Auntie toasts the VRMMORPG

When Flora came home, she found not only her apartment but also the church furnished.

'I raised Robby good enough to put couches on the right place but not good enough to tell his Mama when he gets engaged!'

Flora was still fuming about the lack of communication.

'A nice designing spree should raise my mood.' 

But first, she needed to upgrade her AI's. Flora bought every available AI add-on and update in the Cetviwos Shop.

Then she added another A-rated AI with the nearly same configuration as Aidan.

Name: Haidan. (She resisted the sudden urge to call it Bob again.)

Trait 1: Loyal. + 5 OV hacking resistance / affinity.

Trait 2: Respectful. Holds owner in high esteem.

Trait 3: Practical. Choose the least resources intensive approach.

Flora dumped over 100 discs next to Aitoshuri together with the consoles of the three AIs. 

"Please swipe them over the consoles, dear."

Meanwhile, Flora changed two of Haidan's jacks to the Dr.Brownski jacks, one for her and one for Deriga or other guests.

"Hello, Haidan!"

"Hello, Milady!" 

Flora smiled. He even sounded like Aidan.

"Aidan, please bring Haidan up to date on our shenanigans." Flora collected her thoughts. "I have a strange request for Aidan and Haidan. Two people to care for and boss around is my max capacity. Therefore I want Aidan to be your voice, Haidan. I will command Aidan, and he will delegate tasks to you. Haidan's responsibilities will lie primarily in managing the church and the flat and the devices in it. Aidan's chores are mainly communication with me, my personal devices, and the management of HUD and options. My vision for you is that you will fuse, like two bodies, one mind, or one mind, two arms, maybe two souls, one mind, 14 arms. Whatever. Can, or rather do you want to work under such conditions?"

"Of course, Milady!" The answer came twice.

"Please reserve one of your .... threads? ... - The thingy you have only seven of - for continuous synchronization with each other." Flora felt bad about casting Haidan aside, but she knew her limits well enough. 

"Please, Haidan, know that I appreciate your work, even when I won't talk to you directly. If you have any requests for me, please tell them to Aidan or anything to say at all. Any questions, anybody?"

"No, Milady!" Now, only one verbal answer came back, because Aitoshuri shook her head while five of her tentacles rapidly juggled data disks.

"Did Haidan tell you that he has no questions, dear? Just checking."

"Yes, Milady."

"Excellent!"

 

On her way to the printer, Flora inspected the changes to the house. The security system was up and running, visible cameras in every corner, and a few hidden ones in between. Flora connected Haidan to it.

She installed a signal amplifier in the north-west part of her flat, which was the center of the building. Without it, the ranges for drones and AI were ridiculously low. They could use their full capabilities only in a circumference of 30 m of herself. Up to 60 m, their movement speed was halved, and they lost access to in-built skills or features. Farther away, they stopped working.

At least, the rules for AI's were less absurd than the gun ranges. Flora had overheard someone in the Hunter Lodge complain that even sniper riffles only shoot up to 50m straight, and in the next 10m, the bullet reduced in size and finally vanished.

The explanation was, of course, 'magic interference'.

In the entrance area, Deriga had sat up the shop. A counter on one wall and empty class cabinets on the other side. Behind the desk hung shelves with tiny holograms of Flora's products.

An archway separated the shop area from the main area. This part was very much a work in progress. Deriga had bought wooden benches and tables, but the distinctive feature of churches of Evailyn were the appliances. Those would be acquired directly from the main church.

Flora had understood from her description that the other churches were a mixture of the community kitchen and washing salon.

On the right side were doors to offices and behind them another row of smaller rooms for storage or sleeping. 

As Flora walked through the rooms, she noticed the lack of bathrooms.

Jumping down to the production hall, Flora fed the printer with the new tier-1 materials. She bought a second mailbox and installed it right next to the printer and added a few more multitools, one overpriced A-rated plasma sword (215 VirDos! For that price, you got one in the real world!) and tier-1 clay for Deriga.

On her way back to her apartment, she met the novice.

"Hi, dear. Did we forget the bathrooms?"

Deriga shrugged. "It is uncommon for churches of Evailyn to include them. Only nobles have bathtubs in their homes, and regular people use bathhouses. They belong to a different god."

"I mean for number one and number two."

Deriga looked at her, puzzled.

"Peeing and pooping."

"Do you plan on inviting beasts?"

"No, at least not explicitly. Do you mean humans don't have these urges?"

Deriga looked horrified. "Of course not! That would be disgusting!"

Flora saw the struggle on Deriga's face, and she knew what she wanted to ask, but Flora didn't offer the answer. Some things you were only ready to hear when you had the guts to ask them.

Earlier, Flora tried to buy a virtual workshop for Deriga, but she got an error message that she was allowed only to buy one of them, and they were bound to the buyer. Deriga had still not maxed out the budget Flora had assigned to her, so Flora asked her to try to buy one for herself. That failed too. 

