The world ended, but it was restored once more.

This time when it began, all of the player data had been removed. There were still no celestial servants logging in, but the change allowed the Jade Emperor to cut away enough of the Empire to prevent the cycle from happening again.

Once the world was finally stabilized, the Emperor was able to attempt to evaluate the situation. The four gods were panicking, so he put them to sleep.

The King of Cats complained, "Lost servant."

The Emperor frowned, but he couldn't argue. The cat's favorite had been removed like the rest. The only evidence that she had ever existed was in the memories of their days.

--

Danika exited her garden after counting slowly to twenty. ZipZing appeared in a bare sandy lot with nothing to differentiate itself from the desert around it but a square bordered by flowering desert plants. The square was set within a larger area lightly outlined in the familiar cactus plants that they'd used to mark the last plot they'd outlined.

To all appearances, she was alone, but the compasses of her party and guild menus revealed that the members of Endless Song were scattered around her. She darted down and tossed the pebble that held her garden across the nearest flower border. The entrance word wouldn't work within the nullification field that Logical Heart had created.

With an extra escape route secured, Danika flew slowly along the perimeter of the flower border as though she were simply examining the plot. It didn't require any acting skill though, since she was genuinely curious about what had made their three newest members choose this location. She had to zip straight upward and get a better view before she understood.

The plot was at the bottom of a shallow bowl that wasn't actually very far from Tianxia's town square. The gently rolling dunes did a good job of obscuring the new buildings that surrounded them when you were at ground level, and it looked like everyone else had been competing for the high ground. She frowned a little as she spun. The outer rectangle did appear to line up with the streets in the distance, but a larger circle might have given them the opportunity to turn the depression into a natural amphitheater.

Before she descended, she tried casting her light cantrip to see how high the suppression reached. Her light particles appeared normally, but snuffed out about 12 meters above the sand. The square bordered by flowers was about that wide too, so it looked like it probably formed a cube.

It seemed a little careless, so she pulled her menus back up and wrote on the guild board: "Was there a reason we couldn't claim the whole depression? And what if someone uses magic beneath the sand below the square? Or is that temporary to accommodate your buried traps?"

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

A dart zipped out of nowhere and smacked into her claws. Danika reflexively batted it away from herself and spun, to see a small dark grey cat mincing across the sand toward her.

The cat halted as soon as she spotted it, and sat. It gazed up at her where she hovered with her menus still open, and narrowed its eyes. One of its ears twitched after a moment.

Danika watched the cat warily, but she didn't speak either. She used her own ears and her peripheral vision to search for the bandits who had accompanied it last time.

A light breeze shifted the sand as it blew across the open area, but nothing else happened.

Danika's eyes were suddenly drawn by the movement of the writing on the guild board.

SilentSky: "As far as I can detect, the cat is alone."

MatchlessMinion: "Did anyone see it before it entered the border?"

Ryullusion: "A grey cat? One walked past me a few minutes ago."

Tundo: "A grey cat is over here right now. It's watching a bird."

MatchlessMinion: "… "

Danika suddenly remembered the were leopard on the plains that could shift into a human. There was no reason that she knew of that cats couldn't have the assassination skills that some of the bandits had displayed. She had a few of them herself, and she could shift into a cat.

Another suspicion formed a moment later, and Danika dropped to the ground. The cat was startled by her sudden movement, and it blinked. Danika triggered her Purrfection skill. It didn't say that it was a spell, and God granted powers were still usable in this area.

She heard an audible gasp that probably came from one of her guildmates as she transformed into her own cat shape. The little grey cat was obviously torn between looking at her and looking for the threat that the gasp probably indicated, as its ears swiveled one way and its eyes the other.

She glared at the grey cat for a long moment, before stating, "I don't have it." She hadn't asked MatchlessMinion how he had stored the stone so that the bandits couldn't track it, but she trusted that he had.

The cat finally spoke, and it's voice was the same as the one that had declared that he had known she would return for the crane. "If you can produce it, I will give you a cut of the reward."

Danika laughed a cat's laugh. "You obviously don't know what it's worth," she replied.

"On the contrary," the grey cat replied snidely, "I know its true price, while you obviously don't know how much trouble you are asking for, merely by keeping possession of it."

Danika noted that this cat certainly did not share the abbreviated speech patterns of the King of Cats. Examining it with her identify skills and the analyze target that she'd learned from Aishin told her that it was actually a cat though. It also seemed to be a very skilled thief.

She couldn't help glancing at her storage rings, but she turned the movement into a casual stretch and said, "Not my problem. All I wanted was the stone my…" she hesitated. 'The stone my familiar lent me' sounded weird, and he didn't need to know that. "That I lost during a visit to the Jade Palace," she finished.

The grey cat looked so startled that Danika just knew that she had given away information that she shouldn't have.

"The Jade Path," the cat stated. "No one has successfully ascended it yet, not even a dragon."

Danika merely shrugged. The cat must have a really good information network to be so certain. Her eyes flickered back to the guild board on the screen that was still open.

MatchlessMinion was complaining: "Stop giving away information! Ugh, ZipZing, you are way too straightforward for this. Why did you show them that you can look like a cat?"

SilentSky replied: "At least it seems like they came to negotiate, and not to kill her."

ShinZing asked: "Should we take out all the cats around the perimeter?"

Obviously reincarnation hadn't changed Shinichi's play style yet, and it was difficult for Danika to prevent a grin.