“I GIVE UP!” Metra came screaming into John’s office. Yes, the Gamer now had an office. It was a small, fully outfitted room that he had found inside the Guild Bank. It came with everything he needed, except a computer, but that was quickly bought and internet quickly installed by Magoi.

When he said fully outfitted, he meant one of the old bureaus with a massive wooden desk, lines of (mostly empty) shelves and an extra conference table in the edge of the room. Not one of those awful new designed CEO rooms where it was just a glass table with a computer on it. How was one supposed to get hidden blowjobs under a glass table? That just went against all of John’s principles.

Anyway, he had paperwork. He had always dreaded this was going to happen, but now it was a reality. Between a small, neutral guild licking his boots, the areas he had already taken over asking for advice or aid, threats, trade requests (people wanted to get what he sold on the auction directly) and other such things, John was actually getting a lot of stuff sent to him.

“What are you giving up on?” John asked, eyes glued to the screen as he formulated a nice but firm email about how he did not plan to sell any more bouquets anytime soon, no matter how much the customer’s husband liked them.

“What do you think?!” she spewed out and threw Beatrice onto his table. The impact of the weighty female shattered his keyboard and monitor, the desk itself got away with a few dents. Papers flew everywhere and the large goldfish bowl on the corner (currently inhabited by a golden crocodile), lost some water. The robotic spirit looked unfazed by this, even as she had landed on her back and was now staring at John upside down. “This brat is getting on my nerves.”

“I am a bad student. Opinion, source: Metra. She is a bad teacher. Fact, sources: Aclysia, Beatrice, Salamander, Seth, Ti…” Beatrice began but was interrupted by a halberd ripping into the desk next to her head. “I take this as a non-verbal request to cease talking. I comply.”

“That’s what I am giving up on, this sass-blasting, arrogant robo-bitch,” Metra declared, pulling her weapon out of the table.

John, who used Observe on his keyboard to see if he could use Create to repair it and found out the resulting window wasn’t even for a keyboard but for electronic junk, same for his monitor, sighed and leaned back in his leather chair. He loved that thing because it was comfy and could swivel. “Look, I am just happy she learned what sass is.”

Beatrice raised a hand, still lying, to imply she wanted to comment. John allowed her with a simple gesture. “If what I am doing is categorizable as sass, I am not knowledgeable of when I do it. I simply use truths.”

“Deal with her yourself!” Metra declared, already stomping to the door and slamming it shut behind herself so hard that one of the hinges broke. Not even a minute and John’s previously orderly office was a mess.

However, John took that in stride because this was actually way more entertaining than the paperwork. After fixing the door, he went back to his desk. Beatrice was still lying there. After three days, it seemed like something of a personality had formed, albeit it didn’t deviate much from the initial ‘passive as hell’ template.

“So, what do you want?” John asked her in hope that something would have changed.

“I had an epiphany on that front,” she actually answered. “I want nothing.”

“In other words, you don’t care whether you keep lying there for the rest of the day or have something to do?” John asked for clarification.

“Correct. I am indifferent regarding that. Extended combat situations are burdensome, however,” Beatrice answered. “I will occasionally change from just lying. I may engage in masturbation. Perhaps I feel more like standing somewhere. Generally, I prefer to just exist around. I want nothing aside from continuing that existence.”

“But what do you do for fun?” John asked.

“Orders,” was the single word she uttered.

“Pardon?” That needed an elaboration.

“I find that I enjoy moving towards a goal. The goal itself is of little importance. I could work for hours on a task. Problem: I am not capable of picking my own work. I prefer to just lay around. If given no outside input,” Beatrice did give him the desired extension. “Exceptions: I will sometimes act on impulse for instant gratification. Putting a vase in the perfect centre of a table. Cleaning tables. Masturbating.

