With the business concluded, the player remembered their manners. Cheerfully, Flora introduced herself.

"Hello. We've heard great things from Mia about you. It's a pleasure to meet you.

I'm Little Immortal. You may call me LI or Little. Last season, I was the top-ranked player on the kiddie server.

The gloomy one is my friend SAF, and his specialty is mass PvP.

Last but never least: The lovely lady's name is Poppy. Initially, she ruled as PvE Healer/DD hybrid, but at the moment, she wipes the floor with us thanks to her S-rated elemental, Unflaze." Little pointed everyone out and stopped at the hip-high snowflake.

Mia saw the glassy look on Auntie's face and knew her AI's explained the gaming terms to her. But she couldn't wait to come clean and get rid of the audience.

"I'm sorry, Auntie. I have told them a thing or two about you when they asked about the mods of my batticle. They all belong to top clans. The less they know, the less they can pass on. I recommend sending them out for our PvP workshop."

Auntie Flow laughed.

"Never mind, dear. Discretion is overrated." She turned to the crowd. "If you want to stay, you have to comply with my rules. For sharing my lesson with Mia, you have to pay one spell. Furthermore, you are forbidden to share any information with Tigressa Flamante until my duel with her."

The teenies looked at each other.

"If you want to learn a spell from everyone, it would take hours." Little said.

"Nonsense dear, just show me the diagram, and we are good."

Mia signaled with her eyes Auntie to shut up.

"What's up, honey? Is something wrong?"

Mia lay her finger on her mouth. Of course, the attention of the group was on her, and pantomime was useless. But she didn't trust her mouth to stay polite, so she kept it closed.

"Oh, come on. Just casting can't be such a big deal. I haven't even revealed I could modify spells."

Mia's shoulders sagged, and she didn't trust herself to even look at the old codger.

'Discretion is overrated my ass. She is a walking security risk.'

"Ooops. Oh well, nevermind."

"I wouldn't want to miss it. I'll stay. What spells do you want?" Little agreed, and the others joined him eagerly.

"I want the elemental mage spell Fire Breath. The ice version is fine, too."

"I have it. It's called Frost Breath." Poppy exclaimed.

Flora giggled. "Is the wood spell called Toxic Breath? If yes, I even know a few people in real life who possess it."

The kids laughed. Mia was so used to the skill names she didn't notice how funny some of them were.

Gradually, she relaxed. The teenies hadn't understood what Auntie meant when she said she could modify spells. They had probably thought of Morphs.

"And I need more movement skills which don't share cooldowns with the mage stuff, Escape Trap or Power-Jump. I watched a few vids of Tigressa, and she is slippery."

"I have that covered, too. But I won't pay for all of you. Little and the SAF have Seven-Mile-Step while my spell's name is Blink. Both share a cool down. Little has means to speed himself up, but I'm pretty sure he won't trade it."

"Right. Super-Blown is a hidden spell. When I teach it to you, I'll lose it."

When Mia saw Auntie's face light up, she got a bad feeling.

"Can we go somewhere with space to train?" Flora asked.

Mia showed her the controls of the booth. Although she felt like a cheapskate to let auntie pay for the room expansion, she couldn't bring herself to spend 2 VirDos when she was so close to affording an AI.

While Flora, fiddled the controls, Frogger collected the nerve to speak up.

"I know a few of the animal moves, mainly amphibians, and I Wish The Ground Would Swallow Me." He said.

"I know teenage life is hard, but it will be better, I promise." Flora looked at him with compassion.

Mia suppressed an eye roll, and the teenies snickered.

"It's the name of the skill. It opens up a tunnel, and you stay underground for a few seconds." He clarified. "But thank you for the encouragement, I'm counting on it."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Flora patted him on the shoulder. "That's the spirit! What about the animal thing?"

"It's the beastmaster movement skill. You need at least 10 OV in the animal affinity of the species you want to imitate. Frog Leap shares a CD with Power-Jump, so it's useless. Newt Feet enables you to walk walls. Gymno Gymnastics lets you do contorted movements. These were all skills of the amphibian affinity. I've got a few of the reptilian as well."

"Fascinating! Unfortunately, I haven't time to grind the affinity." Flora said. "To make matters worse, Tigressa Flamenta can make herself invisible. I can counter it with Dawn, but the spell has a long CD. Do you have skills against stealth?"

"Sorry, most of the anti-stealth spells are tier 2. But stealth isn't as scary as it seems. It only works for a few seconds, and if you stand in an AoE, the skill gets interrupted when they approach." Mia said.

"I've got Astral Vision. But it's only effective if your skill is higher than the opponent's skill." Poppy added. "By the way, Dawn won't work in single matches. Only spells with CDs up to 10 minutes are allowed. Or you morph it down."

"But what about your elemental, dear? Summon has 25 min CD. And what does 'morphing it down' mean?"

"I conjure Unfaze before entering the arena. When he dies, I can't resummon him. You don't know about morphs?" Poppy looked confused.

"The word Morph comes from Modifying Graph" Mia started to talk fast to distract Poppy.

The teenagers explained standardized modifications to skills existed. You could change spell-attributes with them like reducing or increasing cast-time, secondary effect, cooldown, or mana cost.

