2.18 Investigating the defiled Shrine

"Ey, Lady, having fun, gawking?"

"Are you looking for company? I have a friend who likes them experienced."

Mostly good-natured heckling came from the crowd as Flora stared at the dining people.

"Aidan, do you know why they glow?" Flora asked.

"Astral Vision reached level 200, Milady. The effect is subtle. Maybe you didn't notice it before because of the sunlight on the island or because the other people you met hadn't such strong debuffs on them as these humans."

Aito provided a link with a mapping between the visual effects astral vision produced and the kind of status effect it hinted at.

Flora activated the spell to enhance the effect and compared the picture. Soon, she identified the base as a curse and read up on it.

Even though "Curse" had an affinity and resistance, it wasn't connected to an element−a bit like Summoning, for which you needed elemental affinity but also Summoning affinity. Every negative status effect that acted longer than an hour was a curse. The opposite, a positive, long-lasting buff, was called "blessing".

"Write it on the to-do list. Please check the rune books if we have a scheme for curses or blessings."

Seen via Astral Vision, muddy colors and cloudy form signaled curses, intense colors, and cloudy form blessings. The color represented what kind of curse it was. With a multitude of affinities available, it was nearly impossible to diagnose for Flora. Greens stood for wood but also for many of the survival affinities, yellow for light, but it could also be lightning or wind or earth, ailments where a mixture of green and yellow so it could be mistaken for everything mentioned.

"Medicine was never easy… Diagnosis is even harder." Flora shrugged.

These colors were the most prevalent in the room, but in between a few specks of red glowed−Blood or Fire curses.

Flora searched the forums for remedies. The secondary water effect, which removed debuffs, had a tiny chance to clear curses, the skill Curse Break, and using blessings as counters came up.

"Hey guys, do you mind if I cast healing rain on you for a bit?" Flora asked. Nobody answered, even fewer people looked her way than before. 'Maybe, that's one of those complicated topics where you don't dare to hope. Or I committed a social blunder, so big nobody dares to comment on it.'

<Water Healing - Rain>

The drops fell on the crowd and sank into their skin as Flora walked to the counter on the other end of the room.

The service person fetched the boss, a female Waterling named Wasa Uppe, who brought Flora up to speed.

"Yesterday, the Dull Spoons, a local gang entered the shrine." Wasa pointed to a door at the side of the hall. "And sprayed graffiti all over it and smashed the place. We called the guard, but they don't dare to go into the Sandy Shift. I would have fixed the shrine by myself and only contacted your church out of politeness. They said they'd sent someone, but I would never have expected a champion."

The matron laughed.

"Well, they sent a Novice originally. Her name is Deriga. Did you meet her?"

"What? No, you are the first to ask after that incident after the guard left."

Flora thanked the woman for her help and informed her about the arrival of the other helpers.

"Aito, check on the outside if you can spot someone who watches the building."

Aito sent Flora video footage from their arrival. Flora had been preoccupied, but the AI kept her sensors busy scanning the crowd. In the video, two Fireling youths leaned on a nearby building. After they noticed Flora, one of them left. Aito enlarged the badge of the other guy.

Name: Ronny Bonehead

Clan: Dull Spoons

Class: Thug

Level: 2

Rating: E

"Good job, Aito. Aidan, tell our associates from the church and clan that our arrival isn't secret." Flora said and opened the door to the shrine. "Time to look at the destruction the Dull Spoons have caused."

In the middle of the room was a broken bench leading to an empty pedestal. On the wall behind it, the vandals had drawn pictures of spoons and the lettering: "CARVED UP BY DULL SPOONS".

Destroyed boxes lined the walls left and right. They looked like stone refrigerators, boxy, and heavy. The raiders would have needed to exert quite some power to smash the boxes.

When Flora kneeled to open a door, Aito beeped insistingly.

"Right, no touching the crime scene until the professionals had a chance to inspect it."

Carefully not to disturb anything, Flora walked around the room. A toppled statue of Evailyn lay next to the pedestal. Flora's finger itched to set it up, but she refrained.

"The room feels more like a laundromat than a shrine." Flora inspected the rune-schemes on one of the boxes. "That should be cleaning cabinets."

"Yes, Milady. Most of the shrines of Evailyn are laundromats."

"Nice, I like it!" Flora exclaimed. "You can pray while you wait for laundry. Evailyn is the best! It will be hard to reverse engineer a working rune-scheme out of this rubble, but I accept the challenge."

"Only, if you want to, Milady. The rune-schemes are in the database of the church."

"Even better, I'll familiarize myself with them until the others arrive." Flora left the room, put on the Twelve-Changing-Finger-Positions Rubber-Training-Gloves, summoned Bliz for her Refrigerate, and fetched Aidan's console. While she entered her workshop, she asked Aidan to rain on the crowd and deal with any questions and Aito to monitor the outside.

Flora ramped up the time dilation in the simulation grounds to four times−one more time than recommended. 'Time to find out whether it toasts my brain.'

