Auntie toasts the VRMMORPG

Flora paid MiaMyMio 1000 VirDos, including a nice tip. 'That poor girl needs it, and she was immensely helpful.'

When they said their goodbyes, Flora's tired brain produced another demand.

"Can you teach me the armor spell you used during our last bout?" 

"Sorry, it's a spell for drones."

Flora was disappointed but then had an idea. Aidan had shown her the Drone Driver standard skills, and they were the same as the Robot-Handler skills. That should enable her to extrapolate the spell.

"Show me the diagrams of the drone version of Hurry Up and Overcharge Regular Mode, dear."

Flora compared it with the corresponding robot diagrams and was able to extract which part influenced the effect and which part adopted it for drones or robots.

After Mia showed her the picture of Drone Armor, she reconstructed it, exchanging the parts concerning drones with graphs related to robots.

Octopussy was still installing generators on the roof and volunteered by not hiding to be Flora's guinea pig.

<Robot Armor>!

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You gained a skill: Robot Armor.

Description: Increases the armor of your robots.

CD: 25 sec

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You learned the skill without guidance: + 1 OV to the skill.

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The octopussy's video skin grew duller and thicker. 

"I've heard about people who are able to change skills through diagrams, but I never saw it live!" Mia gaped at the octopussy. "That was amazing!"

"It's really easy. You just have to identify the components and rearrange them." Flora started to explain the process, but Mia put her hands over her ears and stared at her wide-eyed.

"I don't own enough money to pay you for the information." She protested.

"I listened to you, and the two pictures have nothing in common at all." Eddie was patting his pockets in search of the glasses he neither wore nor possessed in VR.

"Just watch this graph, its clearly the same as this line, only transposed. The projection from the fourth to the third dimension hides the similarity, but if you account for it, it's pretty obvious." Flora continued to explain the process.

Meanwhile, Mia gave up hiding that she was still listening but stared at the Diagram with glassy eyes. Eddie smirked and gave Flora a thumbs up.

"Of course, dear. Totally obvious, it directly jumps to one's eyes."

Flora nodded emphatically, glad that he finally understood. At least until his smirk widened to a full grin and she realized he was pulling her nose.

"Bad friend! Using sarcasm against unsuspecting engineers! Shame on you!"

Eddie's grin broadened even more.

"I'm sorry, Auntie. I just finished school. I know nothing about dimensions and stuff." Mia scratched her head. "But I have a drone spell I would love to use in my batticle. The word batticle is the short form of battle vehicle." To demonstrate her explanation, Mia fetched a 2,5-meter high steel construct from her inventory. Two legs held a pilot cabin surrounded by guns. Instead of feet, it had three wheels on the end of each leg. One stubby arm wielded a shield, the other a sword as tall as Flora.

"Isn't it a mecha?" Eddie asked. Full of pity for the uninitiated, Flora shook her head. 

"A mecha translates the movements of the player to the machine. I pilot this beauty by pressing buttons and using joysticks. My current problem is that I only have two hands, but four joysticks. I can move and fight and shoot the auxiliary guns, but only two of them at the same time. The drone conductor skill 'Parallel Control' enables me to mirror the movements of one remote control to another. I would like to use it in the batticle, too."

"Why aren't the guns integrated with the joysticks?" Flora asked.

"The main gun is connected to the movement joystick." Mia pointed at a shaft at the center of the cockpit. "But I got the auxiliary guns separately and didn't know they couldn't communicate with the primary system. It sucks because it is a peak tier 3 batticle, I will use it for a while."

Flora and Eddie wondered about the last comment, and Mia explained that equipment gets down-leveled according to the zone level as well. 

Name: Knight-Skater

Type: Batticle

Description: The valiant vehicle combines mobility with protection.

Regular Mode: 15 mana regeneration.

Built-In Skill: Swipe; 10 mana; CD: none;

Description: Hits all enemies in front of you with your sword.

Built-In Skill: Shield-Bash; 10 mana; CD: 25 sec;

Description: High aggro shield skill with a good chance to interrupt casting.

Built-In Skill: Barricade; 10 mana; CD: 25 sec;

Description: All friendly targets near you get reduced damage. High aggro skill.

Built-In Skill: Burning the tires; CD: 25 sec;

Description: Spins the vehicle in a narrow circle.

Built-In Feature: Sword-fighting; CD: none;

Built-In Feature: Block; CD: none;

Built-In Feature: Skate; CD: none;

Built-In Feature: Laser-Beam; CD: 2 sec;

Tier: 1(3)

Rating: S

Add-On: Gun-Arrangement XD23DI

Regular Mode: 10 mana regeneration

Description: Eight plasma guns, providing massive firepower for low mana cost.

