Chapter 366: 9: Hooked

The Witch said cheerily, "I simply have an interest in receiving high quality wings from Endless Song, you won't owe me anything. Any of you with plant growth skills can help grow these berries, but only a witch will be able to use them to their full regenerative healing potential."

"Of course, she won't turn down a few extra wings," Arthur added sagely, as ZipZing accepted the pouch.

Danika nodded and mentally added an extra thousand to the total the quest required. Bad things happened to people who offended witches, and the game was founded on old stories.

She left the City of Cyan via the portal of return, and stored her stone space in the guild hall in Fogton as usual before logging out. She left the seeds inside it, in case Shinichi wanted to play while she was at work.

--

Danika hesitated in front of the bedroom door, and then moved quietly past it, keeping just outside of the sensor range so that it didn't open. She was certain that she'd taken long enough that Shinichi would already be asleep.

As the elevator platform carried her down to the first floor, she contemplated her available resources. 

The oven in the kitchen, that Shinichi and Ryuske had apparently barely used before her arrival had all of the usual functions and a number of fancier ones. If it had the ability to do the prep work, it could have prepared entire meals by itself. She could imagine a day in the future when an AI like her Celestial Dragon assistant could use robotic arms, or even a whole body, to do chores like that, even though it currently had difficulty interpreting pictures as spacial representations.

She worked as quietly as possible, and prepared the rolls full of dried fruit. Then she programmed the oven to control its humidity and temperature so that the rolls would be ready to start baking about half an hour before Shinichi woke up.

Shinichi's "we do the dishes" had actually meant, "we load them in the washer" at home. She knew from seeing him wash the dishes in her apartment that he was familiar with hand washing things, but it seemed that he'd grown accustomed to this luxury. She wondered how long it would take her.

The last thing she did was schedule a message for the morning, so that he'd know the rolls were there, if the scent of them baking wasn't enough. When she scooted into the bed beside him, he was sleeping so soundly that he didn't react until she pulled on the blanket. He still didn't seem to wake though, he just grabbed an edge and pulled them up tighter.

Danika made faces at him, despite knowing that he wouldn't see. It was a bit of work to get herself aligned against him with the blankets held down, but she finally got herself wriggled into a comfortably covered position and fell asleep.

--

Her reward for the effort of making Shinichi breakfast was a short, but happy, text message. There was another one from Naoki, and when she read the one from Kimitoshi, she knew that she was going to have to find something else for breakfast. She'd made a full dozen rolls, but it sounded like all five members of Underneath had gotten to eat them.

The morning meeting of the sixth division ended after its scheduled hour, making Danika feel like there must be some big project looming ahead that she just wasn't aware of yet. 

When she mentioned that to Ariana, the older woman grinned and scolded her, "Don't jinx us! Just enjoy this momentary peace! I guess that things have been pretty intense since you joined us though, if just a week of working a regular schedule is making you nervous."

Danika thought about it for a moment. She had joined just before the first expansion, the memory quest had turned into a full blown project, and then she'd helped build the update that had pretty much turned into another full expansion even though the map itself hadn't been enlarged again. There had been a few times when things settled back into routine, but this really was one of the longest so far.

"There really have been some hectic times." Danika agreed. "Maybe I'm just overthinking things and need to relax a bit."

Ariana winked at her, but the effect was spoiled a little when Danika's assistant popped up and announced, "The honorable celestial servant of the seventh class, Lin Hao, first among his rank, serving the Jade Emperor in the maintenance of the Living Jade Empire requests your presence Danika Belova."

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"Um, I'll just go see what's up then," Danika said nervously.

Ariana stuck her tongue out for a second and then said laughingly, "Be careful what you wish for?"

--

Lin Hao only waved a hand in greeting when Danika appeared in his workspace. Her own department head, Devon Yu, was standing beside him, and Danika suddenly felt certain that her feeling that there was a big project looming was about to be confirmed.

Devon turned and grinned at her. "Prepare to have your brain picked," he suggested cheerfully.

Danika asked warily, "What do you want to know?"

Lin Hao finally turned away from his screen and explained quickly, "We need to construct half a dozen game demos on one of the new servers. They need to be kept small enough to share the space, but be big enough and interesting enough to look really profitable if expanded. Basically, we need six new game storylines that can be build from the 'Living Jade Empire' framework."

"You got a server?" Danika asked excitedly. Lin Hao had complained that he needed one in order to be able to work with the copy of the game that they had rescued. The game company had been trying to research a pirated copy, and the system had evolved differently than the original because of the limitations of the system it had been kept on.

Lin Hao grinned at her triumphantly, but he only said cautiously, "Temporarily. Six months to produce demos on one, if at least one of them is deemed worthy of production, then I get to keep the server."

Devon Yu laughed and told her teasingly, "Plans to carry it off in his back pocket."

Lin Hao shrugged and flipped his hands at them. "We get to keep the server," he corrected himself.

"Don't you want experienced game designers then?" Danika asked doubtfully.

"What am I? A catfish?" Devon Yu asked with a hurt expression.

Danika blushed and said quickly, "I mean, what do you want me for?"

"Weird ideas," Devon replied sagely.

"Yeah," Lin Hao agreed wholeheartedly.

"Ha," Danika responded weakly.

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