2.16 Teaching the Pebbles – Part 2

Flora beamed to the Riverstones.

The Training Hut stood tall behind the Gym Hut. It looked finished, but Flora wanted to make sure, so she connected to four octopuses and told her AIs to inspect the location and equipment.

The new boxes stood on the Mezzanine level, and Flora discovered that some of the rune-schemes were missing because Aito had written it in the information sign. Then she remembered she had wanted to add the rune-schemes by herself.

None of her clan members was in sight, but most of the boxes were occupied. Flora found a free Treadmill Tunnel on the lower floor.

"Aidan, define all the Riverstones as friendly targets so that they'll profit from my Divine Radiance," Flora said as she logged into the workshop. In the simulation grounds, she chose a Boxing Box again, this time with lightning.

When she arrived on Riverstones Island, a crowd lounged at the Bistro, chatting and drinking cocktails. She only knew some of them, like Emba and Grill, Ressa's teammates, and Ponda, the busty witch. All her favorite Riverstones like Robby, Eddie, or Mia, were missing.

Flora greeted the crowd and asked where the others were. Ponda pointed her to the gym area.

A trail between fruit trees led to the section Eddie and she had dedicated to training. A track with Robby, Ressa, Zapple, and Hoffi running on it surrounded a meadow. There Hub and a few others used the classical strength and gymnastics equipment. Too Biased and Normad fought with dummies. Honey and an unknown woman played with a Stehaufmaennchen while Lana and Mia climbed across the obstacle course.

"Hey, Ma! Great, you are back. I'll use your workshop again, okay?" Robby waved at her and disappeared.

Hoffi slumped to the ground. "Thank you, Boss-Ma; I needed the break."

"I strongly suggest you resume training," Flora said disapprovingly.

"Ow, mother and son are from the same mold," Hoffi whined, but picked himself up while Zapple laughed and ran circles around him.

The others interrupted their training and approached.

"We'll start with the lesson as soon as Robby declares everyone is here. Please notify everyone interested." Flora said and started to jog. "No need to waste the waiting time. Go, go, go!"

The Riverstones reacted with groans and laughter but followed Flora.

"Alright, Aidan, let's optimize our setup for the session. I want everyone's stamina and mana up. So, Divine Radiance is a must. Do the pebbles profit when I cast Rekindle in the box?"

"What pebbles, Milady? You share the pools with the body in the box. Therefore the positive effects of the spells should propagate through your Divine Radiance aura."

"Excellent. I meant the Riverstones with pebbles. Bind Rekindle and Pray for Stamina to the gloves and cast on cooldown. We'll use Ora et Labora, too. Should we connect it to Dodging or Free-Running? I believe Dodging might be better. What else can we do?" Flora started glowing as she implemented the plan.

Aito displayed a picture of Bliz, the little ice elemental, and a fire elemental next to her.

"Right, Bliz has Refrigerate. And the other has Rekindle?"

Aidan confirmed that Embrun had the spell, and Flora summoned him. He looked like a campfire, broader than tall, and multiple red fire tongues reached in the sky.

"Welcome to the team, Embrun! Please follow us and cast rekindle on one of the pebbles. Can you see who needs it the most?"

The fire elemental ducked, which Flora interpreted as "No".

"Just target the one who pants and sweats the most, dear."

"I have the data for Dodging and Sprinting, Milady. They generate a similar amount in the boxes, Sprinting a bit more because of its higher level. I agree that Free-Running would produce less on the smooth track. Blur is another option to generate stamina and mana, but it might not work because of the box, as is Mingle. Mingle works with teaching."

<Blur>

Flora's blurred for a second and a buff for the skill appeared on her HUD, but both vanished a second later.

"Oh well, you can't have everything." Flora checked Mingle, and the skill was still at level 1, but Flora had an idea of how to raise it automatically.

Robby approached with a flock of Riverstones in tow. "We can start, Ma."

"Welcome, to the Jump crash course. I don't mean, you have to crash when you jump. Let's call it Jump Anticrash course." Flora remembered why she disliked big workshops. It didn't help that she couldn't see the faces of the pebbles because she was running at the front. The last issue had an easy fix. Flora turned around and sprinted backward.

<Mingle>

"Power-Jump is a skill that relies on Magical Body Control. What is Magical Body Control? Nothing much other than pumping mana through your body to reinforce it." Flora started to speak.

