Data Dragon Danika

Another system notification popped, warning them that they only had one minute left. Danika exited the garden again and looked around. She could see MatchlessMinion leading one more villager, and his cat. Shrubbery appeared from behind a corner that Danika hadn"t even realized could hide such a tall character a moment later.

"I think that"s all of them!" Shrubbery reported while MatchlessMinion coaxed the last villager he"d brought into entering the stone s.p.a.ce. "I"ll see you after the update," she said, and logged out.

Little Tortoise agreed from his flat stone, "I think that"s everyone." He went offline a moment later, and so did MatchlessMinion.

Danika hurriedly scribbled a message to the snow leopard that said, "The oracle said the King will save the lucky ones, please save as many as you can."

She slapped the stone"s harness back on and was just about logged out when she saw Mench Frest staggering toward her, loaded with packs and bags of all sizes. There wasn"t anything she could do about it as her screen went blank.

--

Danika tried logging in to her work account, but a notification popped up that said: "System under maintenance."

She checked her phone and tried asking her a.s.sistant, but the app said that the server could not be reached. After a moment she opened the VR-medi pod and lowered herself to the floor. She stretched before scooting over to find a snack.

This late at night, or early in the morning, there was barely a sound from moving vehicles outside, or from nearby apartments. She would have felt sleepy if she hadn"t felt so worried about what was going on with the "Living Jade Empire" server. She was kind of afraid that the world really had ended, and that she"d missed something that she could have done to prevent it.

She thought about texting Shinichi, but she didn"t want to accidentally wake him just to have someone to fret at, and wasn"t sure what his sleep schedule would be currently.

It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn"t even checked on the other guild members after the notice had appeared, and she felt a bit guilty. She couldn"t think of anything that she could have done for them, but she felt that a good guild leader would have at least have thought of them earlier and checked.

--

Just before the half hour the system announcements had predicted had finished, Danika received both an email notification and her LJECD a.s.sistant activated and told her seriously, "Danika Belova, last among her rank, serving the Jade Emperor in the construction of the Living Jade Empire, Devon Yu has sent an announcement to all members of the sixth division. Would you like me to read it?"

"Yes!" Danika agreed quickly while opening the email.

"Do not panic, everything is under control! Lin Hao discovered that the system load was unexpectedly high when the update was pushed to the Empire. He forced all players to log out for two bells time as soon as the world changing event was triggered, and then shut down all outside access for a few minutes to ensure that none of it was external. It triggered early because a group of players in the dwarven capital met the event conditions before our scheduled trigger. When the game reopens you can continue as planned," read her a.s.sistant. "There is a private addendum: P.S. Danika, Lin Hao says, "thanks for letting me know"."

The email was almost exactly the same as the announcement that the dragon had read. It lacked only the addendum from Lin Hao, and it included a schedule reminder that showed her next shift, which was still scheduled for her usual time on Monday morning.

Danika abandoned her dish and scooted back over to the VR-medi pod, pulled herself over the edge and hooked everything up, and waited for the game to connect.

When the game finally connected, she was greeted by the usual black notification screen, which announced:

"Living Jade Empire has expanded to the west! Explore new regions and discover new plants and animals!"

"The guild and reincarnation systems have also been updated. NPCs now have a chance to reincarnate, or in special circ.u.mstances even revive. Look forward to more complex interactions and the opportunity to meet those with memories of their past lives!"

"Adventurer reincarnation now provides the opportunity to carry something extra forward from your past life, you can choose between a skill, an item, or existing affinities. You will continue to carry forward your Karma balance, and gain additional Karma based on your past life, to begin your new one. Speed in learning a skill known to you in a past life will now be boosted by an amount proportional to your previous mastery."

"Reincarnation will now reset the resurrection counter, and these two will be separated into two counters. This may affect guild improvement costs, as the formulas have been altered, as listed below. The cost of improvements already underway will not be changed unless the guild leader chooses to have them recalculated. The wait time between guild membership transfers has been reduced to one week."

Danika dismissed the notification, expecting to have her character appear somewhere in the desert, since she"d been standing on a mountain that would have been destroyed, but instead, the Sandman"s golden sands swirled up around her and she saw a scene. The dwarven capital, Nabatea, appeared before her, and she zoomed in, and into the inner city, and further in, to the King"s hall. Worried dwarves spoke in whispers that were translated into the common tongue.

The dwarves warned that the Empire was unstable, the very fabric of the world was straining. The scene transferred to a similar one in the elven territories, with many elven mayors gathered to discuss the same problem. The scene transferred again and the gnomes mourned the deaths of too many relatives recently, again, and a dolphin pod muttered about blood washing out of the mountains. Then the view zoomed out and she floated high above the Empire, looking down at the old configuration.

The golden sands carried her back to Nabatea, and cleared, and for a moment Danika was disoriented as she tried to move and discovered that her character did not exist. Her viewpoint was forced upward, and she realized that even though everything had switched to color, she was still viewing a video scene. The Phoenix flew out of the sun.

Danika watched the G.o.ds argue. At first it followed the story outline perfectly, as the twins raged against the Jade Emperor"s preferential treatment of player souls. Then things got a little weird, the Turtle joined the Twins in outrage against the slaughter in the dwarven wars that shifted the balance of species. He released the water of what seemed like the entire northern ocean as the Phoenix released her fires from the south.

The Tiger got angry about their impertinence in interfering in his territory and slammed his paws down on either side of his mountains, creating an earthquake that shook the central continent, and creating the first mark outside the existing map as land sprang into existence beneath his toes on the western side of his territory.

The Dragon called all the celestial dragons into service, as well as the dragons that carried the storms within her control and a great wind swept the world from the east, shoving the other G.o.ds and their sweeping powers west. Only the Tiger did not move, with his feet firmly planted in the Empire.

A green mist rose from the Empire, restoring and renewing everything it touched, and the script resumed as the Jade Emperor appeared beside the Tiger"s toes. He was tiny, human sized, and the other G.o.ds shrank down to his scale to argue with him.

The Jade Emperor said calmly, in a voice that rang across the entire world, "Your wish is granted, all of the people within the empire have been given souls. New lives have sprung up across the destruction you have laid down, and the Empire has expanded with vast unclaimed territories."

A silver cat wound between his feet, and sat neatly in the center of all the G.o.ds. He washed one ear casually and then announced clearly, "Not entirely unclaimed, I saved some of the old places to play with later."

The scene zoomed out, and out, until the whole map once more lay before her view. This time it was in brilliant living color, and the desert stretched to the southwest, but to the northwest the ocean stretched equally far and swept around the western edge of the desert to meet the southwestern sea. A new island continent shaped like the Tiger"s paw stood in the northwestern ocean, with tiny islands scattered out in a windswept chain.

After a moment she realized that more than the three mountains planned had been flattened. The fourth, where the dwarven racial capital city had stood, was also missing. But a paw print shaped range of hills rose from the sands to the west of where Nabatea had stood.

The Empire shimmered in her vision, and then dissolved.