The merchant laughed and asked, "We have a deal then?"
"Yeah," Danika agreed.
He adjusted his pack and said, "Then let's set off right away, time waits for no man or fairy dragon." He turned and strode quickly away from the olive tree.
She blinked and then zipped after him.
--
The merchant left her in the oak riddled forest a couple of hours later with the parting words, "I'll return to check on your progress every few days ZipZing. Good luck!"
The afternoon sun shone brightly, and cute little forest birds hopped and fluttered about on their personal tasks, with a variety of cheerful noises. Danika pulled out the pouch the witch had returned to her and peeked inside. There were still 3 moonflower seed pods laying in the bottom.
She moved the seed pods into her food pouch, where each one took up an entire inventory slot. But after preparing her inventory and casting her first plant growth, she discovered that it would be a while before the acorns were actually ready to harvest. She could currently only bring one to ⅔ of maturity.
Thankfully food was abundant in this forest. Spring strawberries colonized the forest floor along with other edible plants that her identify skill showed her. Since she could keep her energy replenishing, she stored the pouch and simply concentrated on casting growth at as many acorn buds as she could as quickly as possible.
Her growth spell soon leveled up again and the acorns were catapulted to ¾ of the way to maturity instead. The activity soon became an endless grind despite the beautiful scenery, and Danika wasn't regretful when the sandman twinkled into existence before her. She'd slowed down for a moment and fallen asleep with a half eaten strawberry clutched in one claw.
--
In the morning Danika pulled herself heavily out of the VR-medi pod when her alarm woke her. She fumbled through her morning routine with her eyes half-closed. Fortunately there was nothing complicated during the first hour of her shift.
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By the time she had worked her way through one particularly tricky section later in the morning she was ready to open "Living Jade Empire" on her phone and continue casting at acorns on the side.
She was surprised to find that her Growth Phase quest had completed while she slept. It didn't reward her as generously as hatching had. It only gave her 10 additional Karma, but she was still pleased.
Her avatar on her phone didn't appear noticeably different, but she found herself looking forward to being able to log back into the VR version of the game that night and see what had changed.
Danika wondered suddenly how Aishin had guessed that she was a little plump and had green eyes from such a simple representation. Curiously, she zoomed her view in on herself. ZipZing's eyes in this form were more green than her own, but she had to admit that the plump cheeks and green eyes did make the little dragon face resemble her own, a bit.
She continued her work with her phone in her lap, casting at acorns every time she had a spare moment. Aishin logged in for a little while during the afternoon, and after dithering for a moment, she sent him a brief, "hi."
It was her first time using the in-game messaging system, and Danika laughed when the animation showed a small grey bird swooping in on ZipZing and flying away with a scrap of parchment in its claws.
Aishin's reply arrived a moment later, held in the toes of a small bat. It said simply: "Hey."
There was no further communication between them, but Aishin hadn't disbanded the party, and while he was online Danika could see his status bars and a compass that showed his direction from her.
--
Danika estimated that she'd probably only cast at around 1,200 acorns by the time her shift ended. She hadn't been counting them individually, but she doubted that her estimate was very far off. However, she had no idea how many she'd cast growth on the night before, so when she reconnected through the VR-medi pod, she took a few minutes zipping around the surprisingly large patch of forest with partially matured acorns visibly dangling on the branches.
Danika was surprised to find that she'd already cast her spell on around a hundred trees worth of acorns, which meant that at about 60 acorns per large tree, she was already a bit over halfway through preparing 10,000 acorns. She felt more optimistic about being able to complete the quest within the next five days.
Unfortunately, she wasn't able to examine ZipZing's matured appearance in her VR form other than by craning her head around to look at her own wings and examining her claws. From those portions of herself, she decided that she probably looked exactly as she had in the beginner's vale.
Danika worked busily. Every few minutes she dropped to the forest floor and scrounged for food, and then resumed her progress. The raw berries and edible leaves didn't boost her energy as much as the prepared foods had, but since they were freely available she was able to alternate between eating and casting and make steady progress.
Everything was going well, when she came face to face with her first squirrel.
Danika froze when the branch quivered beneath the impact of the squirrel's landing. It landed on the branch inches from where she hovered over her most recent acorn target. The squirrel glanced at her and then examined the acorn she'd just cast growth at closely.
Danika started to back away, and the squirrel's head snapped up and it bared its teeth at her. It made a sort of chattering noise. She looked around nervously, to find that there were dozens of large red-brown squirrels with fluffy ear tips visible in the trees she'd visited earlier.
“Shoo," she said experimentally, and waved her claws toward it.
The squirrel gave her a look of disgust.