Kaori began to backtrack her train of thought and realized that she still needed something to encourage her underlings to thrive. She also needed to figure out how they would go about the changing of roles without being able to abuse it. Also, she had to figure out how she would minimize the cost of any such system. In a rare facepalm moment, she realized that she could solve both of the former problems and completely reverse the third all in the same stroke.
Kaori called out to her gathered underlings for attention. Almost as one, they turned to regard her with looks of rapt attention. “I have a couple of announcements and then I think we will do something rather fun, yes? Okay first, I am putting a ban on the destruction of souls for any reason without consulting me first. I figure that one would be pretty obvious to all of you and fairly self-explanatory but let me tell you why I bring it up. We are going to have a lot of hirelings that will be working under us soon and they may have seen souls destroyed in their own world. Let all the new recruits know that that’s off limits in this world or at least not without extremes of justification.”
“Next, I am not going to tie any of my deities down to being either good or evil. That’s not to say that you can be both at once but you will be able to switch. This will be one of several personally provided prizes for doing a good job. Another set of things that will be available is a lot of the powers in the catalog. I will provide a copy of the catalog to each of you but I’m likely going to remove the worship point cost and reset them to reflect a rewards-based system. I don’t have to spell it out to most of you, the prices in the catalog will be lower but they are my cost. I’m going to be making a share off of your efforts.”
“I presume that all of you know that you will be getting paid in worship points and I think I will do that on an annual basis. Not that I’m yet sure what the time system is like in this system or if it even follows the same principles of science that earth did. I have my doubts since there isn’t even any weather on this world yet. Getting back on track, you will have money as it were but what to spend it on? I will provide a number of items that you can buy once you gather enough worship points.”
“I will be paying everyone based on the importance of their job just like on earth. However, some jobs won’t be fit for gathering points personally. Evil deities will likely be less likely to see worship than good. Deities in charge of animals probably won’t get much praise. All the points gathered will be distributed to everyone by their gob title not by what they personally gathered. Therefore as a means of motivation, the items that one can purchase will be distributed to those who perform their duties the best in their designated roles.”
“One of the rewards for performing your job well will be the ability to change roles. Think of them as promotions and job swaps. You can buy your way into a different role after saving up enough. You can also purchase the ability to secure your title as a certain deity. Then also, you can save up for powers from the catalog. I will think up a bunch more items that you will all be offered to purchase with your reserve of worship points as time goes on. In this way I hope to encourage everyone to work to your fullest and make this a positive if competitive work place.”
When she was done, there was a momentary pause where the angels, demons, and Yaju all looked back and forth between each other and her with growing grins. Abruptly, the whole treehouse erupted in jubilant cheers and questions. It was so loud and chaotic that Kaori had to quiet and calm them before she could begin to tell what any of them were saying. It took a couple hours of work to work out a system for everyone and then she began their promotions to godhood.
Kaori asked all of the demons to take a form reminiscent of one of the intelligent races, especially if they wanted to represent that race. Yaju asked if he could be excused from representing the elves or people of the forest as he called them and everyone broke out in good-natured peals of laughter. That brought his situation to Kaori’s mind.
After thinking it over for a second, Kaori focused her intent and found that she could break his curse at any time and told him so. It made her wonder if the poor dear had been trapped the whole time in a form that he could have broken at any time prior to her being appointed to replace him. her musing was interrupted a moment later when she noticed Einoro looking terribly forlorn and Yaju noticing her looked conflicted. Kaori then cleared her throat. “I also think I could modify the curse so that it was a more at will form change. In fact, I think I could even throw in a full wolf form if you wanted.”
Einoro was practically bouncing and Yaju just chuckled before turning from his angelic lover to Kaori with a big smile. “I would… We would be most grateful Fujiwara-sama. Maybe it could even be something that we shared in common?”
At his words, Einoro gasped and turned tearful pleading eyes to her. Both of them bowed and she couldn’t help but chuckle. “Let me see what I can do.”
She looked at the patterning of the curse and understood it on a fundamental level and realized it was much like a program. She studied the program and realized that it was something that was very easily transmitted by bite or scratch. That had to go. She then looked at it’s adaptability and found that it could easily mold itself to most any mortal creature but was only tenuously sticking to Yaju because he wasn’t a mortal creature anymore. She rewrote the wording of that part to better fit a being of godly standing and moved on to the next part.
The part about transformation didn’t exist, unlike the legends from earth. This curse was one that would leave the person permanently stuck as a werewolf if oh wait, there it was. It was tied to a part about the moon and kaori realized that this world, not having a moon, had left the curse in a locked state. She rewrote the condition of transformation to being at will and then added in a transformation to the final form as at will. Apparently, the wolf was the final form after a person lost their will to resist the curse. It was probably meant to break the person’s psyche by having them commit atrocities they couldn’t live with. She checked and found that there was a phrasing for the temperament of a “Rabid or Insane” wolf in there. She rewrote that part and had it being merely the sensory perceptive form of a wolf instead. When she finished with the rewrite of the curse, Kaori was rather startled to see that Yaju’s fur had gone from a grey and brown to being a lustrous and gleaming silver and gold.
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With her having confirmed that the curse was responsible for Yaju’s condemnation, Kaori looked briefly through his early memories and found the night in question and the following punishments and put a censor over them. There was no call for him to continue suffering for something that wasn’t his doing. She then copied the curse and transferred the copy to a very excited Einoro. The next few minutes was spent watching an excited pair of silver and gold wolves or werewolves flipping back and forth between forms in rapid succession and cavort around in various forms. Fortunately, the clothing they were both wearing transformed with them and it was quite odd seeing a wolf wearing a business suit or a dress. It was a rather surreal moment but the moment passed.