“Further exception: In movement heavy environments I do find it satisfying to execute a chain of movements perfectly. I also checked the position of every brick thrice before I was happy with each individual placement. Then again, I do not seek out fights myself. Replace Exception with validation. Theory: I may be a lazy perfectionist due to overlap from Aclysia’s personality with the lack of my own original one. Assuming this is true, I have a new answer to the question of what I want.”

“Let’s hear it,” John told her. This robotic girl was kind of growing on him; once one caught the drift, it was absolutely easy to handle her.

“I need to be ordered. I need my want externally dictated. I feel satisfaction in fulfilling a job. Especially the kind Aclysia would like. I do not pick jobs when left alone. Feels like a hassle. Conclusion: I am incapable of living on my own and need continuous guidance,” Beatrice looked at him and smirked. “Ironic. You attempted to make something that was its own thing. The result was a person who would do nothing without external input.”

“Well, you got me there,” John sighed; he knew she didn’t mean that in a mocking fashion (at least not mainly), she was just observing reality. “You are capable of distinguishing between who you should take orders from or not though, right?”

“Mostly.”

“Not the answer I was looking for.”

“Facts don’t care about your feelings.”

“I know, I know,” John waved off, taking the junk that had been his monitor and keyboard and loading it into a trash can. The parts not buried under Beatrice, that was. “Okay, for the moment send me a mental picture whenever you are not sure that you can trust someone who gives you an order and wait for me to say yes or no.”

“That sounds like a functional practice,” Beatrice agreed.

John started gathering his papers again and had a very obvious idea. “You don’t mind repetitive tasks, right? No matter how boring?”

“In the first place, I lack the feeling of boredom. No, wrong. Reformulation: I don’t feel boredom, as such passiveness is my continuous state of existence.” Beatrice had a self-aware moment. “Moving my hands with purpose is largely preferable to just standing around. I find to especially enjoy doing chores. Another aspect of Aclysia I took over.”

A bit later, John bought an extra table for the room through the building design tab and placed it nearby. He handed Beatrice all of the papers and left her with orders to filter out the interesting ones. With her off it, he got to fix his table. Then he got back in his swivel chair and waited for new computer equipment to arrive.

“If you like combos so much, maybe we should focus you around Agility?” John suggested as he watched her go through several stages of scanning the documents. The large pile was separated into smaller and smaller piles sorted by importance. With nothing else to do, he checked if she was doing her job well. So far, there were no problems.

“I would appreciate that. Also spears. I like the range advantage,” Beatrice told him.

“Alright,” John nodded; as far as he was concerned, she had ‘awakened’ a personality now. Sure, it was cold turkey, but she did make choices and suggestions. “Let’s get through that pile and then run a dungeon to get you up to speed.”

_________________________________________________________________

How did Beatrice perform in the dungeon? About as well as expected, which was the worst in the group.

Single enemies gave her difficulties. Sure, they were buffed up for the group of eight (John and all his familiars minus Stirwin, who was going to stay out of engagements for as long as John didn’t have the mana to feed him to a usable level), but everyone else could at least beat one enemy at a time. This wasn’t universally true, depending on the dungeon a single enemy was stronger or weaker, but it was true for this one.

They were in the Angel I.D., not for the bouquet that the earlier email had wanted so much, but because John planned to create another artificial crystal and sell it. That was just about the quickest way to get money, as those things went for hundreds of millions. Even if he had to grind days for it, he would come out with a win once he got there.

The dungeon that lead up to the Golden Tulip was a maze of greenhouses, to put it simply, around that central garden. The advantage of this I.D. was that the end point was always in sight, but the way there was often hard to find as the greenhouses weren’t connected in any predictable matter.

From the size of the glass constructs, one could estimate how many enemies were inside of them. Depending on the shape of the roof, one of three different debuffs affecting one of the physical stats was also active.

In any way, the enemies were Angelic Gardeners. If John had to put a nickname on them, it would have been Holy Janitors. They wore golden overalls, had wings of pure white and fought with gardening tools that had been upgraded to look more dangerous.

