Danika gazed at the flames with astonishment, and then dropped quickly to the ground. She used her claws to dig into the ground with her dragon strength and tossed as many little clods of earth as she could at the fire. Too many fragments of vegetation were mixed in and the amount that she was able to hold in her small claws was not enough to smother the growing flame.

After a moment she remembered the squirrel's aqua gem, and hastily tapped her storage ring and pulled out her pouch of holding. She quickly removed the shiny blue gem, before stowing the pouch again. She launched herself into the air with it, and said, "aqua."

Danika was a little disappointed when water didn't fountain from the gem and instantly drown the fire. But the water dripped between her claws in a steady trickle, and so she darted closer to the flames and tried to target the outer edges of the small fire. She circled the fire until she felt a little dizzy, although maybe that was from breathing the noxious smoke as the fire hissed and sputtered.

Eventually the fire died out and only some ash and smoke remained. Danika continued to hold the gemstone over the increasingly damp patch of burned vegetation for quite awhile, before finally telling it, "desino."

Danika returned the gem to her inventory, before looking up at the sky to see that she'd already been playing for several hours. She decided that instead of continuing to play with fire, she would harvest the plump radishes that she'd grown. She had to stand on the ground and pull each one up with her dragon strength. Then she used the stone's water to wash each one, before she stuffed them into the embroidered pouch of holding.

She left behind a handful of plants that she hoped would have gone to seed by the time she finished work the next day.

--

During her lunch break the next day, she received a long reply from SaltySiamese that read: "Sorry. I can see that you've even gained 4 levels since yesterday, and it sounds like you've been building up a pretty good stealth type character this time, but we already have a thief. Unfortunately we really need some kind of area damage for this quest. Also, we think it would take several days to meet up, because we've already traveled quite a ways south of the human capital, so everyone decided that it isn't worth it to backtrack and try to meet up with you. I'm sorry."

At first Danika felt hurt by the rejection despite the apologies, and she replied a little angrily with the first thing that popped to mind: "If you want area damage, you should talk to a wizard called Justin the Grey!" But later in the afternoon she ruefully acknowledged that most of her skills did seem to be based around evading danger, rather than causing damage.

When her shift ended, the two week long leveling of the 20 accounts was completed. She had taken one day off for the moonflower quest, but decided to give herself the next day off to play and rest.

After connecting to the game again through the VR-medi pod, the first thing Danika did was send SaltySiamese another message: "Sorry. A more useful idea, if you have enough coin, might be to buy scrolls or artifacts that would produce area damage. I haven't seen any yet, but I think the existence of enchanted items and scrolls that can summon NPCs should mean that such things exist?"

SaltySiamese's messenger cat returned a few minutes later to find Danika hovering over the place she'd left her seed radishes growing. The message read: "No need! Your first suggestion was great! Thanks so much! He accepted my friend request right away even though my level is so much lower, and agreed to help us! He even said he should catch up to us before midnight!"

Danika wished that she could throw the message, and dismissed it instead with an angry tap. She couldn't even explain why she felt so upset. SaltySiamese had at least thought of her first, even if she and her friends had decided that ZipZing probably couldn't help them. Justin may have instantly rejected her friend request, tried to bind her, and almost killed her accidently, but he'd also gifted her a free healing item, and offered to escort her to safer territory.

Danika's feelings just weren't being logical. She glared at SaltySiamese's name on her friend list. It listed her as an elven archer, with an accumulated level of 55. Her current location was 'Emberton', which, when Danika flicked over to the game site and examined the map south of the central human capital, was about as far south as Oliva was east.

Danika sighed, and reminded herself that she didn't have to always be logical, and that anger and irritation were normal human reactions. She closed her menus, and as the last of her anger drained away it was replaced by frustrated tears. Her seed radishes were gone, and in their place were some sort of small rodent burrows. Her wings were sparkling with lavender sparks, but she couldn't appreciate it.

She had just decided that she might as well log off for the night, when Aishin's little messenger bat arrived and waited for her to take its message. Danika accepted the message with a sigh. It read: "What are you up to tomorrow? I should be free all day, and I've got a quest you might like?"

"I have nothing planned, but is it ok to take a novice along? I was about to log off for the night, but I could summon the merchant to have him escort me out of the forest first," Danika replied promptly. Her little grey bird flitted off cheerfully.

Aishin's bat was back a moment later. "You have a summon scroll for the merchant? Don't use it!!!" Danika read the message with a puzzled frown. She wondered what Aishin thought would happen if she used the scroll.

Another bat fluttered up, it was struggling to carry a much larger message. This one read: "And of course it's ok, unless you think the people who got to play the beta should only be playing with other beta players. Only people who started immediately after the game officially opened and play all day have leveled their skills enough to even reach Proficient. The areas around the popular racial capitals are really crowded right now. Wait there and I'll come get you. Those scrolls are selling for a minimum of 25,000."

"Why would it be worth so much? He just gave it to me, I didn't even have to buy it?" Danika sent.

"You can't buy them from the traveling merchant, and no one I've heard of has been able to create them. So far people have only received them during quests involving him, and those seem to be pretty rare," Aishin returned.