“What the crap, Mia?” asked Kyle in surprise, looking at the man in the ashes. He was wearing rough garb made from hide, quite unlike the skillfully crafted leather Braden had made for Mia and Lumen. Besides that, he seemed to wear nothing of value, though Kyle couldn’t tell what was in his inventory.

“I mean, it’s obvious, right?” Mia said. “Some guy torched our houses so he and his buddies could touch the crystal while we were distracted. Saw all three of them. I only caught the one, though. Beat his face in ‘cause he ranked strength like a newb instead of ranking reflexes.” She shrugged.

“Hey, I picked strength,” Jacob said.

“Why’s he here?” asked Kyle. “Are corpses persistent or something?”

“Not if you loot them,” Mia said. “But he’s not actually dead. If you punch somebody enough, they just go unconscious instead of dying.”

“What’re the rules on that?” Lumen asked. “Y’think you could keep somebody from respawning in 24 hours by keeping them unconscious? Just beat them over the head every couple of hours?”

“Wouldn’t they die of thirst or something first?” Jacob asked.

“Probably,” Mason said. “Seems like the simplest way to avoid an exploit like that.”

“What about a prison?” asked Lumen. “Can we lock the guy up?”

“You want a prison?” Jacob asked. “When I’ve already got two houses, an apothecary, and a tannery to repair?”

“Kinda, yeah,” said Lumen. He looked around. “I mean, we don’t want this guy running around trolling people, right? Lock the sucker up.”

Kyle had his doubts. In his opinion, it would be a serious design oversight to make completely eliminating somebody from the game was as simple as capturing them and holding them in a cell. But there were enough nods of assent that he held his tongue. “I guess we keep watches until we get the prison set up?” Kyle asked.

“Actually,” said Mia, sneering and narrowing her eyes, “That brings up a good point. We need watches all the time, not just while we’ve got our guest here. Our town burnt today because we’ve been ignoring our basics, guys.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jacob.

“We’re lazy. We’re sitting here building our own little utopia here, but we’ve got no guards, no walls, no defenses, and we had the idiotic audacity to build right around a giant beacon that says ‘attack me please’!” Mia started to pace as she ranted. “Meanwhile, ‘Kyle the Bland’ here is preaching ‘love peace and tolerance’ but we have no plan for how to deal with people than think that playstyle is —-.” As Mia grew increasingly upset, she began triggering the profanity filter. “Kyle’s trying to convince us that this five-million dollar competition shouldn’t be ——- competitive!”

“I think we’re doing fine,” said Jacob, crossing his arms.

“Yeah, well I got news for you, dad-kid. These people that attacked us were level three. Examine him for yourself, and see. We’re level one.” She threw her hands up in frustration. “We got roasted. Almost literally. For —-‘s sake, as we sit here and build our little city, other players are getting more and more powerful. Soon we’ll start being attacked be level tens. Or twenties! How the —- are we gonna fight that if we don’t even have ——- walls? And remember: all the players who actually want to win this game are going to have to come to our city eventually. Why the —- haven’t we been built any defenses? Or at least built our ——- Utopia somewhere more secluded?”

“That misses the point, though,” interjected Kyle as Mia took a breath. “If other players come here, we can talk people into joining us. This isn’t a town to defend the crystal, Mia. It’s a gathering place to make sure everybody’s on the same page. We’re forming a community.”

“Yeah, so all the real competitors have a place to raid and get free stuff,” Mia said, putting her hands on her hips and striding towards Kyle. “Did you think of that? These guys were dumb enough to set fire to our places, but what if they had just killed us and taken our stuff instead? We’ve got more treasure here for adventurers to loot than all seven of us have found in the rest of the —-ing world put together!”

“If we put up a wall, though, then we look like we’re guarding the crystal,” Kyle argued. “People will start planning how to attack us before we even get to say hello!”

“People are already planning that! This was premeditated. The fires were a diversion to draw away our guards so they could get to the crystal. Well guess what? Joke’s on them because we don’t have any ——- guards! They coulda just walked right in!”

“That’s kind of the point,” said Kyle. “If they could just walk right in, why would they bother burning our houses?”

“Look, Kyle,” said Lumen, “I think Mia’s got a point here. We’re gamers. PvP is in our blood. I get the whole “band together” thing. I really do. But this world has no safe zones. There are gonna be trolls. There are gonna be griefers. Guys that don’t realize we’re actuallycompeting against the Korean and Chinese regions, and not other gamers from NA. If we build defenses, we’ll outscale them late game. Let’s see how well their raids go when we’ve got plate mail and ballistae or whatever, huh? But if we don’t build defenses, they outscale us. We get wiped weekly. Bam. Square one. Over and over. And they just get stronger.”

“I agree,” said Mason, “But we could make compromises. Could we put up a big sign over the city walls that says, maybe, ‘Welcome to Crystopia, adventurers welcome?”

