Kaori smiled at the retreating back of the former demon come dwarven god. She was very happy that her underlings thought so much of her and even a little touched that they cared. However, she had a lot to do and unlike in her previous life, she really didn’t get tired so there was no real need to go to her apartment and rest. Instead, she closed her laptop and pushed it to the side of the desk before opening up the holographic maps above the top of her desk and peered at the amazing work that her teams were doing.
Already, there were multitudes of changes to the map that they had worked on before. Among them was the addition of hundreds or maybe thousands of floating islands in the skies of the world map. Then there were the swirling storms and charted airflow markers on the map. That along with the water flow channels were an amazing improvement over the broad boringly open sky of the current world.
When she zoomed in on the map, she was able to see a huge number of smaller changes to the environment. Ere was also a huge number of glowing red icons on the map when she got closer in. She could see that the middle of this large continent was supposed to be covered in a dense jungle but the largest portion of the plants were in a red color. There were floating icons above a lot of the patches and she realized that there was remarkably little biodiversity on the world below.
She was zooming in on some of the other parts of the jungle around one of the proposed starting locations of a tribe when she realized that somebody was again standing at her desk. Looking up, she saw that it was Tozenna and she gave the woman her full attention. “Sorry, you needed me for something? Go ahead.”
Tozenna looked a tad uncomfortable but decided to continue anyway. “Fujiwara-sama, I would first like to thank you for the opportunity you have given me, no all of us. The thing is, well…”
Kaori encouraged her. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, just say it and I promise not to be mad.”
Tozenna looked a little more relieved and kaori could almost swear she saw a blush on her green cheeks. She brushed a few stray vines over her slightly pointed ear before she continued. “I know that you just gave us our assignments as the counselors and all but I was just wondering… I’m just speaking for myself but I wouldn’t be surprised if others didn’t feel the same. *Finally, mustering her courage she said the thing on her mind in a rush so she would get it out* Fujiwara-sama, would you allow me to work on the plant-life on the planet? Please, I know you just set us aside to do a task but seeing everyone else busy makes me anxious!”
Kaori just had to blink for a few seconds and Tozenna had her eyes squeezed shut like she was expecting to be yelled at. “Uhm, sure. I don’t mind. In fact, I don’t mind if any of you want to help in making the world better. Actually, I was just looking at the jungles in these plans and I see that they need a lot of new plants. Want to sit down with me and help pick out plants to use?”
The dryad happily agreed and sat in the chair that kaori summoned for her. Apparently, only the first time you bought an artifact from the catalog counted against your worship points. It didn’t really matter though as the plants actually came in biome packs that could just be bought as a package deal. Kaori bought over a hundred different biome packs with Tozenna’s help. There were even mushroom biomes and a few that were bioluminescent! Kaori had a lot of fun looking through the catalog with the dryad woman.
Kaori stood and stretched a bit before turning to address the Dryad woman still peering intently at the map while moving it over illusory terrain and muttering to herself. “I think that I will leave the rest of the botanical decisions to you and the other teams. If you need any help feel free to ask for it and never forget that while I am your boss, I also hope to be your friend. Oh, and when you go, tell all of the other gods from the counseling section that I don’t mind them helping in any role they feel they can as long as they are open to hear the problems of others and help them through.”
Tozenna stood, bowed, and walked away with a huge smile and a bounce in her step. Kaori just smiled as she watched her make a bee-line for the small group of deities sitting to the side. Only one of the deities in that group was talking to anyone at the moment. Kaori sat and observed them for a few moments and shortly after Tozenna’s arrival, almost the whole group stood and went right to the groups working at the giant mapping tables.
With a smile, Kaori went back to perusing the work being done by checking the mirrored maps on her own desk. The islands had taken on a drastically different look but she noted that despite being a staggeringly good idea, all of the changes were blinking. Kaori guessed that this meant that either the ideas weren’t finalized or that the parties responsible weren’t sure if she would approve of them. Kaori wasn’t sure which of the two it was or even if it might not mean a third something instead and she didn’t want to have to constantly be under everyone’s elbows to find out what they were doing either.
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Kaori decided it was time to make a deific network interface. She collapsed the maps to a small corner of her desk and brought her laptop back. She sat in front of the laptop hashing out the rough concept of her network scheme for a few minutes and then prepared to get to the tedious part, programming the whole thing. Only, when she was about to start on the programming, she suddenly felt as though her knowledge of how to do it was taxed all at once. It was a very strange feeling. It felt like she had thousands of minds tackling the problem from every angle and all of them were drawing on overlapping parts of her brain and using overlapping parts of her memories all at the same time.
