Auntie toasts the VRMMORPG

Flora knocked on Doc Brownski's door.

"No! No!" The Doc exclaimed, followed by the sound of something crashing down. "Okay, now you can come in."

Smiling, Flora entered the office. "Hi, Doc!"

"I know you! Do I?" The silver-haired Metaling asked while he wiped his hands on his lab coat, careful not to hit the Aloha shirt beneath it.

"You do. You implanted my nocks in a six-star configuration. They are working splendidly."

"Ha! All the deaths were worth it! Molana bless you, Earthlings! Your reincarnation ability makes you the perfect test subjects!"

"Have you thought about using golems for your trials? You would have unlimited test subjects."

"Golems? For what would they need nocks? Most robots are smarter than them. That would be a dunce directing a genius. Oh. Like my boss! He is an imbecile, and our arrangement works out fine. You might be on to something."

"I want to equip my golems with nocks. So we can try it out together and see how it goes." Flora patted Tolly's head. She felt some reluctance in the toaster golem but not much, like a single pepper in his potato sack mind.

"If I had the funds, I would try for sure!" Doc Brownski looked at her pitifully.

"How much?"

 

An hour (and 1000 VirDos) later, they had no solution but a better understanding of the problem. Nocks sat in the nape of humans. From there, they could access the central nervous system and the mana because most people had a strong connection from their magical core beneath their naval to their hands. Golems had no nervous system, and their magical pathways differed from humans.

Doc Brownski had called a fellow scientist, Anhar Qadir, over who specialized in mana saving nocks. The waterling had a strong background in nock placement theories and now measured a Tolly. His lanky frame bending over the small golem, he wrote down the numbers for his equitations.

While Doc Brownski was inserting so many nocks into his Tolly that the poor golem resembled a pin cushion, Flora sat with closed eyes in front of a Golly and an Octopussy. She explored the difference and similarities between a nock connection and a mana connection.

The skill Establish Connection did everything a nock did and should need the same requirements. So after establishing a connection with the Octopussy, Flora tried to locate the origin of the link in herself. She changed between nocks and the spell for contrast.

Because Qadir missed his dinner appointment, the stood-up colleague joined them instead. Doctor Mercedes Versario, a tiny but energetic Woodling, challenged the entire concept of golems with nocks because of the metal handicap. Predictably, the scientists became engrossed in the discussion, and nothing did get done because they weren't sensible like engineers and waited until something exploded before they started theorizing. At least, they weren't theoretical scientists or nothing would ever get done. 

Meanwhile, Flora was pretty sure that her magical link originated from the area around her collarbone.

"Would a nock in my collarbone area work?" Flora asked.

"Yes, but … " Brownski said.

"No, except ..." Versario said.

"It depends on …" Qadir said.

Flora listened to their elaborate arguments for five minutes. Although they voiced dissenting opinions, she understood that they deviated within acceptable margins for an engineer.

"So, probably?" Flora asked.

"It depends on …" Brownski said.

"Yes, but … " Versario said.

"Not until …" Qadir said.

"Okay, probably it is. Thank you." Flora hurried away and repaired the pincushioned Tolly before assigning Establish Connection to him. She reasoned that if a nock would work from the location of her magical link (probably), then it should work from the origin of Tolly's magical connection as well. Now, she just had to pinpoint it.

"Connect to the Octopussy, Tolly."

The golem shook his head, and Flora sensed his distress.

"Does the metal handicap prevent you from casting?" Flora asked. She had left five nocks in him to falsify Verserio's claim.

Tolly nodded. They were deep inside the Magetech Institute. Even Flora had problems casting spells here. She wasn't ready to agree with Versario before she tested the golem's spell casting ability on neutral ground.

Flora announced that she would be back in a few minutes and walked to the exit. Why did the Magetech Institute use so much metal in the construction of its HQ? They handicapped their own science!

On her way to the exit, Flora met Professor Quon, the Fireling Technomancer. "Huhu, Yolanda. Do you want to join our Equipping-Golems-With-Nocks party?"

"That's impossible!"

"The more impossible, the more fun!" Flora caught her up on the current project status, and before the Fireling realized it, she was helping the auntie locating the origins of Tollies connection. It happened to be on his butt. In hindsight, the place was evident because its mana emitter was in its tail.

With the addition of Yolanda, Doc Brownski's office became cramped. The scientists didn't mind. They tackled one problem after another, ate some toast, finally exploded a Tolly, and had a great time.

Modifying the nocks to need no connection to the nervous system was the most complicated part. Flora had thought it would be easy because they just needed the mana from the golem, and the AI connected to the gadget would do the rest. However, mana connections required consent, and without the golem allowing them to work, they wouldn't. So the nocks had to connect somehow to the potato sack consciousness.

After they were stuck for over an hour, Flora remembered that every function of the golem, like senses, mana-emitter, attack appendage, had a glyph. Was there a brain glyph?

"I'll ask that chat group." Doc Brownski said and went to a communication device.

"Which chat group?" Flora asked Yolanda.

The professor raised her eyebrows. "That chat group that is better left unmentioned."

Flora to AIs: "Do you know what they are talking about?"

"No, Milady."

*Beep beep*

A hologram of a Woodling woman appeared. Flora knew her. It was her Animator teacher.

