23. Meeting Squad Four-One

"You have to hide your class!" Robby commanded.

"What's wrong with being a champion of Evailyn, the glorious goddess of household appliances?" Flora had already imagined bragging about it to her friends, acquaintances, and random strangers at the bus station.

"Nothing is wrong, Ma." Robby sighed. "There are five High Factions in the Cetviwos: White, Black, Cyan, Red, and Yellow. Every god or power belongs to a High Faction. Regular followers of the power only generate the normal amount of contribution, but champions produce a multitude of that. Therefore it's a priority of the other High Factions to hinder the champions of their rivals. In short: you get chained ganked or spawn camped into rage quitting the game."

"Please, translate the last sentence for newbies."

"You get killed often enough that you don't want to play anymore."

Robby fetched a legacy-pack out of the clan storage.

"When you activate the class, nobody can see you are a champion. You can switch anytime you are not in combat between active classes."

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Class: Analyst

Branch: Crafting

Passive: the S talent factor in the training efficiency modifier for perception, mana skills and abilities relying on perception

Active: Bonus for all perception-based skills and abilities

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You gained the skill: Identify.

Name: Identify

Description: Describes the effects of an object.

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You gained the skill: Measure.

Name: Measure

Description: Gives you information about the size, weight, and speed of an object.

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You gained the skill: XYZ-Ray.

Name: XYZ-Ray

Description: Let you see through an object or parts of it.

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You gained the skill: Zoom.

Name: Zoom

Description: Zoom in visually.

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You gained the skill: Astral Vision.

Name: Astral Vision

Description: Reveals the mana flow.

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You gained the class: Analyst.

Do you want to change your active class?

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Flora hesitated. 'Though all may be turned away from you, I will never be turned away. This is just a game. No need to overthink it. Before the hour of the cock's cry, you will say three times that you have no knowledge of me.'

"Not only will people seek to kill you, but there will also be gamers who seek your friendship because of the story quests of the champions. If you get one of those quests or need help, please come to me."

"Alright, sweetie. I can't bring myself to change classes, yet. I feel like I am Peter and get asked if I know Jesus and deny it."

Aidan laughed. "It's alright, Ma. I want to rush because I want you to be safe. But what did you teach me?"

"It's better to be free than to be safe. And it's better to be safe than sorry." Flora shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not sure how to apply the proverb in this situation. I should have taught you practical skills."

Robby laughed again. "Your silent casting is pretty smooth. It relieves me to see you are taking training seriously. Our gym currently gets used by squad four-one. They prepare to go to the Cradle at the end of the week. So, if you want to get to know them, the next few days are the best. Squad four-one has the same level as you. They will stay under level 25 until the Battle-Festival in four months."

"Too much information!" Flora interrupted Robby. She lost track of what he was talking about at the beginning of the sentence and never caught up.

"Never mind, I'll introduce you to them." They left the spotless meeting room and walked to the gym hut.

"By the way, do you need the Globe of Revelation? Can you lend it to me?"

Flora recognized the way Robby asked for it. She patted the globe. 'I will probably never see you again.'

The gym looked like a fitness studio in the real world: weightlifting machines, free weights, treadmills, spinning bikes, and rowing machines. Though, the laser turret and railgun in one corner of the studio were not part of the usual setup. However, it had been a while since Flora last visited a gym. 'Maybe those young kids are even crazier than the last generation? Of course, they are!'

A white, stocky, bald guy stood in front of the railgun and got shot in the stomach. Without even blinking, he jogged to a treadmill. Flora was happy she wasn't the only masochist in the Cetviwos.

"Hey, guys! I want to introduce you to my mother. She started playing on Saturday and will be one of your future customers." Robby said to the three people in the room as they gathered around him. Besides the stocky guy, Gram, Flora shook hands with a mousy looking teenager in an oversized grey hoody, Mia, and a motherly, brown-haired woman, Shari. Gram and Shari retired from the army, and Mia was a star gamer on the kids-server and recently got old enough to join the regular game.

Nickname: Gram OPhone

Level: 1

Class: Soldier

Clan: Riverstones

Rating: A

Nickname: Mia MyMio

Level: 1

Class: Driver

Clan: Riverstones

Rating: A

Nickname: Shari Sunpeace

Level: 1

Class: Soldier

Clan: Riverstones

Rating: A

"Don't be alarmed by the guns, Mrs. Flowers. They are just for reducing health for training vigor." Shari said, smiling.

Flora nodded. "How do you use the guns?"

"Just stand in front of them, activate the trigger, and get shot." Gram answered gruffly.

