Flora woke up early and hungry.
The three healing turrets were hard at work, shooting green beams at her chest and even more often in the direction of Deriga's bed.
Unholy Place: - 2 OV to all attributes.
Unwelcome: 3x ~1dmg / 2 sec.
Faithless: 25x - 1 OV to magical Micro-Control. 25x + 1% damage from all sources.
Immediately, Flora cast a flurry of spells. She started with eight Bless and Condemn, then she cast Refresh on herself and prayed for more mana. After that followed Thaumaturgy, which this time gave everybody a heal and mana over time effect for 5 minutes, then Fortification of Faith on Deriga. The rest of her mana and all the mana in her battery she invested into Bless and Condemn. Still, four stacks of the debuff faithless were left.
While waiting for the cooldowns to run out, she inspected the blade-roller. Five of its sawblades broke, clearly sawed through, and ten more stopped working. This little robot was not fit for long-term use.
"How do you feel about the bot and your progress with it, Aidan?"
"Very good, Milady. I tried risky maneuvers and now have a much firmer control over it."
Flora nodded, satisfied.
Again, she cast Bless and Condemn until her mana was low. Because Refresh was over level 100, it worked thrice as good if her mana or health was below 30 Percent.
If Deriga didn't oversleep, she had a good chance to survive with only one healing turret working.
After eating breakfast, toasts with jam, Flora still had a few hours until the mother-son-date.
"Time for some crafting!" She exclaimed cheerfully.
Now, she knew about how wonderful foci were, she needed one, or better several. Although she created three in the simulation grounds, she couldn't take them out.
After her third attempt at the Doom Moon scenario, she realized the importance of not having your weapons and potions in the inventory. She vowed to have the multitool and plasma sword on her belt at all times. That left only a fast way to get a potion unaddressed.
"Aidan, how do other people have access to their weapons and potions during fights?"
"Quick access slots, Milady. It's a tailoring technique. The items come mostly in the form of belts or fanny packs."
Flora looked at examples in the marketplace and finally bought a blueprint from the workshop interface for a toolbelt. It had three holsters, one pouch, and six quick-access slots. She colored it green to go with her mech-suits and streamlined the form.
With the sword and tool assigned to two holsters, one was free for a scepter. But Flora wanted a focus for her elemental spells, the Energymaster skills, too. Kinetic spells counted towards all three of the types and Animator skills, primarily as arcane magic.
"What if I combine them? A multitool would be a great scepter for Evailyn!"
"The high metal content of the tool might be a barrier, Milady."
Flora grinned. "Then, I'll replace the metal!"
The plan proved to be more challenging to implement than Flora initially thought. The casing was not a problem, but the small metal parts snapped too quickly when replaced with stone. Flora solved this issue by engraving runes against breakage.
Now, the casing consisted of a milky white moonstone and the inner parts of black onyx.
The next hurdle was the enchanted parts. Fortunately, most of them consisted of other materials than metal, but Flora had not the means to replicate them. She had enough of them for one more tool in her printer, but afterward, she had to do the scenario again. Or had she?
In the marketplace, she found none, but the auction house offered multitools. They went for around five VirDos. Flora clicked her tongue. The scenario cost 10 VirDias, and with a raid of the supply warehouse, she could get a few tools, but it was several hours of work.
"Let's see if I can make something good first. Aidan, is there a way to boost the performance of rune-schemes?"
Aidan overlayed her hud with the appropriate page from the rune book. Basically, you had to write the same scheme again and connect it to the original with a combination rune.
Flora carved the scheme into the pommel and then boosted it.
Name: Stony-Multitool-Scepter
Type: Hybrid: Focus and Tool
Description: Multitool from the 'Groom the Doom Moon'-Scenario modified to function as an intent-focus.
Regular Mode: 1 OV Mana-Regeneration.
Built-In Skill: Shoot healing cantrip; Cost: 2 mana; CD: 2sec;
Built-In Skill: Shoot damaging cantrip; Cost: 2 mana; CD: 2sec;
Base Damage/Healing: 1
Tier: 1
Rating: B
"Why is the mana cost higher and the base healing lower than Deriga's Scepter?" Flora asked herself, but Aidan answered nonetheless.
"The moonstone is tier 0. It conducts magic inferior to tier 1 materials."
