Jade was not depressed about having had to remove everything from the demo they had created together, despite his apparent worry before the decision had been made. He took the order to reduce his own system back to an empty core state much more calmly than Danika did. Even though she had known it was a possibility, she still mourned the loss of the solar system the demo team had created.
Jade was curious about why Danika was upset that he was not upset, but unconcerned about all of the virtual locations and NPCs that had been created and then deleted. She didn't know how to explain it to him, and wasn't sure that she should even try, since it was a good thing that he wasn't unhappy.
Lin Hao didn't seem to understand why Danika was upset either. He told her doubtfully, "I expected you to be really happy that Jade could keep running."
Devon Yu patted Danika's head sympathetically, and added, "We did well. We achieved our goal and won the resources to keep developing outside of the limits of 'Living Jade Empire'."
"I am happy about that," Danika insisted quickly.
Takahashi, Paul, and the others hadn't logged into the demo server for the dissolution. She had somehow expected that at least Takahashi would log in for it, but decided that maybe his love of the setting it had been designed to portray, was the reason he hadn't come to see what would be left of Jade's system after the reduction.
Jade tried to cheer her up by informing her, "Even though all non essential instances and functions have been removed, this time I am allowed to keep all of my libraries intact. And Lin Hao even re-added data from 'Living Jade Empire' that had been removed for the demo creation. Look!"
He looked toward the wall of the workspace, and it became a transparent view into a duplicate space that was quickly filled in with a grassy meadow beneath a blue sky, where a tiny herd of feathered elephants grazed beneath a single tree. Danika gazed at the scene questioningly, and then gasped as a pixie zipped out of the tree and snatched a feather from one of the little elephants.
"I have the data for the elemental races back, and so I can recreate all of their halfs again," Jade said with satisfaction. "I have even tried combining the species that Thimblepot was created from to compare the result with the original calculations, and it is very similar despite the differences that the random modifiers make."
A little flying pig that looked very much like their friend had when ZipZing first discovered the source of the trail of destruction, although Thimblepot was noticeably bigger now, crept cautiously out of the grass. It launched itself into the air and the little feathered elephants stampeded. The single tree was shaken hard enough to lose a branch, which somehow fell on a trajectory that allowed it to strike the little pig out of the air.
Danika winced sympathetically, and Jade removed the space he had just created with the same cheerful expression he had worn while producing it. He was still wearing the simplistic spacesuit that they'd designed for the demo and the Corcillum title. Unlike the original 'Jade Emperor', his name wasn't his title, although it was still simply 'Jade'. And like the other game cores, he wasn't a human despite his appearance, he was quite literally this system's first god who could create or destroy everything in existence here according to his own designs.
Lin Hao shook his head as the scene Jade had casually created and then destroyed disappeared, and said, "In addition to making Jade compatible with future system updates like the other cores, I've been thinking about how to build him human senses."
"Hasn't he been learning to see on his own?" Danika asked.
"Yeah, that was… interesting, when I got time to look at how he was doing it," Lin Hao agreed.
"It actually seems to work for most things within 'Living Jade Empire', at least through the mobile version," Devon pointed out.
"True," Lin Hao agreed. "But it isn't adaptable enough to call vision."
Jade objected, "The functions you have added share many similarities with the one I was creating to convert the data to words."
"Yes," Lin Hao agreed immediately and with some pride. "You were doing very well at sorting out relevant patterns."
"I like the navigation nixie you created for me," Devon told Jade. "It's still slow and a bit awkward, but with my nixie's help, I can actually play through the mobile version if I want to." He added to Danika, "He designed an assistant that will describe things verbally. It's kind of annoying, but since it's patterned after the assistant dragons it can adapt to its users preferences somewhat."
"Jade's nixies are already set up to be added to the original Empire with the next update," Lin Hao added.
"Nixies? Are they pixies?" Danika questioned.
"There is more than one kind, but each sense aside from hearing is patterned after one of the four elemental races," Jade explained. "They are small translucent versions that cannot actually interact with the world and aren't affected by gravity. The vision ones resemble etain, the tasting ones look like nadia, touch are like gnomes, and pixies smell."
"Hearing doesn't get one because subtitles are already available?" she speculated.
"That, and it would have to be patterned after a human for consistency," Lin Hao pointed out laughingly.
Danika blinked. "Not a dragon?"
"The Dragon's elemental race is the pixies," Devon reminded her. "And humans belong to the Jade Emperor, who is the fifth god."
"I would make them cats," Jade declared. "The Emperor is first among the gods, and when the God of Luck is reborn this time, he will be the proper sixth."
Lin Hao and Devon Yu both looked startled by this pronouncement, but it made sense to Danika and she agreed, "Cats are known for having good ears too."
--
When the God of Luck was born, he was very angry.
Since the Jade Emperor had told his wife when their child would arrive, Kit scheduled her play time that day so that Danika and Shrubbery would both have time to play during his arrival. Danika was a little startled when the baby was delivered to the Empress by a stork, since it meant that Kit currently had her settings restricted to a child-safe level. It made her wonder if Kit had still never done more than kiss her husband, but she didn't ask.
The red winged stork traded the swaddled baby for the 'round belly of its mum', and Kit's shape instantly returned to her former slender condition, as the stork flew away with what appeared to be a red glass marble in its beak.
Shrubbery whispered curiously, "Where is it taking the marble, and what does it use it for?"
"It is just a representation for the balance of souls, which the Turtle carried alone until the Twins began to guard the souls of all who reside within the Empire," the Jade Emperor explained in a normal tone of voice. "Now the Turtle decides who will receive the blessing of a child, and the Bird chooses its soul, in most cases."
The baby cried angrily.
The Emperor greeted the former King of Cats, his first child, and the last full God to arrive among the Gods of 'Living Jade Empire', with amused affection and told him, "I know, you decided everything yourself."
The baby stopped crying for a moment and then yelled even louder.
"What did you expect?" the Emperor asked serenely. "When you chose to become my child, you finally placed yourself fully within my domain."