Reincarnated as a mana core

Argul had been looking out for intent related things for a week now and she had discovered that no matter what you did, intent was created and used up through that action. As far as she could tell, just existing was enough to create intent.

This is where the balancing factor of using that intent came into play. Let's say you are about to move your arm for example. Then in the moment you start the action the intent is created and continuously used through the motion until nothing is left anymore. 

For most actions the intent is often used up long before the action has even ended. The only way Argul could explain that to herself was that the more intent something produced the less likely it is to find this as a natural occurrence.

You could find sharp things similar to a knife in nature, but any kind of firearm was unlikely to form naturally. Nothing was impossible so Argul was really careful with her words here. Anyway, because of this knifes produce less intent than they use up and firearms are likely to react after a single shot. Pretty much the same goes for every modern technology.

Argul summarized that as the first law of intent, the likelihood of natural occurrence.

The second law of intent was the law of complexity.

The more complex something was, the more intent it produced. The interesting thing here was that organisms didn’t produce a lot of intent despite being incredibly complex. They were pretty likely to appear in nature though, so the first law reduced the intent more than the second law added.

Argul’s flashlight on the other hand was both complex and unlikely to be created naturally so it comparatively produced a shit ton of intent. This intent then stays behind and gets slowly moved by the natural mana. Once the whole of Erod was inside the level one mana zone all intent would slowly move into space.

The problem here was that the more portals to Argul’s domain there were, the less the mana in the center of the level 1 zone would move, so intent pollution was a serious concern.

You could use up intent through other actions, but the amount was generally too little to make any serious dent in extremely polluted regions. This was a problem Argul had to find a solution for in the future or some seriously crazy shit might happen and she couldn’t tell what that was.

The third law of intent was the law that reality always had an exception for something. Argul called this law the law of sapience. The moment a sapient something was involved everything gets crazy. She really wanted to phrase it as sapient organisms, but Argul was not an organism anymore and this law sadly also applied to her.

Now the first two laws don’t simply go down the hill and still apply, but sapient beings tend to overpower them, especially with emotions. The stronger an emotion is the more intent the person produces and for now Argul hadn’t found anything that used this intent up.

This caused her to feel really uncomfortable inside of the city, because she was always walking through clouds of one intent or another, letting her see the general mood of the city. There was a lot of uncertainty around.

Argul was pretty sure she had seen every emotion that could possibly exist out there as a color already and a lot of other things. She had been surprised that death had the most neutral color of all of them.

Hate on the other hand was ugly and looked evil. Just looking at the intent made Argul shiver and ever since she had seen that she preferred to not look at the intent around her every single moment.

Argul had of course also looked inside of her own domain. She produced her mana together with a pretty weak intent of advancement. Because of this any other intent got flushed out of her domain constantly, leaving her own lands clean. Looking at her own domain always made her happy and calm and the intent of advancement had a bit of the same effect.

Argul called the intent weak, because she had yet to see any of it be created outside of her domain. It also got used up pretty fast by anything alive and Argul had only once spotted some of her own intent in Newport.

She had also continued living her life during this week. Argul had tried to do a few things together with Mia, but after the second trip the girl had said she would rather do something with Arthur, because Argul was boring.

It had hurt Argul badly to be called boring. Not. In truth she was fully aware that her interests were a bit extreme and not that compatible with a child. Argul also had no idea of what to do with a 10 year old girl without computer games around. That had been her childhood, but Mia didn’t have the option for any of that.

So the rest of the week Mia went on adventures together with Alyra and Arthur while Argul cleaned clothes at Tania’s stall. After the first day her cleaning ability had become really popular and now people were coming to the wooly sheep hoping to get a discount.

Argul didn’t give in to the demands. She didn’t want to have to deal with the money and was only too grateful that Tania was doing that part, even if Argul had to give her 40% as a share. The group wasn’t in need of too much money and Argul could teach spells for money if they really needed it.

In the evenings they had always done little game parties together with Mia and were currently doing the same or at least the others where. Argul preferred to watch if too many people were participating.

Mia laid down her last card and jumped up. “My win again!”

A round of disappointed sighes went through the group of 8 people who had participated. Arthur laid down his full hand and turned towards Argul. “How can she have as much luck as you in this game?”

Alyra poked Arthur in his side and grinned at him. “It’s skill, not luck. Just accept that you are bad.”

Arthur turned towards the foxiest of them all. “And how do you even manage to lose? There should be no way for that to happen.”

Argul got up and walked over to Mia. “Don’t be like that Arthur. My daughter is trying to lose in a specific way or otherwise it would be boring for her. She has lost her challenge by the way.”

Alyra looked at Argul indignantly. “Hey! How do you even know?”

The other players laughed and Argul winked at her daughter. Then she crouched down and patted Mia, who looked at her with puppy eyes. “Can I play for a bit longer today? It’s the last day of my holiday.”

Argul looked out of the window. It was already dusk and would be dark in about an hour. She glanced at the rest of the players that were all looking at her in anticipation and sighed. “Allright, you get to play until it gets dark.”

The group of players and some of those watching cheered at Argul’s assent. Mia hugged her for a short moment before she went back to her place on the couch. “You are the best, auntie!”

Argul sighed again and went back to her own chair again. Doing everything in darkness would be annoying so she should create a light spell later.

One of the guys Argul didn’t know took the carts and started to mix them. “This round I am going to beat you girl!”

An excited gleam entered Mia’s eyes and she grinned. “Only in your dreams old man!”

Argul watched the game absentmindedly and wondered where the feeling came from that told her Mia was starting to become a little roguish.