Chapter 231: 57: In Essence

The busy day working on the expansion area made Danika wonder again how they had ever managed to push her memories quest through in one day. When she said that aloud to Ariana, the experienced designer snickered. "As complex as that was, it was only one quest. This is an area almost ¼ the size of the current 'Living Jade Empire'.

"Yeah, I guess that's true," Danika agreed. "I wonder if people will think too much of the map is desert after it's implemented?"

Takahashi said quietly, "You can't try to build anything to please everyone, it's impossible. If we do a good job some people will love it, and others will hate it."

"We've done a good job if some people hate it?" Danika asked doubtfully. 

"Indeed," the older designer agreed complacently. "If you have evoked a strong emotion in someone, you have succeeded in conveying the essence of your work and creating something that spoke to them." 

"One way or another," Ariana agreed laughingly. "I can't say that deserts are something I've really enjoyed visiting." 

--

After work Danika was tempted to skip her exercises and rush straight into the game to visit the druid. She did hurry through them in a slapdash manner, but she did them.

She pulled herself into the VR-medi pod and discovered that her hands were trembling when she tried to make the connections. She took a deep breath and tried to remember if she'd eaten. "Did I skip lunch too?" she asked aloud.

"You did," her celestial dragon assistant replied from her phone speakers. "Do you want to know how many calories you ate for breakfast?"

Danika pulled herself back over the edge of the pod and slid to the floor. "How do you even know that?" she asked suspiciously. 

"You were on your phone the entire time you were eating," her assistant replied primly. "I calculate that my visual recognition of the content and calorie estimate is at least 90% accurate."

"You have a library of food photos?" Danika asked. 

"Yes, members of the seventh have uploaded over 37 million foods to the culinary catalogue," her assistant replied cheerfully. 

Danika pulled out a few quick foods and the last fresh fruit. She'd never guessed that so much of a programmer's job might look like data entry. "Can you access and repeat the grocery order I placed two weeks ago?" she asked as she ate. 

"You don't want to duplicate the order you placed last week?" her assistant asked doubtfully.

"Nope," Danika confirmed. 

"Very well, I have placed your order," her assistant replied. And then it added, "Aishin just messaged ZipZing."

Danika didn't ask what he'd said. She stuffed the rest into her mouth and scooted back over to the VR-medi pod. A few minutes later Aishin's little bat messenger dropped a message into her little clawed hand, while Aishin himself asked, "Would it be weird if I came over and had breakfast with you before your shift starts?" 

His message simply said: "I'm done! I'll be home soon." 

"Won't you have to get up really early? You don't want to sleep in?" she questioned.

He gave her the quick shrug of an emote, and replied, "We leave at 4am on Monday, so I might as well just stay with the same sort of schedule as usual?" 

"I don't see how you survive on the 4 to 6 hours of sleep that it seems like you must usually get," she replied as they traveled to the portal that lead to Tamworth. Aishin hadn't asked where they were going, but he lead the way.

He flashed her a grin and told her, "You'll laugh if I tell you and my image will be destroyed?"

"Now I really want to know!?" she insisted. "I won't laugh! 

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"I take a long nap after lunch like an old man, whenever I can," he told her seriously. 

She tried not to giggle as she pictured it. Aishin looked at the scrunched expression on her little dragon face and told her, "Go ahead and laugh, you look so silly when you're trying not to."

She grinned at him, but she didn't laugh, she asked, "Does Nao1 draw on your face?"

Aishin laughed briefly and told her, "Not since SilentSky helped me get revenge about three years ago."

She suspected that her eyes were sparkling like MatchlessMinion's might when she asked, "What did you do?! 

-- 

They had passed through the elven capital and followed the Whereabouts compass to the grove of angry trees surrounding his strangely compressed, or expanded territory by the time Aishin finished telling her about Nao1's first experience with temporary tattoos.

The fairy dragon and the assassin crossed the border without hesitation. The rolling field stretched out before them as the trees faded into the distance. Unlike when they'd cautiously searched for him through the game's night, they moved at top speed across the landscape, startling grazing herds and small animals in the undergrowth. 

Hikaru zipped along almost invisibly behind them. The tiny beetle wasn't very visible in the bright daytime and Danika wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't kept teleporting right in front of her every time it fell too far behind. ZipZing's evasion skill triggered every time collision was almost imminent.

When they reached the little dell where the druid's oddly sharp little cottage lay, Mark Bounds appeared to be waiting for them. His brilliant blue eyes looked sharp as he surveyed Aishin, and twinkled with amusement as they returned to ZipZing. "I'm not sure I've ever had anyone besides a celestial dragon cross my boundaries in such quick succession before," the druid said with amusement.

"I have collected a thousand hair, teeth, scales and nails!" Danika announced excitedly.

"I don't know whether to say that you are quick or slow, since it took you well over half a year, but gathering a hair, scale, tooth or nail from a thousand different living creatures is indeed an accomplishment. Well done," the druid replied with a nod. 

"Half a year!?" Danika gasped. 

The druid arched a long white eyebrow at her and Aishin said calmly, "Well, it was almost two months in real time." 

"Oh, right," she felt silly for being surprised when she thought about it.

"And it's very convenient that tonight the moon should be full," Mark Bounds added a little dryly, "so you'll be able to practice right away."

Danika nodded and began pulling out the pouches and bags full of animal essence containing items. Many of the things she usually carried were sitting on the seats in her garden so that she could carry them all at once. She handed them to the white haired druid with a hopeful expression.

Mark Bounds shook his head over the collection and clicked his tongue. "How messy. It's going to be like playing a game of roulette," he commented.

"You didn't say anything about organizing them," Danika objected.

The druid looked up and flashed a grin at her, "Oh, it won't trouble me at all. It's your problem." After inspecting them all he handed them back.

"What's wrong?" Danika asked anxiously. She gave Aishin a worried glance, but he only shrugged.

"Don't worry. You did well enough," Mark Bounds said reassuringly. "I'll teach you the skill as soon as the moon rises."

"Does it work if the moon is up during the daytime?" Aishin asked curiously. 

The ageless elven druid replied cordially, "Only at higher levels. The essence of the light is too difficult for beginners to find when there is light everywhere."

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