"Yes, of course!" Flora bought the tier-1 minerals Aidan and the book recommended, and two additional multitools to save herself the running around if the design proved to be a success. Then, she sprinted to the mailbox and printer and logged back into the workshop after changing the binding to Energy-Jump.
Energy-Jump was the only Energymaster skill under level 25. She doubted it would work within the training-coffin and might destroy it, so it was better to test it while awake.
"Keep an eye on it, Aidan, and notify me if something breaks or." Flora didn't bother to finish the sentence properly because her thoughts were back on the current project.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Name: Stony-Multitool-Scepter V2
Type: Hybrid: Focus and Tool
Description: Multitool from the 'Groom the Doom Moon'-Scenario modified to function as an intent-focus.
Regular Mode: 1 OV Mana-Regeneration.
Built-In Spell: Shoot healing cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;
Built-In Spell: Shoot damaging cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;
Base Damage/Healing: 3
Tier: 1
Rating: A
Of course, Flora had the engineering method deeply ingrained. Add power, add more power until it explodes, and then go back a sliver.
"Let's see how it works with two boosts!"
"Check! Four boosts!"
"Check! Eight boosts!"
"Check! Sixteen boosts!"
"Check! S-class, baby!"
The stats didn't change except for the rating and one additional effect appeared:
Effect: Can be used to focus all crafting spells regardless of their type.
"32 boosts! It's still working. Time to go big or rather small!"
Flora miniaturized the scheme and tested how small she could engrave it with it still functioning. There was no physical limit on her engraving skill because, in the workshop, she could change the zoom and resize the scheme as she wanted. The materials determined the size limit and if it would be an electrical device, interference. Flora reckoned there was something like magic interference, as well.
She had to stop at 2 mm, half a grain of rice.
'Let's boost the boosts!'
Plastering the area around the central scheme with boosts, she started to connect the enhancement schemes to boosts, as well.
Now, she could fit 800 schemes on the surface of the multitool. But why stop at the surface? The product would be printed, so pesky considerations like 'how do I engrave the insides of a material' were superfluous.
After Flora's mad copying spree, the multitool had 3333 cascading boosters connected.
Name: Stony-Multitool-Scepter V3
Type: Hybrid: Focus and Tool
Description: Multitool from the 'Groom the Doom Moon'-Scenario modified to function as an intent-focus.
Regular Mode: 1 OV Mana-Regeneration.
Built-In Spell: Shoot healing cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;
Built-In Spell: Shoot damaging cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;
Effect: Can be used to focus all crafting spells regardless of their type.
Base Damage/Healing: 4
Tier: 1
Rating: SS
Flora researched the tools you needed for pottery. Most of them you could substitute with features of the multitool, albeit awkwardly like using the plasma-knife as a blow-dryer. Therefore, she only added a monofilament wire cutter and a resizable ribbon-tool. For the last, she had to take the enchanted parts of the spanner, so she could only make two scepters out of the three multitools.
Only one hour was left. Therefore Flora went into overdrive.
She did the same steps for the plasma sword, substituting the metal and engraving the focus schema. This time she used the rune-scheme for an elemental-focus, to be exact for lightning. Aidan had told her the kinetic scheme was not suitable because the secondary effect could affect the positioning of the enemies uncontrollably. Lightning has a weak secondary impact, 'Jolt' or a middle 'Shock.' Former had the chance to interrupt the casting of a skill and later to stun the opponent for a short time. Additionally, plasma had the attribute lightning, so there was a chance for synergy.
She ordered the strands of cascading boosts that they resembled lightning bolts.
Name: Lightning-Focus-Plasma-Sword
Type: Hybrid: Focus and Sword
Description: Elemental-Focus Plasma-Sword that can shoot lightning bolts.
Regular Mode: 1 OV Mana-Regeneration.
Built-In Skill: Shoot lightning cantrip; Cost: 1 mana; CD: 2sec;
Effect: Lightning has the chance to hop to one additional target in range.
Focus: Base Damage: 4
Sword: Base Damage: 6
Tier: 1
Rating: SS
Flora smiled at her two creations and rubbed her hands. It was never easier to create SS rated designs, so why stop here?
