Back in the virtual world, Flora repaired her melted boots and handed in the daily-quest. For the first time, she received an A rating. Despite grinning like a mouse finding a cheese toast, she couldn't quite believe she managed to complete the XP-grind and doubted that she could repeat the performance short-term.

'Hopefully, Eddie enters the VR soon. I need somebody to brag about it!'

Next, Flora ported to the Seven Masters Dojo and attended her lessons. Her increased stats drew attention. Tempering and Physical Defense caused her to take less damage and strength to hit harder than the other level 1 pupils. The coaches now paired her with level 10 participants.

But her technique was still not up to par. She needed longer than the young people to implement the instructions of the trainers. Furthermore, she didn't want to hurt her training partners and pulled her punches.

It wasn't a conscious decision, just a habit. When she saw a smiling face, she was used to smiling back and not to hit it.

"Punch me, like I popped the cherry of your fifteen-year-old granddaughter!" Her partner, Ghoris Jalati, a brown-haired Georgian male, demanded grinning.

Flora estimated he was easily in his thirties, which added a decent oomph to her punch.

"Ow! Woman! That's how you do it!" He mumbled with a dislocated jaw. Then he grabbed his chin and put it back in place. Flora's stomach turned just from hearing the noise. 'What a brute!'

But his tactic was successful. It proved he could take everything she was able to dish out. Therefore she felt free to loosen up.

Question time occupied the last five minutes of each lesson. You could skip it and run to your next course, which Flora had done in the past. But today, she had nothing planned for the evening and decided to stay.

First, the teacher reminded everyone there was only one lesson left until the course examination.

Flora had no confidence at all. Although she knew her attitude was the main problem, she had issues with adjusting it.

'Maybe I feel too safe?' Germany was a secure country, and Flora experienced no physical violence after elementary school.

"Get some fighting experience, folks! Sign up for Ring-Time."

Fortunately, she wasn't the only newbie, and someone asked about it.

"That's the PvP feature of the Seven Masters Dojo. Go to the Ring room, adjust your settings for Wing Tsun or MMA fights, and sign up. You will get paired with someone of a similar Seven Masters Dojo course level. Defeat your opponent in two rounds to win."

"If you have issues with the forms, visit the Wing Chun temple. You can find Mannequin-Routines there. Unfortunately, the temple has only Ma-Routes for the Ip Man Wing Chun lineage. Wing Tsun is part of this lineage. Therefore the first two forms are identical." One of the coaches, an athletic brown-haired woman, added.

The forms consisted of Thai Chi like movements and were the equivalent to a kata in karate.

Flora to Aidan: "Great! The Ring-Thing and the Mannequin-Thing have the potential to solve both of my problems and get ready for the test! Let's try them out. I hope you caught the correct appellation, dear."

First, she navigated with Aidan's help to the Wing Chun temple in the northern part of the compound.

The temple was part of a whole village consisting of red houses with curved roofs and courtyards.

The first room reminded Flora of a museum, with black and white photographs hanging on the walls, and objects in display cabinets standing on podia. The smell of wood from the creaking floor permeated the air.

After tiptoeing through the room, Flora entered the courtyard. A pond with several statues of cranes and snakes decorated it.

A few people came from the side houses and entered the main house on the northern edge of the yard. Flora followed them.

A strange scene welcomed her upon entering.

The room had dozens of statues in martial arts poses. People surrounded them and touched them. Nobody spoke or moved. They all stared with glassy eyes on the figures.

'This is the strangest cult ever!' Flora's eyes darted between the statues and the open door, her emergency exit.

Suddenly one person moved. Flora thought she looked vaguely familiar, maybe from one of the lessons she had taken. The black-haired woman took her hands off the shoulder of the statue of a guy in horse stance. Then she looked at Flora, nodded, touched the shoulder again, and went back to staring into nothingness.

"Aidan, what are they doing?"

"These are Mannequin-Routines, Milady. They work like experios and transport the user into a separate dimension where they can experience the movements of the martial arts routine."