"If this isn't the sleeping beauty with her scholastic octopus!" The lecturer, Hannah Everlast, said to Flora, who waved awkwardly.

After Flora brought the Woodling up to speed, she explained her idea: "We need a glyph which can enable the nock."

Everlast shook her head. "Even if I'd knew a glyph, the nock's metal will disturb the mana flow of the golem."

"I tested it with inert nocks, and the metal resistance of my golem is high enough."

"The placement of the nocks would be different for every golem. How would you even know where to place the glyph."

"I found a good area via Technomancy," Flora said.

"While there is a glyph for enhancing the consciousness of golems, it fell out of use because, after a few animations, the golem would become insane."

"Holy Toaster! Why?"

"If you disenchant the golem, nothing supports the glyph. My predecessors speculated that it is akin to death. If you animate it again, an echo of the former consciousness gets reanimated… or something similar. I'll send you the paper."

The revelation that she had killed her cute potato sack golems appalled Flora. She just hadn't thought about it. She looked at it more like a computer: when she animated a golem, it ran, and if not, it sat around. Maybe that comparison was fitting. It was just a computer with only runtime memory. For the consciousness to persist, she needed either a non-volatile memory or a way that the golem would never shut down totally.

"Is there a way for its consciousness to linger while disenchanted?"

"Not that I know of." The Woodling shrugged.

"So the problem wouldn't appear if I don't disenchant it? Can a golem 'go to sleep'? Something like a stand-by modus? Maybe if I would include a mana battery or a mobile crystal of binding?" Flora had a magical crystal in her home. She could assign golems and elementals to it.

Name: Crystal of Minor Binding

Type: Binding-Crystal

Description: Connects your home mana-grid to mana-bound artifacts. Due to energy loss, you have to provide double the amount of mana for the Regular Mode. Maximum of four tier-1 connections.

"The Gargoyle Formation feeds ambient mana to a golem. The golem rests in the formation without needing mana upkeep. You can even configure it to wake the golem up when certain conditions are met, like invaders. Though the activity time depends on the accumulated ambient mana, and you'd need a few years to power it enough for one minute of golem activity."

"Sounds great! Can you teach the formation to me?"

Everlast agreed, for a fee, of course.

"Alright, now we have a consciousness and a nice place for a nock. What else do we need?" Flora asked the round.

"The tip of the nocks is configured to connect to the human nervous system. We need something to bridge the gap between the consciousness and the nock." Doc Brownski said.

"Why? I have powered magical gismos by touch. The golem should be able to supply the implanted nocks as well. Hmm, I did need Use Built-In Spell for anything fancy, though."

"Admittingly, the nerve access is primarily for operating the device. In your use case, you wouldn't need it because your AI pilots the gadget. But we came so far do we really want to stop before the last hurdle?" Versario said passionately, and the other scientist voiced their agreement.

Flora's imagination formed a Tolly in a mech-suite−too cute. "I'm in."

They started to brainstorm.

"What if we use the Sambandh rune as the socket for nock?" Flora suggested. "Magical gizmos include it for the connection to the user. Then we'll build a pseudo-nervous system linking all the glyphs via a runic network. Can you … glyphify … a rune scheme?"

"Well, yes. Rune-schemes can be transposed into glyphs with a slight loss in functionality." Everlast said. "I love the word 'glyphify', by the way. But how will you carve the glyphs inside the golem? Although high-level rune-crafter are able to hide their schemes inside matter, but can someone here do it?"

"I can with a mixture of Transform Inorganics and Engrave coupled with XYZ-Ray for vision," Flora stated.

The scientists and engineers went to work. While Flora carved the glyphified rune-schemes, the nock specialists finished adapting the tips of their nocks.

The first test didn't work but looked promising.

After a few rounds of adjustments, they had a working prototype, a Tolly with four nocks. The scientists insisted that their own nock design was the best, so Flora had to take at least one nock from each. Brownski Nocks had a bandwidth of 8 MR/min instead of the usual 5 MR/min. Quon Nocks provided a more stable connection and were harder to hack. Versario Nocks had less metal, and Qadir Nocks a smoother energy flow that provided +0.5 MR/min more power for the connected appliance.

The entire room broke out in cheers. Even the Tolly waved his stubby arms in the air. The small guy didn't feel potato-sacky anymore. Instead, Flora sensed curiosity and a willingness to toast from him.

Happy, and with a pouch full of nocks, Flora went home. After she connected the Tolly to the Crystal of Binding and ordered him to refine her elemental wood, Flora went to bed. It was way past her usual sleeping time.

---

After Flora woke up, she looked at her stats. Nearly two virtual days had passed since she had last inspected them, but the attribute gains were abysmal. Magical Perception rose two points and three other attributes by one point. That was it.

Looking at her resistances cheered Flora up. The Elemental Caverns boosted the eight elemental affinities nicely. Maybe it helped that their rating rose from C to B.

Flora still had too many similar skills. The magical and the normal versions of her Weapon-Master classes were listed separately—the same with the Monk prayers. Dusk, Dawn, and Holy Field had a similar diagram as well.

Because Acrobatics was one of her lowest abilities, Flora stood on her hands while cleaning up her skills and casting all of them. Her new habit of exercising the entire list each morning had helped her tremendously in the Elemental Caverns. She felt much more familiar with her repertoire.

Stats: