Danika"s a.s.sistant held up a screen when she returned that showed her phone"s usual display. Seeing the little dragon holding it up at just the right angle for her to reach out and tap it, reminded her of a scene in "The Blue Sword", where a servant held up a mirror for the captive his king had brought home. Such exacting calculation for such a perfectly executed minor convenience.She selected the game application and moved ZipZing into her garden. Then she asked her a.s.sistant, "Did you really need access to my phone for this? Couldn"t you have accessed ZipZing directly the way you get her messages?"
"I can only access a device that can run the LJECD app. I have no way to access or control your character directly," the little celestial dragon replied promptly. "I can also only control your character through LJECD according to your instructions."
"What if I instruct you to finish my current quest?" Danika questioned.
The little dragon appeared to think for a long minute before replying, "There are too many variables. If you choose a destination I can navigate ZipZing to it, and then you can instruct me on what you want her to do next."
Danika decided that that meant she could only give simple instructions. She tried asking the little dragon to rotate through a short list of ZipZing"s skills every time her energy was full, and it agreed that that much was possible. She smiled. ZipZing was about to start leveling up faster than she"d ever been able to before.
There was a non expansion job available that looked more like one of the usual troubleshooting requests, so Danika selected that one first. It was another system generated player race. The little half human half slug was… disgusting. It made her wonder what the player"s goal had been, so she sorted back to the original report.
That wasn"t very informative, so she asked the system to replay what it had recorded for the fifteen minutes prior to the report being placed. The distressed character complained bitterly to his mentor, "What do you mean I can"t stick to anything? I"m not supposed to be slimy, I"m supposed to be able to climb anything!"
Danika considered the slug human cross idea again. The system generated character looked like some sort of horrible swamp monster from a movie created in the previous century. It"s racial abilities were Secrete Mucus and See Smell, which explained the two tentacles on its head.
Seeing smells sounded interesting enough that Danika left that and the tentacle antenna in place. She replaced the mucus production with Sticky Grip, and then redesigned the physical appearance to conform more to a standard human shape, but retaining the translucent and moist looking flesh.
When she finished she wasn"t certain that the gelatinous humanoid was less creepy, since now it looked like an alien from a bad science fiction movie instead, but at least it"s abilities matched that players expectations better. She did check just in case anyone else had ever chosen a slug human cross before, but so far it was only the one person.
Danika asked her a.s.sistant, "Can I give the character who submitted this bug an extra skill for being the first, like Lin Hao did for ZipZing?"
"Only Lin Hao, the King of Cats, or one of the five G.o.ds may grant a character Strong Luck, but you can grant them any non celestial skill if your solution is accepted," her a.s.sistant explained helpfully.
Danika thought about it for a while, and then requested to give the first Slugmin the skill Blend, which worked much like ZipZing"s color cantrip, but automatically matched whatever target that the character was in contact with and only affected the character itself. She didn"t know of any real slugs that could change their own colors, but it seemed like a fun and useful gift.
--
Danika posted on the guild board that she could now run the game on the side while working, after seeing the first couple of messages pop up, so that people wouldn"t think she was ignoring them. MatchlessMinion congratulated her on having such a cushy job that she could play during work.
ZipZing had gained a couple of levels in skills by the time she finished her extended shift. It might be silly, but she was pretty happy about it and did her after-work exercises cheerfully.
The first time her phone spoke to her in her a.s.sistant dragon"s voice, it startled her. But she had half expected it so she didn"t do anything but smile wryly. Her a.s.sistant merely asked if it should add her exercises to her daily schedule.
When she logged into the game after a quick supper, Kit was also on for her hour a day, and Danika met up with her. They did one of the new guild quests together, and Kit told her, "With the week long quest going I feel like there aren"t quite enough guild quests available for us all to be able to partic.i.p.ate?"
"Maybe? But I feel like it"s better to have too few than make us all feel pressured isn"t it?" Danika asked.
"I guess that"s true," Kit agreed.
After Kit went to work Danika zipped back to the nearest portal and spent the Karma she"d just earned on portalling her way to the southeast. The warm jungles there were supposed to be home to the next short list of animals that she"d never collected from.
When Aishin logged in and exited the stone s.p.a.ce garden on her back, she and her pet firefly were lighting up the dark jungle night, in search of the elusive and nocturnal Aye-Aye lemur.
Danika thought that the name sounded rather piratical, and lemurs were usually cute, so she was looking forward to finding it. She greeted Aishin with, "You"re just in time to help find a cute creature if you"ve got time."
He flashed her a grin that let her know that he was still on his phone and not home yet. "Sure, I have time. Done for today."
After awhile spent tracking life forms and shining lights on them, Aishin asked, "Would it be worth hiring someone with ranger skills to find it faster?"
Danika zipped forward and huffed a breath at the moth her latest light cantrip had spotlighted. She caught it in her little clawed hands and identified it before answering. "I don"t know, we are still finding more animals here like this that I haven"t collected from."
"True," he agreed. "We can just take our time."
Danika grinned at him. "It"s hard to relax though, I only need 16 more out of the thousand now," she declared as she plucked a few hairs from the moth, which looked more like an old leaf. The moth woke up and struggled frantically until she released it.
"Sweet!" Aishin exclaimed in that oddly flat tone.
She looked at the powder dusting her little clawed hands as her light faded out again. "I think the powder from its wings is made of scales, but I don"t know how to save it."
Aishin pulled out a dark scarf and handed it to her. "Wipe it off on that if you want to try to keep it," he instructed.
"Eh, I already have a few hairs though," she pointed out.
"Ok, let"s keep looking then," he replied evenly.