Auntie toasts the VRMMORPG

11. Nocks

Flora woke up refreshed and relaxed.

"Good morning, Aidan!"

"Good morning, milady!"

Flora smiled. In the real world, it would be impossible for her to feel good after a night spent on a small couch. Her body would be aching all over. Nobody would say good morning to her, either. She tried out the home management AI's when they were first released in the teens of the century, but felt spied on and misunderstood. She tested a few of the future generations and quite liked her coffee machine AI, but after she worked with Evai, the AI of the CAD-System, the others paled. Therefore she had high hopes for Aidan.

According to her plan to step up the training, she unpacked her breakfast with telekinesis, sat back on the couch, and opened her mouth. When the spoon with muesli approached her, she had to giggle about the absurdity of the situation and lost control. The muesli spilled over her sweater.

"Oh my, that's my only top!" Flora laughed. "Aidan research how cleaning works in Cetviwos."

Aidan listed some options, including to die and respawn but Flora liked the cleaning spell the most. Additionally, it could be found in a book called '1000 homemaker spells' which sounded intriguing to Flora. Immediately, she bought it in the marketplace.

When she fetched the book from the mailbox, she noticed that she had several unread letters. Yesterday she ignored the 'Welcome to Cetviwos'-message, but today there were two new ones. The first from 'Legal Team @ Cetviwos' with a request for a meeting on Monday One at 8 o'clock.

What time is it now?" Flora paused. "And what day? And what's up with the numbers behind the days?"

"7:38 on Saturday two, milady." Aidan noticed Flora's puzzled look. "Due to time dilation, every day in the real world are two days in the virtual world."

"That means Monday One 8 o'clock is 4 o'clock in the real world? In what time zone?"

"The Meta world has the same timezones as the real world. You are currently in UTC+1."

"They are in a hurry, interesting." Flora's intuition told her again that something was fishy.

She received the second letter from 'Ali Hawks' the founder of Huffgrin Skateboards. He invited her to a skating tournament, he sat in the jury, for a meetup on Saturday Two at 16 o'clock. 'This smells like a business opportunity.'

Flora confirmed both appointments.

Finally, she dedicated herself to the book '1000 homemaker spells'.

The content was even better than she expected! It not only had a dozen cleaning spells: an all-rounder, one for large areas, one for stains caused by fruits, one for stains caused by oil, polishing, et cetera. The tome contained spells for crafting as well like drilling, cutting, sawing, and stitching; basically, everything you needed for woodworking, metalworking, tailoring, cooking and general repair and maintenance of your house and possessions.

Learning the all-rounder cleaning spell was Flora's goal. The text described two kinds of activation.

The first was via the word and the will. That meant saying the spell's name with the fitting intend. Flora concentrated on vanishing the blotch and commanded: "Clean!" It worked. Despite using magic intuitively for years in the CAD software, she was still excited about her first officially learned spell.

The second activation method demanded from the player to visualize a spell matrix, fill it mana and sent it to the target. A picture illustrated the matrix. Eight curved lines led from the small circle in the middle to the border. It looked like a 3D wire-frame model of an island with a central lake surrounded by hills. Flora gave it a try. She imagined the model and willed her mana into the grid. Then she directed it to the empty ramen bowl from last night. The dish was now shiny and prim. 'That was easier than I thought. '