Flora ported back to her lair.
Absentmindedly, she sent a Brownski-Jack to Robby, Eddie, and Mia with just a short text: "Found good stuff, enjoy the gift, your loving Mama/ Flora / Auntie."
Her thoughts were still on the mountain-quest and especially the mech-suit models she assembled.
"Honestly, I feel naked without wearing a mech-suit. I need something over my mana reg clothing. Maybe normal armor? But I'm still in love with the whole mech-suit idea. After the wonderful quest more than ever."
Entering the Simulation Grounds and Deriga's workshop, she plunged into the jacuzzi and opened the marketplace access.
After she discarded knight armor, leather bustiers, chainmail-combos, and especially a chainmail-bra, she gave up. Nothing listed, she liked more than a mech-suit.
"My little PvP teachers said I shouldn't waste mana-reg on a mech-suit. Do you think they are right?"
"Beep."
"I don't know, Milady. The conventional wisdom is to either play as pet-player and invest all the mana-reg in companions or as hero-player, stacking mana-reg to strengthen yourself."
"Hero-player sounds a lot better than a pet-player. Tell me what they do."
"They use their mana-reg for boosts, like the agility-boost you know or their armor, be it technological like mech-suits and batticles or magical like rune-armor."
"Let's try it out."
"Use your 10 Mana-Reg for the boost and 21 Mana-Reg for the Mech-Suit, Milady."
Flora jumped out of the pool on a workbench nearby, did a backflip to the floor, and shadowboxed.
"I feel like a superhero!"
"Your normal physical stats are:
29 Power
29 Macro-Control
28 Micro-Control
31 Vigor
33 Regeneration
32 Defense
With boost and mech-suit they are:
65 Power
47 Macro-Control
32 Micro-Control
35 Vigor
37 Regeneration
71 Defense
Additionally, your mech-suit has an HP pool of 322. Every physical damage and arcane and elemental damage will be shared with it."
"71 % defense, does that mean I get 71% less damage from physical sources?"
"Yes, Milady. And damage with 7 points or under will be blocked completely."
"Holy toaster! How can this be any worse than my turret octopussy set-up?"
"There is only you. If you are out of range or controlled, there will be no damage at all. You have no weapons scaling with strength but your fists and no melee skills to bolster them."
"Oh." Flora was disappointed. Nonetheless, she bought a blueprint of a dummy capable of measuring DPS (damage per second).
Hitting it with Wing-Tsu chain punches felt awesome, but netted only around 70 DPS compared to the 100 DPS when she would do the same punches naked but backed up by four turret traps and one octopussy firing away.
"You raised a good point with being controlled. What I like about having assistants is, when I freeze or when the opponents morph me into a sheep, my helpers still are going to get them." Flora mused. "What do you think about me making a light mech-suit. Because I'm less than two meters tall, I can only put two generators in it. That means 3 Mana-Reg. Aitoshuri won't even feel the difference if I subtract them from the octopussies budget, right?"
"Beep, beep." Aito disagreed, but then added a vague, "Beeeeep."
"Anyway, I fell for the model SMS4903. On a new suit, I can add two features I need: a wrist-holster for the multitool and a forearm gun. I'm not too fond of letting go of the multitool every time I engage in hand-to-hand combat. Besides, I want to get higher skill results when casting through a focus. I believe I could cast through the tool when it touches my forearm. We have to test it. The reason for the gun is I don't enjoy the enemies shooting at me at 50m distance, and I have nothing to retaliate."
"As you wish, Milady."
Flora took the blueprint of the SMS4903 and reworked every part of it. She broke up the breastplate for more flexibility, replaced the antishock pads and motors, and increased the size of the visor on the helmet. Then she transferred her favorite features of the Ivy-League to it.
The integration of the multitool proved to be tricky, but Flora was trickier. Now, she could snatch it and put it away with a flick of her wrist. Casting spells through it worked whether she held it or not.
First, she was disappointed because she found no gun with a 50m range short enough for her forearm, but then she discovered a mini rocket-launcher. You could double-tap the trigger, one time for launching and one time for exploding it. Flora liked the idea - even if she missed by a few centimeters, as long as she timed the second tap right, it would still affect the target. Unfortunately, it could only pack six rockets, expensive rockets to boot.
Meanwhile, Aitoshuri put large amounts of tier 1 plastic, mostly the flame-resistant Kynarosium, and stone in the fusion box, because Flora didn't want to build the suit out of metal. She tried to lower the handicap for spells as much as possible.