<Power-Jump>

The crowd jogged behind her and listened. Some people were chatting with each other but kept their voices down. Robby, Hub, and Zapple were glowing with Divine Radiance while all of the participants cast colorful effects now and then. Still, the level of attention felt much more focused than in the workshops with mobile phones and laptops.

Flora interspersed her lecture with Power-Jumps but ran out of words to say after five minutes. Aidan informed her that she had to speak at least half an hour for everyone to catch it. On a whim, she activated auto-mode for Teaching, and more explanations gushed out of her mouth− even some facts she didn't know about consciously.

Meanwhile, Robby had invited her to a party, the gaming kind not the social kind, and the pool bars appeared over the heads of the other members. Judging from the empty bars, they were a sorry bunch, but the atmosphere was good. Even the chatting had died down because the biggest blabbermouths were the worst runners and now busy with panting.

Another idea came to Flora when she noticed Robby mumbling a Mantra. Could she combine Mantra and teaching?

"Channel your mana into your legs and use the power to jump." She said while channeling Mantra of Stamina through the words. The rising stamina bars verified the method.

<Power-Jump>

A few of the pebbles mimicked her and jumped. It took another forty minutes until everyone could join.

Hoffi fell to the floor, hugging the ground. The poor boy was on his second and last bar and received the sole attention of Embrun and Bliz, who she had called when the cooldown for Summon Elemental had run out.

"Alright, now to the second part of the workshop." Flora continued. "I'm offering to teach you Refresh. It's a water magic spell which not only regenerates all the pool values but also has a chance to get rid of negative status effects. I believe everybody should know it. We'll take a fifteen-minute break."

"I'm too exhausted to flee!" Hub complained, sitting next to his destroyed clanmate.

"Everybody of the PVP team will stay," Robby stated just as Team Fire turned around to leave.

"But darling, I'm a DD. Healing is a waste of DPS." Ressa whined. "Emba is a tank, and Grill knows Rekindle."

"You can still use it for training or when we retreat." Robby countered. "Even with my healing capabilities, I have died of DoTs after the fight. The spell has been on my to-do list for a while. Grill, Zapple, and Ponda may go, but it would be appreciated if you'd stay to uphold the regen."

Flora nudged Aidan, and he translated "DD" into "damage dealer", "DPS" into "damage per second", and "DoTs" into "damage over time", skills that left a status effect that diminished the health points like poison or burning.

"I'm staying. I have too much fun seeing y'all sweat!" Even now, the glowing Zapple jogged circles around the group. "Besides, you'll miss my buffs."

Now, Flora had a bit time to look at the bars over the heads of her clanmates. The HUD displayed health red, stamina yellow, mana blue, and concentration green. Everyone's health bar was nearly empty. Most of the bars showed only white with small colorful fillings on the left side, the remaining points of the bars. The interesting aspect was that Flora knew the programming of the health turrets and damaging schemes and, therefore, could get an estimate of the HP of the users.

Although the boxes had five modus, which controlled when the schemes and turret started and stopped functioning, Flora assumed that most pebbles activated them in the factory setting. The standard modus instructed the damaging schemes to work if the user had more than 10 health and the turrets if the user had below 30% health. The turrets were only strong enough to heal one damage rune-scheme, not the two, most of the boxes incorporated. That meant the players HP fluctuated around 10 health.

With the relative display of the bars and the knowledge that the fill status meant most likely around 10 HP, Flora started guessing vitality OVs. Of course, all the players were squeezed to level 1, so she wouldn't know their actual values, but their diligence in training.

Eddie's sliver of health was nearly as thin as her own 12/330. Her pal seemed to have made good use of the box she gave to him. Flora looked at Mia, but she used another modus. She sent the girl a message asking for the reason.

The next tier was around 200-250 health. Robby, Hub, Zapple, Mia's squadmates, and to her astonishment Honey and Lana fell into this margin. The HP of the rest were around 10% of the bar or a tad higher, meaning they had 100-150 health. Maybe a few reached 180, but Flora knew none of them.

"They are probably from squad 3-1. The Training Time Suppression didn't hit them as hard as the pebbles who played longer." Flora mused to her AI's.

"Yes, Milady. The squad names are noted behind their names on the clan member list. You can look at the list in the clan menu."