After the utterly bizarre feeling left her, Kaori staggered a bit and had to steady herself on the desk. Her mind was reeling and she wondered what had happened but then instantly knew the answer as though the memory had always been there. Her awesome godly mental powers had set to work on a problem that only she could do and brought it to completion. She looked numbly at her laptop and sure enough, there in the top corner of the page was a new icon that said Deific Network Interface Program.
Kaori blinked a few times before the realization fully settled into her. She had just done a couple week’s-worth of programming and trouble-shooting in a matter of seconds! The proof was there on her screen and in her mind. She could remember every step of how the program was created, programmed, vetted, fixed, and finalized and she knew exactly what it would do and how. She grinned to herself before tapping the icon to execute the program.
Suddenly, she saw an illusory podium next to her and knew where she wanted it. Kaori pointed to a spot in the midline of the huge office and roughly between the tables with the maps and the nearest set of desk and seats by the windows. She then judged that she didn’t like the spacing and moved the whole section of maps a bit farther from the giant globes. When she picked up the entire section of flooring with all of the deities still on it, several of them looked over at her in bemusement and the rest soon followed suit.
She slid a section of flooring backwards to fill the gap and then settled the tables in their new location. Looking at the tables, Kaori frowned a little bit. It wasn’t that the tables were a bad design, a little bulky for her taste but not bad, however, she still just didn’t like them. She settled on leaving the maps as giant floating 3D holograms in the air about waist height while moving the tables to the sides and splitting them into a lot of smaller, single-leg podiums so those working could set items on them while busy.
Looking around, Kaori took in the aesthetic of her office and winced. The wraparound windows were nice but since they were all showing scenes of the current happenings of the elven villages, they just looked like the huge computer monitors they were meant to be. The desks looked like modern imitations of classic office furniture and the chairs around them were the exact same mediocre office chairs she had gotten from her book. The giant holographic globes and maps occupying the center of the room clashed pretty badly with the quaint podium tables next to them as well. The sum total was a bizarre mixture of old and new with faux elegance.
Kaori decided that she had to change the designs of the various elements in the room. None of this bothered any of the other deities present, well, possibly the former angels and demons from earth but she was betting that they were too polite to say anything even if they did feel that way. She however, couldn’t stand the mish-mash and resolved to fix it. There wasn’t much to be done about the holographs or the space ceiling because those were functional elements. That meant she needed to find a balance of elegance in a space age theme. She then thought about a very old cartoon from America and shrugged it off with a grin before going back over her memories of it with a bit more interest. Space Family Jetson actually had a rather classy look all things considered and she knew with an impish grin what she had to do.
She started with the tables she had just made and had them float off the floor. Then Kaori shortened the leg of the podiums to a long tapering point and then added two flat floating rings around the last third of the points before settling them back to the same height as before. Several of the deities stood a bit away from the now floating pedestals and Kaori noted with pride a grin matching her own appear on a couple of her direct underlings.
The office chairs were next. She pulled them all up and gave their suspension system the same makeover as the podiums and left them black but swept the spike backwards a little. The seats weren’t spared though. She changed the overall shape of the seats to a vaguely egg shape with most of the shape missing and a soft cushion and back inside what was left. She topped the whole look by changing the material of the top from black plastic into the same tone of wood as the podium tables. She settled on that wood as the one that would be used throughout the office since it complimented the chocolate brown of the back wall trim and the color of the flooring very well.
Then she hit the desks and they saw the most dramatic change. They were all formerly large rectangular bricks of wood but the new models would look nothing like them. The desks all floated up, including Kaori’s, and then proceeded to change from rectangular to crescent shaped with even more work area. The top of each still kept the built-in keyboard but the type of wood changed to match the rest of the furniture and they all got a sleek sheet of lacquer over the wood top. The base of each changed into a strange almost draping curtain look made of wood with the insides of the folds painted cream and the tips resting on the floor. They were still the same height as before but now the whole office matched very well! And even better, all of it had a classy futuristic vibe that Kaori cherished from her early childhood.
Now to fix the last element, the Deific Network Node. After that, it was time to get everyone on the same page or network as it were.