Auntie toasts the VRMMORPG

Lana showed Flora the bamboo huts. The biggest ones, like the clan-hall and the clubhouse, would be more appropriately named 'Bamboo Palaces'. The clubhouse stretched across the river, and its floor covered the water only partly. Near the bar, you had to stand directly on the stones in the river. Of course, Lana forewent the holes in the floor. She nodded and waved to the patrons while crossing the room.

The patrons came in all ages, colors, and attires. A guy in a red robe with arcane symbols shared a plate of fries with a punky pilot. Behind the bar, a pretty boy in a blue 'Clan Riverstone - Staff' T-shirt served cocktails to a knight in shiny armor and cyberpunk girl in an exoskeleton. Flora took it in quietly, but her heart swelled in pride. This thriving community was her son's achievement!

The next stop was a warehouse. You could exchange clan contribution for items. Superficially, Flora browsed the wares: potions, armor, vehicles. As Flora noticed that even the clothes had stats, she couldn't contain her laughter. This world obsessed about stats!

Lana wanted to skip the armory because only the staff was allowed to access it, but Flora convinced her to sneak a peek. Jetpacks, turrets, robots and even three of Flora's toaster spaceships filled the building. Of course, Flora jogged to the spacecraft and inspected them. It definitely was her old design! 'How awesome would it be to race through space in a ship I have designed by my self?'

Flowing Flowers to Aidan: "Remind me, to bully Robby into letting me have a spin in a toaster, dear!"

The next hood they stopped, contained the 3D printer.

"This get's better and better, Lana!" said Flora while hugging a pillar of the pavilion-like construct. "Just leave me here and come back tomorrow or next week."

She laughed. "Okay, I will relay to Rob that he should pick you up when he's back."

 

Flora connected her workshop module with the printer and her nock. Her surrounding changed slowly to her old workshop.

"I'm home again!" She smiled. Flora built her workshop like a gothic cathedral with pointed arches and stained glass windows depicting household appliances like mixers, toasters, and electric beaters. On the workbench in the middle was still her last project before her license for the CAD-system had expired, a diamond toaster. After she petted it, she opened the marketplace.

"Alright, dear. I've got an idea." Flora smirked. "I'm much stronger and more agile than in the real world. I'm not used to it yet, and we can exploit this by an old age suit!"

"I don't understand, Milady."

Flora smirked and selected the exoskeletons. She sorted them by price ascending and user rating ascending. After she scanned a few, she discovered one she found promising. The reviews trashed the design!

"This piece of garbage is more a hindrance than a help!"

"A medieval armor suit supports it's wearer more!"

"No skills are preloaded. I uploaded 'sprint' and 'power-punch'. The latter broke the mech suit. The former broke my legs!"

"If you asked your self where the 5 OV reg goes, this monster steals from you: It's into heat! After half an hour, it starts burning your body!"

"Excellent!" Flora exclaimed and bought it for 1 VirDo. "We will modify an exoskeleton, that is heavy and unwieldy to train up my stats."

Her previous work as an industrial designer didn't give her insights into exoskeletons, so she was more comfortable altering an existing one. At least until she got a better understanding of the technology. She assembled the armor according to the blueprint but changed it. Every large solid plate, she broke up and layered it for better mobility, and smoothed ridges and edges. She wanted to have the full range of motion, but it shouldn't be easy to move. Additionally, she added a second, frosted visor to the motorcycle helmet because she wanted to train her perception with restricted sight. At last, she installed tasers on the torso and legs.

"Milady, those tasers point inward!"

"I know, dear. They are for electrifying myself."

Flora tested the exoskeleton, and it was horrible to use. Every step needed immense power to move against the resistance of the uncooperative joints. The whole armor weighed over 100 kg and did nothing to help the wearer to sustain it. Through the frosted visor, Flora vaguely recognized silhouettes at most. When she touched her fingertips against each other, the electrical current ran through her. On the first try, she wasn't damaged by it, so she upped the current. That didn't help. Aidan knew the answer to the problem and activated friendly fire in her options. Luckily you could specify it for different groups like party or bystanders or just yourself. She didn't want any misunderstandings because of toasting her new clanmates.

