NOVEL NEXT Chapter 28
Mia tried to copy Argul but ended up slamming her head on Argul’s stomach. Argul was forced to exhale all the air inside her and made a weird sound. The stalk of grass was sent flying and she sat up in surprise. This in turn threw Mia off of Argul, who immediately made sure that the girl was alright.
She looked around and noticed that everyone was looking at her. Argul blushed. Couldn’t she try to look cool once?
Alyra began to laugh and Arthur had a hard time trying not to laugh at Argul. The leading woman looked confused and Argul turned away, hoping to just get swallowed by the ground.
Trying to change the focus on something else Argul asked the woman meekly for her name. Turns out her name was Jennifer and there were indeed some problems going on in the city, but Jennifer either didn’t want to tell Argul or she had no idea herself.
After that they built their camp. Jennifer had gone off talking to higher ups and took Trevor with her. They were still under the supervision of the soldiers, but they were mostly focused on Argul. She had always wondered if you could tell if someone was staring at you lustfully and now she knew.
It made her feel uncomfortable so she disappeared into her tent after dinner to escape the gazes. Mia followed her and Argul told her a story until the girl fell asleep. She would have to tell Mia one of the stupid scray stories her father had always told her when she had been a kid.
A tinge of sadness creeped up in Argul and she just laid next to Mia feeling a bit lost.
At some point she fell asleep and decided to take the next step towards her kraken. Hopefully creating something new and watching her floors would distract her from her conflicting feelings. Then she started the creation of her first whale species. It took a rather long time and after about 30 minutes two fully grown whales were swimming in the ocean next to her starting island.
The two whales were about 15 meters long and mostly black. They had a rather pointed mouth and two long fins at their sides.
Erod whale
This is a large animal. This whale lives in the oceans of Erod and feeds off of the plankton and krill in the water. Their size alone is enough to scare off most possible predators. Because of that these whales have a possible life span of 200 years.
Argul watched them a bit until she realized that the two whales had started to have sex. While she was indeed curious there were lines Argul didn’t want to cross, so she stopped watching them.
Instead she looked over her sixth floor and realized that compared to the amount of different plants on Erod her floor was pathetic and would always be without nature having millions of years to create some variety. To fill at least a bit of the void she created a kind of grass and a berry bush. They didn’t look all that special except for maybe the orange berries.
She really hoped a few plants from the forest on Erod would hop through, it would make these things a lot easier.
Most of her other islands were still bare of anything and it would likely take a bit of time for any seeds to travel to them.
Leaving her islands behind Argul focused on what she called her coral reef. She created two more corals, one that was really flat and a purple one that looked like some kind of tube.
For the large predators she needed either more fish or larger fish. In both cases she would need more plants and things to eat for them. Argul didn’t want to rush her disaster animals and would take her time. That way she could make sure that none of her species died out.
She would also need to spice up her deep sea a bit more, but sadly had only time for one other species tonight. As she had not done so on either of her two water floors Argul created a kind of jellyfish.
Their head had a diameter of about one meter and their copious amounts of tentacles trailed behind them for 7 meters, so she could safely say that they were massive. The middle of their heads and the tentacle base glowed in an ominous red light.
Eztli medusa
This is a large animal. This jellyfish eats mostly plankton. As they can't sustain procreation by only eating plankton they are often hunting fish and other sea creatures, utilizing their extremely toxic tentacles. To create the toxin they use for hunting Eztli use chemicals found in resource lakes in the depths of —.
If they don’t find prey for prolonged times they journey out of the deep sea to terrorize the oceans before they return to procreate. The longer they are away from the deep sea the less deadly they become.
Argul looked at the thing. Jellyfish were something truly fascinating in her opinion, at least as long as they were smaller than you… They had a lot of horror potential in her opinion and not that many enemies by her guess.
Now that she thought about it, are there even things that prey on jellyfish?