"I mean, do you hold the vigor almost constant on a certain percentage, if yes, how deep do you dare to go? If no, do you let it regenerate and then take it down, if yes, how far? I believe holding your health below 10% is the most effective training, but I can imagine it is hard to dose the damage with guns this big."

They stared at her.

"Yes, it is hard to meter the right amount. I take my health down to 10 HP and use the laser turret when it regenerates to a maximum of 20 hp. The laserbeams do ten damage in the belly. But sometimes something crucial gets hit, and the damage goes up to 20 hp." Surprisingly, the shy girl Mia recovered first. "May I asked you a question, too?"

"Of course, dear!"

"Your mech-suit is a modified SmasherXXXRulz, right? That suit is, um, infamous in the mech community because it is, um, not up to par."

"Yes, I looked for the most crappy design. I use its unwieldiness to train strength, agility, and even a bit of dexterity. For vitality, I have used electroshocks, but now I added toxic materials to the suit. I can highly recommend them. With turning the friendly fire off and on, you can stay safely in the <10% HP zone."

They stared at her again.

"Boss, can you get me one of Auntie Flow's mech-suits?" Mia once again recovered first.

Flora explained the process and that the toxic waste ran out. Robby ordered a team to fetch more of it and asked Flora to design Clan Riverstones jackets with 20 dmg/min and a mech-suit for Mia.

"I want a suit, too!" Gram added, "I'm a tank, so I need the extra training."

"Please don't bash yourself. Your figure is totally normal. You are maybe a bit stocky but in no way built like a tank." Flora said.

"Stocky? These are muscles!" He pointed at his belly.

"Ma, the tank is one of the roles a player fulfills while playing in a group. They hold the aggression or aggro of the mobs. It has nothing to do with water or oil tanks or being fat."

"I'm not fat!" Gram protested.

"Of course not, dear. To each his own." Flora made a mental note not to stand up anymore for other people like tanks or dummies! "What I don't understand is why you train in the stuffy gym. Isn't learning by doing better than these machines?"

"We want to make a Hero's Entrance," Shari said proudly. "You can enter the Cradle in two ways. One is the regular portal to the capital. The other way, you can only choose once. You get ported to a random location as the hero for the people. The endeavor is called Hero's Entrance and quite challenging. But with luck, you can get great rewards."

"Of course, you can train at the scenarios, too. But it's expensive. We only pay for the three most important." Robby added and sent Flora the names of the scenarios: Building the Pyramid, Do it like the Super Mario Bros, The Tutorial Tower. Aidan's list contained them all, but one of them Flora hadn't included on her personal want-to-do-list. What fun can it be to play an Italian, overweight plumber?

"The Hero's Entrance is for gamers who want to challenge themselves, not for people like you. You don't have to overexert yourself." Robby said in a soothing cadence.

"What exactly do you mean by 'people like me'?" Flora demanded to know.

"Civilians. The Cetviwos offer beautiful sights, elaborate gardens, and art exhibitions for people of your age. Even if you want to have a bit of adventure, there are easy quests like collect some flowers and defend them against slugs or something. You can do endless amusing activities without being an elite fighter."

On the one hand, Flora agreed with Robby. She had no plan for virtual reality, but the program she set for herself. Why shouldn't she just enjoy herself? Build a few toasters, explore a bit, and take everything slowly.

On the other hand, she was deeply offended. She wanted to slash her finger at Robby and lecture him on who he was talking down to. She was an engineer! She had heard her fair share of more or less well-meaning reasons why it wasn't the best career choice for a woman.

And when she strove to be one of the leading toaster experts in the world, there were a lot of people asking her why she worked so hard for such a flimsy goal, including herself.

You never miss if you don't aim.

Robby said she was a civilian. But was she really? Evai had foisted the Champion class on her, but Flora realized she always had been a champion of home appliances. The title might be new, but not the mission. Maybe she owed Evai to try for a Hero's Entrance, or perhaps in her mind, she already was a toaster hero, and anything less than a hero's entry would be underachieving.

"Ma? Ma! Are you listening?" Robby interrupted her train of thoughts.

"Sure, sweetie. What did you say?"

"The clan has this rule to take only A-rated players. But that doesn't mean they have to be fighters. Look at Lana; she got to A without fighting well. You don't have to worry about it."

Flora hadn't bothered about it. In fact, it hadn't even been on her radar! For a second, she started worrying, but then she remembered all the incompetent people in the world. It was practically impossible for her to be rated less than them, or at least, the System would have to pull out the strangest criteria.

"If you would get rated B on Saturday, you still have a week leeway to turn it around. But with crafting rated A or S and with good stats, you can easily get to an A Rating. When the contract goes through, you are rich as well, which is a criterium. Therefore you don't have to rush into danger."