Now the tasers hit her for 10 damage.

"What happens when I die in the workshop?"

Aidan explained that her body was still on the outside. She could even watch it through a camera in the workshop module. Her body outside and in the workshop shared the pool values. If she died in either space, she would be teleported to the looser's corner. Flora got a few ideas out of this information but wanted to finish the current project first.

"So, what do you think about it, Aidan?"

"Milady's genius is evident! Only a rare talent can make this awful blueprint even more appalling!"

"Thank you, thank you." Flora grinned bashfully. "Let's make it a bit prettier, and we are ready."

She coated the outer layer in a matte white paint and the inner layers a light green. First, she thought about adding some ornaments but decided against it. You can't beat simplicity for transforming coarseness into elegance.

 

"Counterflow-Training"

"Of course not! I only publish high-quality designs." Flora reacted on instinct, but then thought it over. "On the other hand, if it can help me, it could help other people as well - Let's publish it, but mark it as work in progress or alpha version or something."

Flora set the price to 2 VirDos. The system determined that half of the money would go to the designer of the original. Flora doubted that it would ever sell, so she didn't care.

Now she ordered the printer to assemble it. She had to pay for the raw materials, but they were cheap, under 1 VirDo. Flora learned that Tier 0 materials were available in every printer, and higher tier materials had to be fed to it.

Tier 0: Materials found in the real world.

Tier 1: Level 1 - 24 materials.

Tier 2: Level 25 - 49 materials.

Tier 3: Level 50 - 99 materials.

Tier 4: Level 100 - 199 materials.

Tier 5: Level 200 - 249 materials.

 

"Our next project is digitalizing the book '1000 homemaker spells'. I want you to be able to read it to me and show me the matrixes."

There were no shortcuts available, so Flora designed a book scanner with automated page-turning. She built one of those before in real life to scan old family photo albums, therefore the construction was no challenge. But the energy supply puzzled her. In the Cetviwos portable gizmos took energy from the user. A jack in the nock of the player and the device connected them. Some of the player's mana regeneration, usually 5 OV, rerouted to the machine. For inspiration, Flora inspected the energy supply of the mech-suit and found a box. Wires from the jack ran into it and the other side connected with the electrical circuit of the suit. 'Bingo!'

Flora bought the mana-converter and cameras. Unfortunately, she found no vacuum cleaner. She wanted to use suction to turn the pages.

Flora refused to build a vacuum cleaner as her first device, so she turned to the toaster on the workbench. After a few finishing touches, she declared the outrageous design ready for publishing. The toaster was shaped like a cut diamond. Every edge consisted of diamonds, and the planes were gold with small brilliants stuck to them.

Flora was in a cheerfully silly mood after tinkering with a real toaster design after all this time on cold turkey: "If you have nothing to brag about, you can still show off this toaster."

"Yes! Sweet!" Flora exclaimed. "1000 VirDos! One VirDo for the design and 999 as a fee for bad taste."

Aidan explained that for upgrading the rating of the printer, the clan not only had to pay money but also had to prove, that they deserved the better printer. If a crafter supplied a new modification, design, or invention with a better rating than the printer, it counted towards the upgrade progress. Flora was happy that she had the opportunity to help Robby's clan along, hence agreed.

Unnoticed, the printing of the mech-suit had finished. Flora left the workshop and donned the exoskeleton. Before reconnecting, she cleared her blinking notifications: Physical Vigor rose two levels, physical defense, and magical perception one level. Of the skills and abilities only 'Modelling and Design' leveled up. But she got a new affinity, metal + 5 levels. That reminded her to check the metal handicap: it was at 50 OV! She tried to get one marble to move with telekinesis, but it didn't even shudder. Immediately, she logged back into the workshop and tried using magic there. It produced the same result: none.

'I can't work like this. Let's replace the metal.'

