Flora dashed out of the building, and Aidan led her to a flyover which connected the trees of the Talpica's city center.

How would you drive if you were immortal? Flora discovered the answer to this question while running next to swaying and honking sci-fi and fantasy vehicles: Like an absolute maniac. After only 200 meters, Flora had passed a griffin ramming a submarine off the street and two smoking vehicle wrecks, ironically one of them a firetruck.

Because Flora valued her virtual life, she jumped off the flyover into the park. Of course, she had to pay another speeding ticket but arrived at the magical university with a few minutes to spare.

The technologically inclined passerby thinned out, and the fantasy-themed people dominated the crowd. Magisters in elaborate robes, Witches with pointed hats, persons dressed in feather costumes passed the loggy at the entrance.

Flora registered for the animator course.

After Flora paid the credits, she received a prompt, whether she wanted to use the guidance system to the classroom. Although she was pleased with Aidan's navigation, she wanted to see what the Cetviwos had to offer to people without AIs.

In front of Flora, a greenish misty line appeared and led her via three rollercoasters to the dome.

"I like it. Aidan, use this method for your guidance as well. You can vary the strength of the mist to show me how fast I can go."

Flora entered the classroom. Already, half of the 50 seats were filled with mostly young females. She strolled to the last row, fetched one Octopussy and Aidan's console and donned the Counter-Flow mech-suit.

After sitting down, she activated the boosted Ora Et Labora and connected it to Mana Cultivation. Then she logged into her Workshop and loaded a Dodging Box with a training dummy and faith, mind-control, and projection runes. She changed the multitool to a wrench and set the Bludgeon, Mace and Clubs Ability to auto-mode. From inside, she logged into the Simulation Grounds with 3x time-dilation, entered a Dodging Box with Ice and Faith, and logged into Deriga's workshop. Here, she loaded a Treadmill Tunnel. At last, she accessed her bedroom.

Bone tired, Flora fell face-first into her bed.

"Wake me up in 5 hours or if anything interesting happens." She said to Aidan, her voice muffled from the pillow.

"What about the Animator Class, Milady?"

"Record it. We'll watch it after I've slept. If the teacher wants something, answer them for me." Flora turned to the side, got rid of her clothes, and snuggled into the blanket. "Ah, the good old times of napping in class. Having a bed is so much better than sleeping on a hard desk. May Professor whatshisname's PowerPoint presentations lull the angels to sleep in his afterlife."

 

Flora's dreams were filled with weapons, skills, and pastel-colored monsters. They flowed into each other and permutated in her head. Excited, she woke up on her own.

"I'm ready, Aidan. Start the recording." Flora said as she jumped in the Jacuzzi.

Her bedroom contained a huge, rotatable screen that she could comfortably watch from everywhere.

"Milady, your son wrote a message that he would appreciate having the swimming-pool tanks for the Training Hut as soon as possible. He also mentioned that the former clan merchant cleared out most of the gloves and boxes you provided for the storage and asked if you can deliver more."

"Sure, I'll watch a bit of the course to awaken fully and then build them. Write a message to all the users we know and ask them for feedback on the boxes. For instance, I'm interested in whether the healing is sufficient. In the meantime, start printing out more gloves."

The video started when the lecturer entered. Flora had a perfect view of the classroom, but she found the rows of heads in front of her distracting. Therefore she enlarged the teacher, a middle-aged Woodling woman. Then she raised the playback to 1.25x speed.

Flora had assumed that the four hours for the course would be wasted when she could learn the spells in just a few minutes. However, the video captivated her more and more.

The Woodling woman started with common class roles and how you could employ the skill to their maximum effect, then brought up examples of professions that used them. Especially the golems were employed by a multitude of industries, from farming to mining.

Learning skills through diagrams only revealed the most obvious use, like toasting bread for a toaster. But there were so many more things to toast! Like bagels, croissants, and even prepared meat. Taking the course gave Flora a much more thorough picture of the class.

After the Woodling taught them the single target skill, Animate Attacker, Flora wrenched herself away from the video. She didn't want to let Robby wait any longer than necessary.

First, Flora noted down the rune-schemes she would need for the tank. Water was the most important aspect. Pure water would be a wasted opportunity to train vigor, so acid water was a must.

"Aidan, when we get acid, would the users have to swim naked? Or can you configure that the acid doesn't affect your armor?"

"No, Milady. Except for mech-suits and underwear, you can't exclude armor. Mech-suits count in many ways as companions, so you can configure friendly fire separately, and underwear is indestructible."

"I want to know more about the underwear topic. Is it an anti-rape feature or just for propriety? For the first, you may need additional features, like make it unmoveable. You could even integrate a force field against groping. No, that would affect damage. I bet many men would appreciate the feature against groin strikes, though. Let's make it conditional; the forcefield should only work against unarmed contacts. And when the raper wears gloves? Oh, dear. Let's change our perspective. I would love to protect people from molestation, but we have to concentrate on exploiting the current rules for our gains."

Flora paced through her bedroom.

"What happens if I'd build underwear armor−or better, mech-underwear? Or I could go commando in knights armor, declare it as my underwear and put a t-shirt and some sweatpants over it… just to honor the word 'under' in underwear?"

