- Command Center, hit me with the news.

- Roger that sire. Our battle at the northern front has been delayed due to excessive heat, whilst the southwest campaign has been delayed due to an unexpected flood on the Main Tunnel. However, we were successful on our eastern front and the orcs of Taìí village have been successfully subjugated.

- Good. Keep me informed of everything.

Sandro turned off his communication menu. The Dark Elves under him had, for most part, achieved consciousness - that is, souls - but still couldn’t be considered a proper civilization.

His time-killing game, henceforth, was mostly to train and try to capacitate them into a proper civilization.

It normally wasn’t easy living in Another World but, for dragons like Sandro, it could be said to be too easy.

Not to mention the fact that his father was that Jack and his mother that Elicia, he never had to go through any kind of hardship in his life.

That’s not to say that, by knowing of the objective existence of a reincarnation cycle in the world, his own view of life was that of it being useless - unless you were super powerful, in which case it would be a huge waste to lose it.

‘Think about it’ - He would argue, when lucid - ‘If you’re weak, then you have nothing to lose by dying. At most you’ll be sad because you had a good family - but then again, you’ll have another one once you’re reborn. But if you have huge stats, then won’t grinding them back be difficult as hell?’.

Of course, he wasn’t sadistic or cruel. Just didn’t value lives which didn’t take a long time of effort and pain to build.

Maybe, if he was older, then he would also learn to value things which are just as difficult to find and build as getting a lot of levels, like true love and a loving family, or one’s own expression of their essence through artistic means.

But he wasn’t.

So, he treasured his strong subordinates, and used the weaker ones as cannon fodder.

His father, obviously, didn’t know about it.

- Big bro, big bro, dad made us roasted dragon!

- Come on in! - Sandro answered, while keeping his contempt at bay.

A dragon-cooking father. So, what? Useless. That wouldn’t kill orcs.

- Are you done with the Hyena People?! - Pietro asked, while launching himself at his brother.

- Cut it! No hugs allowed!

How do a dragon hug?

Usually, by crossing their necks - just like cats.

Anything else would be either too awkward or impossible to do, as a human-like hug was just too unbalanced to be done.

Of course, Sandro himself was on that age where he didn’t wish for even that to happen.

- So, did you do it?! - Pietro kept on it, while also producing a roasted green-dragon tail from his magic pouch.

- Urgh, green dragon. Dad knows I hate to have to peel the skin! Why didn’t he peel it?

- Don’t be ungrateful, son. - Said a gentle but commanding voice.

- Okaaay, sorry ma… - Sandro rolled his eyes while answering to his mother.

- Now, eat it up and start telling me what were you doing these days - Elicia entered the room while looking all around.

It was a messy room. That is to say, it was a quite big cave, at least a couple hundred meters wide and another 300 long, full of gold, coins, jewelry and magic trinkets.

There were also a few big pieces of pumice, a piece of white marble which could be used as a screen for dungeon-related holographic projections and a small library full of story books.

One good thing about being born a high-grade NPC on Another World - one would be born already knowing how to read.

Of course, that was a given only for those with certain high-end bloodlines, like the draconic and angelic ones, but it surely made it way easier for Jack and Elicia back in the day.

- Well, we couldn’t take the Hyena People down due to a flood, and it seems like the fourth tunnel has experienced some kind of magma leakage or something…? Did you and dad start expanding again?

Expanding the dungeon could have a number of consequences - for instance, once could end spewing lava everywhere, or creating a huge earthquake. If done properly, the chances of that happening were minimal. However, Jack and Elicia rarely cared about “properly expanding” the dungeon these days.

Of course, they wouldn’t do it were there was a big risk of hurting people - like near towns or other places like that - but they didn’t care nearly as much when it was about expanding into the wilderness.

- Not that I’m aware of. And since your father… well, I guess no, we didn’t expand these days. - Elicia answered, without needing to repeat herself about her husband’s lack of motivation to live and do things.

- Well… we did conquer the seventh Orckish village. Now all that’s left is their capital.

- What about player losses?

- About five or six. It’s almost sure that they have been reincarnated in the village already.

- Good. It seems like you’re making progress. - Elicia said, while nodding approvingly.

- Thanks ma. - As for Sandro, he couldn’t be happier. His mother was, in fact, one of the few people he valued and respected.

***

- Now, remember to keep your brothers’ war games a secret from daddy - Elicia whispered to her youngest son. - He will stop your brother if you don’t, so be quiet about it, okay?

- Okay! - Answered the little one.

Elicia looked ahead. Jack was currently sleeping, of that she was sure. As for her… she could only sigh.

A hundred years. A hundred years, and he was still the same.

While she…

Could she think of herself as the same person? As someone even related to that Elicia she knew at the day?

