Aishin grinned at the NPC girl and replied, "Only if you can tell us where to find any unusual animals around here for ZipZing's quest?"
The girl actually did tell them about three different animals that ZipZing hadn't collected from yet. When they were leaving, Danika glanced back at the harp. She really suspected that she and Aishin had encountered it because she'd been asking about instruments while she'd been working. But since other players had been involved first, she couldn't be certain.
A beam of sunlight seemed to be highlighting the harp, even though it was probably only that it stood in the center of the clearing. A ghost of the harp's music teased her ears as a breeze blew through the clearing, and then she turned and caught up with Aishin.
There was something enchanting about the haunted harp that went beyond its actual powers within the game, but the man whose curiosity had been piqued first was leaving without any sign of hesitation. Only the little dragon who'd been ready to run away before seeing it kept glancing backward.
--
After the group meeting of the sixth the next morning, Danika asked her assistant about Brannigan Bard's bug reports. To her relief the little dragon reported cheerfully that the other reports had already been processed over night, and that Brannigan had received a one time Karma refund for his reincarnation, along with a warning against accepting future challenges from NPCs that clearly stated death as a consequence.
One of the pre-expansion species relocations came up on her job options that afternoon, and Danika snatched it up. If she knew the animal's location, she could cheat and ZipZing could go collect from it. She only had another 98 species to go out of her sometimes seemingly impossible quest.
The mountain goat that was called a Markhor looked like another possible candidate for a seed of truth in the world's fables about unicorns. It was not quite a unicorn, since it had two horns instead of one, but they were incredibly large spiraling horns. Otherwise its stocky body, cloven feet, and bearded face seemed like excellent material for the older illustrations of unicorns that Danika had seen.
Its description also included a hint of the purification associated with unicorns, in that it said that its spit was said to neutralize the poison of a snake bite. Of course, 'Living Jade Empire' had real unicorns too, but it was cool to learn about a creature that might have been a source of legends.
The goats needed a scrubby kind of forest and had lived only on one of the mountains that bordered the strip of desert at the edge of the map. Danika searched the Empire, with the help of her assistant, for a similar environment.
She was fairly certain that the mountain in the same range, but much farther north that she selected in the end, was close to the mountain that the snow leopard guardian's clan lived on. But it had almost all of the same species of trees and flowers and such, and seemed like the best alternate environment. Even though the Empire held 3 very large mountain ranges, it felt crowded with interesting creatures and plants.
It made Danika hope that there would be more expansions in the future that added even more territory, and thankful that she didn't have the Black Turtle's job. Keeping the populations of so many species in balance would not be an easy task.
Thinking of that, she had her assistant set a future notification to remind her to check on the migrated goats in a few days, or a couple of weeks within the game. Since the actual hours that passed within the game were the same as those outside the game, and it was only NPC growth that was sped up, she wasn't certain how long it would take to show the goat's impact on their new environment and vice versa.
Her next assignment was for a bug report that had apparently gone from support, to accounting, to the programming division, and then been bumped back up to design. Danika had chosen it because it had said it was for new tattoo designs, and she was curious, but she'd been rather startled by the number of notes that accompanied it after she selected it. After awhile she tracked it back to the original complaint submitted, which was actually startlingly simple, and not exactly asking for new tattoo designs.
Danika laughed and began working out how the system could transfer the tattoo and makeup options that it offered to colored fur patterns in those characters whose skin was covered in hair. When she finished, Ranma or MatchlessMinion would have been able to buy a butterfly pattern or eyeliner as easily as Kit or Aishin might have.
Thinking of Kit made her think of the upcoming guild creation, and wonder how her friend was doing.
--
That night Aishin was too busy to play, but he still messaged with her. The snow leopard cub carried the many messages cheerfully though. Danika figured that he was enjoying how much traveling ZipZing was doing.
Aishin sent: "I finally convinced my dad to play this morning, but I had to reset the VR system so he can use it, because what finally made him take interest was me telling him about that harp!"
Danika replied: "Why did the harp especially interest him?"
Awhile later Aishin's answer arrived: "I told him about how it had promised to teach a bard to master the harp, and now he wants to know if it's going to teach real skill with it, or just a game skill. I told him that most of the skills in game are actually experienced pretty accurately in the VR version. So now he actually finally wants to try it. LOL"
Danika asked: "Does that mean he's currently working his way through the beginner's vale?"
Aishin replied: "Yeah. I told him to take his time because I probably won't have time to play much for another couple of days."
Danika sent back more questions: "What's his name? Should I send him a friend request? You remembered to tell him that the harp only reacts to bards right?" She almost added, "Have you told him we're dating?" but then she realized that it left her open to the return question, and she obviously hadn't told her father.
Aishin took even longer to reply and said only: "I don't know, I'll ask, and yeah."
After she logged out, she didn't go right to sleep, instead she kind of guiltily composed a message for the people marked as family in her contacts. She rewrote it a dozen times before sending it. The final message described her new job, her amazement over being able to help continue the creation of her favorite game, and one line at the end that said: "I've also started dating someone, he's four years younger than I am, but he's really great."