"I hear you, son. I'll think about it," Flora really wanted to reflect on it, but she knew herself well, especially the part which screamed: 'Those snotty-nosed brats have seen nothing! Hero's Entrance it is!'

After wrapping up the conversation, Flora beamed to Tricky Beach and did the daily quest. Next, she attended martial art lessons and last, but not least, took a nap.

Now, she was ready to tackle the Huffgrin collision-detection system again.

Yesterday, she had an idea. The standard collision handling for the core-area around the deck was almost perfect. If she could somehow simulate the crashes in this area and propagate the reaction to the model, all of her problems would be solved.

The first and easiest step was building a miniature of the model. Flora hid it under the deck in the belly of the plane.

The next step consisted of linking the states of the miniature to the original skin. It took Flora a while to figure it out.

She tested the modification by poking a stick at the underbelly of the plane. Not only did this part of the big model deform, but the little model also crumbled, causing the big model to distort.

The last step was the most difficult. Flora had to think of a method to simulate the crash happening to the skin to the miniature. The system only reacted to "real" objects and not to other animations. Flora combed through the bulletin boards, guides, and the user manual until she found a hidden feature.

Binding her advanced detection to the feature cost her much time and nerves. But finally, she got a working prototype.

The skater approached the back of a mini-ramp. The forewarning system she built yesterday noticed the intrusion. With this data, Flora modeled the crash to the miniature. Then the connection between the miniature and skin propagated the changes to the big animation.

Flora was too tired to even test it thoroughly and fell into her bed. 'Tomorrow, I will take a break'.

After waking up, Flora cleaned up the two templates and tested the last one.

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You created an auxiliary template for the Cetviwos trick-interface.

Name: Advance Warning Collision Handling.

Type: interface template

Effect: Allows detection of collisions up to 2m around the core-area and offers bindings to react to them.

Rating: A

Price: 8% royalty

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You created an auxiliary template for the Cetviwos trick-interface.

Name: Simulation PP Collision Handling

Type: interface template

Effect: Perfect collision handling. The only prerequisite: enough space needed to hide the miniature.

Rating: SSS

Price: 15% royalty

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Afterward, she fine-tuned the burned toast skin, the meadow, and the Heinkel world war II bomber. Of course, she substituted the swastika on the bomber's tail with her logo and included a feature, with which the buyer could upload his own picture instead. Additionally, she integrated the Intensity-Meter on the propellers making them change their speed and glow with rising intensity.

'It would be a waste of a solid, but admittingly a bit boring design, if I wouldn't adapt the Rainbow Intensity to a deck.'

Therefore she added one stripe with this feature above and one below a black deck and called it finished.

As soon as Aidan had registered the skins, Flora sent the whole bundle to Ali Hawks.

Meanwhile, Robby had messaged her that he collected 500 kg of toxic waste.

Unfortunately, Flora had to fuse the materials manually because the system couldn't or wouldn't automate the fusion box.

"Aidan, we need a robot arm for you to help out. Write it on the to-do list. Prio B-."

Flora designed a simple biker jacket with the Clan Riverstones Logo on the back. Because of the materials, it looked disgustingly disco shiny cyan metallic.

Name: "Riverstones Biker-Jacket"

Type: Jacket

Effect: Toxic-Aura: - 3 hp per minute, stacks 3 times, 1 meter radius.

Effect: Radioactive-Aura: - 3 hp per minute, stacks 3 times, 1 meter radius.

Rating: B

Price: free

After messaging the links to the designs to Robby and Lana and transferring the ownership of the 1500kg X34P2V1-TW to them, Flora took a deep breath.

"There's nothing in my immediate schedule, right, dear?"

"Yes, Milady. Should we go over your to-do list?"

"Hell no! I'm sorry for cussing, but no. I'm taking a bath. Refuse any calls and messages." Before she had finished the sentence, she was already in the jacuzzi and cranked the heat up to max.

For the time being, Flora was satisfied with lying back and feeling the water flow around her. Now and then, she played with it using her hands and her magic. Flora created little geysers and maelstroms or pitted her strength against the jets. Sometimes, she added a round of mana cultivation and regular meditation.

Snippets of the past days flitted through her mind. She didn't mull over them, just mindfully revisited the scenes.

When she felt calm and recharged, she opened her notifications and went over her stats.

Now, she reached over 20 OV in all attributes but Magical Perception, but even it rose by 5 points. Magical Push and Refresh were the clear winners in the spell department, but Clean rose as well, which made Flora snicker.