Sure, she could blame dying in the Real World, or the lack of relationship renewals - she had indeed been faithful all this time - for how she turned, but would that be true?

In a sense, the reason why she turned the way she turned was simply that she had to interact with people.

She had to talk to others, to order them to do things, to negotiate, to strategize.

As her husband chose to sleep, she chose to run an Empire. And while running an Empire, one must come to terms with oneself.

Life?

It was precious, sure. All kinds of life were precious.

But it was also made solely of living.

What was the use of being like her husband - sleeping eternally?

Was he really alive? Or was he just dead, dead like…

She decided to stop thinking about it. It was still too fresh on her mind. Even while maintaining herself awake way more than her husband, she slept, after all, while her kids slept.

It would be way too painful to change so much they couldn’t recognize her anymore once they woke up.

Instead, she took on her human form and sat in front of the dungeon crystal. While looking through the images in it, her mind begun wandering.

- Another move on the part of the Kingdom, eh… - Elicia muttered to herself while seeing a dungeon near the borders of the Demon Kingdom being conquered and destroyed right after.

Even though Jack and Elicia never intended to get even close to the Kingdom’s territory, that didn’t mean the Kingdom didn’t intend to get closer to them. Land was land, after all, and for some reason, it seemed like they never had enough.

As for Jack and Elicia’s underground dungeon network, anyone with a couple advanced Analysis skills would be able to know that most of the land was theirs already.

The question was - would they try and attack the dungeons first, ask for a negotiation on national borders, or go for an all-out attack?

Regardless of the outcome, everything was happening at a snail’s pace. Most probably, it would come a day when her children would be the ones dealing with this, not her.

After all, she didn’t intend to let Sandro, Pietro and Sandra idle for their entire lives.

They could go and make a kingdom for themselves at the Hundred Kingdoms Area, but what would be the use? Would there even BE a Hundred Kingdoms Area a hundred years from now? Two hundred? A thousand?

If one was to extrapolate the rate at which players achieved greatness versus the rate at which they died to one another, one would be able to see that there were only four possibilities.

The first was that those players who got enough power were increasing in number, but getting as inconspicuous as possible, avoiding infighting. In this case, the high-level player population would be increasing.

The second was that these players were choosing to remain in the player society, killing and plotting against one another, as well as those living as hermits. In this case, the high-level player population would be diminishing.

As for the third, it was that the numbers balanced out. Just as a certain number of players got to high levels, an equal number would die due to a series of reasons.

Now, looking at things from a resource perspective, it would be clear that, if any of those options were the ones happening right now, it would be great.

Hermit-players, or small-high-level player communities posed almost no treat to Dragon King Island (2).

What is more, since they wouldn’t have the resources needed to start an all-out war and conquer one another, they would probably just spread around the world and create a bunch of small autocracies.

Elicia’s children would be safe in this kind of world. They would be able to have their own kingdoms and, as long as they didn’t go way too overboard, no one would ever pose that big of a treat.

But the problem was the fourth possibility.

And that was that, not only was the number of high-level players increasing, they were also been kept at bay and tightly leashed on by a nobility-vassal system.

If that was what the Kingdom was doing, that is, actively increasing the number of players on their ranks and keeping them in check by a number of means, then they would need to expand ever more, that is, as much as they wished to have more things - be them mana, NPCs or simply land by itself.

Fifteen million. The number of players who left reality to live in Another World should be close to that number. If they kept each other at check, then there was nothing to worry.

But what if they didn’t?

Could Jack, could her children, could her even, counter a 15-million-players attack?

No, even fewer. Five million. Five million high-level players, not like those in Goblin Island back in the day, which were crumbling into dust themselves.

The worst-case scenario would be one where all of those players reached high levels while sharing the world’s land and NPCs between them.

In this case, they would be dead fish in the water. A billion enemies, most of them NPCs, but, still. Could they survive that? Could the world itself survive that?

That was why, for Elicia, it was important that her children learnt how to deal with wars, power games and gambles.

In a certain sense, it was important that they all knew about it in order to avoid being trampled by it. For no other reason, except for survival, they had to keep their potential enemies from gathering enough power to submit others in a pyramid scheme.

And the best way to do so was, of course, by deflecting people to their side - specially to anarchy, as keeping tabs on them would end up in simply another escalation to war.

Many small kingdoms, all being under their mercy. Loose enough that they would keep each other in check, tight enough that they wouldn’t go crazy and start a successful conquer-and-submit campaign. That was the best-case-scenario for the Hooligan family.

Only with that much could they keep being active in the world while also sleeping for as much as a dragon needs to.

Of course, that was only if they wanted to keep being active. If they decided to be like Jack and do nothing all day long, then sealing themselves up and disappearing from the world was also a possibility!

Elicia sighed.

In the end, she and her husband had one big difference - she wanted to live.