Auntie toasts the VRMMORPG

22. Lawyers

"Ma? Ma! Are you awake?"

Flora woke up and needed a few seconds to orientate herself.

"Now I am or at least on the way."

"The lawyers are here. They changed the meeting time to 7 o'clock and said they notified you."

"Sure, sure. Do they carry glittering pink hoops or something toaster related?"

"What? Why? No!"

"Then tell them that they can wait till 7:30 or reschedule the meeting with enough lead time to actually read the mail."

It was 6:54, so Flora decided that she would get up.

"Aidan, please research shady negotiation tricks and how to protect yourself from them. Prioritize safeguards we can implement in the next 25 minutes."

After exiting the workshop, she checked her mail-box. The mail from the lawyers had arrived at 17:12 yesterday. She found four additional messages from shop owner requesting her to submit the rainbow intensity skins to their shops timestamped near midnight. To the two shops who wanted exclusive contracts and the one skateboard shop, she sent a polite refusal + thank you. For the remaining offer, a shop specialized in dancing gear, she delegated Aidan to register the skins, and he gave her his compiled list.

Flora scanned the list focusing on the resistances.

Trick: Angels Tongue: Makes your voice harmonic sounding to other people. Resistance: Empathy/Manipulation.

Trick: Righteous Stance: Changes your body language to one projecting confidence and righteousness. Resistance: Empathy/Manipulation.

...

Prayer: I'm with a higher power: Makes your voice reverberating and surrounds you with a hallow. Resistance: Faith.

...

Spell: Mind-Haze: Makes the target dizzy. Resistance: Hallucination/Mind-Control.

...

Most entries consisted of manipulation with a prayer now and then and a few terrifying mind-control spells.

Flora's first instinct urged her to stack mind-control resistance, but she realized that the tiny bit she could amass would be a drop of water on a hot stone.

"Is there a way to register all skills cast?"

"Yes, Milady! The log records all mana-skills that affect you. Furthermore, an artifact is available on the marketplace that reveals all active mana skills in its surrounding."

"Tell me as soon somebody uses a mana-skill on me. Save the log every 30 seconds for the next 6 hours to my cloud drive. Activate video and save the stream as well. Notify me if something prevents those two things." Of course, Flora bought the artifact ignoring the horrendous price.

Globe of Revelation

Type: Artifact

Regular-Mode: 5 OV mana regeneration

Effect: All active mana skills and cast mana skill in a circumference of 2 m will appear above the globe.

Rating: A

Price: 1000 VirDos

The artifact didn't have jacks, but you had to do a binding ritual. With Aidan's help Flora figured it out, but the time was ticking away.

"Last but not least: what can they do to compromise you?"

"They could hack me. This would disable me or made me follow their commands. The last is difficult to accomplish because as A-rated AI, I have scaling hacking defenses. That means, my resistance is the max value of the tier of the hacker. Antihacking upgrades are available in the Cetviwos-Shop and on the marketplace."