Flora wasn't sure what to do now. She had worked through her todo-list.
Priority: Description -> Status
A: Animator -> Check
A: Remote Arms Class -> Check
A: Elemental Master Class -> Check
A: Meditation Chamber -> Check
A: Food, Potions, and other temporary buffs -> Check
A: Equipment for the entourage -> Check
B: Skills to learn: Bolster Immune System, Flush Out -> Check
B: Building the Animator mech-suit -> Check
B: Achievements for attribute OV -> Check
C: Building an effective Healing-Repairing Turret -> Discarded
C: Controlling a nitro mech-suit -> Check
D: Summoner Class -> Check
"I'm missing experience−not the points, but actual experience. I only 'quested' a bit with Eddie and did one dungeon run with Mia. I'm sure there are a lot of things I don't know about the game. Show me some videos of champion competitions. I want to have a picture of what will happen."
While Aidan displayed the videos on the big screen in Flora's bedroom, the auntie resumed casting spells. She wanted to collect as many mage classes as her combinatory abilities provided. Death Mage, Blood Mage, Affliction Mage, Sonic Mage, and Mind Mage had joined the list before she leveled up. They all had the standard set of offensive skills Bolt, Rain, Shield, Stride, and Field and the healing variants Healing Bolt, Healing Rain, Halo, Healing Stride, and Re-Generate. Now, she cast the spells with longer cooldowns like Field and Super-Over-Thingy and noted down their effects.
Before today, she had three Field spells:
Dawn Description: The first light of the new day reveals hidden dangers (counters stealth, hide, and invisibility) and lifts the spirit of all friends (doubles regeneration, removes debuffs, immunity to mental debuffs).
Dusk Description: The arriving darkness hides your allies and decreases the spirits of all enemies (lowered regeneration, increased debuff length, lowered resistance to mental debuffs).
Holy Field Description: Protects the faithful from and punishes the sinner with increased damage from all sources.
With a radius of 15meter around the caster, their area of effect was massive. The game balanced that and the long runtime of one minute with 25 minutes cooldown.
Thanks to her efforts, a new skill had formed.
[Magical] Field Description: Buffs your allies and debuffs your enemies with a strong [magical] secondary effect. Furthermore, the Regeneration of allies is enhanced. May have additional effects depending on the type of magic.
Until now, Field of Death was her favorite, though she was miffed about the name. The game had to be extra dramatic, not to call it Death Field and added a ridiculous description.
Field of Death Description: As death licks on the heels of your enemy, you drink in their suffering.
The visual effect consisted of black tentacles with rust red and neon green highlights slashing at the ankles of every entity inside. Enemies lost health because of the rotting debuff, and friends received a part of it due to a leech buff.
On the screen, a group fight between the different champion candidates and entourages broke out. The video was about the Fire Mage champion selection for the Red High Faction. A female player had two Firelings with her, and one of them perished. The host said that the NPC was out of the competition permanently but would resurrect.
"Yeah, you can stack your entourage with NPCs with a high Recommended Group Size, but the disadvantage of forgoing the Respawn abilities of a player is the price you have to pay." The announcer said.
Flora raised her eyebrows. She hadn't considered this aspect before.
Mass PvP was the second round. In the first round, the candidates had compared their fire magic against each other in multiple challenges, like burning down houses, fields, the biggest explosion, or the highest jet of fire.
The third and last round was a traditional tournament.
"Alright, let's make a new list. What skills and abilities do I have to hone is one central question. Let's call it 'Exercises for Flora'. The next is what information do I need."
Q1: Exercise for Flora
- Single-player PVP
- Multi-player PVP
Q2: Information
- Competition formats and rules
- Intel on Flora's rivals
"I'm a bit intimidated by facing another of those Spirit Weavers. That last tower boss killed me too quickly. Although I have the Transference Affinity now, I want to raise it until Sunday. Please help me to look for a rune scheme that I can adapt for sleep training."
Unfortunately, Flora's trusted rune books offered no ready schemes, the rune for the affinity was in her runic dictionary. So, the auntie constructed a scheme that used Transference to siphon mana from a golem to herself and vice versa. (1)
Flora engraved two medallions with the scheme and handed the Tolly one.
Name: Twin Medallions of Golem Mana Transference
Type: Artifact
Description: Transfers Mana between the wearer of the two medallions.
Cost: 1 MR/min.
Effect: Transfers up to 8 mana/min
Rating: B
"Not my best work, but it's for training. And maybe I can use the concept for something useful."
The following vid was about the competition for the churches of the Blue High Faction. The first round consisted of saving people, the second had the candidates and their entourage escorting a messenger, and the third was a tournament again.
A few more videos showed the same pattern: First, a solo task, often with sub-challenges, followed by a round together with the entourage and ending with a tournament.
Flora spent the rest of the evening tinkering with her spells and watching videos.
--------------------
The first thing after Flora awakened was checking her mail. With the activities of the last few days, she had neglected her business.
HoneyStream Land sent her contacts for investment. Olivandra, the priest and future Field Chaplain of Robby's squad, was in a dancing company looking for sponsors. Dave Lupe, the guy who cleared up the SwordOfMichael situation, and some of his squadmates had an escape room type of business in the Metaworld. Flora was delighted and transferred money to them.
Mia, her favorite and only henchgirl, had written her about her side hustle as well. She worked together with a drone designer and participated in tournaments with his models. They planned to enter the big leagues as soon as Mia had the recommended level for it and needed money to tide them over.
Flora was happy to help.
Although Mia offered to introduce her to her partner and the venture, Flora declined. Of course, she was more than tempted to look at awesome drones. However, with just two days until the tournament, she didn't want any distractions. When she didn't have it in her to send the decline, she changed it to "I'd love to, somewhere around next week, take my money first." And hit the send button before she could change her opinion again.
Then, Flora wrote a message to Robby, Eddie and Mia.
>>>
Hi, dears!
I need more experience before the competitions. Do you have any recommendations on what I could do? My stats and equipment are alright, but I think I need more practice combining everything.
Hugs and Kisses, Flo
<<<
Flora hit Canem et Ludos afterward. When she assembled her team, she noticed that the Mover's and the Octopussy's stats had increased quite a bit, whereas Gaccu's and Toastlem didn't improve.
"All your companions are now level 2, Milady. It doesn't change the golems as much as the others because their stats depend on yours. However, your mech-suit, your equipment, your robots, and even Aito, Haidan, and I profited immensely."
"Nice!" Immediately, Flora checked everything. Her Mana-Reg Robes of Mana-Reg provided now 26 MR/min in contrast to the 17 MR/min at level 1! "Very nice! Or horrible. If the competition is at level 5, they all will have even stronger equipment and companions, right?"
"Yes, Milady."
"Maybe I should level to five. What do you think, dears?"
*beep, beep*
"I don't know, Milady. You would get more powerful companions, but you would lose some personal growth potential. Reaching level 250 in under a year gives impressive rewards, but you still can do it even if you take the first few levels slower. The big-time differences happen after level 99."
"Hmm…" Flora penned another message to Mia, asking her for advice on that topic.
Flora fought one duel after another. Because she had to start in the C-league for level 2 again, the dozen fights were shorter than the waiting time. She never had the problem at level 1, and it hammered home that there were a lot more level 1 players than level 2 players. Nonetheless, she battled her way into the Level 2 Single-Player A-league. Now, she had to wait for up to fifteen minutes for a match.
When Flora grew bored, she looked for the first time at the multi-player options. Level 1-5 shared them. Scanning the list, she felt like at the beginning of her VR experience. She didn't understand most of the options.
"Catch the Flag, Capture the Flag, Conquer the Flag," Flora read. "Give me some slack. That's too much flag. And what the heck is Gnomeball, and why are there three versions of it?"
"Flag-themed PvP is very popular, Milady. On the other hand, Gnomeball has a bad reputation for being cruel. It's basically basketball, but instead of a ball, you use a gnome. In one of the game modes, you can play the gnome. If you reach your burrow, you get the point. If the other players throw you in the opponent's basket, they score."
Flora gaped.
Ten minutes later, Flora was one meter tall and had pigtails poking out of her helmet. Zig zagging around a boy, she dodged the sword strike of a second player, never breaking her sprint to the earth hole that counted as her burrow. Ice spells rained on her, but she resisted their effects. Some damage went through, but Fortification of Faith took the sting out of it.
Suddenly a girl from team red appeared in front of her.
Flora yelled in protest, but it sounded like a squeak.
The girl lunged but didn't notice the Octopussy tying up her legs. She stumbled and faceplanted.
Brazenly, Flora used her back as a springboard and dove into the burrow.
*************
Gnome: 3
Red Team: 0
Blue Team: 0
*************
"That Auntie-Gnome is cheating!" Grumbled a boy from the blue team. "She resists everything and then some!"
"I already reported her. Damn Hackers!" His teammate agreed.
"I wanted to throw a male gnome around! *Bleep* the Patriarchy!" A girl whined.
Porting back to the center of the field, Flora cackled, though it sounded like high-pitched giggling.
"Let's go and get her!" An amazon from Team Red screamed. Not only her teammates but the Blue team also joined in.
(1): Inspired by a Discord conversation with Cryum. Hey, check out my Discord: https://discord.gg/hX8gWPE