Chapter 37: The Return

This was it the day of the tutorial peoples return. My entire staff was on high alert throughout the kingdom. I have purchased everything I could think of to help and even managed to hire the domestics and build the orphanages at the last moment. Everyone has instructions on how to deal with the returnees. Be gentle and use words and explanations whenever possible, however do Not back down or put yourself into danger. Offer help and shelter when you can. This will only build trust and help people out. Collect stories and tales of what happened and forward any that seem pertinent. Flag anyone you think might work well for civilian leadership roles based on their classes and how they interact with others. Only time will tell the story of how much I have missed.

I have been thinking hard about my role in the kingdom. Yes, I will be the figure head of the new kingdom. People need someone to both rally around and to blame. However, I am doubting more and more my daily role in the running of the kingdom. I am just not trained or cut out for this. The stress and worry are making me lose sleep and no matter what I do I feel like I should be doing more. I need to pass this off to professionals. I can still help out if needed, but ruling just does not seem to be my thing. I mean I have not even been able to take care of my new pets. With all that has been going on my new baby dragons have been stuck in stasis this entire time. I have been afraid for them and afraid that I might lose, mismanage, or just do something wrong with them.

Even when I was raising my daughter I had lots of help from friends and family. My being in charge of this whole thing started out small. I just wanted to help my family and few friends. Somehow this whole thing has snowballed out of my control and I am supposed to be responsible for thousands if not millions of new citizens in a kingdom that did not even exist a month ago.

As it got closer to noon, I got more and more nervous. Did my family survive? How did my friends and worker fare? Will they accept and help with what I am trying to accomplish? Will they panic and flee? Should I worry about assassins and somebody overthrowing my new government? I just keep getting more and more crazy as I wait. What is that? Finally I see the tell tale shimmer of incoming teleports. I was a little worried that people might be teleported outside the castle now that I have the teleport blocks up, but it seems that the Great Game is putting everyone back from the place they teleported from. I see my daughter, she survived! There is mom, my sister and her husband, my nephew and niece, but where is my brother and his wife? Where is my dad? I look around and realize that there are a lot of people missing. The courtyard was practically full when people first teleported to the tutorial. Now it looks like more than 75% of the people have not returned.

This is horrible. I expected that several people would not make it and tried to harden my feelings and emotions against the losses there would be, but I never expected this many people to fail the tutorial. No more people are teleporting in and it seems that the reality of the missing persons is starting to settle in. Several people are starting to tear up and I am one of them. I need to meet the family.

After a tearful reunion and some rushed tales of the happenings in the tutorial a Great Game screen appeared.

“Welcome back tutorial survivors. You have successfully completed the tutorial to participate in the Great Game. Your individual rewards and experience will now be calculated.”

I could see several people staring off into space. That must be what I look like when I am studying my status screen.

While they were examining their status screens I received a new message from the Great Game.

“As the ruler of the new Appalachia Kingdom you need to designate your citizenship policy. You may select from the choices below or enter a custom choice. All current Great Game players within 50 miles of your territory are automatically granted citizenship. All current Great Game players within 50 miles of your territory are given the choice to become citizens, those that choose not to become citizens will be expelled from your territory after 24 hours. All current Great Game players within 50 miles of your territory must apply for citizenship within 1 week or be expelled from your territory.

Please note that this is a one time choice and hereafter all Great Game player beings that are born in your territory will automatically become citizens and those from outside your territory will have to apply for citizenship.”

I think I will go with option 2. I do not want to force people to join my kingdom which is what option 1 seems to do and I would rather not give people 1 week to plot against me. Also I have no infrastructure in place to review or accept citizenship applications currently.

I select option 2 and get another announcement from the Great Game.

“Great Game players if you are seeing this notice you are currently residing inside the newly established Appalachia Kingdom. King Mark Anderson has given you 24 hours to decide on whether you would like to remain and become a citizen of his kingdom or be transported elsewhere. You may contact the Great Game interface anytime during this 24 hours and select your choice.”

Before I can even register that this has just gone out to everyone within 50 miles of my new kingdom the Great Game adds on another notification.

“Each new planet is awarded a 1 year immunity from Great Game competition. After this time your Planetary Leader must participate in the Great Game competition. Your planetary leader “Mark Anderson” may now select one world perk from the world list as a welcome gift from the Great Game. As the third highest level entrant ever to enter the Great Game system your planetary leader will be granted an additional 2 planetary perks and the right to bypass the first level of Great Game competition in his first year of representing your planet of Earth in the Great Game competition.”

The entire group in the courtyard slowly turned towards me. My daughter looked at me with accusing eyes and said, “Daddy is the Great Game talking about you? Are you the king and this planetary leader, and why do you have horns?”

I had no choice but to answer. There would be no dodging these question. “Yes honey, I am the king of the Appalachia Kingdom and the highest leveled person from Earth so I have been designated the Planetary Leader. As for my horns I had a race change through the Great Game to King of Elemental Dragons.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“I am not sure exactly what it means sweetie, this is pretty new to me also.”