Next, Flora gave Deriga the money in VirDos because you couldn't transfer VirDias. But Deriga had no option to change it into VirDias as a native.

Flowing Flowers to System: "Request: Buy one virtual workshop for and assigned to Deriga Ticet from Flowing Flowers money!"

Finally, that did the trick.

"Thank you so much, Auntie Flow!" Deriga exclaimed, hugging the console. "Now, I don't have to intrude into your living space anymore!"

"Yes, but we can be more creative than that. Let's try if we can stack the workshops."

Flora bolted her enhanced training coffin to the floor.

After grabbing the focus in the left hand, she connected her new pully system. Now she or rather Haidan could execute four unique hand-movements just with this hand.

Left Hand:

Refresh, Pray for Mana, Thaumaturgy, Focus: Healing Cantrip.

Right Hand: Bless and Condemn.

With delight, Flora realized that all her Energymaster Spells had risen above level 25. Now, she could connect Lightning Mage! Of course, she had to get the class first.

The two women modified the old training coffin for Deriga. They removed some of the toxic waste plates and put it obverse to Flora's coffin for shooting each other with spells.

Because Deriga had no auto-mode, they tried to convince System that when Haidan executed the pully-system, Deriga's focus should shoot the healing cantrip. After a while, they gave up and switched to begging Evailyn. 

"Ha! Who is the most awesome Goddess in the Cetviwos?" Flora exclaimed after it worked.

"Evailyn!" Flora and Deriga shouted.

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The Goddess Evailyn grants you + 1 Level to Faith for excellent sucking up efforts.

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After they logged into the workshop, Deriga continued to pray to Evailyn for letting her shoot Smite at the dummies, and Flora modified the multitool again.

She wanted to include a mini-shield generator. It took longer than she estimated because she had to combine the Doom Moon tech, miniaturize it and force it to work with the help of runes. At last, a mini-shield hardly bigger than the tool sprang to life.

Name: Stony-Multitool-Scepter-Shield V4

Type: Hybrid: Focus and Tool and Shield

Description: Multitool from the 'Groom the Doom Moon'-Scenario modified to function as an intent-focus.

Regular mode: 1 OV mana regen.

Build-In Spell: Shoot healing cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;

Build-In Spell: Shoot damaging cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;

Build-In Magetech: Create Force-Field; Cost: 10 mana; CD: 25sec;

Effect: Can be used to focus all crafting spells regardless of their type.

Base Damage/Healing: 4

Tier: 1

Rating: SS

All the hardship was forgotten when Flora saw the rating had risen to SS again.

"I want to block the ax. I want to block the ax." Flora mumbled in front of the dummy with a shield in hand she sped smithed. At least is was rated C.

After she got the blocking ability, she switched to the multitool and bound Use Build-In Magetech to blocking and put blocking to auto-mode. In the right hand, she equipped the plasma sword.

After a coping spree, Flora and Deriga entered the simulation ground.

Before deciding on the setup, Flora wanted to test if they could enter Deriga's workshop. 

Although they could get in, Flora was depressed. The workshop was 3x3x3m and had only one tiny workbench. She had forgotten about the standard configuration.

After they figured out how to update it, the size doubled, and the second workbench appeared, Flora's mood rose.

As long as she had her design tools, everything else was only nice to have but not essential.

Reluctantly, she logged out again and set up one training coffin, albeit the old one without the toxic plates, the unholiness was debuff enough. The new coffin was too mana expensive, now that she had to pay the price herself and couldn't connect it to the house system.  

With the coffin, Page-Turner, Potion-Guzzler, Blade-Roller, and healing turret, and the unholy debuff, all of her 26 OV mana reg was accounted for. She bound Refresh and Bless and Condemn.

"Aidan, change the binding in my flat from Bless and Condemn to Overcharge Regular Mode."

"Yes, Milady. But due to the cooldown of Overcharge, we would have a mana surplus."

"Great! Get creative with it, we speak later about it, crafting is occupying my thoughts at the moment."

Finally, they entered the workshop to get some work done.

Now, Deriga could start on her pottery, and Flora decided on a sleeping bag as her first project, to warm up. Pun intended.

She sewed the fluffiest fabric she could find together with a tier-1 outer layer and some feathers between them. Then she took a tier-1 material with good defensive stats and fused it into a cocoon.

Name: Rhinoraton Hide

Description: 

• major protection against slashing damage 
• minor protection against elemental damage
• no protection against intent damage

Tier: 1

Rating: A

One of Flora's favorite features of the workshop was that you could substitute materials. In the real world, knitting with metal wire was hard. Here she could knit with wool and replace the thread with metal afterward.

She added ribbons to both sides of the Rhino-Cocoon. Those in the inside connected with the fluffy part of the sleeping bag. The purpose for those on the outside was attatching the knitted metal and hanging it from a tree.

Flora didn't have to knit everything by hand but duplicated freely. In the end, she had the ultimate sleeping back for carrying the Blade-Roller and testing spells. You could even use it for its intended purpose: sleeping!