Built-In Skill: Barrage; Cost: 10 Mana + 1 mana / 2 sec; CD: none;

Description: Increased the rate of fire.

Built-in Feature: 2 x 4 x Plasma Slugs; CD: 2 sec;

Built-in Modes: Focused Fire, Fanned Fire; Conical Fire; CD: 2 sec;

Effect: 

Tier: 1(3)

Rating: S

"The Gun-Arrangement is awesome! You got 8 guns for only 10 mana! Wow! And all the skills. Great!" Flora fidgeted in excitement. Soon, she lost the battle with herself and cast all politeness away. She crawled over the batticle, XYZ-raying all the parts.

Mia gave her access to the cockpit, but it was too small for Flora in her mech-suit.

"Please demonstrate how you get in there. I'm convinced you have to use a shrinking spell."

Smiling, Mia got out the counterflow mech-suit and grabbed a rail at the top of the cockpit. Then she folded her legs while holding on and nestled them inside under the console. At last, her head slid in. Between it and the ceiling was just enough space to fit a helmet. The area didn't allow for stretched out arms. Mia's forearms rested on the console on two joysticks, surrounded by dozens of buttons and switches. Flora felt claustrophobic by just looking at her.

"The left joystick is for the lower appendages and the main laser, the right for the upper body and special moves." Then she pointed to another two smaller joysticks on the windshield. "Left and right plasma guns, but I can control all guns with just the right controller, what I usually do."

Mia demonstrated the controls and moved the batticle. She left the door open, and Flora sat on the shoulder and shield arm while looking into the cockpit.

Flora's first instinct was to fetch the sleeping bag for target practice, but then she decided on the drones. Within moments the plasma guns reduced them to smoldering piles of metal, and Flora was happy they hadn't wrecked another sleeping bag. 

"Mimicking the movements of the upper body with the guns is still sub-optimal because I perform slashing motions with the sword. It would result in spraying the plasma slugs all over the place. But that is still better than not firing at all." 

Flora nodded. "I think a technical solution would be better. I refuse to believe that you can't get the two systems to speak with each other. Communication problems are as old as information technology, maybe as old as language and plenty of solutions are existing."

Despite their reservations, they started comparing diagrams and modifying the spell for the batticle.

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You gained a skill: Overcharge Regular Drive.

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You gained a skill: Parallel Control.

Description: The second remote control mimics the commandos issued by the first remote control.

CD: none.

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You gained a skill: Parallel Control (Console).

Description: The second joystick mimics the commandos issued by the first joystick.

CD: none.

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You gained an achievement: Skill Creator

• 5 OV to every created skill.

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Mia wasn't stingy with her skills, and Flora learned the whole Driver standard skills and modified them for drones and robots. Unfortunately, she didn't get the class, because it required ten levels in Driving.

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You gained a skill: Wheel of Steel

Description: Your wheels won't burst regardless of punishment.

CD: 25 sec

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You gained a skill: Overrun

Description: You can drive over any obstacle, living or dead.

CD: 25 sec

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You gained a skill: Car Armor

Description: Armors your vehicle.

CD: 25 sec

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You gained a skill: Nitro

Description: A jet accelerates your vehicle.

CD: 25 sec

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You gained a skill: Drift

Description: Take impossible turns.

CD: 25 sec

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When Flora opened her skills tab, she sighed. The five new skills appeared three times. One time for vehicles, one time for drones and one time for robots. The same situation applied to the elemental mage spells.

"System, this is ridiculous! We all know these are the same spells with minor modifications! I can cast them the same way. Why do I have to level them separately?" 

System to Flowing Flowers: "You have expended your daily limit of system requests. Please raise your limit in the Cetviwos-Shop."

"No Problem! I'll do that." Flora raised her request to three per day.

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Quest: Proof your claim of skill mastery! (Unique)

Description: The player Flowing Flowers claimed that she could use any skill with the same effect. She has to prove it by casting the standard skills for Diagram1 and Diagram2.

Reward: Merged Skills.

Penalty: Title 'Braggart' must be worn for a week

Time-Limit: 1h

Difficulty: S

Obligatory quest.

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"I accept!" Flora shouted.

"Milady, this quest is already in your quest log. You can't reject obligatory quests. Hence you don't have to accept them."

"Mia and Eddie, I have a quest to solve, please excuse me for a moment!" Flora looked around but couldn't find Eddie. 