"So it's not an esoteric ritual to pray for enlightenment in martial arts." Flora was a bit disappointed but more inclined to try it. She chose the same statue as the woman and touched its forearm.

小念頭 (Xiǎo niàntou) - Mannequin Routine

To experience the Routine, please pay one Credit.

After the now familiar feeling of getting hurled through dimensions by your navel, Flora found herself in a meadow on a mountain. She wanted to look around, but couldn't move.

Suddenly, her hands started to move on their own. After a short bout of panic, Flora realized she did the first Wing Chun form, Siu Lim Tao.

The Beginner-I Course only covered the first section of it, but now Flora experienced the complete form.

'Again!'

At the next pass, she got over her discomfort quicker and started to feel the moves.

'Again!' 'Again!' 'Again!' 'Again!'

Gradually she began to comprehend the form and move mentally in sync with the mysterious person whose body she was sharing.

Eventually, she took a break and tried to perform the form on her own. She judged she got the first section of the form right, but with pauses. Consequently, she returned to the statue for a few more rounds.

After she could perform the first section fluently, she moved on to the next statue.

黐手(chī shǒu) - Mannequin-Routine

To experience the Routine, please pay one Credit.

A second person appeared in front of her, a Chinese guy. Flora's body put its wrists against the wrists of the other guy. They took turns in defending and attacking while never losing contact with the forearms of their partner.

The drill was called Chi Sau, sticky hands, but Flora called it wrist massage. It was used to train energy exchange and continuous movement.

In the lessons, they only performed it with one hand, but using both felt more natural to Flora at first. Then the exercise progressed to a level Flora couldn't comprehend. Therefore she repeated just the first few minutes several times.

Of course, Flora tried all the statues at least once, but the rest reached from above her level over 'Why do I have swords in my hands and what am I doing with them?' to 'What just happened?'.

Finally, Flora went back to the first two statues to clear her mind from confusion.

A time check revealed she missed the next start of Jiu-Jitsu, but she didn't mind. She wanted to check out the Ring-Time first.

The hall was on the ground floor of the building and contained a training section, a cafeteria and a lounge area where many pupils in the Seven Masters Dojo uniform trained, ate, or chatted.

Aidan directed her to one of the small projections of a boxing ring strewn across the hall. Upon touching it, a popup appeared where she could put in her preferences.

Flora selected opponents for Wing Chun, level 1-25, Seven Masters Dojo Beginner-0 to II. Boxes like 'same sex' or 'same geographical earth region' she left unchecked.

Immediately, she teleported into a boxing ring.

Red numbers counted down from 5 to Go! Before she even got a good look at her opponent, he was upon her. She only saw a fist approaching her face, and reflexively closed her eyes and protected her head with her arms. The rest of the punches, she felt raining on her upper body.

You were defeated!

Directly, the countdown started again. Her opponent was a male youth with a buzz cut. He grinned aggressively at her.

'If I breathe in, you hang vertically under my nose, sapling!' Flora smirked back.

This time she managed to block the first few of his chain punches but didn't even attempt an offensive. Somehow he got a punch past her defenses. Getting her throat squashed caused Flora to lose the rhythm, and she got defeated again. The match ended 0:2.

'Again!'

That match ended 0:2 as well.

"I can't be that terrible in martial arts, right, Aidan?"

"Of course not, Milady! Your first opponent had two yellow belts in a Japanese martial arts, and your second opponent had one blue belt in Taek-Won-Do and four additional white belts."

On Aidan's advice, she set the maximum number of Seven Masters Dojo belts to two white belts. Flora had noticed the other pupils had colorful buttons stuck on their sashes, but she had mistaken them for a fashion statement.

The lines on those represented the belts. Beginner-I had one white stripe crossing the button and Beginner-V five white lines. The color of the button showed under which master's department the martial art was sorted.

It made absolute sense to restrict the number of belts. Flora didn't want to face somebody who had seven belts in karate and just started Wing Tsun again.

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

Flora lost the next few fights again. But now she felt she had a chance. With every battle, she improved a bit. She decided to continue Ring-Time until she had her first victory.

"We will record this challenge for further analysis."

