The hot springs visit turned out to be… not exactly the best, which led to a very disappointed Enna. The pools of water there were extremely shallow and only barely deep enough for us to stick our feet into. That made it even worse, really. The fact that we could dip our feet under the hot water only made us, especially Enna, wish even harder for it to be deep enough for the rest of our bodies, too.

We were going to have to figure out something to do about that.

More importantly, as soon as I woke up on the eleventh day, I immediately opened up the map to claim our new territory.

Well, it wasn’t so much as me “waking up” since I wasn’t able to sleep due to the nerves. It was more like me getting up out of my bed as soon as I noticed that the daily income came in, which happened early in the morning just as the sun started to rise.

It took eight influence to claim the creature tile, and that left me with four more influence that I could use to claim the next tile toward the volcano.

I noticed something after looking at the map again. That one lava lake tile to the south of the creature tile was almost completely surrounded. All I needed to do was claim the tile to the northeast of it, and then I would get it for free. And the one to the northeast of it was already adjacent to three claimed tiles, so I would get a discount on claiming that one, too.

But that wasn’t important at the moment.

Neither was the fact that the latest technology I queued up, the Elite Hunters technology, was done.

All that was really important was that we got the creature tile. Since I had it claimed, I stepped outside to head over to the Council Pavilion where I saw Sara sitting and waiting.

“You’re up early,” I told her.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Sara replied. “I’ll go to sleep once I can rest assured we have a new population source.”

“That’s fair. I didn’t get any sleep myself.”

“I would criticize you for not resting your mind considering how important your position is, but I can’t blame you for not being able to sleep in this situation.”

That made me laugh.

My laughter made her tilt her head and frown at me. “And what exactly is so amusing to you?”

“You,” I answered. “I thought I’d have to deal with you being a spoiled princess for a few more weeks at least. Now, here you are, wanting to criticize me for not getting enough sleep.”

“You are the one who is ultimately responsible for any and all decisions we make as a group. Of course I’m going to care about your mental health.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“Are you hoping for more?”

“It would make me feel warm and fuzzy inside if there is more.”

“And here I would have thought you already get your fill of warmth from living next to a volcano and giant lake of lava.”

“That’s a good point.” If I could get her to banter with me a little then good progress was being made. I wanted her to be somebody I could joke around with. That would be a huge improvement from how we started off.

“By the way,” Sara said, right before I was going to try opening communications with the minor faction.

I tilted my head. “Yeah?”

“I am… sorry, for hitting you. Before.”

“Well, didn’t expect to get an apology for that.”

“It was mainly for appearances, mind you. It does annoy me a bit when you shorten my name, but I would never allow something so petty to truly bother me. But all of Hell, and my father, was watching, so.”

“You don’t think they are now?”

“It doesn’t matter if they are, is more like it. That being said… I doubt my father would pull out of his opportunity to win Earth and to toy with ‘God.’ He may have revoked his support from us, but I would not be surprised if he called in a favor somehow.”

“Is that even allowed?”

“It is. If I were to place myself in his shoes, he likely already had several backup plans in order to deal with this sort of situation. The most likely one… would be trading my elder sister for control over another participant’s faction.”

“How would that be allowed? I thought that nobody knows who else is participating?”

“It is not publicly said who is participating, but that does not mean a participant is banned from announcing their participation. In the same way, it is not banned for my father to announce he is interested in making a deal with somebody to take control of their faction.”

“I figured he wouldn’t just up and abandon us at the cost of not gaining anything from this game, but I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. So, just to confirm, you’re saying he might try getting back into this game?”

“Not might. He almost certainly will. And your punishment will be his second highest motivation aside from dealing with God.”

“One more question while you’re in a talkative mood.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “What?”

“What would you rather me call you? The only reason I had to call you that before is gone,” I answered.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I was only calling you that because you insisted on being disrespectful. If you plan on treating us with respect, I’ll treat you with respect. But you’re still limited to only four letters.”

“French pastries?”

“Exactly.”

Sara sighed. “Zira. If you insist on not using my real name… call me Zira.”

“You’ve got it, Zira.”

Zira looked away to try and hide the smile that spread across her face. “It has been too long since I’ve been called that. It’s… nice.”

“I’ll try not to wear it out then. And you have a nice smile. You should let us see it more often.”

“Give me reasons to smile and perhaps I will.”

“Would securing more population make you smile?”

“It would. It would also allow me to sleep.”

“Well, let’s call up our new friends then.”