11 11. Nocks
Flora woke up refreshed and relaxed.
"Good morning, Aidan!"
"Good morning, Milady."
Flora smiled. In the real world, it would be impossible for her to feel good after a night curled on a small couch. Her body would be aching all over. Nobody would say good morning to her, either. She tried out the home management AI's when they were released in the teens of the century, but felt spied on and misunderstood. She tested a few of the future generations and quite liked her coffee machine's AI, but after she worked with Evai, the AI of the CAD-System, the others paled. Because Aidan came from the same company, she had high expectations.
According to her plan to step up the training, she unpacked her breakfast with telekinesis, sat back on the couch, and opened her mouth. When the spoon with muesli approached her, she had to giggle about the absurdity of the situation and lost control. The muesli spilled over her sweater.
"Oh my, that's my only top." Flora laughed. "Aidan, research how cleaning works in Cetviwos."
Aidan listed some options, including to die and respawn, but Flora liked the cleaning spell the most. You could learn it from a book called "1000 Homemaker Spells", which sounded intriguing to Flora. Immediately, she bought it in the marketplace.
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When Flora fetched the book from the mailbox, she noticed she had several unread letters. Yesterday she ignored the "Welcome to Cetviwos"-message, but today there were two new ones. The first came from "Legal Team @ Cetviwos" with a request for a meeting on Monday One at 8 o'clock.
What time is it now?" Flora paused. "And what day? And what's up with the numbers behind the days?"
"7:38 on Saturday Two, Milady." Aidan noticed Flora's puzzled look. "Due to time dilation, every day in the real world is two days in the virtual world."
"That means Monday One 8 o'clock is 4 o'clock in the real world? In what time zone?"
"The Metaworld has the same time zones as the real world. You are currently in UTC+1."
"They are in a hurry, interesting." Flora's intuition told her again something was fishy.
She received the second letter from Ali Hawks, the founder of Huffgrin Skateboards. He invited her to a skating tournament for which he was part of the jury, for a meetup on Saturday Two at 16 o'clock. 'This smells like a business opportunity.'
After Flora confirmed both appointments, she dedicated herself to the book "1000 Homemaker Spells".
The content was even better than she expected. It not only described a dozen cleaning spells: an all-rounder, one for large areas, one for stains caused by fruits, one for stains caused by oil, polishing, but also contained spells for crafting too like drilling, cutting, sewing, and stitching; basically, everything you needed for woodworking, metalworking, tailoring, cooking, and general repairs and maintenance of your house and possessions.
Flora studied the all-rounder cleaning spell. The text depicted two kinds of activation.
The first was via the word and the will like in these old fantasy books. That meant saying the spell's name with the fitting intent. Flora concentrated on vanishing the blotch and commanded: "Clean!" It worked. Despite using magic intuitively for years in the CAD software, she was still excited about her first officially learned spell.
The second activation method demanded the player visualize a spell diagram, fill it with mana and send it to the target. A picture illustrated the matrix. Eight curved lines led from the small circle in the middle to the border. It looked like a 3D wire-frame model of an island with a central lake surrounded by hills. Flora gave it a try. She imagined the model and willed her mana into the grid. Then she directed it to the empty ramen bowl from last night. The dish became shiny and prim. 'That was easier than I thought.'
After finishing her breakfast, Flora fashioned marbles with the transform spell out of the empty bowls.
She still had material left when the spell stopped working. Then she tried her other cantrips, and they failed as well. Attempting the matrix casting, she got an idea about the reason. When she tried to channel her mana into the grid, she was not able to gather mana. Her mana-pool was empty.
Aidan suggested displaying the pool attributes in her HUD as bars. Flora arranged them in the left upper corner of her vision: Health red, stamina yellow, mana blue, and concentration green. The blue bar was empty, the green concentration mostly full, and the other two completely filled.
"How can I empty the other bars? I know stamina sinks through jumping jacks." Flora mused. "Or should I ask, how can I train most efficiently using the pool-attributes?"
"The forum entries indicate that holding the pool-attributes below 10% is the most effective training for vigor and regeneration and quite good for the controls. Power grows with the frequency of using it and the intention to go to the limit. Defense rises with the rate of getting damaged and the amount of harm. There is no consensus on perception."
"Got it, the training result depends on how often and how intense the exercise is." Flora summarized, but then got pensive. "I have a problem with health training. I can't stab myself intentionally. My body is my sanctuary; I won't defile it." She paused. "Allowedly, I may have done a few things in the past I'm not too proud of and took a few risks with my health. I can't count the incidences I have electrified or burned myself."
She fetched the blowtorch from the inventory and held it on her arm, but she couldn't convince herself to fire it up. Next, she tried to facilitate a fitness incident but didn't dare to do even a cartwheel.
'My mind still thinks I'm an old woman made of glass. First, I have to assure myself it is okay to hazard physical risks in this world.'