“What, and let in all the randos?” Mia asked.

“Let in all the awesome teammates, like Lumen,” Kyle corrected. “Lumen could have been a raider. He was thinking about it, I could tell. If we had walls, he’d have seen it as a challenge to be overcome, and tried to sneak in and attack us.”

“Hell yes, I would’ve,” said Lumen smiling.

“And what if there was a sign?” Mason asked.

Lumen shrugged. “I’d have probably thought it was an NPC village. And when I came in and saw players built it, I’d have thought it was pretty cool. I’d have stayed a while. Equipped myself. Joked around with people. ‘Researched’ intoxication rules. That sort of thing.”

Mason nodded and folded his arms, as though it was decided. Mia didn’t seem convinced. “I don’t like the idea of letting random people into our town. I think we’re mostly on the same page here, but who knows what other people will try to do when they come in.”

“Good thing we’ve got such a capable captain of the guard, then,” said Mason, gesturing at Mia, who simply narrowed her eyes in disgust. “What?” Mason asked, smirking. “You’re good at it, obviously.”

Kyle looked down to the unconscious man in the ashes. Mason had a point. If the arsonist was level three, he would have had an advantage over Mia, but Mia took him down anyway. She was good.

“Hey, why does she get to be captain?” asked Lumen.

“She complains the most,” Jacob muttered quietly. Dvorak guffawed, and awkwardly tried to disguise it with a hacking cough.

Braden shook his head. “Yeah, if we stay open and friendly, I think we’ll probably attract more friends than enemies. I’m guessing there are lots of people who just want to hole up and wait until this thing is all over. Plus, if a level one could fight off a whole group of level threes, then levels must not count for much, right? Maybe good equipment’s where the real power lies. We wouldn’t need to go out and touch crystals to have enough power to defend ourselves.”

“How hard was it, Mia?” asked Mason. “Did they seem powerful?”

“Dunno,” said Mia with a wry little smile. “They ranked strength, and that only matters if you hit the person you’re swinging at. And I didn’t let them do that.”

“Yeah, see? Levels don’t count for much,” Braden said. “We can hole up here and it’ll be fine.” Kyle wasn’t convinced, but didn’t say anything as Braden continued. “I think we need walls at least, though. A single gate, so there’s a choke point. That way a single guard can keep track of everybody coming and going. If we don’t, then Lumen’s right: we won’t be able to last long enough to craft high-end gear.”

Kyle sighed. It was a valid compromise. “Alright, so new plan: The top priority after rebuilding Avina’s house is a wall and gate, with a friendly sign of some sort. Then we can get back to teching up with a bloomery or whatever.”

“Oh, sure,” said Mia sarcastically. “Loudly order us to do what we had already decided to do. Make it sound like it was your ——- idea. I’m sure that’ll convince people you call the shots. Way to go.” She threw up her hands and stormed off towards her cabin. Surprisingly quickly, too, as though she wasn’t fatigued. Maybe it had to do with all those naps.

Kyle watched her go, fuming.

“Don’t worry, man,” Jacob said. “She wasn’t there when your idea saved the apothecary. In my book, you totally call the shots.”

“For now,” added Lumen. “You gotta admit, she’s pretty bad-ass. I wanna ask her how she took down this punk here.” Lumen grinned and started off after Mia.

Kyle rolled his eyes and shook his head. “So Dvorak,” he started. “Wanna guard the prisoner?”

“Let me ask my viewerbase if they’d enjoy watching me watch a sleeping guy for hours. Hm! They say no!”

“You don’t have contact with your viewerbase, Dvorak,” Kyle said.

“I know, right? But the force of five-thousand minds, each recoiling at the thought of having to watch me on guard duty, can reach me even here. Amazing, isn’t it?”

“Dvorak? It’s like 3:00 AM in the morning,” Kyle said.

“Yeah, five-thousand is my Chinese viewing base. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Wouldn’t sleeping be just as boring for your viewers as guarding a prisoner, though?”

“No.” Dvorak suddenly wore the darkest expression Kyle had seen on him. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Kyle paused, taken aback by the sudden departure from Dvorak’s chipper persona. “Whatever,” he said, backpedaling awkwardly. “I’ll guard him. Braden, help me carry him to the library, then get some sleep. I’ll work on spell research while I’m up. Could you come take over for me at about 7:00?” Braden nodded his assent.

“I could guard him,” offered Jacob. “I’m used to the fatigue thing, I don’t mind.”

“You’re already busy. You need to rebuild Avina’s house before she can sleep. Thanks for the offer though.”

Kyle went into his inventory and crafted some rope out of cordweed fibers he had gathered earlier, using a crafting recipe simple enough even untrained people could do it. Then, he tied up the man and hefted him over to the library with Braden. Within a few minutes, it was just him, cataloging books by candle-light, and the man, asleep in the corner.