These fragments once filled a week between volumes, but I'm posting it as one chapter here. Thanks for reading.

 

--1

 

Shinichi checked for messages before Underneath left the airport and its reliable data connection. He grinned as he read the short message from Danika: "I hope your day is good. It looks nice out here."

She obviously didn't know what she should say, but she was trying. The night before she'd announced her intent to find the King of Cats, without cheating and looking up his location while at work. Shinichi suspected that as a god level NPC the cat could be in multiple places at once, or none.

He checked his in-game messages too, and there was one from Ryullusion and one from the system. He frowned and checked the one from the system first.

Naoki leaned over his shoulder and said uncomfortably close to his ear, "Oh, the way you were grinning and then frowning, I figured that you were talking to your little dragon. You're being invited to the familiar's association? I didn't know this game had associations."

"It's a guild, that's their name, 'The Familiar's Association'," Shinichi replied dryly.

Naoki stood straight and instructed, "Oh, just ignore it then."

"Yeah," Shinichi agreed. He hesitated though. The message hadn't been sent by a player, and he was curious. After a moment he took a screenshot and sent it to Danika.

 

-- 2

 

Danika had her celestial dragon assistant look up the guild that Shinichi had been invited to join. All but one of the members were NPCs, and the player was a relatively low level cat witch.

She actually recognized several of the NPC members. Arthur the Witch's Toad, Maou the Wizard's Cat, and Frederick the Farrier's Mule were all characters that she'd met within the game. There were more than a hundred of them.

She called up the traveling merchant and asked what he knew about the familiar's association, but even to her work avatar, he would only say, "It's a very exclusive group. Only familiars can join, and they don't accept player quests."

Danika wrote back to Shinichi: "Would you lose anything by trying to accept the invitation? Since you still have to wait a week between memberships, wouldn't it just give you an error? I'm pretty curious about it now."

He didn't reply until the next morning, but when he did he texted: "My character is now a member of two guilds, it didn't revoke my membership in Endless Song, and I can't seem to speak of, or send you messages about The Familiar's Association within the game."

Danika replied without thinking: "It sounds like The Way of the Cat. Is the first rule of the Association not to talk about the Association?"

Shinichi answered immediately, "Third rule, and if I'm going to keep breaking it like this, you have to tell me about the Way too! :P "

 

-- 3

 

Shinichi read the Familiar Association's message board while they waited for the shuttle.

Arthur the Witch's Toad had written: "Maou, why do you keep sending me these non-magic path novices? Keep it up and I'll start sending you pixies!"

Maou the Wizard's Cat had replied: "Sure, pixies are easy compared to these novice mages I keep having to guide."

Edith the Gardener's Willow wrote: "My master never takes me on quests anymore. :( And I haven't had a novice to play with for weeks! Someone send me a novice!"

After a bit of thought, Shinichi wrote: "How do you send novices to each other? I've been a familiar for about a year and don't have any skill like that?"

Arthur was the only one who answered before the shuttle arrived, and he replied: "Tsk, of course not, Aishin the Fairy Dragon's Human. Your master doesn't even follow a path. You have to learn to guide your own master before you can guide novices."

Shinichi asked suspiciously: "What do you think I should be guiding her to do? She seems to enjoy doing things her own way, and that seems good enough to me."

When he checked back later, dozens of familiars had replied. Some encouraged supporting your master's choices, others argued that most masters were clueless about the world and needed someone to guide and care for them. They all agreed that no matter how much independence you allowed them, you had to set boundaries and enforce them, or your master would get themselves into no end of trouble.

One comment, that seemed particularly similar to his own experiences with ZipZing, read: "And I look away for a few minutes, and next thing you know she's been eaten by another giant frog!"

 

-- 4

 

Danika was puzzled. The list of available jobs had nothing on it related to the expansion. Or at least, that's how it appeared at first. After working through a few of them, she realized that it was more like the expansion had affected the entire Empire a lot more than she'd imagined it would.

Pirates were complaining that there weren't enough legitimate ocean going shipping concerns in the west to support them in adventuring away from the northern ocean and the river industries. Gryphons were complaining about being fed lizards and bugs when they carried their riders into the desert. Pixies and etains were complaining that the gnomes and nadias had more territory, and small wars were breaking out along the borders.

When she went to consult with Ariana, Ariana said, "It's happening all over. There are even glassworks in the eastern mountains that are complaining that there are no available portal enchanters to make new portals so that they can access desert sand, and also that a great deal of the sand that people are trying to sell them is of inferior quality. How can sand be inferior quality!?"

"Maybe it's too mixed? I mean, we basically had the gods melt the contents of several mountains and then grind them up right?" Danika suggested after a moment. "But are there really that many players who are pirates, gryphons, and glass makers?"

"I'm not sure about the others, but there are tons of pirate players. It's seen as being 'cool', and I can understand why they're anxious to move into the new ocean. They've mostly been crowded up along the northern coast and they are always complaining that it's easier to find another pirate ship than even a fishing boat." Ariana explained.

