I gathered the usual crowd at the Council Pavilion. Everybody else was invited to hang around and join in, but none of them seemed like they had any interest in doing so.

At least, none of them aside from Kaila.

She was happy to sit next to me where Enna would usually be sitting. The seat next to me wasn’t exactly a reserved spot for Enna or anything, so I wasn’t going to kick Kaila out of it, but… I did notice Enna pouting and looking jealously at Kaila from across the table.

Enna decided to sit directly across from me since she couldn’t sit next to me.

Then there was Thad to my right and Zira also across the table next to Enna.

Now, moving on to the actual meeting, I realized something that made me curious enough to ask about it. “Is it safe to have important meetings out here?”

“What do you mean?” Enna asked me, trying to distract herself from Kaila sitting next to me.

Meanwhile, Kaila was happy to rock from side to side atop her chair, turning her head to look at whoever was talking. And I do mean turning her head. Very dramatically and quickly. It made me worry about her neck.

In a way, she reminded me more of a squirrel than a wolf. A hyperactive squirrel with the hunting instincts of a wolf.

“What I mean is that anybody not participating in the game gets to watch us, right?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Zira answered.

“Then is it possible for somebody watching to communicate with the members of another world or however it works that is participating, and then those members could join the game as new population units who share information with their leader?”

Enna shook her head. “No. There are rules in place to prevent that, and Monitor is capable of scanning the memories of everybody who comes here to make sure that they are not bringing any information that would upset the game’s balance.”

“Good. That means I don’t have to be too paranoid. Now then, let’s get to the reason for this meeting. I think we should go to war with the Viking Elves.”

Enna looked panicked, Thad started laughing, Zira sighed, and Kaila smiled.

“I agree!” Kaila cheered. “War! Fight! We’ll rip them apart! The strongest pack gets the biggest hunting ground!”

All Thad could do was laugh out of insanity, and Enna looked too panicked to give any calm thought, so I looked at Zira and asked, “What do you think?”

“I want to know what you are thinking to even suggest that.”

“They claimed the exact tiles I was going for. That means they have a new, unprotected settlement that our military will be able to reach tomorrow. We could take it while it’s fresh and deprive them of those tiles, even if only temporarily. Then we could pull out of there, or leave a distraction force up there, to redirect their military to there. Then we can move in and take the settlement north of Mount Hound and defend it properly.”

“So, get back that science you wanted, then deprive them of their Living Wood. It’s not a bad idea. But if you’re willing to actually go to war with them this suddenly, why didn’t you do it before? Would that settlement north of Mount Hound not have been unprotected when you approached it to open communications?”

“Because I was thinking I would like to avoid an early conflict unless absolutely necessary. Now I’m realizing it might be the best possible option for us. If I had this realization sooner or could go back in time, I would probably attack to take that settlement from them right away.”

“War!” Thad shouted. “War with the fucking Ull’s Chosen! An early war at that! I knew you had balls, but I didn’t think they’d be this heavy.”

“We can’t afford to let them surpass our technology level and own their best possible material for this stage of the game. We need to take one or the other from them, preferably the latter. Optimally, both. It doesn’t look like there’s an upkeep for military units or anything else at the moment, so we could pump out as many as we need to grab and hold both settlements. In theory.”

Zira rose her hand to get the attention back to her. “And what about our own resource gathering? We can’t gather resources if we: one, are using all of our population up on military units; and two, are dedicating our building queues to military production rather than gathering camps. We need those materials for buildings that are more advanced than the tents we have now.”

“Then that’s all the more reason to steal their settlement north of Mount Hound, isn’t it? Then we can build out of Living Wood. We’ll dedicate that settlement to be a gathering settlement. We don’t exactly have much in the way of useful materials over here, including no usable wood, so we need to claim territory over there anyways.”

Zira looked like she had something to say but stopped herself before she could.

Enna finally spoke up instead. “I… think it might be our best option. We are going to go to war with them eventually no matter what we do, so it’s… probably best to strike them first before they can attack us. And allowing them to have even one of those settlements might give them an advantage over us, so… we do need to take at least one of them away.”

“Fight!” Kaila cheered. “Let’s fight! We can shred them! They looked skinny and weak! Our claws will slice right through them!”

“Alright,” I said and stood up. “If anybody is opposed, speak up now. I want to hear everybody’s opinions.”

“What of the Demons out there?” Zira asked.

“I’m going to pull them back and garrison them here. Kaila’s Volcano Hounds are more than happy to have fun fighting, so I don’t want to risk the lives of the Demons.”

Zira looked at Kaila and the few other Volcano Hounds around. “Is that really alright by all of you? To fight our battle for us?”

Kaila grinned, giving more proof of her squirrel-like energy… before relaxing her lips into a more casual smile to say, “We understand what’s going on. We heard from talking to the others. If we die, we still get to go home. If you die, you don’t. Give us hunting grounds and we’ll be happy to fight in your place.”

Zira really did turn out to be a surprise as she lowered her head for a bow and said, “Thank you.”

And just like that, Kaila went back to grinning. “So! When is fight?!”

“Tomorrow,” I answered. “We’ll get to watch it from here, assuming nobody objects?”

Thad stood up and wrapped an arm around my shoulder before saying, “I won’t object, but I am going to make you promise me all the booze I could ever ask for once we can produce it.”

Even though he wasn’t even going to be in any danger, unless we lost every fight and New Liberty got invaded, I still went along with him so that he could have something to look forward to other than stress over the war. “I promise.”

“Then no objection from me!”

Some of the others around looked nervous, but there was no objection from any of them, either.

That made it official.

Tomorrow, it would be time for war.