I truly hated my job. It was worse than grinding quests to level up because there was no progression.

I’d been slaving away in my little corner desk for three years and for what? I’d unlocked health insurance after six months, but beyond that there weren’t really any perks other than getting paid for my hours.

But I knew for a fact that Jeremy, the guy I the desk next to me, was going to get promoted long before me despite the fact he’d worked for the company for half as long and he made more errors. He was lazy and obnoxious, but he turned up every day and he had the benefit of being related to my boss, so I was at the bottom of the pile. I also suspected he was paid more than me, from the comments I’d heard by the watercooler. Bloody nepotism.

When lunch finally rolled around, I walked down to the hairdresser and told her exactly what I wanted, then sat down and started going through Nightfall’s notes.

I’d never had an experimental haircut before, always scared to risk going below ponytail length in case it turned out dreadful.

But I wanted to look like the person I felt like, and shedding the long hair I’d always hidden behind felt like an important step towards being who I wanted to become.

My mother had always praised my long hair, called it feminine. Encouraged me that boys would love it and lamented that it would have been perfect if only it was blonde. In hindsight, it was ironic that I’d internalized her advice when she had gone through four failed marriages by the time I was out of home.

I set my jaw and focused on my phone instead. I wasn’t going to let that bother me anymore. I had another whole world I belonged in, and it was counting on me.

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I scrolled through all the excerpts Nightfall had pulled and compared his notes to James’ sketches. The most pressing problem I could see was the distinct lack of farms. There were quest-giving farmlets outside most of the towns, but they were barely large enough to sustain the family that lived there. And the daily dire-wolf attacks probably didn’t help matters either.

It was no wonder innkeepers like Kira used cut price spoiled meat from suspect sources in their budget stews.

If we wanted to create a world that would sustain itself, we’d have to work out the ratio of food to population and get the AI generator to incorporate it somehow. We’d either have to adapt the map or extend it to either side. And we’d have to be careful with our calculations, or we could create a whole new Earth with a whole new set of environmental instability.

I started drafting my notes in a new email and jotting down a list of things we would need to research.

“All done! What do you think?”

I looked in the mirror and grinned, feeling a burst of confidence.

“You’re a miracle worker! Thank you!” I beamed at her.

I felt that same sense of relief I’d felt so long ago in Lily’s outfitters when she’d cast the customisation spell on me, and I’d reduced my breasts. Looking at myself, I felt like me.

Blade’s face jumped into my mind, and I thought about him all the way back to work. He was an angsty guy and not particularly likeable, but it was kind of understandable when he hated the way he looked so much. A feliskin with human ears, the antithesis to a cat-girl - or nekokin, as they were called in the Fantasy Dungeons world.

I wondered why the body modification spells wouldn’t work on him. They could change size and shape, but apparently not key features of your species.

Even if we figured out how to get everyone fed, there were still a lot of problems we’d have to find solutions for.

I returned to my desk, ignoring Jeremy’s leering comments about my haircut, and got back into my spreadsheets.

I feared if we tried to fix everything, it could take years. Especially if I could only work on it during weekends and lunch breaks.