The following fight, she technically won, but only because her opponent gave up. Although he was covered with tattoos, a Mexican-flag on his chest and tears on his face, he was quite polite. After looking at Flora, he said before quitting: "Sorry, ma'am. I'm not fighting grannies."

'Again! Surrenders don't count.'

Now, she got a spindly thin young man with spiky cyan hair. During the countdown, he windmilled his arms, got into horse stance, and yelled, “Over 9000!".

Screaming several octaves higher than someone with testicles should be capable of, he charged her with his hands formed into swans.

'Is he attempting to simulate mantis claws?'

Flora was puzzled, but it didn't prevent her from kicking him straight in the nuts. And she probably wasn't the first one who had hit him there according to his voice. She followed up with chain punches and won.

The second round was almost identical to the first.

"That doesn't count either. He was mentally challenged."

She lost the next two fights at a hair's breadth.

"This is the one, Aidan! I can feel it!"

The countdown started, and Flora spotted Atteroevra Horisonten, the nice Swedish girl she had partnered up with in Jiu-Jitsu.

Flora waved at her but reminded herself to stay focused.

After bowing, they inched cautiously closer to each other. Flora had her left arm leading and the right following, the standard WT hand position. Shortly before Atterowevra reached kicking range, she lunged at Flora.

'She is trying a takedown!'

A front kick pushed her back, but Atterowevra caught Flora's trousers and pulled.

Half stumbling and half jumping, Flora moved forwards and kneed her with the other leg. Additionally, she had aimed her fist at her opponent's face but missed. Both tumbled to the floor and fell in the familiar Jiu-Jitsu routine of snuggling aggressively.

'No! It's a Wing Tsu match!'

After Atterowevra managed to roll behind her, Flora's neck was in danger. Therefore she used one hand to fend off the choke and the other to hit over her shoulder. The punch to her face caused Atterowevra to jerk.

Immediately, Flora used the opportunity to elbow the girl's stomach and swing her leg around to mount. From this position, she rained blows on Atterowevra.

The round finished.

In the second round, Atterowevra again tried to take Flora down. This time Flora was mentally prepared and defended against it. The girl had no stand-up game, so Flora wore her down gradually with kicks and punches.

"Although it was strange, I'll count it as a legit win."

After scanning the room, Flora found Atterowevra.

"I didn't know you took Wing Chun as well!" Flora said to her after the greeting.

"I don't. A friend recommended it to train Jiu-Jitsu against strikers. In most of the other striking martial arts, the system doesn't count Jiu-Jitsu maneuvers as damage. Wing Chun has almost no rules, so everything goes."

Flora was enlightened! They chatted amiably on the way to the Jiu-Jitsu course and trained together.

Again, Teacher Clowdy lead the training. 'That woman must work 24/7!'

When Flora got back home, it was too late to start a new crafting project but too early to go to sleep.

She snuggled into her bed in the workshop and activated the video platform.

First, Flora started to watch her videos of the fights.

"What were you thinking!"

"Don't you see, his whole upper body is unprotected!"

"Move!"

"Punch!"

"Aidan! This is horrible!" Flora exclaimed after getting fed up with screaming at her recorded self. "Show me videos of fighters who know what they are doing!"

Aidan not only displayed videos but also introduced her to experios. They were like the mannequin-routines, but everybody could upload them. Therefore the quality was all over the place.

Of course, Flora didn't want to experience fights of people with worse technique and fighting instincts than her. But if the recorder was too advanced, she couldn't understand the movements and felt like a marionette with an insane operator.

Finally, they found a woman with decent but slow Wing Tsun who had uploaded some of her fights. Flora wasn't sure if she learned something useful but was intrigued by the possibilities of experios.

After Wing Chun, she tried experios about a guy smelting copper, free-running flipping, spearfishing, American football, break dancing, and aimed for the entry "Analyzing my mana channels", missed and hit "Anal DP". Afterward, she made a wide arc around the experios marked as adult content.

She ended her day with a regular video about cute pets in the Cetviwos.

'Maybe I'll look at pets tomorrow?'