MiaMyMio, Eddie, and Flora sat around the overburdened picnic table.

The sun was setting, coloring the roof garden in the earthy tones of the evening light. Blue glowing mana-generators at the edges of the garden and two fire elementals added to the illumination.

After Flora's question about Tigressa Flameante, Eddie rolled his eyes at her for bringing up business at the dinner table, but Mia was willing to answer.

"Ressa is the leader of Squad Two-One and one of the pillars of the PvP-team. Also, she is the girlfriend of our boss, but I guess you know that."

"I wish she was only his girlfriend!" Flora mumbled.

"Her class-tree is that of a typical beastmaster ranger with gun-fu for melee, but she added some fire-power. I mean that literally, she went for the fire shot."

"Ew, too many terms I don't understand, dear." Flora sighed. "Beastmaster? Ranger? Gun-Fu? Fire Shot? If these are classes, then my AIs can explain them to me, and you don't have to."

"Yes. Notable is especially the beastmaster class in her case. She tamed the big boss, Ahoncartyhr, of the level 50 raid dungeon. There are millions of beast tamers, but I would guess less than one percent acquired an S rated pet."

Eddie whistled, and Flora was impressed against her will.

"At least Robby didn't select a slouch."

Mia shrugged non-committally. Intrigued, Flora kept digging until Mia caved.

"To tame a boss, you first have to know the specific method. You can't just use the usual 'pummel the animal into submission' approach. All animal bosses have a hidden way to tame them. The technique for Ahoncartyhr leaked from server one. Hence she didn't come up with it herself. The beastmaster cats of prey Red High Faction held a competition for the champion position. She competed against the guy from server one and Khan KitKat and came in last. Even more humiliating, after server three opened, another player tamed Ahoncartyhr, and she reached again only the last place."

Mia had a steady way of speaking, and Flora couldn't judge whether she was as unimpressed as her voice sounded or just calm.

"To sum it up, you might have a harder time killing the tiger than her."

"The Blade-Roller-Extreme is S rated, too. Are robots worse pets than animals?" Flora was insulted by the possibility!

"No. The rating just says how much mana-regen you can put into the pet. The Robo-Melee restricts the players to one socket in the Tier-1 League. Therefore five mana-regen is the maximal investment, and it results in weak robots. During my duel, Ressa put 30 Mana-Regeneration into Ahoncartyhr, which gave him the powers and stats of a Sergeant."

Because Flora was still traumatized by the fight against Icemaster Esau, who was a Sergeant too, she inquired about the Recommended Group Size of the tiger. Thankfully, Mia assured her player pets were limited to an RGS of 1.

"But Ressa is over level 200, though she said something about dueling me at level 1. What kind of advantages does she get out of it compared to regular level 1 players?" While speaking, Flora summoned another fire elemental. She had unused Mana-Regeneration after disconnecting from the robots.

"In the Cetviwos, you get squeezed down to the max level of the zone. This mechanic plays a huge role in the political structure of the worlds."

Hearing the word 'political', Flora had to fight to keep her attention on Mia. She hated politics and usually stopped listening to such topics.

"On the kiddie server, the max level is 100. That means you only have 300 attribute points. You can't compete when you have three level-100 attributes or one level-100 and one level-200. If you have a very solid build, you might get a dungeon rating of B if you are lucky. I said lucky because if you were skilled, you would train for higher attributes."

"Sure, that's what the two weeks training before the Hero’s Entrance are for, right?" Flora asked, but Mia laughed bitterly.

"It would be great if two weeks hustling was all it takes!" Mia shook her head. "You have to train a lot for good attributes, even after you leveled."

"But isn't it harder to train stats if you have already spent your points for them?" Eddie asked.

"Exactly! That is the reason why level 1 zones are popular beyond reason. Not only the players grind their stats there, but the NPCs also. Because the kiddie cradle is small, clans and factions battle endlessly over the domination of these zones. I heard, in the normal cradle, even enterprises and big corporations want a piece of the prime real estate pie." Mia paused. While in Flora's mind sprouted ideas and consequences, Eddie nodded thoughtfully.

"Do you mean Tigressa had over a year time to grind her level one stats? Burned toast! How can I compete with her?"

"You have a chance because of training time suppression. And even a good chance if you only look at stats. I dueled her, and her level one stats were noticeably less than mine. Your Physical Power, controls, and defenses are definitely better."

"How do you know my stats? And what is training time suppression?"

Flora to Aidan: "Did we leak my stats somehow?"

"No, Milady."

"I can guess them by the changes your robot underwent during human-machine connection."

"Wow!" Flora raised her eyebrows. "Could you do that, Aidan?"

"No, Milady." He answered, but Aito beeped first snidely and then one more time, which Flora interpreted as 'You should learn!'. Then, she superimposed a table on the HUD.

LV OV

Power ~ 58 ~ 29

Macro-Control ~ 44 ~ 26

Micro-Control ~ 59 ~ 29

Vigor ~ 55 ~ 28

Defense ~ 58 ~ 29

After thanking Aito, Flora had no time for a more in-depth analysis of the data, because Mia continued her explanation.