Kaori got them all back on track and reminded them that they still had a lot of work to do. Now that each of them were gods directly under her, she decided that it was time to implement the workplace attire and began bringing out multiple suits of black and white business attire. They began filing into the bathroom using it as a changing room and Kaori suspected that they only did do out of consideration for her sense of modesty. In short order, the whole room was filled with slightly glowing deities in business suits. It reminded Kaori of the office she used to work at until only days ago.
Kaori was considering starting the hiring process but then she realized that there was an issue. Her little home was crowded to capacity with just the thirteen of them in it. She couldn’t very well start piling people into the place when there wasn’t enough room for everyone now. Time to figure out the renovations. Kaori browsed her trusty book again and turned to the pages of features. There it was!
Kaori contemplated purchasing the ability to create an unlimited number of smaller side dimensions. The dimensions themselves were so much cheaper but not having the option to create new ones as she wished would likely bite her later even if she only needed the one right now. She was about to purchase it when something caught her eye. In the subtext, it stated that the dimensions were all tied to the planet and then went on to offer a link to ones tied to the deity. She found that it was in the powers section and was over five times as much as the one tied to planets. This one however could be tied to planets but could also be moved or connected to any other world the deity ran. With a slight groan, she pressed the purchase circle on the page and felt a sudden surge run through her as well as a flash of insight arriving in her mind.
Kaori sat stunned for a couple minutes while her subordinates tried to find out what was wrong with her. When she finished digesting all of the information slammed into her mind like a sledgehammer, she blinked several times then smiled at everyone around her. “Sorry to worry you, I’m fine now. It’s time to move shop.”
Kaori created a parallel space in her mind and then willed it into existence. The next moment, she shifted the treehouse there. Everyone could feel the sudden shift and looked around only to realize that everything outside had become a blank white vastness. Kaori stepped out of the door and floated there for several seconds pondering before waving her hand and the bottom of the white disappeared, replaced by a huge rectangle of polished cherry wood flooring.
Everybody then stepped out of the treehouse. The moment that Pross, who was the last one out, stepped onto the floor behind everyone else, the treehouse disappeared and only the items from inside it remained. The former angels, demons, and werewolf-dwarf turned and watched in fascination and curiosity as the walls and ceiling of the room they had just vacated dissolved from existence, leaving all the contents of the place floating in the air.
Then, with a wave of her hand, Kaori sent the four windows off to three sides of the floor where the small rounds of glass expanded to become massive partitioned windows. Each partitioned section was roughly thirty meters on a side and were all square. As they counted down the side, they found one hundred of these windows on the long side and seventy-five on each of the shorter ends.
The fourth piece of glass went up and became a ceiling that was one solid sheet and displayed a very impressive view of space with a representation of the sun in the center and to one side an enlarged representation of the planet below with a giant ring around the star to represent the orbit of the planet. Kaori then got a look of concentration followed by a look of surprise. “There are no other planets or anything else in the system. Very sloppy.”
Yaju was looking at the vista above him with awe and bafflement. When he heard Kaori’s proclamation, he got a look of utter confusion and Einoro began trying to explain how stars and planets work to him. The interplay garnered chuckles and fond looks from the rest of the group. Kaori got a few hints that the two were the subject mild jealousy as well. Everyone could tell that Einoro was thoroughly taken with Yaju, as if the fact that they were both sporting matching coats of silver and gold fur wasn’t enough evidence.
Kaori moved on from the momentary distraction to finish the job at hand. She then waved the door from its hovering position to the open side opposite the massive 300-meter set of windows. When it arrived at the edge of the flooring in front of the blank white vita beyond, it began flipping over to both sides, paradoxically, and leaving behind copies of itself. Some of the copies then began to expand in size. Some only grew a bit bigger but others kept expanding up to reach the full thirty meters to the ceiling above and some even began to shrink.
After the far wall was covered from one side to the other by doors in wave patterns going from bigger to smaller and back, all of the doors morphed to become a lot more ornate. The trim around the doors then expanded to fill the gaps above all the doors that didn’t reach the ceiling. The effect was an entire wall with a rippling wave of elaborate cream and chocolate colored doors trimmed in gold with fillagree and the wall above in white with the same decorative ivy patterned gold fillagree reaching all the way to a glass ceiling that looked like it was an expanse of space and the whole place lit by a diffuse light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
As the various deities turned from the spectacle of the door wall, they got a new surprise. Each of the 250 huge glass square panels of the windows now contained various views of the world or the tribes of elves from various different angles. Sitting in front of each of the huge squares of various vistas was a single desk of the classic managerial business style accompanied by what looked to be dozens of office chairs each. on the top of the closest desk they could see an inlay with what appeared to be a digital touchscreen keyboard.
Then the globes moved to the center of the vast open space in the center of the room. Once they stopped there, they both expanded to a size that just barely fit with only a meter to spare on top and bottom as they hovered in place. The now nearly thirty meter high globes began spinning slowly and half of each one was in slight shadow indicating which side was in the sunlight. There was also a glowing red censor above the elven villages.
While they were watching the globes form up, they began noticing bits from the bathroom and bedroom area fly by and burst into particles that flew further across the room. Then they realized that all the doors on the opposite wall had opened and the particles were breaking into dozens of streams that were going into each of the doors. Once all of the bathroom, bedroom, and living room items from the treehouse were gone and the last particles of them fled through the doors, the doors all slammed shut again.
Everybody turned to look at Kaori and she smiled again before she spoke. “Okay, now that we have the office sorted out, let’s get down to the hiring process.”