a trusting sort of person, are you?“

  She laughed in a soft tinkling sound that suited her. “You expect me to trust you?”

  “It would make things a lot easier.”

  “I bet it would, but you haven’t said a single thing so far that I can trust. You could have anyone on your team but you’re after me. That right there is pretty suss. And you come out with this hugely ambitious guild idea with an HQ in the old Cathedral? You can see why I’d be a bit hesitant to hop on board the crazy train. I mean, even if everything you've said is true, how would you even pay for it all?”

  “Well, our team—”

  She held up a finger to cut me off. “Your team. I haven’t agreed to join.”

  “The team has a steady income through the brisk trade the elves are doing, and it will grow even more once we ramp up healing potion production with the Beastfolk.”

  “Healing potion production? Beastfolk?”

  “Uh huh. Plus I plan to generate more ongoing income by renting out the Light Dungeon. It’s a Labyrinth with an ancient Greek theme. Players would pay an access fee to enter, then they'd get run through a tailored dungeon crawl facing monsters and other encounters appropriate to their power levels.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I’ve done it before for my friends. I control the dungeon, which means I basically own everything in it. I used to train a lot with the monsters in the labyrinth but I don’t do that as much anymore, so most of them are bored most of the time and aching for a fight. Defending the dungeon is fun for them.”

  “What are your costs for doing this?”

  Exactly the sort of question you'd expect a business manager to ask. I really wanted her. For the team.

  “It costs me nothing to host a raid apart from the time to organize it. It’s possible to rearrange the layout of the maze so it can be customized for each group, and each time they come back it could be a completely different challenge scaled for their advancement.”

  “That sounds like a lot of work.”

  “It is, but I won’t be doing it. I’ve got very capable monsters managing the dungeon and they’ll all set to handle all that stuff.”

  “You have monsters managing the dungeon? How does that work? I mean...they’re monsters.”

  “Alice and the others are more like NPCs than monsters. You’ll understand once you meet them.”

  “What happens when you run out of monsters? With all those raids won’t Players end up killing them all?”

  “The dungeon is set to automatically respawn the monsters who happen to get killed after a period of time, and just as important for this scheme is that their treasure respawns with them.”

  “And that doesn't cost you anything?"

  "That's the beauty of it. The dungeon takes care of stocking itself. There were some special treasures that were unique and won't respawn, but I've already collected all those."

  "Why don’t you just keep going back and collecting the respawned treasure yourself?”

  “Treasure doesn’t drop for me anymore in the dungeons I control. It does still drop for other people, though, so they can still farm it for loot and raise their abilities through the experience. As long as people can walk away with more than what they pay me to get in, everybody’s a winner.”

  I could see the gears turning in her brain as she studied the blueprints.

  “What’s the deal with the elves?” she said.

  “The elves are in the Nature Dungeon, which we also control. It’s not the same kind of place as the Light Dungeon’s labyrinth, not what you’d think of as a dungeon.”

  “You were saying we get a cut of what the elves make through their trade and whatnot,” she said.

  “That’s right. We could take all of it if we wanted, but that's not fair to the elves and not the kind of Player I want to be."

  "That's...unexpected," she said. "Since coming here I've seen pretty much nothing but greed. And what does it matter? They're just NPCs."

  "That's not how I roll, and not the sort of game I want to play, and you'll understand better once you get to know them."

  "Is the elven stuff that good?"

  "Their artisans are considered among the best in this world. Only the Elohim are considered better but I still have no clue who they are. And since it has been a long time since anything elven has been available the stuff they make is in high demand, and priced accordingly.”

  “In other words they’re raking in the dough,” she said.

  “Yes they are. Boatloads. And more elves are moving back into the village all the time.”

  “Meaning more artisans, more product, more moolah. So you’re saying dungeons are a resource thing.”

  “That’s what I think, yes.”

  “Making this place like a giant board game,” she said.

  I showed her my map of the region with the hex grid overlaid on it.

  “No way! I didn’t think it would be that literal.”

  “This place was designed by aliens based on human games and isekai stories, and some things they did take quite literally.”

  “Wild. So the Nature Dungeon is what, an economic hex. But the light dungeon doesn’t produce anything, so you propose we make money through it by charging people to raid it.”

  “Yes, but that’s just ancillary to that hex’s real resources.”

  “Which are?”

  “The monsters who live there. Immortal soldiers who just respawn back in the dungeon if they die.”

  “You mean they can leave the dungeon? Move to a different hex?” I nodded. “So it’s a military hex.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We should also take a cut of whatever loot they bring out,” she said. I was still getting used to the way her thoughts bounced around all over the place, but I liked that she was so smart and curious about things.

  “Huh? Oh, you mean when we rent it out to Players. That would be up to the business manager.”

  “I still haven’t agreed yet.”

  “I know,” I said, “but you’re saying ‘we’ so that’s a good sign.”

  She allowed herself a small smile. “Don’t you have another dungeon, too?”

  “The Void Dungeon, yes.”

  “Can we rent that out?” she said while hunting for it on the map.

  I shook my head. “It’s not really that kind of place.”

  “There’s always a way to monetize things,” she said. She traced an arc along the map that went through the three dungeons I controlled. “I like that our controlled hexes are all adjacent to each other and the city. What resources does the Void Dungeon bring to the table?”

  It had taken me a while to figure out the utility of the Void Dungeon, but when I finally did I couldn't believe it myself.

  “You're gonna love this,” I said.

  She leaned in and locked her big, pretty eyes on me. “I’m all ears.”