Flora didn't. She was more interested in the stamina and concentration bars now. Nearly all the members had a full concentration or at least another concentration bar in reserve, but many were on their last stamina bar. Flora couldn't distinguish if they had used up the other stamina bars or had Strength below level 25 and only one bar.

Usually, Flora had full concentration as well because of Regenerate, but now her bar was nearly empty. She asked Aidan, and he explained that one body alone couldn't diminish her bar. However, at the moment, she had 38 mana-reg invested in her mech-suit in the box, the box, the gloves, two elementals, the Ora Et Labora boost, and the Divine Radiance Aura. That left only 5 Magical Regeneration and the amount from Re-generate for the skills of two bodies and teaching.

Mia MyMio to Flowing Flowers: "I had trained on the obstacle course, and I didn't want to die because of a bad dive roll. Now, I have readjusted the setting to standard."

Flora wanted to nod to the girl, but couldn't find her. Aidan mentioning the elementals reminded Flora that the cooldown was up, and she summoned Elkoak, the bonsai wood elemental.

"Another elemental of yet another element? And it knows a Re-generate as well…" Emba drawled. "CentralTank treats you very well."

"*bleep* I've heard your connections to CentralTank were great, but that is tier 5 cronyism," Grillmaster exclaimed. "I've needed weeks until I summoned my first fire elemental with Rekindle."

Flora shrugged. CentralTank had given her some nice bonuses, titles, and achievements. She was pretty sure she only got so many names from the elementals because of "Magical Prodigy".

"Just use the boxes for a week or two, and maybe someone will call you a crony as well." Eddie chirped.

"Are you insinuating that my mother cheated?" Robby glared at Grillmaster and Emba.

Radglory Flow to Flowing Flowers: "You didn't cheat, right?"

Flowing Flowers to Radglory Flow: "Not to my knowledge."

"Come on, Robby," Emba said, "We are not stupid. Just look at the contribution list. Your mother produced 40 percent of all support and you another fifteen. That can't be right. We know the numbers from last week. Your amount equaled Zapple's, and now you suddenly doubled it."

Flora nodded.

"Ma! Don't agree with him. You know as good as me that the numbers don't come from cheating, but from your workshop."

"But where did the workshop come from? CentralTank." Flora countered. "It's pretty easy, everyone. Did CentralTank give me nice things? Yes, they did. Did they gift them to me with a bow on top? Nope, I worked for them. I'm better at magic than you because I didn't use it just one year as you, but I worked for over five years with it and was one of the first users ever to cast magic. So do I have an advantage over you? Sure. Have I earned it? Very sure. Do I still think a tank is something that holds water and maybe oil? You can bet your last Nutella toast on it!"

"No, not the last Nutella toast!" Eddie exclaimed.

"Yeah, it's a trap." Hub agreed. "I know an auntie who would light a toaster under my butt, for wagering my last Nutella toast, no matter how sure the bet."

The tense atmosphere relaxed a bit.

"I'm sure Rob will share some of the advantages with us." Ressa simpered.

Flora was no fool. She could think of a source from which Emba and Grill got the impression Flora had received unearned goodies from CentralTank. And she was no fool because she knew it wasn't wise to speculate in public. Her eyes found Eddie's and his eyebrows twitched. That was enough for Flora to know he thought the same.

"Auntie Flow shared her glove and box inventions very graciously with us," Mia said. "I know people who would pay a *bleep*load of VirDos for the blueprints. We are already getting spoiled."

"Not to mention, she sponsored the Riverstone Island," Honey added. "I know how much this retreat had cost and agree with Mia."

Touched from so many people taking her side, Flora smiled. "Let's resume the training. Work hard, and people will envy you for the fruits of your toil, too. Go, go, go!"

"Aidan, do you see a fire elemental anywhere in the Training Hut?" Flora asked and sprinted backward.

"No, Milady."

Flowing Flowers to Grillmaster: "You mentioned you have a fire elemental with Rekindle. We could use its support. Thank you."

The redhaired mage stumbled but summoned the flame as soon as he found his footing.

He seemed to be smart, but maybe a bit too gullible. Flora knew his type. In time, he would learn to distinguish who gave the useful and who the useless information.

"And now, to Refresh..." Flora continued teaching.