With Aidan's help, she determined that 10 kg was the maximum she could use and still cast magic. Her metal affinity was 5 LV that translated to 7 OV. 10 kg steel had a metal handicap of 14 OV when wearing it as armor. Range played a part, she learned. You could start using magic with half the OV, but it only worked fully and reliably when the value of the affinity was the same or higher than the handicap. Half was good enough for Flora who wanted to train her metal affinity as well. After replacing most of the metal with white marble, she printed it and exchanged the suits.

'We will see what the suit does to my training efficiency!'

 

Next, Flora designed a handheld vacuum cleaner. It resembled a futuristic gun. The parts flowed seamlessly together and in no time the process finished, though the suit and the electro-shocks slowed down her movements a little.

"HandySuck"

Flora confirmed the following questions, and the upgrade progress of the printer rose to 27/50.

"Alright, back to the page-turner."

Now that she had all the core technologies, she assembled the machine while modifying the parts to her needs. The book would lie on a frame, and one robotic arm with the suction ability of the vacuum cleaner turned the pages gently. Mountings for cameras and the AI disk surrounded the structure and recorded the pages.

"It's a page-turner. Let's call the design 'Basic Page-Turner'."

"Sure." Flora set the price to 1 VirDo. No reason to get greedy over such a convenient gizmo. Before logging out, she started the print of the page-turner.

Back in the hood, she had the chance to see the printer in action. Turrets extended from the columns and the roof braces and focused on the middle of the pavilion. Molecule by molecule the page-turner appeared in the center.

After the printer finished, Flora fetched the book and Aidan's disk from her inventory and activated the device by inserting Aidan's jack in it.

"All clear, Milady. I'm starting the scan."

"Very good." Flora watched the procedure a few seconds before she entered the workshop again.

By pressing her fingertips, she released the electricity. She started to like the feeling. It didn't hurt; it just tingled a bit and numbed the areas it hit. It was quite relaxing.

"Aidan, the pain doesn't seem that realistic. Can you tell me something about it?"

"Yes, Milady. Your current pain settings are at 30%. This is the recommended value. You can go as low as 10% and as high as 70%."

Floras health was at 43, so she had room for testing.

"Raise it to 40%." She activated the shock again. Now it was even better, like one of those electric massage devices.

"Up to 50%." This time she felt a bit pain, like touching a rail while being charged by wearing synthetics. "We leave it at 40% or are there any advantaged for raising it to the maximum?"

"No, Milady. In the past, there were benefits, but CentralTank removed them and reduced the maximum from 100% to 70% because hardcore gamers got problems with PTSD."

Flora raised her eyebrows. "Of course, the experience is virtual, but if the feeling of losing a limb is real, there might be psychological consequences. I can even imagine physical effects like a heart attack if I get startled by a sudden assault."

"Only partly, Milady. You don't get startled, but you imagine yourself getting frightened like in a dream."

Flora retorted nothing, but she remembered, she had woken up from nightmares before drenched in sweat with a hammering heart.

"Let's start the next project," Flora said resolutely. "I don't want to think about activating the tasers while I'm immersed in my work. Let's built a device for my body outside. I've got hundreds of ideas on how I can torture myself, I mean, on how I can train myself!"

For her first design, she decided to keep it simple to test some of her theories. She built an iron and stone coffin with a few tasers and a vibrating mechanism. Vibration therapy prevented bone and muscle loss in space and accelerated healing, and Flora was looking forward to its effect in the Cetviwos. 

"It's a training-coffin. Let's call the design 'V0'."

"No, this is only the first iteration in the development cycle." Flora was more particular about her original designs.

"Sure," Flora answered and gave the command to print the coffin.

Flora messaged Lana that the 3D printer was ready for advancement and checked the time. It was already at 14:30. Her appointment with Ali was at 16 o'clock, and it wouldn't hurt to be early to get a feel for the skateboarding world first. But not that early!

After putting her body in the training-coffin, Flora grinned. 'Let's design a toaster for the Cetviwos! Theme: Welcome to the Metaworld!'