Chapter 163: Mirrors and Flames
When her alarm went off, Danika stretched and smiled at her familiar kitten and dragon sticker. She pulled herself over the edge of the pod and dropped to her floor which had finished warming back up to its usual temperature overnight. She got dressed and carried her laundry down for pick up and was back in her room and ready in time for her grocery delivery to arrive.
She felt like it had been ages since she'd done her daily exercises and cooked a breakfast, but when she pulled herself back into the VR-medi pod to begin her series of adventures she was feeling pretty good.
The first repeatable quest location was in a town to the south of Windbur. On her way out of town she spotted Hearthdragon and waved to the other fairy dragon player. A very cute little house occupied the tree behind Hearthdragon, and Danika wondered if the other player had already become wealthy enough to buy a home. She surreptitiously activated her Analyze Target skill and saw that the fairy dragon wizard was already level 78, and that it was entirely possible that with a little luck had indeed been able to buy a house already.
On her way to the town of Ebonroot, Danika lucked across a couple of creatures that she didn't think she'd collected hair, tooth, scale or nail from. She stopped and checked her forum post and found a new suggestion someone had left that suggested she contact pet shops for more rare animals. Another person had left a list of marine animals that had teeth even if they didn't have hair or scales. She sent a message to the NPC dolphin bard, Sea Song Tione, after reading that one.
In Ebonroot, the repeatable quest that had been introduced during the Week of Hearts was not too difficult to find, but Danika wasn't certain that she'd be able to complete it alone. Fortunately, as she'd hoped, Hikaru counted as a partner. Having a pet was really helpful sometimes.
She and Hikaru were given a list of materials to collect. The one that took them the longest was collecting 20 buckets worth of ebony sand that had been discarded from the alluvial deposits in the nearby gemstone mine, and carrying it to the glass blower. Hikaru didn't actually carry any sand, but the firefly cheerfully accompanied ZipZing, who carried all the sand needed in the embroidered pouch that could hold an unlimited amount of any one thing.
One of the skills that Danika had eventually been able to teach Hikaru was her Assimilation skill. But Hikaru hadn't yet learned any skills on its own, until they watched the glass maker create the surfaces for the mirrors. When the soft chime of a skill learned rang out, Danika pulled up her menus, but couldn't see any change at first. When she finally looked at Hikaru's page, she felt a little shocked.
She eyed her firefly doubtfully, but Hikaru flew in its usual lazy circles with no sign that it had suddenly learned to cut glass. It didn't seem like it was a skill that a firefly would use often either, but Danika was really curious about how Hikaru would be able to cut glass.
After a dozen discs of glass were cut from the enchanted cylinder, that the dark sand had been magically melted and blown into shape of, they were polished. First they were ground against a soft stone, and then they were ground with paste. Danika suspected that like the olive oil processing the witch had done, the processes had been sped up a great deal within the game.
The discs of smooth dark enchanted glass were then set into wooden frames. Another enchantment was cast upon each pair of mirrors, using the double winged seeds that Danika had been instructed to gather from a Sugar Maple, the eyes of a crayfish, and diamond dust.
When the six pairs of magically connected mirrors were completed, Danika and Hikaru were gifted a pair of the small dark mirrors. Presumably the others would be sold, but the NPC was rather vague about what would happen to them when Danika asked.
Each pair of mirrors acted like, well, magic mirrors. Or in modern terms, they could be described as limited video chat devices that could only talk to each other. They had been designed as toys for couples, but Danika could easily think of a dozen times in her adventures within "Living Jade Empire" when the pair of mirrors would have been extremely useful.
After leaving Ebonroot, Danika traveled farther south and west. As MatchlessMinion had described, the farther south she went, the hotter it got. ZipZing didn't suffer the heat the way his plush furry form had, because she didn't lose health, but she felt that the air was rather suffocatingly warm. Hikaru seemed quite happy though.
The next repeatable quest on her list was in the Etain capital city, and the city was built into the cauldron of an active volcano. It sounded like a very picturesque city if you were a fire elemental, but Danika wondered how dangerous it was going to be, until she arrived.
The city was gorgeous and the lava had been tamed by some kind of elemental magic. There were falls and fountains and canals of liquid flame running through stone channels that didn't seem to be dissolved by the molten rock that they carried. There were also broad streets, wide enough for humans to travel upon comfortably despite the tiny stature of the elemental residents, and low protective barriers between the beautiful displays of tamed lava and the rest of the city.
The repeatable quest was for a messenger animal, a scarlet peacock butterfly. The butterfly apparently didn't actually live within the cauldron city, but the NPC who would direct you to the fields of Firespike flowers where their caterpillars could be found worked in a local pet shop.
Danika also took advantage of her visit to the pet shop to take the advice of the helpful person from the forums, and paid a hefty, but not unmanageable sum to collect hair, claws and scales from another dozen new animals. They refused to let her have any teeth, as none of their animals could regrow lost teeth. Danika tried to argue that the animals could be healed, but the pet shop shopkeeper adamantly refused.
The fields of bright red Firespike flowers among the cone shaped mountains of the southern volcanic range were beautiful, and Danika regretted that she didn't have screenshots unlocked. She had enough Karma left that she could have paid the tribute to the Twin Goddesses of Memory, but she wanted to keep a reserve for emergency uses of her restore prayer, as well as maintaining a reserve in case she needed to revive someday.
The bright red and black messenger butterfly was also very pretty, and Danika was very tempted to replace the snow leopard cub for awhile.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
gusdefrog
gusdefrog 505 Library Stars. 532 Stones of Power when I slept. \(o*~*o)/ Stones by: hearthdragon, EmbersDragon, Celowz, BismuthBorealis, lady_qiqi, quicksilv, Win3519, Zethuron, Saanad, Stranger941, Scynthea, Forlan, qwertyzard, Noveltea, Dreamheart_Dragon, Maliciousdemise, Morbit, Aadarm, Province, Reconmaster, KoNO, etwallis, lissu, ashmike9, DreamyDragonlord, Shadowcrafter, Ghostinshade, Miralin, Zhen_Xin, qwerty01139, Freyrrose, Geofrost, Switchoff, Sullagod, sw_junk, issomesmo, MOFD, Illyanna1 ...
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