Flora strolled back to her apartment. On the way, she ordered and collected clothes with mana regeneration. She already had a set, but some of the items had inferior stats. Now every slot of her equipment list was filled with a + 2 OV item of at least A rating.

Head: Embroided Satin Cap

Torso: Embroided Satin Blouse

Hands: Embroided Satin Gloves

Legs: Embroided Satin Pants

Feet: Slippers of Leyline Walking

The new outfit pushed her magical regen over 40 OV in the church with its buff, which translated to eight elementals. The spell Summon Elemental was at level 22 after the merge, and she wanted to get it as high as possible this night.

"I want an at least B-rated elemental of every element with the Re-Generate Spell. If one appears, spoil him to get his name, Aidan."

"How do I spoil an elemental, Milady?"

"Can we give him more mana-regen?"

"No, Milady. Bolstering elementals with mana to increase their rank is part of the Summoner class."

"Add this class on the ToDo-list. Prio C. Meanwhile, make them work extra hard. High performers may appreciate it, and we don't want slackers.

Aito, do you know whether Mia had the warrior class connected in her class tree? Maybe we could use her way of connecting for our missing link."

Aito posted the class-tree she assumed Mia had. Fifteen classes culminated in the class Tank-Expert as a root. It had Batticle Driver as its predecessor and linked to Remote-Arms. That was the class integrating the classes of the warrior branch and driver predecessors.

Warrior → Sword-Master → Shield-Master → Remote-Arms

Marksman → Artillery → Remote-Arms

Driver → Drone Driver → Drone Conductor → Tech-Support → Remote-Arms

"Great class! Why didn't you say anything? Via Sword-Master, we could have connected Energy-Master to the rest of the tree."

Aitoshuri opened a bulletin-board page, and Flora's face fell. You had to complete a quest in the Cradle to acquire Remote-Arms.

"Never mind, put it on the ToDo-List, Aidan. I believe I will need the class to utilize my gizmos to the fullest. Prio B."

Meanwhile, Flora had reached her flat. Aito sent a picture of the library-container connected to the house grid.

"Great idea, dear. Then, you can read anytime you want. But please, respect your other duties."

Flora stacked Aidans and Haidans containers next to it the new library-container with Aito's poodle puppy box on top. She had to raise the ceiling another meter higher for the unreasonable price of 1000 VirDias.

Then, she fetched her own library-container that Aitoshuri could transfer her books to her space. The prospect of not carrying around the shitty romance novels induced a smile on Flora's tired face. But it went away when she thought about where she would spend the night.

After Flora entered the workshop, she was standing in front of the simulation-grounds. She stared at her immobile mirror with trepidation. Although she knew that it had not a consciousness anymore, she still hesitated to log in. The incident had spooked her.

It was well past Flora's bedtime, but she was in this treacherous state in which you felt wide awake because the tiredness clouded your judgment.

Again, she read the messages from her clones.

'How remarkable. Can my Self be translated into zeros and ones? What about my soul? Or subconsciousness? We don't have to get philosophical; what about those old memories I only remember when someone reminds me?'

To keep her mind from questions, only CentralTank had the answers, and maybe not even them, she browsed her current projects tab.

F4 had promised her some goodies, and she did deliver.

She had reworked the Hungry Chest. Not only had she added wheels, but also slots for mana-generators.

The majority of the other projects consisted of generators like a small marble that had every rune scheme for creating mana engraved. If it stayed in an area with a debuff, it would produce mana.

The device based on hydroelectric power stations captured Flora's adoration. She wished she had invented it! A one-meter long tube had a scheme for creating water at the upper end and one for converting water into mana at the lower end. Between them, F4 had built turbines and linked rune schemes to them, which drew the mana out of the kinetic energy the turbines produced. Basically, it converted gravity into mana.

Sure, it was bigger than the other generators, but it worked in every surrounding with gravity.

F4 had reworked all her inventions to function with the new generators.

The final unfinished project was a Training Coffin with the name Treadmill-Mana-Generator Training-Tunnel. 'My clone definitely has my sense of naming inventions. In this case, 'nonsense' might be the better word.'