"Did you have to add artificial shipping routes? It seems like it would be easier to carry things by portals, especially if there's a lot of piracy?" Danika questioned.

Ariana looked at her curiously and asked, "Haven't you noticed? That's where most of the player courier quests come in. Most NPCs can't use portals. Even pets don't really go through them, they just teleport to the new location of their player."

"Oh," Danika said a bit blankly. It was obvious when it was pointed out.

"But we did have to add some er, magically system generated shipments to the shipping industry to keep them going despite the heavy piracy. We used to have the same kinds of problems with assassins, in the beta. We kept winding up with monarchies made up of children, until we expanded the available NPC quests to include petty domestic arguments, civic bounties, and pest exterminations, instead of just the major political assassinations that had originally been imagined," Ariana complained.

 

-- 5

 

Shinichi understood that these gatherings were part of the publicity that Underneath needed, but at times like this, he just wanted to run away. 

The woman pressed closer and burbled cheerfully, "Oh wow! You really are so tall! I thought that your height had been exaggerated by the filming angles!"

A stern looking man came up behind her and took her arm while scolding her, "Dear, you can't monopolize one of the artists like this. It makes it look like you're flirting with him."

The woman turned and asked coyly, "What if I am?"

The man frowned at her and said sternly, "It is not allowed."

She pouted outrageously, and then met his eyes. A moment later she flounced off, tossing a casual, "Fine!" over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry for the little scene," the man told Shinichi wryly, "but it's a husband's job to guide and set boundaries for his wife."

Shinichi laughed, and then clapped a hand over his mouth. After a moment he said, "Sorry, you just sounded like you were a familiar."

The man gave him a puzzled look, and then his face cleared and he said, "Ah, yes, of course you would find me familiar. I have given many speeches that have been broadcast worldwide." He smiled and shook Shinichi's hand and then walked away.

Shinichi shook his head. He didn't think that Danika would like that concept of a husband, since she already thought he was bossy at times. He tried to imagine her flirting with anyone, and cringed. Then he laughed. A few people glanced at him and he hurried over to where Toshi was obviously trying to escape a conversation with a surprisingly spry old woman.

 

-- 6

 

Danika was surprised when Shinichi texted her: "Let's go on a date tonight after your shift ends, as Aishin and ZipZing?"

She agreed, of course, but she was really curious about what he planned to do.

ZipZing waited for Aishin in Shrubbery's garden, which was still acting as their temporary guild hall. Shrubbery and Kit both logged on before Aishin, but they were still in the desert, and Danika assured them both that she didn't need them to return to the capital with her.

When Aishin finally showed up and teleported to her, she teased him while he drank his health potion, "I didn't expect this to be such a realistic date? Be warned that if I'm footing the bill, we can't spend more than six coin."

He laughed, and then snatched her out of the air and kissed her nose. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be late."

"I know," she agreed quickly. 

He added teasingly, "And I'm surprised that you're so wealthy tonight?"

She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Don't worry, it'll be a cheap date, we're doing a new repeatable quest that Nao1 keeps getting invited to do," he explained.

Danika spent most of the quest/date laughing. They were turned into identical honey bees and sent to steal pollen from prize winning flowers for an unscrupulous gardener. The reward was only a handful of candied rose petals, but she could see why it had gotten a reputation as a romantic quest, as they darted around among the flowers.

 

-- 7

 

The game forums were full of information trading, as people discovered more about the new southwestern desert and northwestern ocean. Somewhat to Danika's surprise, the link between the oasis turtles and the water supply was quickly discovered.

Endless Song was partially responsible, since once she'd mentioned the pyramid temple, her guildmates had rushed over to it to join in the great looting. The easiest stashes of spatially enchanted lamps and other enchanted items there had been found, but it didn't seem like the entrance to the labyrinth had.

She chuckled over the excitement about the musically explosive desert plants that fired their seeds into the desert in orchestrated volleys. It didn't look like anyone had found the valley of the wind songs yet though.

A fierce sand cat tribe took over one of the oasis' designed for future player habitation nearest the eastern edge of the desert and the next closest was destroyed when its water system was disrupted by adventurers. So the first fully player designed settlement looked like it was going to be set deeper into the desert than Danika and the other members of the sixth had expected.

SaltySiamese reported that Justin the Grey's guild was focusing on gaining control of the southern coast. They were having trouble building the series of towers they planned, because every major construction resource seemed to be directed toward Nabatea at the moment.

Danika was puzzled. She was pretty sure that with her own selection of cantrips that she could construct sand castles. She tested it that evening, and if she used her aqua stone to make the sand wet, she could use her shape cantrip. She didn't have any way to magically dry it, so she had to keep maintaining it and asked Saaki to use his flames to toast it. That turned out better than she'd expected, since she was able to hold it in place while he melted the surface slightly.

She had Aishin take a screenshot of the little glazed sand castle for her, and sent it to SaltySiamese with the description of how she'd constructed it, along with the question: "With some of the top wizards in the game in that guild, can't they just conjure up the materials and magically assemble the towers kind of like this?"