A handful of wasps buzzed around among the olive branches, visiting flowers now and then with apparent laziness. They seemed quite large, almost ¼ of ZipZing's size.
Danika discovered that she was surprisingly nervous about approaching the wasps. She wasn't especially afraid of bugs in general. Usually she regarded wasps as irritating pests, but nothing to be scared of. Her own reaction surprised her a little.
Her invisibility spell only lasted for a single second at the moment, but Danika slowly formed a plan as she watched the tree. When she felt ready, she zipped toward the tree, flicking her invisibility up mid flight. She got the timing surprisingly close on her first try, and it gave out just before she reached the branch she was aiming at.
She activated her color cantrip, and became more silvery green like the leaves. As quickly as she could she targeted one of the tiny olive buds with her plant growth spell. Her color cantrip ran out and had to be reactivated before the olive finished swelling in size and plumpness. Danika grabbed the olive and pulled it off with her dragon strength before launching herself away from the tree and casting invisibility again.
The olive was surprisingly heavy and pulled her downward as she flew away from the tree. She landed heavily but safely on the loose shale.
Danika looked at the olive thoughtfully, and tried biting it. She spat out the bite immediately. She had hoped she could eat some of the olives to replenish her energy. She wasn't certain if it was a problem with the game or if real olives tasted so awful raw, but it was too horribly bitter to eat. Regretfully she withdrew some bread from her inventory.
Eventually she worked out a somewhat more efficient harvesting method. Instead of retreating after collecting a single olive, she moved things around in her inventory so that the oldest salt sack was free to fill with olives. Then, while clinging to her target branch she cast as many growth spells on as many olives as she could reach, as quickly as possible. By the time that was finished the first targets had finished growing, and she collected them all before zipping away from the tree.
She had successfully delivered the first five bags of olives to the witch before a wasp caught and stung her. The sting not only hurt, but seemed to paralyze her. Probably fortunately, she seemed to be too heavy for the wasp to carry, and fell out of the tree.
Danika hit the shale hard and bounced a couple of times until she came to rest against something darker than the pale shale. When she levered herself up enough to look, she discovered that it was a boot. With a sinking heart, she raised her eyes to discover that the boot belonged to a human wizard.
Justin glared down at her and asked waspishly, "How can you almost die while still within the village!?"
Danika wondered if the townspeople would be sad that a high level wizard was also referring to their town as a village, or if that kind of thing was just expected from wizards.
Justin nudged her with his toe and snapped, "I can tell that you're not dead yet, and you've already demonstrated that you can talk."
Danika sighed and answered a bit glumly, "Why do you care?"
His mouth tightened and he threw up his hands and simply walked away. Danika lay on the cold shale and wondered why they seemed to clash so much when they'd really had so little interaction with each other. A moment later a bright red apple bounced off the shale beside her.
When the venom wore off enough that Danika could move freely again, she collected the apple. It was so very red and glossy that it resembled nothing so much as the poisoned apple from 'Snow White', but Danika didn't expect that it was really poisoned. As she placed it into her pouch alongside the elven wizard's yellow apple, she wondered what it was with wizards and apples.
She ate the last of the bread she'd been working on, and logged off for awhile to let her health restore and to rest a bit for her ongoing 'Growth Phase' quest.
--
On her first attempt after Danika returned, she was too nervous, and another wasp spotted her. They seemed to hunt mostly by sight, because it lost her again as soon as she recast her invisibility. Danika retreated while they buzzed around more actively for a little while.
She found that as long as she waited for a while before trying again after being detected, she was able to collect more olives without injury. She made less timing mistakes as she calmed down, and her invisibility spell slowly increased in duration as it leveled.
To her delight, her flight skill finally leveled up during one particularly tricky maneuver dodging around a twisted branch that she'd already harvested while recasting invisibility. Danika collected ten more bags of olives before she slept that night.
--
Danika checked her messages while she ate breakfast the next morning, and sat staring at her screen for a long while in a state of stunned surprise. The leveling job had not only been paid already, it had included an added bonus.
Not only that, but the person who'd submitted it had sent a contract request for leveling 20 more accounts at the same rate within two weeks. Danika wanted to cry. It was a fantastic offer, but it was impossible for one person to accomplish, even if she ran multiple accounts at the same time, and stopped playing "Living Jade Empire" for awhile, the most she could possibly finish would be five or six.
She was reluctant to give it up though, so she contacted a couple of the places that she did contract work with moderately regularly. The smaller one got back to her first. Unfortunately, after calculating it, the manager replied that they just didn't currently have the capacity to finish it in time.
Danika logged into "Living Jade Empire" on her phone, while she waited for a response from the larger game studio. Flying accurately was a lot trickier, especially while trying to cast invisibility, but the color cantrip was ridiculously easy through the mobile interface. Matching colors was a simple targeting tap.
She collected two more bags of olives before she got a reply. The owner called her personally to discuss the exact details, but eventually agreed to take on the job under the conditions that Danika was requesting. The first was that she got a 10% commission for transferring the job to the company. The second was that she would also be one of the people paid to work on it, but have a day off on the day that she was supposed to collect the moonflower seeds in "Living Jade Empire", although she didn't explain why she needed that particular day off.
The job started right away. Danika logged in for her first shift, almost gleefully. Working on a single account through a familiar remote interface gave her enough idle time to collect more olives on her phone once in awhile.
--
Danika returned to the VR-medi pod that night in a cheerful mood. Although her olive collecting had been slowed down, and she was only ¼ the way through the amount the witch said she needed, Danika still had three more days before her scheduled day off to collect moonflowers.
Danika collected several more salt bags full of olives before sleeping. By the time she finished, two days later, her plant growth spell had gained a level and her invisibility could last up to 5 seconds.
The only thing that really worried her was that she had used up most of her food again before she collected enough olives for the witch's oil.