Name: Messenger
Modification: SMS4903
Type: Mech-suit
Regular-Mode: 5 MR (-2MR generated)
Built-In Feature: Sprint; 25 sec CD.
Built-In Feature: Jump; 25 sec CD.
Built-In Skill: Power-Jump; 5 mana; 25 sec CD.
Built-In Skill: Rocket-Boots; 3 mana per burst.
Integrated Rocket-Launcher:
Built-In Feature: Rocket-Launch; 5 sec CD.
Built-In Feature: Rocket Explode; 5 sec CD.
Built-In Skill: High-Pressure Explosion; 10 mana; 25 sec CD.
Effects:
• 30 min survival without air
• - 2 OV Micro-Control
• - 1 OV Agility
Tier: 1
Rating: S
After Flora printed it, she tested the launcher outdoors. To her chagrin, she had problems with hitting a garage door from a distance of 25m, at 50 meters distance, she was able to strike the river Rhine, mainly because it was 200 meters broad.
"I have to train shooting, preferably on auto-mode, but how can I reload while I'm not in charge of the body?"
Aitoshuri had a solution. She displayed a skill called Reload and a picture of Mia next to it.
Calling Mia, Flora jogged to the printer to create more rockets.
"Huhu, dear."
"Auntie... I don't know what to say."
"But I haven't even told you what I need! By the way, 'Hello' is usually appropriate to start a conversation."
"Auntie... your gift is too groovy. I'm wrangling my brain what I can offer you to sell me the method you acquired the jacks. Are you interested in my soul? But I'm not sure if it's worth much."
"Oh, no, sorry dear, I don't deal in souls, though I'm sure yours is valuable. But the info is even more precious than you think." Flora linked her the Brownski-nocks. "You can get them there as well."
"Damnation! What about human-trade? I'll make a good henchgirl."
"Sure, 100 virtual hours and free skills."
"Great, I'd even take it for 100 real hours."
Flora told Mia everything about Doc Brownski and his excitement for human experimentation. In return, she got the Reload skill and the rest of the marksperson class.
Class: Marksperson
Branch: Warrior
Passive: + 1 Training efficiency modifier for ranged abilities
Active: Decrease Range Difficulty
STA: Power Shot
AOE: Barrage
DEF: Cover
MOV: Backpaddle
SIG: Set Mark
The last skill caught Flora's attention. It marked a target with an arrow above its head, which caused it to take more damage from all sources.
"How does the arrow behave when the target turns invisible?"
"Unfortunately, it becomes invisible, too. But I sometimes think I can somehow feel the location of the mark. Could be my imagination, though, or something to do with perception. SAF claims he can always sense his targets autonomously from casting mark." Mia shrugged.
After thanking Mia, she gave the girl her first work assignment: raiding the Doom Moon.
"Of course, I pay for your entry fee but make sure to loot lots of multitools. Some plasma swords or tier 1 materials would be nice as well."
Flora passed her a map of the moon with the warehouses marked and some loot-containers with Haidan's toaster-camouflage design.
Because Flora wanted to train as much as possible, she entered Deriga's workshop again.
Raising Re-Generate to level 100 was a must. She hoped to reach level 200 in Astral Vision, but Aidan claimed it would need 84 hours of casting it every 2 seconds. Even with two bodies training, it would take longer than until her duel at noon tomorrow.
The next item on her list was an elemental focus specialized on water spells. Her plasma-sword lightning focus was great, but she doubted it would produce optimal results against Ahoncarthyr. Plasma counted towards the lightning element, but Flora knew it was burning gas. And using it created burns on her opponents, so she figured fire resistance played a roll in the calculations of its effect. No doubt, the fire-tiger had ample fire-resistance.
She went with a ring because she could wear it under her armor and had not to worry about where to store it when she was going to punch or launch her rockets.
Flora created a band from a blue stone and shaped it like a wave.
Because she had found out about the effect of ornamental runes, she covered the whole ring with them, inside and out—some runic clusters in the shape of waterdrops, some foam or just waves.
The stingy Admin had limited the boosters to the rune-scheme, but nobody could order her how many runes to incorporate. So she decided on a mythological number, 55555, because water was the fifth element in the Chinese system.
After a mad copying spree, Flora finished her newest masterpiece.
Name: Wavering Wave-Ring
Type: Focus
Description: Elemental-Focus with a strong emphasis on water and its waves.
Regular mode: 1 OV Mana-Regeneration.
