Even though it was only one more day in RL until the patch would roll out, it amounted to 210 hours in time-dilation. Flora hadn't been conscious of that implication when she had decided to spend the rest of the time in her bedroom. Now, she felt as if she had been quarantined. Albeit, being quarantined with a top-notch entertainment system, a workshop, and access to an island with a spa area was luxurious.
Flora filled her time with a mixture of pleasurable things, useful things, and pleasurable and useful things.
First, she had to solve the household robotics quest for Evailyn. The time-limit was nearly up.
Despite planning on getting the "home appliance" type for her Killer-Blender, she wanted to soften the system before pushing the borders.
Flora created a robot-arms addon for cleaning cabinets. They could load and unload the cabinet, sort dishes by type, and fold laundry. One could add them to most cleaning cabinets with a spanner mechanism, either on top for front loaders or vertical for top loaders.
Next, she built a household staple of the 21 century, the vacuum cleaner robot. It was basically a little can that scurried around and sucked dirt. Whereas her Cleaning Cabinet Loader had the type "Hybrid: Robot/Home Appliance", the Vacuum Cleaner Robot 2050 had only "Home Appliance" as a designation.
Last but not least, Flora recreated Robby's School-Breakfast Robot, in a fancier version, of course: A cooling box to the right, a toaster to the left, and a teenage ninja turtle lunchbox and robot arms in the middle. When activated, the arms put any toast shaped items in the cooler in the toaster, any apple or juice shaped items directly in the lunchbox, and cheese, sausages, or spreads on the finished toast. The original version had problems with spreads. It had regularly applied the butter on top of the marmalade. The Cetviwos version didn't have this issue, thanks to Aidan's and Aito's superior programming abilities.
Quest completed: Household Robotics (Church of Evailyn)
Description: Build three household robots.
Rewards:
- +1 level Faith
- +1 Reputation
- Crafting XP (Mechanics, Electronics, Runecraft)
Difficulty: C
Time: 2.1 of 3 days
Rating: S
Although Flora's printers were still busy printing training boxes and multi-tool scepters, she let them build two exemplars of the robot. One went to Robby, and one produced toasts for her shop. She bought a variety of spreads and bread from the AH to test them out. Of course, she included every type of bread her neighbor Bakery Gottfriedl offered.
Flora was puzzled about the continued sales of the training boxes. She had Aidan add a warning label that the next Cetviwos patch would severely limit the functionality. This led her to think that future patches might be a problem for all of her products, so she put a general disclaimer on them.
Building a rune-suit was another crafting project. Flora learned much about the game mechanics of armor suits. The most fantasy version was called runic armor, basically body armor with rune schemes to enhance them. The goal of every paladin, knight, or heavy warrior was to own such protection. The armor had a fixed cost of MR/min. The few models, in which you could push more Mana-Reg, didn't improve their overall armor rating, but only the runes' effect. Flora wasn't interested in building one of those.
A rune-suit was a mech-suit with no electronics and no motors. However, it functioned like a mech-suit, supporting your movement, making you stronger, had its own HP pool, and provided special skills. The same game-mechanics as mech-suits governed the armors. If one invested more mana-reg into them, the entire ensemble strengthened.
The Steampunk Tinkerer's Experimental Suit, Flora encountered in the SBAP, was the forefather of this kind of technology. To Flora's astonishment, the field of research lay idle. Only the Chinese players dabbled in the runic aspects of mage-tech for mech-suits.
Powered-exoskeletons were a long dream of humanity. Although they based their functionality on thousands of years of human foray into mechanics and hundreds of years into electronics and motor technology, they became available to the mass market only recently. Whereas the Cetviwos rune technology was only explored during the short time the game was online. Flora realized that she might be one of the frontrunners in that technology because she played with the predecessor of the runes, the chips, when she had beta-tested the CAD system.
Holding her back was her lack of knowledge of the alphabet, the runes, and only secondary, the grammatic, how to combine them into valid schemes.
The Asian gamers were great at learning the language. Flora attributed it to the fact that many Asian languages had alphabets with a comparable amount of "letters" like the Chinese symbols. Also, their education systems prioritized rote memorization compared to the Europeans.
Because Flora wasn't afraid of hard work, she started to learn each rune by rote, including their appearance, name, and meaning from her book "1000 Common Runes and Glyphs".