"CentralTank introduced training time suppression because of the Mini Masters, people who stayed level one and trained endlessly to get all the achievements when a new server opens. You get for every week you played but didn't level 1 point of TTS under level 25, for level 25 - 99, one TTS per month. The same goes for squeezed players. Tigressa got at least 52 TTS."

"What does TTS affect?"

"The training time, the amount of training XP need for the level to rise. I haven't all the formulas in my head. You better read the threads in the forum. I can only say it hits hard. I had a 2x250, 1x200, 5x100 built, and now my highest attribute is at level 59."

Flora tried to estimate to what level Mia had trained but only came up with definitely over 100 and the security that she was not AI-Flora.

After watching Flora using her fingers to calculate and mumbling numbers, Mia volunteered: "My highest trained stat was 161."

"Wow, nice!" Eddie exclaimed, and Flora nodded.

"I have heard the average stats of the kiddie server are higher because we have nothing to do after reaching level 100." She shrugged again. "We will see. At least I never met someone with your stats who played less than a week. Rumor has it, CentralTank showered you with gifts because you got some dirt on them."

Now was Flora's turn to shrug.

"I was an alpha tester, and some of my ideas made it into the game without remuneration. They paid me VirDias for it. My stats are high because I knew some tricks from the alpha test and got a highly rated body, and I train smart." Flora pointed at the Counterflow mech-suit.

"The clan could use some smart training," Mia stated it as fact.

"Please elaborate." Flora wasn't a worrier, but the hints the clan didn't flourish, piled up.

"I joined the Riverstones because they pay well. They are not a ranking clan, and their PvP team crawls in the B-league. If we lose the next three games, we downswing to C. You saw the Gym, go to the Training Academy, and contrast it with them. My co-rankers bragged about the training utilities of their clans and said the TA stinks in comparison."

Flora frowned and looked at Eddie.

"She says, we suck."

Flora to Aidan: "Schedule building a better training facility on Monday One."

"No, just the game mechanical knowledge is insufficient. My colleagues have great attitudes. The organization and rules are fine. It just shows most of the employees came from the bodyguarding business and are not gamers."

"You should tell this to Robby. Do you want me to nag him about it?" Flora was conflicted. On the one hand, she wanted to storm to the TA, hurry back, and build an even better gym. On the other hand, she knew she shouldn't meddle.

"No, no. I already did. I'm sorry. The boss told me what I was getting into, and the clan is how he described it. I just need time to adjust."

"I feel you! Formerly, you were a ranker, and now you are a babysitter for old people like Flora and me. Of course, you need time to adjust." Eddie smiled at her. "But your issues have value, too. The Riverstones won't be able to attract high paying customers if we don't rank well."

"What is ranking?" Flora had heard the term a few times and vowed to look it up, but now she needed the knowledge directly.

"A clan gets ranked according to the rating of its members, their achievements and clan stuff like assets, amount of members, and performance. A ranker is someone in the top 1000 of a major leaderboard."

Mia told her how she could see the rankings.

"The clan ranks at place 14892. When you take into account that the Cetviwos have over 200 million players, it seems quite good."

"The GuardianAngels rank 8235, the SupremeCarrier 4883 and TrainOfWealth 1032. They are the three best clans in the babysitter business." Mia supplied. "But our situation is improving fast. When I was hired a month ago, the clan ranked in the 30k range."

"Hey, good job!" Eddie cheered.

"You should congratulate Auntie Flora. I improved it a few thousand places by ranking in baby PvP, but when she acquired the Champion class, the rank rose by 5k at once and then a bit more when the VirDias arrived."

"Of course! Flora improves everything!" Eddie winked. "I reached the first place in a sailing tournament yesterday. Do competitions count as well?"

"B rated and above."

"Ha!" Eddie looked at them, waiting for compliments. Naturally, Flora obliged.

The rest of the barbecue they listened to Eddie bragging about his sailing trophy. Now and then, they came back to Tigressa Flameante and the Robo-Melee. Mia added some useful advice and sold Flora the recording of her duel with the tiger-lady.

Meanwhile, Aito had selected her prize, 'Encyclopedia Britannica.' Reading the price tag, 1000 VirDos, Flora vetoed it with the reasoning it consisted of several volumes and therefore didn't count as "book". Flora had around 5 seconds to feel smart about her debating abilities, then came the next link: "Lord of the Undead – A guide to your Zombie Empire" for 999 VirDos.

Flora blinked, reread the title, and then blinked again. "We take the Encyclopedia."

After they couldn't eat anymore, Eddie distributed empty plates to Mia and Flora.

"I cooked a bit more than necessary."

Flora looked at the still full picnic table and nodded. They made a dent in the mountain of food, albeit a small one.

"We can store the rest with the spell 'Serve Up.'"

Mia knew it, but Flora was at a loss. Eddie started a complicated explanation which Flora interrupted. "Just show me the diagram, love."

You gained a skill: Serve Up.

Description: Seals food in a container or on a plate for storage.

CD: none

After they sealed up 15 additional portions, Eddie gifted the ladies a third each.