Today was a relatively good day for Roger. He was lucky to have had several relatively good days in a row recently. Being the mayor of a town had sounded glamorous when he was younger, it was why he took this gig after all. The reality however, was mostly headaches.

  As he stepped out on the packed dirt street, Roger admired how much they had accomplished. It was just about a month ago when the Network had brought them here. There were about eighty people in the first group, and they had little more than the clothes on their backs when they arrived.

  In front of them had been a small Village Hall, two long houses that might be large enough to fit them all, and a small plot of land with stalks of wheat just starting to bow their grain heavy heads. While everyone was a fresh arrival, Roger had already been assigned the role of mayor. The town had no founder listed, it had been created by the Network itself, which meant Roger was the one in charge. As the mayor he would have almost all of the same privileges as a founder, but a few things, like renaming the town were barred from him.

  Elstree was as good a name as any other, he supposed, and he had quickly gotten to work organizing the new residents. Inside the hall they found a collection of tools that allowed them to get started with expanding their new home.

  Roger had wanted to be a mayor since he was little. Being a serf, however, made that unlikely to ever happen, no matter that he certainly looked the part. He was tall, at one hundred and ninety centimeters he stood above most other humans, and Roger was also a rather handsome man. Making friends had come easily to him, and girls were constantly fawning over him. At least serf girls.

  Without a class, however, he was a second class citizen. No aristocrat ever gave him a second glance. Adventurer’s were willing to talk to him, especially if he had something they wanted, but there was no way for Roger to claim the power to become a mayor. He could have tried to found a new town, but most of his world was either already claimed, or it was teeming with monsters.

  As a serf, the Network was his only chance to ever realize his dream. He had studied for years how to be a good mayor, and had even gotten a job as the assistant to the mayor of a small town near his birth city. Assistant was a strong word, gopher was more like it. ‘Go for coffee’, ‘go for lunch’, fetching things and people were his only real responsibilities.

  Roger hadn’t cared, because it meant he was there to watch the decisions being made. Okay, maybe he had cared a little, but he knew his time would come. When it did, he wanted to be the best mayor he could. And finally his opportunity did come.

  One day there was a notice on the Town Board, a new tutorial was being started. Roger went straight to the Adventurer’s Guild to sign up. Normally such a group wouldn’t have anything to do with a serf, but when tutorials were involved, things were different. Even those without a class, like Roger, would be able to earn rewards for their town. Eagerly he scanned the list, and then he found it.

  Job Offering: Town Mayor

  [A new tutorial is being set up and towns are needed for the participants to interact with. A town needs residents, but those residents will also need a leader. Warning, being the Mayor means much greater risk. The buck stops with you, so to speak. If you have the guts, this could be a great opportunity, or more likely, a death sentence.]

  The Network had offered fair warning, but Roger already knew that this was what he wanted. Yes, it was possible, probable even, that some party of aliens would come in and murder him to steal his title. But it was also possible that he could make a deal with them instead, and then he might get to stay as the town mayor. If he could hold on to his position all the way to the end of the tutorial, then he would become a resident of the newly formed planet and the ruler of one of the few existing population centers.

  That had all seemed far away when they had first gotten to work. Going in, Roger had thought of it as a town, which it technically was, but really it was only a tier one village in the beginning. Getting it to qualify as a full town wasn’t possible yet, and even getting it to tier five, the maximum possible for a village, would be difficult.

  After securing the supplies in the hall, the first order of business was gathering raw materials. Roger had gotten everyone together, and then tried to figure out each person’s strengths. His villagers had been pulled from planets across the universe and he needed to figure out how best to utilize them.

  A group of dwarves was assigned to gather stone. Some elves and a few others who looked the type were assigned with hunting. There would not be much animal life in the area yet, but they could begin to become familiar with the area. Others were assigned to cut down trees for lumber, while the remainder were to till more land to increase their farming potential.

  The second most important person in the group, after himself, was a human named Smith. He was their only blacksmith. Roger had thought his name was amusing given his profession, but their resident hammer jockey had not appreciated the joke. Once the stone and wood had started coming in, the blacksmith shop was the first thing they built.

  Smith had been able to bring his tools with him, and there had been an anvil waiting in the village hall. In addition to stone, the dwarves had found a small vein of iron ore that Roger was able to turn into nails and simple building tools. After that, the work had really gotten started.

  Now, a month later, as he strolled down the street, Roger could see the results of their efforts. Strolled might be the wrong word. Even though their village was now tier three, and had over four hundred residents, Main Street was only about a hundred meters long. Each week brought a new group of residents courtesy of the Network, but other than that it was hard to bring up the population.

  There were other villages in the area, and even a real town that they all started to trade with, but people mostly kept to their original locations. If anyone ended up migrating, it was mostly from the villages to the town.