"Aidan, please create a to-do list:
Reclaim my workshop
Figure out a method to hurt myself
Find a way to train while doing other stuff"
"I already created one yesterday, Milady. You ordered me to remind you of creating a shopping list and a wish list and getting nocks at the Magetech Institute."
"That's right. Let's go to the MI first. As soon as I have access to my workshop, the other issues will dissipate."
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"BLEAMTO Magetech Institute TOBLEAM!"
The MI was a silo shaped building made out of black steel. It did look less like a research facility and more like a world war II bunker. When Flora entered, she felt an impact on her magic. She tried to steer one marble telekinetically, but it only wobbled in her hand.
The interior room was well lit and friendly with couches, armchairs, and potted plants. In the center of the room, next to the elevators, stood a sign with directions. "Nape socket sale and implantation Floor 7."
For the sake of training, Flora ignored the elevators and took the stairs. The staircase was solely made of metal, including the steps and dingy lights. She went down in a brisk tempo. She even skipped the second last step to the floor platform with a little jump, then, feeling daring, the third.
After Flora descended a few floors, she focused on the doors expecting to find a number on them, but they were unmarked. She guessed number seven was three more floors down and tried that door. It was unlocked. 'Probably because of fire safety regulations−but it's a game…A game might need fire safety rules as well, due to sneezing dragons.'
Flora entered a hallway and checked out the next door. The tag read "Dr. Brownski - Nape Sockets", which prompted Flora to knock.
"No! No!" came from the other side, then the sound of something crashing down. "Okay, now you can come in."
Cautiously, Flora opened the door. The sight of a cramped office filled with gadgets stolen from different horror movies greeted her. In the corner kneeled a silver-haired man, maybe a bit younger than Flora. His hairstyle looked as if he had inserted his finger in the electrical outlet. Over a red Aloha shirt, he wore a white lab coat. His skin gleamed bronze. Not "I want to spend the summer on the beach to get a bronze tint", but like the steampunk version of the terminator: bronze, the metal.
"Hello, Dr. Brownski. I want to get some nocks. I hope I haven't come to the wrong place or time."
"No, this is the very right place!" He hurried towards Flora and shook her hand enthusiastically. "We always have time for our test subjects! So nice you are an earthling. You are immortal, aren't you?"
Flora nodded slowly but grinned. She knew it should rouse her suspicion, but Dr. Brownski's passion infected her.
"So glad you earthlings are back! Your reason and steady presence were missing in the Cetviwos!" He nodded rapidly.
"I'm sorry, Doc. Your last sentences went over my head. I'm on my first day in the Cetviwos." Flora explained incredulously. "What about earthlings being back? And I'm sure one of us confused something calling my species reasonable and steady."
Dr. Brownski laughed. "Not your species, your race. I'm from the metal race. You are from the earth race. We Metallings are known to be sharp, Waterlings adaptable, Firelings temperamental, Plantlings benevolent, and Earthling reasonable. The earth race left the Cetviwos centuries ago, but now you came back! We are all, um, almost all of us are happy about it."
Flora laughed. "Yes, I can imagine."
"But enough with the chit chat! I need a test-subject for my nocks, in particular, a six nock star configuration, are you up to it?"
"What are the stats of the nocks?" Flora asked while fetching Aidan from her inventory.
"My nocks are made of under a tier 4 phoenix flame triple refined argentosium!" Dr. Brownski's voice burst with pride. "They have a flow rate of eight mana! I'm repeating: my nocks allow a discharge of EIGHT mana per second!"
"That's above standard, right?" Flora vaguely remembered a lower number from Aidan's explanation last night.
"It is the standard of the future!"
"Great! And what about the metal handicap?"
The Doc mumbled something, and Flora had to ask again.
"0.75 per nock. But it's only an increase of 20%. I improved the discharge rate by 60%."
"Very impressive." Flora thought about it and drew parallels to electricity. 'The gadgets are probably standardized. In the second-best case, they can't utilize the increase in the worst case they'll fry.' She tried to package it more nicely: "What about compatibility?"
Dr. Brownski told her there were no issues. Many gadgets didn't use the full bandwidth, and he even invented a new type of jack to link multiple low bandwidth appliances to one nock.
"Can you substitute the argentosium with mithril? Mithril has a better metal handicap, right?"
"Sure. I'd love to work with mithril, but who could afford it?" Dr. Brownski looked at her, with hope shining in his eyes.
They happily haggled for a while and agreed on Flora taking six mithril Brownski nocks for 1000 VirDos. On top, she got ten Brownski jacks and two years of maintenance.
Ten minutes and a failed implantation later Flora stared at an orange screen:
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You are defeated!
You may leave the loser's corner in 5 minutes.
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Flora poked at the orange barrier, which jailed her in a bare metal room. It was solid and displayed a timer ticking down. After fetching her marbles, she played with them telekinetically while doing pushups. 'This might take a while.'
