Danika looked at Kit's curious gaze and tried to change the topic. "ShinZing's legendary sword, Durandel, broke after he tried to cut the dragon open. And then it vanished like a resurrected corpse."
"Congratulations," Silvam said quickly.
"Congratulations?" Danika asked.
"A legendary item will only break when it is no longer needed," Jade explained.
"Okay…" Danika replied uncertainly.
Silvam looked at her confused expression, and the curious faces of the others, and then explained briefly, "The items act as a crutch, or if needed, a curse."
A small silence greeted his explanation, until the Smith said, "Ah, I get it, I think. Having the game give you an overpowered item would kind of hobble most people's development, because they would rely on it too much."
Silvam looked as though she wanted to argue, but she just shrugged after a moment.
Jade corrected the Smith cheerfully, "It shouldn't hobble them because the powers should suit their character. They are very specifically matched to encourage the player to develop a…"
Silvam interrupted, "They don't need to be told about the mechanics behind the story lines Jade. Try to limit your assistance to what the Traveling Merchant might offer."
Danika blinked, as she realized that Jade was playing the game from his development mode, without the usual restrictions on his conversation that he would have as the Emperor, Merchant, or in his demo, the Corcillum. She was almost surprised that Lin Hao hadn't logged out and shut off the phone when he realized, but then, maybe he'd understood that from the beginning.
"Ah, yeah, you don't have to tell us anything about the game that shouldn't be general knowledge," Shrubbery agreed helpfully.
Danika nodded quickly.
The Smith shrugged, and then turned to Kit and said questioningly, "ZipZing told me that you'd changed your class, but it still says you're a Druid on my screen?"
Danika felt like the conversation was leaping from one frying pan to the next, but Kit replied calmly and honestly, "I can disguise my information with my Self Presentation skill. Since I still have mostly Druid skills, that one seems like the most logical one to show."
The Smith shot Kit a sharp look and pulled up the menu interface, but Kit had already glanced back toward Jade and Silvam. Danika was startled when the dwarf said, "Not my style, but it certainly looks very versatile. If you still retain the ability to shift into a full-blooded dragon, I'd like to offer you a job!"
"Oh," Kit turned back to the Smith with an expression of surprise, "you think that I could help with the airship?"
Her pleased expression made Danika feel a little guilty about trying to prevent the Smith from imposing on her before. She pulled up her own menus and checked for information on the skill, and found that all three of the skills the Jade Empress had started with were now listed in the documentation. There were even notes about which paths had a chance of obtaining them, although Empress wasn't on the list.
"Hey Jade, do you want to join Endless Song?" MatchlessMinion asked cheerfully.
"No," Silvam said sharply.
At the same time, Jade replied, "Yes."
Danika wasn't sure why all of them turned to look at her instead of Shrubbery, whose title of Coordinator was equal to her own Captain title. She hovered nervously as Silvam gave a short sharp negative shake of her head. MatchlessMinion looked expectant, and Jade simply had the neutral pleasant face of a mobile character.
Kit turned away from the Smith and said encouragingly to Jade, "It would be fun to have you join. We usually have something available to work on, but our guild quests are generally not too time consuming."
She turned to add another expectant gaze to weigh upon ZipZing, while Silvam seemed to be trying to communicate silently with her eyes. Danika hesitated. She really could think of half a dozen reasons that having Jade join them could cause trouble, but she thought that it might also limit the damage he could do if they could watch out for him a little. "Alright," she agreed.
"No," Silvam said again, at the same time.
"Um…" Danika mumbled. "Maybe…"
"Why not? What's wrong with it?" Kit asked Silvam.
"Jade is…" Silvam began and then looked at the Smith. The Smith looked back with an expression of avid curiosity. "…still learning a lot of things," she finished weakly.
"I am not sure that I am learning very much through the mobile interface," Jade argued.
Kit volunteered, "Add me as a friend Jade. I have used several interfaces now, and everyone had to help me with a lot of things in the beginning, so I won't laugh at your difficulties."
"Alright," Jade agreed cheerfully.
Silvam covered her face with one hand and sighed. "I guess he may as well join," she grumbled.
Shrubbery glanced at ZipZing and then stepped forward and said, "Welcome to endless Song Jade."
"You know, I think if I worked on a game, I'd have dozens of test accounts on every kind of device that I could test it from," MatchlessMinion commented suddenly. "I never hear ZipZing mentioning extra accounts either though. Is there some kind of restriction?"
"Interface testing is done by a different division," Silvam replied quickly.
Jade said, "You agreed to use only one account when you created your character, but some people create multiple accounts anyway. Their characters do not usually have very good luck."
MatchlessMinion opened his mouth, and then glanced at Silvam and ZipZing and simply said, "Oh."
Danika grinned at him, and noticed the time on the menu window she had left open. "Underneath should be playing already, are we done here?"
"Oh, the wife is finally taking interest?" Shrubbery teased.
Danika somehow felt that it would be worse to admit that she was just using the concert as a time marker for the chores she wanted to get finished than to agree, so she simply shrugged.
"I think it would be interesting," Jade volunteered.
"I'm not getting you access to that," Silvam said sharply.
"But," Jade began.
"You'll be able to watch their concert here in the game soon," MatchlessMinion announced.
"I think I saw an advertisement about that," the Smith commented. "But I don't remember when it's supposed to happen."
"I'm not surprised. You even launched your ship in the middle of the first concert Endless Song hosted in the City of Sand," the chinchillamin replied sourly. "Tomorrow we have our own bards play. Next weekend we'll have a string quartet, which is sort of ours, on Saturday. Sunday we'll have the most popular bard in the game."
Danika interrupted the listing to ask a little incredulously, "Sea Song Tione is singing on stage? How will that work if translation spells can't be used?"
"Most popular bardic player," the chinchillamin corrected. "But that's a good question I guess. I'll have to ask Logical Heart if we can get around that, because that would actually be pretty cool wouldn't it? Anyway, the next weekend Underneath will play on both days."
"The Sandman may become more popular for awhile," Jade commented cheerfully.
"Why… oh, wow, that's true," Danika replied with amazement.
"Um, share?" Shrubbery suggested.
"The Sandman will let you replay scenes from your character's past from different perspectives," Danika explained. "So anyone who watches a concert within the game sort of gets unlimited sandy replay, if they realize that they can do that?"
Kit said regretfully, "Now I'm sorry that I couldn't finish in time to watch the Sugar Wings, I'll have to try it with Ryullusion's performance tomorrow."
"If ZipZing could share her dreams with us, then we could watch the one from tonight," Shrubbery pointed out.
They both turned toward ZipZing with hopeful expressions. Danika looked at Silvam, and the elf rolled her eyes dramatically.
"Not currently possible," Danika declared with a grin. She was still laughing as she logged out.