  The town was also brand new, everything in the tutorial was, but they had been given more people and more resources to start. If you were going to be lured away from your starting group, it was the town that had all the resources.

  Still, Roger thought it was a sign of his villagers’ hard work, and also his leadership, that they had only had two residents move to the town. Other villages had lost many more, especially from the most recent group to be brought in.

  None of that was an issue for today though. His morning had gone well, no major problems, and they had even managed to finish another section of farmland the night before. That meant they would still be able to produce enough food to support their growing population, with a significant portion left over to send on to the town. Since the town had the best supplies, it was important to trade with them for things Elstree didn’t have.

  Roger had decided to celebrate by having lunch at the village’s only tavern. It was a newer addition, previously everyone had just gotten food from the communal cafeteria. There hadn’t been a great variety of food yet, so having a restaurant had seemed silly. Last week's batch of new immigrants had changed that, however.

  They now had a brewer among their neighbors. He didn’t have a class, like all of the village residents, but he had studied a little alchemy. Enough, anyway, that they now had alcohol. He had only recently gotten production going, so the supply was limited, but it meant a tavern now made sense.

  It wasn’t the food or beer that made Roger enjoy this tavern, though. It was one of their servers. Jessica had been part of the second batch of residents, but she had caught his eye immediately. She was a rabbit person, but was rather tall for her kind at one hundred and sixty centimeters. Her fur was a vibrant red that almost sparkled and she had the most vivacious personality. She was also stunningly beautiful.

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  After walking through the door, Roger found a seat at an empty table, and Jessica came over to greet him.

  “Good morning Mr. Mayor, what’ll it be today?”

  “You can call me Roger.”

  Jessica laughed as she responded, “Of course, Mr. Mayor.”

  Roger sighed, she always was so formal with him. “I’ll take whatever you think is good today.”

  Jessica smiled back at him, “Well, we have bread, same as yesterday. We also have a squirrel stew, light on the squirrel, as always. To pair with that we have water or a nice wheat beer.”

  There really wasn’t much variety yet, but considering it had only been a month, it was still impressive. In addition to the wheat that was already growing when they arrived, they had some barley, and recently had been able to add onions. So far they didn’t have any livestock, only the town had those, and they were asking ridiculous prices for any animals. The hunters were having some luck with small game, but it wasn’t enough to supply a whole community yet.

  “That sounds great, and I’ll take the water please.”

  Roger wasn’t against alcohol, but he felt bad about taking any of their meager supply. He would rather someone who had labored all day, get to enjoy the treat. After taking his order, Jessica stopped by another table before heading back into the kitchen.

  There was a commotion at the door and, glancing over, Roger felt a pit forming in his stomach. So much for his good day. One of the issues that he still didn’t have a great solution for, was the dungeon obelisk for his village. As a tier three village it would spawn a boss every week. That was better than the four day reset that they had to deal with in the beginning. However, with the longer interval came a higher leveled boss.

  The first one had been a challenge, but working together the entire community had been able to bring it down. That was important because it meant safety from monster spawns, and a nice surplus of gold for them. Roger knew of another village that had been unable to deal with their boss and had to endure attacks by smaller monsters for several days. Much of their initial work had gone into constructing a wall to protect them, which delayed their ability to upgrade their tier.

  The second boss had arrived to threaten Elstree after they achieved tier two status. This would have been beyond their means of dealing with, if it wasn’t for the group that arrived from the nearby town. The Network knew what it was doing, it had run tutorials countless times. It knew that these towns and villages would have dungeons that needed dealing with, and it had a system for taking care of it.

  No one with a class could volunteer to be part of a tutorial village, but they could be part of the town. Joining a settlement in a tutorial meant committing yourself to living in a new world, with a potentially hostile race in charge. There was also no guarantee that the winners would let you live, but for many it promised a better life than they could get on their homeworld.

  If you were a serf, that is, those with classes usually lived a much better life, and the risk wasn’t worth it. They instead signed up to participate in a tutorial dungeon, hoping to pick up another class. But there were those on the fringe of adventurer society who were desperate enough to take the chance of a tutorial. These were put in the towns, and given the responsibility of supporting the surrounding area in dealing with monsters and dungeons, much like they did on their own homeworld.

  These parties would make their way around to the smaller villages and deal with the dungeon bosses. At least that was how it was supposed to work. Roger’s area had the unfortunate privilege of not getting the dregs of classed individuals. Instead, they had to deal with a family of Aristocrats.

  It was incredibly rare, but occasionally, one of the newer families, or an older one who had fallen on hard times, would gamble on a tutorial. The ‘host’ races of the tutorial would often be challenged with controlling the towns and cities on the disk. They would fight over these areas and only the strongest would prevail. However, it was possible that they all failed. If those who volunteered for the Network managed to hold out against the tutorial recruits, then they would be able to participate in higher tiers as if they were inducted themselves.