Name: Robust Layered Chainmail Sleeping Bag

Type: Sleeping Bag

Description: The sleeping bag for the security conscious.

Effect: Added protection

Tier: 1

Rating: A

Next, she constructed a bedroll to go with it. A few layers of styrofoam, a fluffy outer layer on one side, and a rhino-hide chainmail layer on the other side. Of course, you could sleep on it, but you could also use it as a fortification or makeshift barricade.

Name: Robust chainmail Bed Roll

Type: Hybrid: Bedroll and Barricade

Description: Bedroll for the security conscious.

Effects: Protection

Tier: 1

Rating: A

After that, Flora lay down to test her new creations. Just kidding, she needed a nap.

"Wake me up if we are dying, dear!"

Refreshed, she woke up and looked at the designs of the focuses. Now, she had the time and muse to perfect them. The elemental focuses had been downgraded to rank A or B, but with a bit of work on the exterior and rearranging the rune schemes, Flora raised most of them to S again.

More time, she invested in the plasma sword. She tried out different construction methods to make the best possible plasma sword with the parts she had available.

In the end, she was satisfied with the result.

Name: Onyx Lightning

Type: Hybrid: Plasma Sword and lightning focus

Description: May the Lightning engulfs my enemies!

Regular mode: 1 OV mana regen.

Build-In Skill: Shoot lightning cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;

Effect: Lightning has the chance to hop to one additional target in range.

Focus: Base Damage: 3

Sword: Base Damage: 5 

Tier: 1

Rating: S

Because now the blueprint for the sword was finally fixed, she could build the cane for it. She chose the black tier-1 stone onyxon again and carved lightning bolts on the outside. On the inside, she added rune schemes against breaking. The connection between the hilt and the cane was designed as a spring mechanism. She wanted to shoot the staff part in the face of her opponents, but due to the weight of the stone, she only reached a range of three meters with oomph, maybe five meters if she aimed a bit higher.

She wasn't finished with playing around with the focus rune schemes by far. The next step was testing out what would happen when she boosted an arcane focus with elemental schemes. 

The answer was a smoking scheme. She iterated through the schemes: intent with elemental boost, intent with arcane boost, arcane with elemental boost, arcane with intent boost and elemental with arcane or indent boost, but none of them yielded results. 

Then she fitted the first boost to original focus but changed the boost of the boost with no result.

'Oh well, it was worth a try.'

Next on her list were the traps.

In the beginning, she just built them after the blueprints. Then she started to tinker with them.

At last, she invented new ones.

Her favorite was the sandwich-maker trap. 

Name: Sandwich-maker Trap

Type: Trap

Description: Catches the pray, closes the lid and toasts the catch.

Tier: 1

Rating: A

Maybe it wasn't suitable to hunt animals, because the smell ... or maybe it was suitable exactly because of the smell?

Flora had to try it out.

After the traps, she focussed on the healing turret. She wanted it only to start healing when her health was below 30 percent. That was a software problem, which was a refreshing change. She turned the focus on the hardware to make a pump-up feature. When the turret had nothing to do, it would pump the healing energy in a crystal, and that crystal would discharge it in a mini healing explosion when it was full.

The feature wasn't practical, but she thought the technology was fascinating.

Next, she investigated if she could give the turret elemental powers. A lightning turret would be nice to have.

She did make some forays, but her knowledge about enchantments and runes was to shallow.

The energy was an urgent need. A generator was the solution for that. 

Flora read a few articles about the problem.

In the Cetwiwos, the energy was sucked via rune-schemes out of the elements. Massive rune schemes surrounded volcanos, mills in rivers to convert water energy into mana, and panels on the roofs for solar energy.

Flora thought about what energy was active in her surroundings. There was the Rhine, but she would have to lay a powerline down there. The weather was mostly sunny, but she wanted to have a garden on her roof and not solar panels. She wasn't a fan of wind craft, but there was a bit of draft, and a sculpture slash art object with many little colorful windmills would be a lovely addition to the garden.

Then it hit her. She had the consecrated ground! If it buffed, it meant that it emanated energy!

With the help of her books, she constructed a rune scheme that converted divine energy to mana and stored it in a mana battery.

'Just one more project. Let's create a windmill-generator.' 

Blue, green, red, and yellow little plastic propellers on a pyramid, and behind them, she put run schemes to catch the kinetic energy and fluxed it down through the sticks and collected it in the center of the pyramid.

'Okay, now I stop. I just add one or two devices. Nothing fancy.' 

For the last project of the day, she mass-produced home appliances from the earth: A regular vacuum cleaner, an electrical eggbeater, a mixer, a blender, a rice cooker, a pressure cooker, a coffee machine, a microwave, a table grill, a sandwich maker, a water cooker, and at last, a toaster. She called the series: Household Standards.

Finally, she had ejaculated all her creative juices, and it had felt great!

"I'm ready for a nice long soak in the hot spring. I copied a wet suit for you as well, dear, if you want to join me." Flora said to Deriga before logging out.