Built-In Skill: Shoot water cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;
Effect: Splash. Secondary Effects of spells hit nearby targets or main target twice.
Focus: Base Damage: 3
Tier: 1
Rating: S
Before printing, Flora refined the A-rated Saphiron stone multiple times until it reached S.
Donning her new focus, she tested her equipment.
The poor dummy had to suffer under Flora's exercises and the wall behind it even more. She trained running and shooting, running and casting spells, both while lying (on the back, on the side, on the stomach) or while standing up and, of course, after doing free-running maneuvers like flipping and rolling.
Because Aidan raised her spells in the treadmill, it happened multiple times her skills failed due to cooldown. It had the side effect of Flora internalizing to keep an eye on the CD-display.
Her biggest improvement was lowering the cast-time. During the Mountain-Quest, she had mastered Re-Charge, and now she added Bolt, Shield, Rain, and Use Built-In Skill to the list. She made headway into the movement skills, too. While she used them often during her free-running, the new mech-suit changed her weight and balance.
Although she was delighted with the Messenger, it allowed her less liberty of action than the Ivy-League. But the movement it did support, like running and jumping, improved considerably. Hopping around the workbenches and doing slaloms around them while pelting the dummy with everything she got, Flora got used to the changes.
She measured her output with chain punches again with octopussy and turrets. This time she reached 140 DPS.
"Wow! I didn't expect so much more."
"The limiting factor was your mech-suit ability. You raised it considerably in the last hours."
"What do you both say now about using the mech-suit? Don't forget to include the increased defense and extra-hitpoints in your evaluation."
"Beep." Aito sounded a bit sad but determined.
"The loadout is superior, Milady. The Mini-Masters and I hadn't included in our consideration your ability levels are superior to theirs. The stat increases from mech-suits scale with the ability and its quality instead of level."
"Beep." Aito agreed and showed a picture of the octopus at level 10 with a huge arrow upwards.
"You think we should reevaluate the loadout at level 10? Remind me of it, dear."
After training more and watching a few PvP duels in her jacuzzi, Flora got ready for bed.
"Tomorrow, we build meaner traps for Aidan," she muttered while clutching a pillar of plastic-stone. Aidan had his commands to refine it overnight.
The ringing of her phone woke her up.
"Yeah?" she mumbled.
"Ma? Thank you so much for the dope jack. Do you have more of them?"
"What? Yes, I do. But the supply is limited if I value my body."
"Hu? Never mind. I would take three more of them, only if you can spare them, of course. But it's not why I've called. We got a big job from noon to midnight, and I need Ressa for it."
"But what about our duel?"
"You can do it now, or tomorrow or you let it be. I would prefer the last option."
"Oh, dear. Give me an hour." Flora glanced at her clock. It showed half-past seven. "Make it two hours."
Flora jumped out of her bed. She wanted to integrate two additional changes into the mech-suit. The first was to exchange the materials for the ones she had refined overnight.
The second consisted of giving the suit a shiny gloss. What is the bane of laser weapons? Mirrors! Flora had tested it, and it reflected a good part of the power of lasers. She had employed the coating on the trap-throwing-toaster and made Aidan play pong to train reflecting things.
At last, she ordered the print of the enhanced mech-suit and enough rockets to flatten a village.
Theoretically, she had enough time to invent new traps, but she chose to fight conjured monsters in the SG to warm up and adjust her mindset.
Of course, she notified Eddie and Mia of the time change.
"Do you know it's freaking 5 o'clock in the freaking morning?" Eddie complained while diving out of bed.
"I didn't choose to change the appointment." They bantered until Eddie was ready, and Flora at least felt prepared.
"Let's go over the oh-shit fallback once more," Flora said to Aidan after hanging up.
"Milady, what will you do if you panic?"
"I'll cast Bless and Condemn."
"What will you do instead of freezing?"
"I'll cast Bless and Condemn."
"What will you do if you don't know what to do?"
"I'll cast Bless and Condemn."
"What will you do when looking around?"
"I'll cast Bless and Condemn."
Yesterday, she had focused on casting it in all positions and while multitasking. She had analyzed her spells and picked one she profited under every condition. On some occasions, it might be wise to push for all the damage; on others, it would be more beneficial to heal. For judging, she needed a clear head. Bless and Condemn was the filler when the events clocked her mind - her fallback for shit hitting the fan.
After checking her stats once, her whole equipment twice, and her quick access-slots thrice (Rockets, Traps, Mana- and Health-Potions), she ported to the Clan Riverstones.