When Ariana returned she found Danika's white room filled with a small meadow beneath wandering clouds. Half a dozen small androgynous electric elementals romped back and forth excitedly. One of them spotted her and zapped over to her. A moment later it transformed back into Danika.
"Wow, I did not show you how to make a temporary account yet," Ariana said questioningly.
"Oh, was I not supposed to?" Danika questioned nervously. "My assistant dragon said it was a standard testing method."
"It is," Ariana agreed reassuringly. "What did you do to them?" she asked, watching the elementals romp.
"I gave them the ability to summon themselves," Danika explained proudly. "And I changed how they recharge their energy so that they get energy just from moving. Summoning themselves and moving still costs more than they gain, but they can ride anything that's moving, like clouds." She pointed to the clouds, which Ariana saw through her lens had more un-summoned elementals riding them.
"Wow!" Ariana exclaimed.
"I haven't added any special quests for them yet though, but this way they can manifest themselves and do regular player quests?" Danika said hopefully.
Ariana flicked carefully through a variety of menu screens and then announced, "It looks great to me, it's a small logical change that completely changes their viability as a player race. I'll submit it to the system as having passed my review, and then you'll only need one more person from the seventh to pass it before it enters the Empire."
"Er? Really, so fast?" Danika questioned.
Ariana nodded and explained, "Some player somewhere is probably waiting anxiously on the reply to their bug report about how they can't do anything except float around unless someone summons them."
"Shouldn't this have gone directly to an experienced designer then?" Danika asked a bit worriedly.
Ariana shrugged and replied, "I was surprised to see it come up on your list of choices, but the system is really pretty good these days about directing problems to the right people to solve them. In the early days we had to reroute things between departments a lot, but that hardly ever happens anymore."
To Danika that made it sound like the system could almost be described as coordinating its own development. It made her wonder if it sent things to people who were more likely to make the choices it wanted, but after a moment she dismissed the idea as fanciful. Ariana reached out and patted Danika's shoulder reassuringly.
"Don't worry, you did great, and finished it really quickly. As a reward for a job well done, you get to choose another job!" Ariana announced triumphantly.
Danika giggled.
Her next assignment was more complicated, and Ariana hung around to help her, after the third time she had to stop and call for help.
When Danika apologized, Ariana replied stoutly, "Don't be silly, this is how I expected the whole afternoon to go! You scared me into thinking you were some kind of genius with how easy you got through that racial modification, this is totally reassuring!"
--
That night Danika played with Aishin for about an hour, and she remembered to bring out Hikaru. The little firefly seemed grumpy at first, but was soon spiralling around them happily.
Aishin asked with amusement, "Has Hikaru learned any attacks yet?"
Danika replied with disgust, "No, but Hikaru already learned your random teleport skill before me!"
"You've both gained levels really fast," Aishin pointed out laughingly. "You're going to catch up to me soon, you only reached 76 when I became your familiar and you're already at 113?"
"That's mostly because of my garden," Danika pointed out.
"What?" Aishin questioned.
"It's a safe space that I can practice in without worrying about what happens when I leave ZipZing idle," she explained. "The rest is probably because it's really a bit imbalanced that I can have you as my familiar and use any of your skills on demand."
"Eh, I don't think it's imbalanced," Aishin argued. "Gathering all the ingredients wasn't easy, and using my skills seems to use a lot more energy. You don't have the doubling I got either, it's like it gave me the resources and you the things to use them on. What would be broken would be if I could now make you my familiar."
"It's not like I can keep casting it to try to teach it to you, and I targeted Shrubbery instead when I used it, sorry," Danika replied.
Aishin grinned at her. "It's fine."
"I'm pretty sure I've figured out why I can't learn Hikaru's glow or teach it my dazzling too," Danika went on. "I got to work with racial abilities today, and I am pretty sure that they aren't transferable. Even though we both make light. I'm not totally sure though, because I can still use Claw Swipe."
"Well, you have claws, but maybe wing light and butt light are too different?" Aishin suggested.
Danika giggled.
They gathered another animal essence hair, but their progress on her quest for 1000 different animals was slowing down a lot, although she was ¾ of the way there. After the first hundred she'd started a list, and she'd put it on the forum since it was a convenient note spot from within the game. This had the added benefit that other people could suggest animals that she hadn't thought of too. But even with help, new animals were getting rarer and harder to find. They'd even returned to Oliva and collected a handful of hair from the terrifying wolverine on the mountain above it.
--
At the meeting of the sixth division the next morning, Danika was surprised by how much more she understood about what everyone was reporting.
Her four hours with Devon Yu vanished just as quickly as before though. He seemed very pleased by her new list of questions, but at the end of the session he asked, "Where are you currently on NPC reincarnation?"
Danika was forced to admit, "I really haven't had time to think about it much." She asked, "But kind of on that subject, if I summon the traveling merchant to ask him things, does it create a new instance of him, or remove one from the game?"
Devon Yu blinked at her and asked, "How is that the same subject? I think it creates an extra instance?"
"Well, both things use up more system resources?" Danika answered vaguely. "And he's one of the NPCs who is always active and can revive, so I assume he already has some sort of old memory filtering that discards extra stuff?"
"You might also talk to Lin Hao directly," Devon Yu suggested.
His phrasing triggered the realization. "Oh my god," Danika gasped. "The merchant was based off Lin Hao?"
Devon gave her another puzzled look and asked, "Don't they look nearly identical?"
"No!" Danika protested. "I mean, okay, similar height and build and they both have asian features…" she trailed off. "They seem totally different though," she protested weakly. The more she compared the two faces in her head the less certain she became.
Devon Yu chuckled and whispered conspiratorially, "The Jade Emperor too, although he's the taller and prettier version."
"Shouldn't the Emperor have resembled you?" Danika questioned. "Lin Hao said you designed the core of the game?"
Devon gestured to his face of obvious northern European descent and asked laughingly, "Wouldn't I make the most ridiculous looking oriental Emperor?" Danika shrugged helplessly and he grinned and said, "Besides, I'm just the engineer who says I need a piece that does this and fits here, Lin Hao and the rest of the seventh are the real craftsmen who turned my imaginary world into something I can touch. The elemental forces behind the world you might say. They deserve all the NPC faces that resemble them that are scattered throughout the Empire, it's really full of their own children after all."