The central piece was a treadmill. It was surrounded by three walls, a ceiling, and a floor. You entered the enclosed area from the open front.

After passing a console shaped like a bike handlebar, Flora stepped on the belt. To the right and left was one glowing generator, one meter in front of the belt two, and one meter behind as well. Six generators were positioned one meter above the ground and another set at the ceiling. Small tears transferred the kinetic energy from the belt to the rune schemes. The treadmill powered all in all 18 generators.

The console had some switches on it, and gloves hung from the handlebar.

Name: Twelve-Changing-Finger-Positions Rubber-Training-Gloves

Type: Gloves / Magic Gizmo

Description: Gives automated finger signals.

Regular Mode: 1 mana regeneration.

Built-In Feature: Left Hand: changes between 9 positions every 2 sec; CD: 18 sec

Built-In Feature: Right Hand: changes between 3 positions every 1,5 sec; CD: 3 sec

Effect: + 2 training efficiency for physical micro-control

Tier: 1

Rating: S

Suddenly, Flora realized that neither the treadmill-tunnel nor the gloves used electricity. The gloves hadn't even an AI socket. After looking around, Flora confirmed F4 used no metals in the constructions.

"Marvelous! It's a training coffin for mages! No nocks needed! But two seconds is a bit short for casting a spell, not to speak of 1,5 seconds!"

"Actually, two seconds is the standard casting time for tier 1 spells, Milady. With your current 25 OV in controls, you can shorten it to 1,5 seconds."

Flora threw a frostbolt in the general direction of the training dummy.

"How long did it take?"

"3,04 seconds, Milady."

Realizing that she had a whole new area to train, which she couldn't automate or at least hadn't found a way yet, Flora let out unladylike expletives.

At least, the realization rekindled her urgency to train harder and suppressed her fear of replacing the Mirror-Flora.

Flora loaded all the new gear into the unholy cliff and resolutely added a new copy of herself. Before logging into the grounds, she put hand-to-hand combat on auto mode and pummeled the dummies.

Everything looked like before in the simulation grounds, but Deriga was missing. Aidan informed Flora the novice had died. Flora could only pray that it didn't affect Deriga in the ordinary virtual world.

After installing the new coffin and adding some healing turrets to a generator, Flora put on the training-gloves and bound them and the treadmill-tunnel to her.

Slowly, Flora started to jog on the treadmill. She had read in the development notes that there were additional rune-schemes you could activate by pressing the buttons at the handlebar. A yellow button caused steel needles to shoot out the schemes, an orange button fire, and a dark pink button acid beams. With the duel in mind, she chose fire and acid. Acid was the damaging ability of the element water, and Aidan assured her that water spells hurt the tiger the most.

Fortunately, Deriga's workshop had remained in the SG. Therefore Flora decided to sleep in the workshop to maximize her training. Now, she only had to bind an ability to keep running. Scanning them, Flora found only Free-Running fitting the motion. After she linked the auto mode, her body jumped over the handlebar out of the tunnel.

Flora walked back and started again.

"I want to get the ability jogging. Running would be fine as well." She repeated in her mind and when nothing happened aloud.

After ten minutes of no system messages, she changed her mantra while increasing her speed. "I want to get the ability jogging or running. Sprinting would be fine as well."

Her stamina bar plummeted visibly. Re-Generate slowed the fall, but without a focus, it was less potent. Sprinting costs 300 stamina per minute. The damage from the acid and the fire and their debuffs Acid Burn and Burn sucked away additional stamina, about 30/min at the moment. But the rate was rising with the stacks of the debuffs. Re-Generate renewed 120, but it critted now and then to an average of 144. Flora changed from Recharge to Refresh utilizing its debuff-removing feature. At least, she had a maximum of 560 stamina, which took a while to deplete.

Flora counted on the milestone Third Wind at level 100, but Aidan reminded her that the spells got merged, and now, she only had 74 levels in Re-Generate. On the positive side, her physical regen would compass level 100 in the next few hours, reaching the milestone. Then her natural regeneration would be tripled when her physical pools fell below 30%.

Finally, the system message appeared.

You gained the ability-specialization: Sprinting. + 1 Level.