Finally, Flora selected the spells from everybody:

Frost Breath from Poppy, Morph: Cooldown down; Mana up; from SAF, 7-Mile-Step from Little, and I Wish The Ground Would Swallow Me from Frogger.

Now, the PvP lesson could begin.

"Alright. My first problem is I don't know what loadout I should pack. I have six nocks and 30 OV mana-regen naked. I want my octopussy and my toaster. They cost 10 MR combined." Flora fetched a 1x1x1.2m big toaster on legs out of her inventory. Then four double-barreled turrets and a mech-suit followed. "The turrets are cheap, only 1 MR. One of them is for healing, and the other is for ouch."

Only now, Mia discovered, respectively two turrets were connected.

"Wait. 4 barrels and just one mana-regen can't be." Mia protested.

"I've integrated generators."

"Even if they only do the base skill damage of 10 and have a CD of whatever, you got 40 damage with the initial salvo. Take that times six and you instakill everyone I know or at least below A-league," SAF frowned, while the others gaped.

"I agree partially. Only someone very fast could cast a skill, but you forgot about factors like environment, accuracy, and armor."

"My batticle would suffer, but I would survive."

"I could hide behind my elemental."

"Yes, and Tigressa behind her tiger. My AI thinks the tiger has more than 240 HP. Furthermore, I don't understand your math. Every turret has rapid-fire as a skill, but only base damage of 3. Hence we are speaking about 3 base damage * 4 barrels *6 nocks = 72 damage per salvo. Two salvos per second are 144. Rapid Fire lasts 5 seconds. Therefore we got 720 damage. And only if I and my turrets survive the 5 seconds."

"You can't just count the base damage. SAF thought about a skill like power-shot, sure-fire, or something like that. It's base damage + attributes + base skill damage + corresponding attributes + mojo and multiplied by more mojo... has anyone a measure dummy?" Mia gave up explaining the damage formula.

Little obliged and fetched a mannequin from his inventory. Over its head, it displayed numbers and graphs.

First, they tested one turret, then all six.

They had forgotten you could activate just one Built-In skill at a time, but the initial volley without any enhancement was still 120 damage.

"With the CD of 2 seconds for the laser beams, we are by 60 DPS. 60 DPS auto-hit. And don't forget we haven't added any actions by the auntie. She can drink tea while watching." Little pondered. "Monstrous... my max DPS is higher, but I have to work up to it and can sustain it only a few seconds."

"I say forget about the rest of your gadgets, just go with six of those monsters," SAF suggested.

"But you don't even know what the others are capable of." Flora protested. "My octopussy has four similar lasers, and Aitoshuri can activate Rapid Fire herself. So it's definitely better than a turret. And I have to use the toaster because the duel is about who toasts better."

Auntie Flow explained to them the toaster spat sheets with charged rune-schemes.

'Calmness, please stay with me. Sanity, please stay with me.' Mia had to chant again. The little robot packed 100 boards of almost a square-meter, almost enough to cover the floor of the Clan Riverstones arena.

"I'd say it's worth for the psychological damage." Poppy looked as horrified as Mia felt. "But I wouldn't take the toaster to regular PvP. Too many arenas have special designs, like Slope: The sheets would slide to the foot of the slope or Highrise Building Lot: there is no floor, only rails and a few platforms."

"Alright, so we have the octopussy and the toaster and four turret-traps. But shouldn't I take at least one healing turret with me?"

"No, it's better to go all out," SAF said.

"I beg to differ. A bit of flexibility can save you."

Mia and Little agreed more with SAF, while Frogger sided with Poppy. The teenagers discussed the issue, while Auntie Flow nodded to everything they said.

Smiling, she interrupted the squabbling teens.

"I see the problem. Many matters have a skill dependent solution. I call them spiral issues because you walk on a spiral as your expertise grows. Imagine the X-Axis as the rising proficiency, and the Y-Axis at -1 'don't use maneuver' at 1 'use maneuver'. The graph is a sinus curve. That's a wave between -1 and 1."

The teens had question marks on their faces.

"An example is when to use the handbrake for taking turns while driving. Please don't use them at the beginner level, dears, just slow down. When you get a bit more proficient, you can use the handbrake to drift. If you get even more skilled, you don't need the handbrake anymore. Now you can take the turn at max speed. In the end, you can judge which turns you can take with which method."

SAF shrugged unconvinced, but Mia, Frogger, and Little nodded thoughtfully and Poppy enthusiastically.

"Should I divide my mana-reg evenly between all gadgets?"

Another debate took place. The party who argued for putting it all in the octopussy won.

Then, Mia and her colleagues piled helpful advice on Auntie Flow: When to use what potions, using the terrain to your advantage, and battle awareness.

On some topics, their opinion differed.

A heated discussion erupted about what to do when you don't know what action to take. The opinions ranged from SAFs "nothing" over "analyze for the next match" and "hide" to Poppy's "anything that comes to your mind as fast as possible."

At last, they piled on information on what to look out for when facing rangers or beastmasters.

When Auntie Flow didn't say anything for several minutes and just sat there with glassy eyes, Mia put a stop on the barrage.

"I believe Auntie Flow is ready for her first match."