There were three currently around, each engaged by a single person, being Aclysia, Beatrice and Gnome respectively.

As was expected, Aclysia beat hers first. The Angelic Gardener put up somewhat of a fight, managing to block strikes by Eclys and dodge when Marath came for him. However, he was always on the back foot and eventually cornered. He managed to use a spell that had one of the plants they tended to attack the weaponized maid by trying to bite her with a thorny maw, but a timely executed combination of Marath’s HP-buffed attack and Servant’s Strike took both of those out at once.

Gnome had it a bit harder. Until now she had been their weakest member. As the only remaining Tier 2 elemental, she was a cut below everyone else. Gaining one less stat point per level and having no access to unleashing were quite severe limitations. On the flip-side, she had control over an easily available and malleable resource.

Her fight with the Angelic Gardener came down to how much she could take. With her high Endurance and Strength, that was a lot. She gave ground, blocking the attacks of the sharpened rake with her bare body. Scratches covered her, revealing the earthy brown of her true nature under the pale skin, but eventually she stopped on a patch of grass and stood firm.

The Angelic Gardener thought himself in the advantage and conjured knee-high grass to entangle her. Not only did that not work, Gnome had no problem ripping herself out of the bind. The stone elemental then caused the ground to cave. Between losing his footing and trying to keep up the spell, the enemy was finally slow enough that Gnome could land a punch. Of course, it came along with a “S-sorry!”

Meanwhile, Beatrice was locked inside combat that looked like it would not resolve within the next few minutes. It was a guy with a giant gardening scissor against a girl with a fairly basic spear John had made. It had a Baelementium tip, but that was all that was impressive about it.

Still, that tip was more impressive than the way Beatrice wielded the weapon. All she really did with it was thrust and pull back. Barebones basics, nothing more. Attempts to knock aside the enemy weapon or other uses of her superior Agility were sluggish. This came from a lack of both skills and combat experience. To give her at least the latter, they let her slug it out with the enemy.

It was a grindstone procedure. They both took about the same amount of hits, but as an Artificial Spirit, Beatrice had a HP regeneration that was through the roof. The hits she took were thus disappearing shortly after they landed, being just blunt damage, she took from the Angelic Gardener using his scissor like an awkward club, while she whittled him down shallow cut by shallow cut.

The fight was ultimately decided when the Angelic Gardener wagered on a sudden attack, opening his scissor wide in an attempt to snap off Beatrice’s neck. She made a side step in the nick of time and rammed the spear into his left foot's tendon, crippling him and making the rest of fight a short-lived exercise.

“You suck,” Salamander stated bluntly once it was over.

“Affirmative,” Beatrice stated, taking the insult not with grace but with uncaring rationalism. “My footwork is unsatisfactory. Handling of the spear uncreative. Patterns predictable by enemies. My defence is lacking. High regeneration and health allow me to leave myself open. However, baiting is too risky a strategy. Should not take damage in the first place. Need to improve drastically.”

“To be perfectly fair to you,” John said, “you don’t have any skills yet.” He had put her on a Damage Dealer and then Melee specialization but had bought nothing with the few points she had. “Momo was more useful early, but that was because Mana Battery was just that good. By herself she brought very little to the table.” It wasn’t until Momo had gotten access to the fireflies that she had started to be any use outside of throwing the blue around like the green rained down on strippers. Even then, that was her most defining trait.

“Affirmative,” Beatrice began with what was probably her favourite word. “I will need further skills and perks to become useful. Suggestion: I should be put on patrol duty until that date. I am strong enough to pacify average Abyssals.”

That was a good idea; currently it was only Metra who was really defending their territory and it was better to have one person for each teleporter. Also, he trusted Beatrice more with keeping up with the laws that he set in place, the berserker babe was not exactly a moral person.

“You go do that after we get done here,” he agreed. “We need to get you a smartphone though, so that Scarlett can tell you where not to stop the invaders.”