"Underwear doesn't have stats, effects, or armor-rating. Therefore you wouldn't have any gains by wearing full plate underwear. I'm not sure about mech-underwear."

"We'll try it out!"

After Aidan transferred a mech-suit into Flora's bedroom, she stripped and donned it. The material felt cold on her skin. Nonetheless, Flora put her pajamas over the suit and stated: "The Messenger Mech-Suit is now my underwear!"

"Your strength bonus from the mech-suit remains the same, Milady. However, the defense and HP of the suit have vanished."

Flora knocked against her stomach and wasn't sure about the change. So she went to a dummy and let it hit her arm. The sword went through the mech-suit like butter and connected with her skin. Although the armor looked unmarred, her arm itched. Therefore she removed the armor to look and found a bleeding line on her skin.

"Unscientific, but fascinating…" Flora said.

"No damage was transferred to the mech-suit, Milady."

"I'll summarize: Now, I have an indestructible mech-suit, which raises my stats, but doesn't protect me. That's practically a boost. How does the mech-underwear compare to a boost stat-wise?"

"Very well, Milady. Boost raises one physical stat and the other physical attribute a bit while the mech-suit bolsters strength, adds its defense to your defense, and gets half of the damage. However, as underwear, it only strengthens your physical power. Boost bases the stat increase on your stats, the mech-suit not. With your momentary attributes, skills, affinities, abilities, the strength boost is slightly better in raising your strength (by 1 OV), but if you look at all of the physical attributes, you gain only 5 OV wearing the mech-underwear and 35 OV with the boost."

"Alright. That doesn't sound like a valid option for most circumstances− maybe for a challenge in which you aren't allowed to use skills, but you have to compete in underwear… "

Aito sent a link: "Mud-Wrestling Tournaments in the Cetviwos – Not fun for the whole family, but a lot of fun."

"I'm not clicking on that!" Flora smirked. "Because we have no time… write it on the todo list."

*Beheheeep*

"Okay, back to our tank. We have acid water. Now, we need some cleaning rune schemes, a method to know when we need more water and a jet for a current."

3x3x3 meters wasn't enough space to swim laps, so a stream for pushing back the swimmer was necessary.

Flora compiled and modified the rune schemes then assembled them into a model. Healing water ball and acid ball rune-schemes as jets on one side of the pool, water and acid destroying runes on the opposite wall, a healing turret on the ceiling, some lights and cleaning runes on the floor, and a ladder because she was feeling generous.

The mana-regen cost for the jets was crippling with 50 MR/min for only a weak effect. Flora had to cut it down to only one healing and two acid schemes and add tubes to suck in the water at one end and eject it at the other end for only 5 MR/min per Jet. The entire tank cost still too much with 200 MR/min, but Flora didn't want to lose functionality, so she had to live with it.

After Flora was satisfied with the model, she entered Deriga's workshop and got to work. A few minutes later, she had a prototype ready.

Flora jumped to the rim and climbed through the hole in the ceiling into the empty tank. At the moment, there were only two sliders to control the features, one for how much acid the water should contain and one for the strength of the current, and one start button. She pressed start, and the jets hit her in the stomach and face.

"Alright. We should place the controls on the other end of the tank, near the ladder. Then the users can also adjust the acidity before they enter the pool. Maybe the player before was a water mage and put it much too high for the current user."

While the pool filled with fluids, Flora repositioned the controls. To speed things up, she cast Acid Beam and Healing Water Beam. She didn't want to generate all the water via the workshop controls because it would influence the test.

"Did we get any feedback for the Boxes, Aidan?"

"Yes, Milady."

Flora went over the four messages. The pebbles were satisfied with the boxes but wished for a greater variety in rune-schemes. She agreed. Additionally, her simulation grounds had filled up with boxes. It took too long to run around and search for the right one and then discover that she hadn't loaded or even created a version with the combination of schemes she currently wanted.

A modular system was the solution. Flora created discs with all the rune-schemes and added mounting systems in the boxes. Now she could just slot in the schemes she wanted at the moment. She included three new ones in the mix, a light scheme that only blinded, a sonic that deafened and reduced agility, and one that emitted a cloud of mildly hallucinogenic poison. All three schemes didn't tax the healing turret or any of the pool stats. They were practically free resistance training.

After the pool was filled, Flora tested it and added finishing touches.

"Aidan, print the tanks and send a message to Robby when he can fetch them. Then print ten Dodging, five Balancing and ten Treadmill 2.0 Boxes, and ten copies of every disc."

Flora then made a version of all four boxes with all the nondamaging rune-schemes, the three new ones and Laden Limbs (Magical Body Control), Endless Sneezing and Wheezing (Ailments) and the Spooky Shadows Scheme (Projection), and three mountings. With 60 MR/min, they were too expensive for the training hut or to use on the go, but her facilities had enough juice.

"Replace the boxes in my apartment, dear."

Satisfied, Flora logged back into her bedroom and resumed watching the Animator course. The AoE spell Storm of Debris was next, then followed Animate Defender.

Flora felt self-conscious when she looked at the whole class training the spells. She hoped that she didn't disturb the class with snoring or whatever sounds you might make during Mana Cultivation.