  It was incredibly risky, and only a few times in the history of the Network had it paid off, but it could mean a huge boost in prestige, power, and wealth for a struggling family. This was what Roger was dealing with. He wasn’t clear on the details, but rumor said that the Difmer family was a branch from a much larger group, but the patriarch had managed to piss off someone important and the entire line was disowned.

  The whole family couldn’t come, obviously. There were restrictions on how strong volunteers could be. Most of those who did come, were located in a city far from here, but a smaller group had come to the nearby town to take over. A mother and father with their two sons were now in charge of the area.

  One of those son’s, Chrisly, had just walked through the door. Technically Roger outranked him as the mayor of the village, but in reality he was forced to allow Chrisly to do pretty much anything he wanted. The reason was, it was Chrisly and his goons who took care of any monsters or bosses in the area. If he upset the spoiled man-child then their village would find itself bereft of their protection and inundated by a horde of monsters.

  It was a situation that any serf in power usually found themselves in, reliant on those who had won the genetic lottery, and been born into an aristocratic family. Chrisly was a particularly odious one, however. He was short for a human, his breath was often rancid, and even though he took pride in his appearance, his hair was always greasy. He also liked to abuse his power.

  After looking over the patrons in the tavern, Chrisly and the two others with him approached Roger’s table.

  “Mayor, hope you don’t mind if we join your table.” When Jessica referred to him as mayor he could hear the respect in her voice, Chrisly, however, always said it with a sneer.

  Standing, Roger gestured at the seats around him. “Of course sir, it is always a pleasure to share your company.” His previous job as an assistant had often required him to keep his true feelings hidden.

  “We heard your village has managed to brew something like beer. We just finished taking care of your obelisk and thought we might try some.”

  Chrisly was loud enough that everyone in the tavern had heard, but Roger made a spectacle of calling over Jessica and giving her the order. He made sure to tell her to put it on his tab. It wouldn’t do for the incredibly wealthy people to pay for their own drinks.

  Roger knew that Chrisly wasn’t just there for the drinks, and he didn’t have to wait long for him to broach the topic, “So, have you thought about my father’s offer?”

  Even though he had agreed to protect the villages under him when he had taken over control of the town, Chrisly’s father was leveraging that protection to get the village mayors to agree to help him against the tutorial parties that would soon arrive.

  Roger put on his most ingratiating smile, “It’s not that I don’t want to agree, I just don’t see how I can help.”

  “We just want you to make sure that the invaders don’t have an easy time of it.”

  Feigning ignorance again, Roger asked, “But what can we do?”

  It was about that time that Jessica returned with Roger’s food, and the others’ beers. When he handed over the coins to pay for it, he could have sworn her hand lingered for a moment on his. It set his heart racing, but he didn’t smile as he still had to deal with Chrisly and his muscle. The two other people with him were not part of his family. The man and woman were volunteers with two classes each who had seen an opportunity to hitch their wagon to a higher power.

  It was the woman who responded to his question while Chrisly enjoyed his drink. “For starters, you can bar any of the invaders from the village. Deny them access to any of the services here.”

  “There’s not a lot here for us to offer them. And how would we even be able to tell who the invaders are?”

  The male member of the entourage scoffed at that. Roger had made the petty decision not to learn their names. “They’ll be in a party and decked out in adventurer clothes. How thick can you be?”

  Chrisly pretended to defend Roger. “Now, now, Caleb, you have to remember that the mayor is unused to higher society. As a serf we can’t expect him to think of everything.” He paused to take another swallow from his mug. “This beer is pretty good, by the way. Could you have a case of this ready for me to bring back to my father.”

  Chrisly’s condescending tone made Roger grind his teeth, but the demand, couched as a request, for a case of beer was infuriating. He tried to tell himself that if Chrisly’s father enjoyed it, then maybe they could export it to the town for another source of income. Perhaps they would finally be able to afford some chickens.

  Offering what he hoped wasn’t an obviously insincere smile, Roger tried to dodge a commitment again. “Of course, we’ll make sure to have it ready by the time you leave. I will consider your father’s offer, now that I better understand what he is asking.”

  Chrisly gave him an oily smile, full of teeth, “don’t take too long. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it through here again until we hear back from you. I only have so much time, and I will have to prioritize it for those who have a similar grasp of the pressures we are all under. I’m sure you understand.”

  Roger did understand. This was it, the final threat. If he didn’t give in to their demand, then they would no longer be visited by adventurers and the obelisk would begin releasing monsters. Without even one class, there was no way the villagers would be able to protect themselves.

  On the surface it didn’t seem like Chrisly’s family was asking for much, but if Roger forced the residents to be hostile to those from the tutorial, then his chances of making a deal to continue as the mayor were slim to none. He would be more likely to find himself killed and replaced. He would have to consider his next move.