She built a tree-shaped crystal and stuffed it with wood rune-schemes, an icicle-shaped with ice, a flame-shaped with fire, a wave-shaped orb with water, a mini-crystal mountain with earth elemental focus rune-schemes. For wind, she wasn't sure. First, she did a feather, but didn't like the effect: Supports all flying spells. Then she formed a hurricane and liked the bonus more: Wind effect continues to all targets in a line up to 3 meters.
Notification: Exploit detected.
Please wait for the arrival of the Administrator.
Someone cleared his throat right next to her. Flora winced and turned around.
"Hello, Mr. Administrator! Long-time no see!"
"Hello, Flowing Flowers. May I come right to the point?"
Flora nodded.
"Congratulations, following exploits were discovered by you:
1. Boosting boosts works indefinitely
2. Boosting a scheme has no limitation but the available room.
We will fix both exploits to only one level of boosting a boost and a maximal amount of six boosts per schema. Your creations will be rated down.
You earned 200 VirDias and + 1 OV runecraft for disclosing this exploit."
"How about, you add one OV for Modeling and Design as well? I created it in the workshop, after all."
"No. Thank you for your cooperation. Good-bye."
The Administrator vanished.
"Oh, well." Flora sighed. "And still haven't enough C-rated blueprints to update the printer!"
"Milady, you reached the wall!"
"I wouldn't formulate it like that. I have thousands of ideas, just not enough time to implement them!"
"Of course, Milady. You reached the opposite wall in your living quarters. The movement spell propelled the whole training coffin. The belt, which binds you to it, is damaged as well. I estimate it will hold another ten minutes."
"Not bad, at least a better result than I expected."
Flora loaded the blueprint for the training coffin. Then, she added a tier-1 belt, a mounting on the base to bolt it to the floor, and a more sophisticated pully-system for casting. Just two spells weren't enough anymore.
After she crawled out of the coffin, Flora printed only the toolbelt for the potions for her excursion. But then she realized that she didn't want to wait any longer for her octopussy companion and needed to level the Robot Handler spells. Hence, she printed it, as well.
Name: Octopussy-Helper-Bot
Type: Robot
Description: Camouflage capable, crafting bot with laser eyes.
Regular Mode: 7 OV Mana-Regeneration.
Built-In Feature: Laser; 2 sec CD; Damage: 3.
Built-In Feature: Vicious Cut; 2 sec CD; Damage: 3.
Built-In Feature: Multitool: Change tools; 2 sec CD.
Built-In Skill: Camouflage; 2 mana + 1 mana/minute.
Built-In Skill: Rapid Fire; Cost: 5 mana; 2 shots per second for 4 seconds.
Capacity: 140 mana.
HP: 40.
Rating: B.
Flora winced. Due to the shitty printer, her robot had suffered. Its HP, Mana-Capacity, Rapid Fire skill, and rank had sunken. Even the toolbelt was worse than its design, with only five quick-access slots.
After connecting Aitoshuri's jack to the robot, she patted its head.
"So, what do you think, dear?"
Four of Aitoshuri's arms moved in a wave-like motion. Flora interpreted it as shrugging, but it looked so cute she had to laugh.
As Flora prepared all the items she needed, she realized she had forgotten to learn the underwater-breathing skill.
You gained a skill: Infinite breath.
Name: Infinite Breath.
Description: Buff. You won't suffocate as long as it lasts.
Duration: depending on the OV.
CD: none.
While jogging to the teleportation circle, Flora spammed the spell. With 25 mana, it was costly, but at least there was no cooldown. Additionally, she could now pray for mana, which helped. Without a focus, she got around 38 mana back for a ten mana investment. But with a focus, it would be at least 15 mana more!
The buff only held for a few seconds, but the duration was rising.
On the way, she ran into Deriga.
"Auntie Flow! Auntie Flow!" Deriga was out of breath and gesticulated to her chest.
"Ha! I know just the spell!
Deriga still only exclaimed her name while pointing at her chest. Flora seized the chance for playing charade again.
"You got a heart attack?"
"No, Auntie, look!"
"Your boobs have grown?"
Deriga looked down as well.
"Maybe? But look at my badge!"
Name: Deriga Ticet
Class: Novice
Title: Novice
Level: 5
Rating: C
RGS: 2
"Your recommended group-size rose!" Flora exclaimed. "Congratulations, dear!"
"Thank you! Thank you so much!"
Flora waved her off. "I have to go, sweetie. See you tonight!"