Auntie toasts the VRMMORPG

39. A new Lair, Charade and Books

After a dreamless night, Flora woke up in a good mood.

The sun was shining on her bed, the air smelled of grass and needles, and the sounds of servo motors filled the clearing. Perfect!

She opened her stats and did a quick scan. The attributes rose slowly but steady, except the perceptions. They both made a big jump.

Magical Push came along nicely because of the coffin training, and Refresh had broken through the level 100 milestone.

Mechanics, Electronics, and Hacking won in the category abilities.

In the inventory tab, she could look at her balance. The 500 000 VirDias from CentralTank had arrived.

Flora guessed that they came together with the workshop improvements, but she had missed it due to her excitement.

"It's time to move into a nicer lair, dears." Flora opened the real estate market. "I want an industrial area, with smoking chimneys, factories, or maybe a powerplant in the vicinity. Do I have to consider infrastructure, Aidan? Probably not, with the inventory, magical mailboxes, and teleportation circles."

"Transportation per air is common for parts bigger than 3x3x3m, Milady. These dimensions limit not only inventory space but also the mailbox. Furthermore, you can only beam with connected pets or what you carry. The aircraft, mostly megacopters, need no infrastructure."

Flora shrugged and selected the Rhine River Plain as the preferred region. They had the best weather in Germany.

Unexpectantly, Flora had difficulties in finding an industrialized area. Most towns in the real world had an industrial park, but in the Metaworld, they were missing.

Flora tried Mannheim and Ludwigshafen, where the BASF, Rosch, ABB, and Mercedes Benz had local branches, but she only found vanity buildings and no factories.

Finally, she discovered a big building with some chimneys on an elevated plateau with a view on the Rhine. She zoomed in and read 'Bakery Gottfriedl'.

"This is fate! Hello to my new neighbors! I hope you produce good bread!"

Like she had planned before, she designed a two-story building with a flat roof for a garden. The ground floor had the dimensions 25x50x5m and was for crafting. She partitioned the first floor into the living quarters and 1/4 into a room for the shop and 1/8 for the teleportation circle.

Then she beamed to the area, using the circle of the bakery as an anchor point.

When she arrived, a young woman came her way.

"Hello, dear. Are you working in the bakery?"

"Hi. Yes, actually, I own the bakery. Do you want to buy something? I was just on my way, but I have a few minutes."

"Not yet. I'm Flowing Flowers, your new neighbor. You can call me Auntie Flow. I plan to buy this part of the land." Flora pointed to her favorite spot. "Is this alright with you? If you have planned any expansion in this direction, I can go a bit further away."

"No, no, feel free. Welcome to the neighborhood. I'm Momo."

They shook hands and chatted a bit about the weather and floods, but didn't hit on essential subjects like toast. Flora wanted to have a taste first before she decided to do further business with Momo.

After they parted, Flora surveyed the area. She was a strong believer of eyeballing things before purchase. Pictures on the internet couldn't convey some aspects of reality.

By and large, Flora was delighted with her choice and leased the land. Immediately, she started the automated construction of her building. Maybe it would be cheaper to hire people, but Flora didn't have the patience. The system would complete the building in 12 hours.