----------------
Eddie lost the coin-toss who would be Jack Sparrow in their Pirates of the Caribbean screening. Maybe screening was the wrong word. They ran it as a free experio and could influence the action. While Eddie knew every line of the movie by heart, Flora had to rely on the system prompts and mostly ignored them.
To Eddie's chagrin, she messed up the first major scene with Jack Sparrow. Whereas the original Jack stood on the sail's upper beam as his boat sank into the harbor, Flora repaired the vessel. Eddie took revenge by changing between the rest of the cast to make Flora/Jack's life hell. They had a blast yelling "Reset Scene!" whenever they botched up the plot or as a way to admitting defeat if one of them brought the other in an unsolvable situation.
With Robby and Ressa, she watched Kung Fu Hustle. Flora liked the idea, with just enjoying a movie together, Ressa didn't get on her nerves, and she could acclimate to her presence. Of course, Aito played with Ahoncathyr. Flora reigned herself in, and Ressa did the same. The latter acted disgustingly meek. Flora gave her best to ignore it and be as non-judgmental as possible.
Inspired by the Martial Arts, she sampled the entire Ip Man series in pure experio mode. While she couldn't influence the plot in this mode, she experienced the martial arts of the master first hand. Sure, it was just movie-fighting, but Donnie Yen's moves were still multiple levels above Flora's abilities. She had to watch several scenes from the 3rd person perspective, just to figure out what her/Ip Man's body had been doing.
With Aidan's help, Flora created a new type of video. She called it Diagram Rollercoaster. They used her skill diagrams lines as trails and followed the flow of the mana from its perspective. The footage offered Flora new insights into her diagrams. A roller coaster might be the wrong kind of image because the mana-stream split up and ran through different parts of the chart, more like an irrigation system that supplied multiple fields and wasn't continuous. However, the experience of racing up and down the graphs was definitely comparable to a rollercoaster.
They implemented the technology for rune-schemes, as well. While the mana flow wasn't as interesting, the changed perspective furthered Flora's understanding. She needed more of that desperately because she failed to create an all-rounder focus that supported elemental, intent, and arcane skills.
First, she assumed that the failure was her lack of knowledge because the Multitool-Scepter was an intent focus as well as a combat tool. After hours of futile work, she realized that they both supported skills based on micro-control, and maybe that was the reason they were fusible. So she filed the project away and just created another elemental focus, a bracelet. The Wavering Wave-Ring's AoE effect had caused her too many aggro problems and pulled the enemies out of their sheep transformations.
Name: Wavering Wave-Ring
Type: Elemental 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
Because everything was better toasted, Flora arranged the boosters around the effective rune-schemes like the heat coils surrounded a toast. Of course, she miniaturized the runes and implemented thousands on the birossium band. On a whim, she created a toaster pendant, stuffed it full of "Condense", "Refine," and 'Improve' runes, and connected it with a gem to the bracelet.
Name: Toasted Focus Bracelet
Type: Elemental Focus
Description: Elemental-Focus with a strong emphasis on toasting as a concept for refinement
Regular Mode: 1 OV Mana-Regeneration.
Built-In Skill: Shoot fire cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;
Effect: Condense. Secondary Effects of spells are more effective.
Focus: Base Damage: 3
Tier: 1
Rating: S
She had needed a few attempts for the effect. At first, it was "Toasted. Improves Fire secondary effects." and variations of that description.
Flora spent much time improving the Mover (Morph-Double-Quad-Golem assisted-Hover-Killer-Blender). Carefully, she tested every available propeller type for the optimal effect.
The blueprint was a work of art. Flora arranged the parts not only in the most efficient way but also aesthetically pleasing. Not only had all primary circuits redundant counterparts, but they also run through separate channels in the chassis.
Aito had found excellent light materials. When Flora tested them, they were too fragile. One halfhearted punch resulted in a hole in the panel. However, fabricated into the Mover, they profited from all the mana the golem and the generators provided. Its 630 HP were nothing to sneeze at. Flora didn't ask the System for how long she could enjoy them.
Flora had integrated the golem in the design. It served as an accordion sleeve over the joint that connected the two cabins. For its melee function, Flora provided two scythes on chains. With 20 MR/min invested, it could sustain five spells. Flora chose Repair, Cluster Maintenance, Establish Connection, Resharpen (the metal version of Re-Generate), and Fortify Link.