"I leave it to you to keep me alive, sweety." Flora logged into Deriga's workshop.

Wide awake, Flora lay in her freshly loaded bed. She turned from one side to the other and puffed out the blankets. Nothing helped. She missed her toaster pillow! Actually, it was a knitted plushie in the shape of a toaster, but she wasn't in the age of using plushies, so she called it a pillow. Hub's mother gifted it to her when they were still on speaking terms.

Flora created a pillow with a toaster pattern and tried snuggling with it, but sleep wouldn't come. Then she considered plushie-fying the Octopussy but rejected the idea because it might lead to misunderstandings of why she was sharing her bed with a tentacled monster.

Her thoughts circled around the octopussy. Now, she had enough refined material to finish it, but she wasn't pleased with the exterior. The video skin gave Aito a way to communicate, but its armor value was not acceptable.

While she still lay in bed, she loaded the octopussy design and reworked the tentacles with the refined metal. For the head, she built a metal cage, filled the holes with kevlar, and added a few layers of silk and padding. Just in case her pillow wasn't available.

Over the skin, she spread tiny opaque scales made out of hard plastique for more protection. That caused the video picture to get blurry, but she didn't plan on reading texts on it, so it hopefully wouldn't matter.

Her professional pride got challenged when she had seen Mia's gun-arrangement. Eight guns for 10 MR! And her lousy robot shot from his two eyes for 7 MR! Unacceptable! She added two more laser crystals at the tentacles and added a small motor behind the eyes. The other lesson she learned from Mia's batticle was that lasers fixed on the hull sounded more impressive than they were.

Next, she upgraded the mana transformer. It now supported up to six connections, with Flora's Brownski-Nocks that translated into 48 mana-regeneration.

Still not satisfied, she embraced the octopus. Just to test its hug-ability, of course.

"Aidan, can you continue channel Refine into it while I'm sleeping?"

"Yes, Milady!"

"Then, I just have to fall asleep..." Flora sighed and started the skill.

After another hour of trying and failing and counting sheep, she got another idea.

"Didn't we have a scenario on the to-do list with counting sheep?"

"The scenario 'Shepherd, herd the Sheep!' is about herding sheep, not counting them, Milady."

Flora rolled out of bed. "I'm sure counting is part of a shepherd's job. On the other hand, they shouldn't fall asleep while working. But if they had a capable assistant … " Flora grinned. "Aito! I have a job for you!"

Aito displayed a picture of two octopussies.

"Do you want to have both, or should Aidan control one?"

Aito beeped two times.

Currently, Flora had in her six nocks:

Aidan

Aitoshuri

Haidan

Mana-Battery

Healing-Turret

Healing-Turret

The AI-jacks and the Mana-Battery were Brownski-Jacks. They enabled Flora to insert another jack in the same slot. Unfortunately, she couldn't copy the jacks because they were tier one, and she didn't own the materials. In fact, she didn't even know what materials she needed because her analysis tools gave back gibberish.

The turrets stood outside the workshop in the SG, but when Flora ran the other scenarios, she always ended up in her flat. Flora wasn't sure whether it would happen again, or maybe she would be transported to the SG. There she needed the turrets to survive.

Therefore she assigned the two squids two nocks each.

Name: Octopussy-Helper-Bot

Type: Robot

Description: Camouflage capable, crafting-robot with laser eyes.

Regular Mode: 8-48 OV mana regeneration.

Built-In Feature: 4 x Laser; CD: 2 sec.

Built-In Feature: Precision Cut. CD: 2 sec

Built-In Feature: Multitool: Change tools. CD: 2 sec

Built-In Feature: Can use Built-In Skills from mana-battery.

Built-In Skill: Camouflage. 2 mana + 1 mana/minute.

Built-In Skill: Rapid Fire. 10 mana. 4 x 2 shots per second for 5 seconds. CD: 25 sec

Capacity: 146 mana.

Rating: SS.

Currently: 16 OV MR -> 176 HP

Flora took her pillow under one arm, the sleeping bag under the other, and carried the two squids on the back.

"I'm ready to sleep! Start the Scenario!"