“Well what is your level and what happens if someone passes it before the competition?”

“My current level is 65 with several unique titles, and I think that if someone passes my level in the future they will earn the designation of Planetary Leader.”

I could see jaws drop as I mentioned my level. I forgot that they would be much lower leveled than me and were probably mystified on how I could have possibly gotten to my current level.

“Listen I will explain everything as best I can in the future, but first we need to get everybody situated and taken care of.”

My new staff was quickly introduced and I managed to deflect any more questions and get everybody into a room to rest and recuperate. I promised a meeting in the morning to update everyone as best I could. This has been a stressful day but I need to check in with my military leaders in the other cities. I contacted every city one by one through the communication crystals and asked them to bring the top three candidates they had for civilian positions to a meeting to be held tomorrow at lunch. Hopefully there would be some people I could recognize or test and I could alleviate some of my responsibilities and start building my council.

Now I need to look at those world perks the Great Game mentioned. Please list the available Great Game World perks.

“As planetary leader you may select three perks from the following list. Universal Language (Single Use Only) One Year Increased Experience Increased Crafting Knowledge (Single Use Only) One Year Increased population fertility One year Increased food/fields fertility One year immunity from invasion tickets One world invasion ticket Tier 2 Level Cap (Single Use Only) Part 1 of 5 World Teleportation Network One year Increased Mana and Health regeneration for natives One year Increased resource regeneration Increased Magic Knowledge (Single Use Only) One world connection for World Teleportation Network One world Resurrection Point for World Natives One year protection from natural and monster related disasters

My night passed fitfully as I tried to plan in my mind for as many scenarios as possible that might occur tomorrow. I knew that it would be a rough day, but I was also optimistic that it could be the start of something new and better. Only time will tell.

The next morning over breakfast, I spent the time catching up with my family and hearing about their experiences during the tutorial. I deflected most of the questions about me with the line that I only wanted to tell people once and soon we would have a meeting with everyone at the castle. I also brought out my new baby dragons and let them get used to the family.

Around 10 a.m. I followed everyone into the largest courtyard where my guards had gathered everyone to hear me speak.

“Good morning everyone, I have a short speech to give then I will take some questions. Please remember that you need to make a decision about staying or leaving within the next 12-14 hours.”

I regaled the people with my tale of the beta test and how I had luckily passed it. I mentioned how I tried to prepare a safe place for as many people as I could, but was restricted by the Great Game in what I could say before the change over. I let them know that since I found out that the Great Game did not seem to recognize group or democratic rule that I decided to found a kingdom to help keep my family and friends safe. I also let them know that I had built 21 cities and shelters to help as many people as possible. I had staffed them with guards who were experienced with the Great Game system and provided enough supplies to last people 6 months or more dependent on the population.

I ended with this,” I realize that many of you are thinking about leaving and trying to find friends, family and others that you might help. However, I want you to think about this. The survival rate in just our group here in the castle was a little lower than 50% even though I was able to give you a quick warning and supplied some weapons that hopefully helped you out. The survival rate outside of the castle is probably lower. I may be the king of a new kingdom but I will be as hands off as possible and utilize a council of experts to help guide and make what is ours safe and secure for yourselves and your family. Please do not misunderstand me though, I will do whatever I feel is necessary to protect my family, my kingdom and my new subjects to the best of my ability. The world has changed and we must change with it. You and the people around you find yourselves in a unique and safe situation. I will force no one to stay in my kingdom, but know that if you leave now you risk yourself and may have a very hard time of ever making it back to the safety and security that you are now enjoying.”

I then fielded several questions and gave the best answers I could.

No, I would not disband the kingdom in the future, but I may hand control over to the Council that I hope to establish.

Yes, I look different, I went through a race change via a bloodline dungeon where I became king of the elemental dragons and acquired my new friends. When my little dragons flew out I saw several eyes light up with admiration and a couple with greed. I would have to keep a close eye on my little ones until they are large enough to protect themselves.

Yes, the Great Game did name me the Planetary Leader due to my high level. My current level is 65 with several unique titles.

No, I do not know what is expected of the Planetary Leader or what the Great Game competition is about but I would inform people as I found out.

There were several other questions but these were the big ones that kept being asked over and over in different ways. I excused myself after some time and told everyone to think carefully about their upcoming decision. I then retreated to my throne room and signaled for Rudolph, Edward, and Jacob to join me.

“Gentleman, soon we will have several incoming groups of people from the cities with hopefully some candidates that might be able to help with organizing the council and helping to fill in various positions in the government. I found a truth gem in the Great Game store and would like to ask if there is any way that people can get around the aura of truth the description said is emitted.”

Jacob spoke up, “As far as I know sire as long as a person is of a lower level than the one controlling the gem than you will know if they are speaking the truth.”

Randolph added, “Someone can still lie by omission or just not speak of something, I have also heard that higher levels in the rogue classification can also use an ability to confuse detectors such as the truth gem. However, in this situation with people of a much lower level and most probably classless there should be no problem.”