Name: Mover (Morph-Double-Quad-Golem assisted-Hover-Killer-Blender)
Type: Hybrid: Vehicle/Airbus/Robot
Mana-Generators: 16 MR/min
Mana-Battery: 150 Mana
Airbus-Mode: 13 OV mana-regeneration empty + 5 OV mana-regeneration per 50 kg cargo
Max-Load: 500 kg
Reduced Weapon access: Only Laser Canons
Rating: SS
Vehicle-Mode: 1 OV mana-regeneration
Reduced Weapon access: Only Laser Canons
Rating: S
Combat-Robot-Mode: 9 OV mana-regeneration
Built-In Feature: Laser x 4; CD: 2 seconds;
Built-In Feature: Blender-Propellors x 4; No CD;
Built-In Feature: Can use Built-In Skills itself from mana-battery (150 mana).
Built-In Skill: Rapid Fire; Cost: 10 mana; CD: 25 seconds.
Built-In Skill: In the Mix; Cost: 10 mana; CD: 25 seconds.
Built-In Skill: Toaster-Boost; Cost: 10 mana; CD: 25 seconds.
Tier: 1
Hybrid-Rating: SSS
After Flora finished a Mover prototype, she put it into the simulation grounds that her AIs could train with it. She brought two buckets full of fruit, colorful paper umbrellas, glasses, and drinking straws.
"What an excellent home appliance you are!" Flora said out loud in the stilted cadence of amateur actors. "Please show me your blender powers."
"Yes, Milady." This time, she hadn't forgotten to add loudspeakers. The Mover inserted its propeller into the bucket and minced the fruits. Then Flora filled her glass, inserted the drinking straw, and took a sip.
"Only a dedicated blender like you could make such a nice smoothie!" She intoned, glancing at the "Type" of the Mover. It was still "Hybrid: Vehicle/Airbus/Robot".
At that moment, the doors of multiple boxes opened, and Mia, Dice, Shari, and Cherrya of Squad Four-One exited.
"What are you doing, Auntie?" Cherrya asked, peering into the buckets while Mia stared at the Mover without blinking.
"Smoothies, dears?" Flora didn't wait for an answer and distributed glasses. "I'm testing my new household appliance. As you can see, it's a blender."
Cherry tilted her head while Dice scratched his. Only Shari showed her manners, smiled at Flora, and thanked her. Mia still stared at the three-meter high killer robot.
"Wouldn't you say that it blended the smoothies with the quality only a true professional blender is capable of?" Flora was getting desperate.
"Uhm, sure." Dice said, and the girls, sans the mesmerized Mia, nodded.
"Maybe in more words?"
"This is a most excellent blender?" Dice said, but his body language screamed. "Help!"
"Great blender! I wish I had one of those in RL." Shari said. "We have to log out. Our timeslot is over. Thanks again for the smoothy, Auntie."
"Yes, yes!" Dice agreed and vanished together with Shari. Cherrya shrugged, exed her smoothie, flashed Flora a thumbs up, and disappeared, too.
The description was still "Hybrid: Vehicle/Airbus/Robot".
"Come on, System, you heard them. The Mover is obviously a home appliance!" Flora said.
***************
Nope.
***************
Four members of squad three-one appeared, including Dave Lupe. Flora bullied all of them to compliment/acknowledge her blender.
"We are still on your mission, Flora," Dave said. "I hope you understand that we have to take a break now and then."
"Of course, dear." Flora nodded. "And you have to use the time well, now that the boxes have an expiry date. Neglecting your growth and training would be a victory for those terrible SwordOfMichael guys. Please take care of yourself and your team."
"Thank you for your understanding," Dave said and tried to get Mia's attention. Only when he touched her shoulder, Mia woke up from her trance. "Sorry, you have to log out. It's our turn."
Mia nodded but turned to Flora. "Auntie, may I build a batticle version of the blender? I will use it to make a lot of smoothies. Every household should have such a nifty blender!"
***************
I give up!
"Type: Hybrid: Vehicle/Airbus/Robot/Home Appliance"
***************
"Of course, Mia dear." Grinning, Flora hugged the girl.