Argul wasn’t sure, but nature likely had found its way and if not she would have it her way. She watched them moving around a bit and once watching two weak red glowing points moving around in an endless nothingness got boring she focused back on her avatar. Needless to say, that happened rather fast.
The next day Jennifer had gotten new orders and the group was to go back to the mana zone. Jennifer was commanded to verify the existence of mana, which basically meant she had to use herself or one of her subordinates as a test subject. In the end she herself and five soldiers who had volunteered gathered and joined the rear of the refugee group.
Once the group packed all their stuff they started this day's walk. The mood was a bit weird. For one the refugees were relieved to have found other people and were even able to help them, but on the other hand said people were very wary of them.
The trucks were following them, but left half a kilometer distance between the group and themselves. Arthur had likely warned them about the reaction of tech and mana, something that Argul found curious herself. She would likely research the cause once they weren’t occupied by walking around with mostly basic necessities.
The six soldiers walking with them was actually a sign of faith in Argul’s opinion. She would be totally able to slaughter them and then disappear and the soldiers were well aware of that.
In the afternoon Argul could feel the mana density thickening at a rapid pace and started to feel a lot better. She wasn’t the only one in that regard and Aina started to move around inside the sport bag in excitement. Argul put her hand inside the open bag and patted her.
The poor slime had been asleep for nearly the entire duration they had been out of the mana zone. Argul thought Aina had only woken up to get fed by her.
Arthur went off to notify Jennifer that the mana zone was about to reach them and Argul followed him. She, Arthur, Trevor and three of the most able in mana manipulation gathered near the soldiers.
It was actually the first time for Argul to really meet Jennifer. Before they had more or less shouted at each other over a distance. The woman actually looked a bit harmless and had brown hair.
Jennifer looked at Argul, especially at her eyes and couldn’t help herself but ask. “What happened to your eyes? Can you still see?”
Argul looked at her a bit unsure. The woman had just destroyed her whole image with these two questions and Argul wasn’t sure if it had been worth it. “Mana happened and yes I can still see with them.” There was no need to tell her more.
Jennifer seemed to be a bit disappointed by the answer, but didn’t try to pry further.
After that the six soldiers formed a line with about 10 meters between each of them. Argul could understand that, it gave them a bit of safety as they could watch over each other this way.
Jennifer was the first of the soldiers the mana zone spread past. Argul stood besides her to help should the need arise. After half a minute nothing had happened, but the next soldier was already inside the zone. It was spreading faster than they walked again.
Jennifer looked at Argul in suspicion, but said nothing. A few seconds later she tensed up and Argul immediately started to push her mana into Jennifer. A moment later the woman relaxed again. She made a motion as if trying to touch something in front of her but obviously didn’t find anything. Then she turned to Argul and was about to ask something, but a scream of pain from behind them interrupted her.
They both turned around to the sight of the second soldier writhing on the ground with Arthur right next to him with his hands on his head. Jennifer’s face turned dead cold and she was about to grab her rifle, but Argul immediately took hold of the woman’s arms. Then she looked her in the eyes while making sure not to open herself for an attack. “Would you please calm down? Just because you were lucky doesn’t mean your soldiers will be too and feeling one's body change rapidly is bound to hurt.”
Hadn’t Arthur told them about that part? And if so that was really stupid of him.
Argul looked at the other soldiers and noticed that they were really tense, but hadn’t jumped like Jennifer. That was good because they had no need for exploding firearms right now.
The reaction had likely just been a reflex of Jennifer or some such. Who knows what she had seen as a soldier?
The other soldiers all had painful integrations of varying length. They all grew tentacle-like appendages on the side of their neck, that were longer the longer the process had taken.
Argul remembered that the corrupted that had hunted Arthur had also been tentacle things. She had thought that people turned into something based on their location, but it seemed to be more of an organization thing.
Jennifer made a waving motion towards the trucks. They would have to make haste if they didn’t want the trucks to become fireworks. The plan was to meet up at the next village again or at least that had been the plan that Argul and the rest had been told.