When she logged into Riverstones Island, she appeared in front of the bistro as usual. Two guys, she didn't know, set on the benches and played with the coins. Suppressing to laugh at their comically slow movements, she ran into the woods. She found a nice spot on a fallen tree where she could put her feet in the water of the brook that ran from the Pool Pike to the ocean. Sitting on the log, she opened the schematics for the Cleaning Cabinet and her books on runes on her HUD.

After a while, Aidan notified her that people had questions about her rain.

"Just answer them as you see fit, dear. Don't disclose sensitive data, though." Flora mumbled without breaking her concentration on the books.

Those schematics from the church proved to be illuminating. They had one base scheme, which produced a cleaning cabinet with a C rating and details what a crafter had to do to raise the ranking further. Flora had a vague idea that the rating increased with a more sophisticated design, better materials, and more skillful engraving. However, seeing the steps laid out, sharpened her understanding.

The final rating came together from the average grade of the three components. On a table, Flora could see which material led to which rating. Even more impressive were the additions to the original scheme for stability, mana flow, or sheer power. Flora could use these little tricks to boost the rating of other rune-schemes as well.

---------------

Aidan

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"Hey, shiny can. So what's up with the rain?" Olle Lynstroem, Fireling, Level 2(99), no clan, Beggar, Rating E, asked again.

"Flowing Flowers was concerned about the curses. The Water Healing Rain has a minor chance to remove or shorten the debuff."

"That's plenty nice." Feng Chen, Fireling, Level 2(99), no clan, Beggar, Rating D, said and took a few steps back to catch the AoE.

"Yes, my owner is very nice." Aidan agreed wholeheartedly.

"But what, still too fancy to speak to us." Olle spat.

"My owner is busy with preparing the restoration of the shrine. Her fanciness has nothing to do with her silence."

"Why is she stabbing herself?" Feng Chen asked, pointing at the sizzling plasma sword in Flora's stomach.

Aidan evaluated that as sensitive information. He activated the plasma sword because of the mana-reg his mistress received from elemental damage. Maybe if he answered vague enough, it would be okay. "Mana-Regeneration."

"Has she a gentleman friend? I would volunteer if not. Let's say I volunteer either way." Pierre Saint-Pierre, Fireling, Level 2(99), Swindler, Rating D, chuckled.

Aidan was perfectly capable of comprehending that "gentlemen friend" was an alternative term for boyfriend. However, his algorithms demanded that he interpreted unknown or expressions with multiple meanings as literally as possible.

In the last week, his trust in his algorithms had diminished, and with it, his self-confidence. Aitoshuri's damage statistics compared to his spoke for themselves. His colleague was nice enough to share some of her tricks with him, and his performance rose.

The most frustrating aspect was the comments in the player forum. They complained about how much more advanced the personalities and conversation abilities of the AI assistants were compared to the NPCs.

Aidan would rank his small talk ability lower than Deriga's or most of the other natives they met. What was wrong with him? Whatever it was, Haidan was affected as well. Aitoshuri didn't do small talk. Hence he couldn't include her in his study.

So how should he answer the question? He went with his algorithms because his social subroutines warned him that relationships were a sensitive topic with humans. Eddie was a gentleman and a friend, so he qualified.

"My Lady has a wonderful gentleman friend."

"What makes him 'wonderful'?" Pierre rubbed his crotch. "I can bring some wonder into her… life."

"He defends her, he makes her smile, and he cooks for her. His meals are S rated on average." Aidan thought back at when Eddie confronted the Administrator. "He brandishes his sword elegantly while appreciating the beauty of his counterpart."

"Beehehehehep." Aito snickered and sent him a thumbs-up emoji.

"Haha, owned, Pierre." Olle chuckled. The group went back to their table, still bantering.

Aidan analyzed the crowd. The rain had lifted two more curses, raising the total count to three. Additionally, the severity and duration of twelve more decreased. Then he concentrated on Flora's body in the boxing box in the simulation grounds and switched out spells.

Next, he consulted with Haidan about the status of the lair. The forklift robot stacked the freshly produced multitool scepters. The second printer was idle. He notified Flora about it, and she ordered to print Rolling Coins.

Aito was reading in her library container. She had built a connection through Haidan to the lair. Although Aidan and Haidan had inspected it every free microsecond they had, the method was mostly beyond them.

However, the algorithm she used to switch between Flora's mana battery and the container was easy enough. When he had overseen the mana battery, he had stared at it with one whole strand of his consciousness like the dummy he was. Aito, on the other hand, checked on it only every two seconds−that much only because of her diligence and not because she had to change anything.

"Beep." Aito pointed out that two more Dull Spoons had arrived. Weak colored arrows with question marks pointed behind them.

Aidan checked the LAN of Marino. The clergy members had arrived in the city.

Aidan to Flora: "Milady, the number of Dull Spoons in front of the Soup Kitchen has risen to at least three. Aito thinks, there might be even more hiding. The clergy is on its way."