"Mr. Shiny said goodbye while you were inspecting the Knight-Skater. You said Merry Christmas back and waved him away." Mia managed to tell this with a remarkably straight face.

Blushing, Flora shrugged. What else do you say when you play with new toys?

But she would have loved to speak with Eddie about the unusual high-grade AI once more. She didn't believe the situation was as simple as the CentralTank guys pretended.

Undaunted, she inspected the first Diagram. It contained shapes Flora associated with the technological branch. Her intuition told her it was not a whole skill, but the part which controlled the affinity or ability. 

'I should name the different parts of the spell. Let's call it "class-relation". For the class fire mage, it's fire, for the class drone driver it's drones. I will call the second part "effect", meaning that the energy will take the effect of a bolt or a jump. The Parallel Control and the Re-Spells have another part, they concern the targets of the spell. Thinking about it, many of my divine spells and technological commandos have the same feature. Let's call it 'target' until I know more about it.'

Flora took the diagram and merged it with the effect of 'Overcharge Regular Mode'. Analog to the robot spell, she exchanged the class-relation and the target area of the diagram. 

After she took a deep breath, she channeled mana into the layout. The energy wobbled and then dissipated.

Usually, she used the technological skills on the fitting device, drone commandos on drones, robot commandos on robots. She needed the right target. 

'It's not a drone, nor a vehicle, nor a robot. What else is in the techno branch? Toasters and other normal household devices!'

Flora fetched the 'Welcome to the Metaworld'-toaster from her inventory and cast the commando again. Although it failed, Flora felt the energy curve away from the toaster. The mana moved as if it was drawn to another target close to her body. When she looked down, she saw her mech-suit. 

Instantly, something clicked in Flora's mind, and she knew for sure that the first diagram represented mech-suits.

In quick succession, she performed all the standard skills on the Counterflow-Training.

<Overcharge Regular Mode>!

<Overcharge Built-In Skill: Taser>!

<Grease with Life's blood>!

<Hurry Up>!

<Human-Machine Connection>!

She got the notifications for the new skills, though Hurry Up had a different name: Overcharge Movement Apparatus. That irked Flora. 

"Why? You could call the drone spell or the robot spell the same! Maybe not the car spell, but nothing speaks against calling the mech-suit skill 'Hurry Up' as well!" she mumbled.

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You gained the class Mech Suit Operator.

Name: Mech Operator

Branch: Technology

Passive: + 1 Training efficiency modifier for ability mech-suit

Active: Built-In Skills profit from your attributes

STA Overcharge Regular Mode

AOE Overcharge Built-In Skills

DEF Grease with Life's blood

MOV Overcharge Movement Apparatus

SIG Suit-Up

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You gained a skill: Suit-Up.

Description: Instantly puts your mech-suit on, even if its in the inventory.

CD: 5 min.

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"Nice skill!"

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You gained an ability: Mech-Suit.

Description: Supports moving and fighting with a mech-suit.

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"What? I wore mech-suits for the whole week. Why am I getting this ability only now?" 

"Because the Counterflow-Training is too bad and supports no movement and the Ivy League is too good and supports all movements, albeit to a lesser degree. Regular mech-suits limit the users' movement, and they have to learn how to adapt to it, Milady." Aidan answered. He had read all the user comments on the two models opposed to Flora, who just skimmed the section.

Flora rolled her eyes and instructed Aitoshuri to find a way to connect the class.

Next, she studied the second diagram. It was vaguely familiar. First, she tilted her head, and then Flora did a handstand because she wanted to look at it inverted. Unfortunately, the display moved with her.

"Should I flip the diagram, Milady?"

After Aidan turned it around, Flora noticed the similarity to the class-relation of the light spells. 

<Dark Beam>!

<Descending Darkness>!

<Dark Shield>!

<Riding the Darkness>!

<Dusk>!

All the spells worked, but she guessed the names wrong except for Dusk. Hence she got five new spells, Shadow Bolt, Descending Shadows, Shadow Shield, Riding the Shadows and Dusk, and a new class: Shadow Mage and the affinity shadow.

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Quest completed: Proof your claim of skill mastery! (Unique)

Reward: Merged Skills: Skills with similar effects get merged. You get the average level value and modifications.

Difficulty: S

Rating: B

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Flora opened her skills tab, and it looked much better. 

The system still bombarded her with messages, but she had no patience for it at the moment. Hence she instructed Aidan to relay them to the unread notices section.

The reason for it was Mia and the wildly firing batticle. Looking at the mess, made her engineering instincts itch. 'Impossible! Simply impossible that they can't communicate!'