While the elders and youngsters were dealing with their own headaches, a third group was trying to sort themselves out.
The six children.
They’d formed a circle, at the center of which was the first boy Ainz had given candy to—the one he’d specifically asked to include Aura in their games. He was thinking the hardest here.
The kids had naturally been curious about the girl from the unknown outside world. They still were and would have loved to get to know her and play together. But there was a good reason they’d never tried and kept their distance.
She wasn’t like them.
This girl was a better hunter than anyone in the village. Even if they were the same age, she stood leagues above them. You couldn’t just walk up to someone like that and start chatting.
Running into a beloved celebrity on the street was enough to make anyone think twice.
But now they had to.
“What do we do? What do we play? Games that aren’t athletic…that means no running around or climbing. That is how we play, though.”
The candy had certainly helped convince the dark elf kids to spend more time with Aura, but that was something they already wanted to do. Ainz had just given them the encouragement they needed to act.
“In the leaves?”
This game was what other races called hide-and-seek.
“I dunno about the new boy, but that girl’s a super-good ranger. She’d spot us instantly. It wouldn’t even be a contest.”
“That’s fine. I mean, that’s how the game works.”
“But that’d be her playing games with us, not us playing a game together.”
One of the other kids whistled.
“You said it, Ku.”
“Nice one.”
“You’re just pointing out the obvious!”
Ku’s proper name was Orange Kunas. The first boy to get the candy. He flashed a cocky grin, then waved them over.
“We all know I’m cool, but never mind that. Can anyone think of a game that doesn’t involve moving?”
“How about climb…no, that’s still moving.”
The kids fell silent. Finally, the oldest girl suggested, “Maybe we could just ask them to teach us a city game?”
Kunas sighed, shaking his head. “Don’t be dumb,” he said.
“What’s so dumb about that?”
“Why are you mad? Didn’t you hear what he said? He wants us to show them games they don’t have in the city. Stuff you can only do here. Did you forget already?”
“…He said that?”
“He did. So we’ve gotta find a game…they don’t have where they’re from. I mean, I dunno what they do in the city! Maybe we should ask that first?”
“Something we can only do in the village…like go into the woods?”
“No!” Kunas yelped, scowling at the suggestion. “You know what happened to Ah, right?”
Everyone got real quiet. The boy who’d made the suggestion looked sick to his stomach.
Inside the village, it was comparatively safe, but the forest was different. If the kids went out there alone, they’d be in trouble. Maybe they’d come back okay once or twice, but their luck was bound to run out eventually. And sometimes kids didn’t make it back. The adults took no real measures against this.
They didn’t even have someone watch over them or put them on leashes.
If they broke the rules, ran into trouble, and didn’t come back, then that was a necessary sacrifice.
If one child’s death taught the other kids how dangerous the forest was, then that was no great loss.
It was far worse to grow up never knowing how scary the forest could be.
Every single adult in this village had lost at least one childhood friend to the perils of the woods. That was why they all had a healthy fear of it and went about their lives with ample caution. That was what life here meant.
“That girl’s a super-good ranger, so I get why you’d think we’re safer with her than we are with the grown-ups. But we’d still be in big trouble. You know how Ailes”—he pointed at the smallest boy—“and me can do totally different things, right? You gotta at least be able to climb a tree quickly.”
“Then what do we do?”
They were back where they had started.
“I guess we’ve gotta ask about city games first.”
“But what even is a city? Are there more trees than here? Lots of prey for her to train on?”
They looked at one another, then back at Kunas.
He grinned triumphantly.
“I heard the grown-ups who went hunting with her talking.”
“Whoa, Ku! Nice work!”
“You’re the best, Ku.”
“Heh-heh-heh. The city doesn’t just have elves and dark elves—they got all kinds of races. And no trees at all! Instead, they got houses made of brick and tar and dirt.”
“Dirt…like the glieak?”
That was a race that lived in the forest.
They were omnivorous but didn’t eat intelligent life, so if dark elves ran into one, both sides would just sneak off the other way.
And the kids had heard the glieak lived in square homes of hardened soil.
They imagined a bunch of boxes in a field, but it was obvious they didn’t really get it.
“Wow. That place sounds nuts.”
“I kinda wanna know more…”
“Uh, but if we ask and find out they’ve done this stuff in the city before, then that’s just one less game we can actually play with them. We’ll have to think of even more ideas.”
“Argh.”
Once again, the children all stopped to think.
This was a tall order.
“Um, we could play house?” the youngest girl ventured.
The three older boys made faces. They clearly thought they were too old for that. But—Kunas quickly saw the light.
“You wouldn’t need any athletics for that. It might be our only option!”
“But that isn’t something special you can play in the village. You can play that anywhere!”
“We’ll just play village house.”
Village house.
Kunas seemed to be the only kid who knew what that meant.
“And the boy who showed up second didn’t look like he was all that athletic, so house might be right for him. At his age, we still played that, right?”
“No,” said the one boy Aura’s age.
“Whaaaat?” The kids around jeered. “I saw you playing house all by yourself.”
“That wasn’t house! I was playing dark elf hero!”
Then the children began arguing about what the difference between the two was.