Reincarnated as a mana core

At the end of the night Argul couldn’t do anything about the moral problem she had with her power over everything in her prison. She could just hope that her take on this wouldn’t change in the future and her friends would stop her if she ever tried to do something stupid.

Argul switched over to her avatar and got up. She dressed herself and went over to Mia to get her out of bed. “Good morning sleepyhead.”

Mia grumbled and tried to put the blanket over her head, but Argul took hold of it and pulled it away. “It’s time to get up!”

The girl sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Morning aunt.”

Argul smiled at Mia and searched for her daughter, but couldn’t find her in the room. Alyra hadn’t slept with them last night for some reason, though Argul wasn’t worried about it too much. Alyra could handle herself.

She helped Aina out of the bed and then went downstairs to get the slime something to eat. Mia could dress up during that time.

In the main room Argul was greeted by a sight she had not anticipated. Yesterday's playgroup was sleeping on the couches and empty glasses stood around everywhere. 

She went over to one of the glasses and sniffed at it, definitely beer of some kind. Argul eyed Alyra who was lying half on top of Arthur. It didn’t look too comfortable so she decided to end their suffering.

Argul walked behind the couch Alyra was sleeping on and began to scratch her daughter’s head. 

Alyra groaned and cracked her eyelid open. “Good morning mom.”

Argul smiled sweetly at her daughter. “Morning sunshine!” That was for not telling her she could use the ambient mana inside of her domain like it was her own.

Alyra glared at her and sat up. Then her expression became strangely pitying and she patted Argul’s shoulder in condolence. 

Argul frowned towards her daughter. This was highly suspicious, but more importantly Alyra reeked of alcohol. She casted a cleanse at the little fox and handed the glass she was holding over forcefully. “How about you clean up your mess together with the others before Mia comes down?”

Alyra was about to respond, but Argul crossed her arms and made clear that this hadn’t really been a question. “You have 5 to 10 minutes so you better hurry up.”

She turned around. “And maybe don’t drink that much next time.” Her daughter knew that she wasn’t exactly a fan of drugs. Argul wouldn’t judge you if you did take any as long as you didn’t try to get others to try them too. She couldn’t stand people like that.

Argul headed towards the kitchen and organized Aina something to eat. Luna wasn’t up yet, which wasn’t too weird considering that she had likely been serving the whole time the others had played. The innkeeper needed the money and didn’t exactly have the freedom to just say no to this opportunity.

When Argul got out of the kitchen Alyra was already busy tidying up the mess of the night. She let the others continue to sleep while doing the work alone. The girl just couldn’t do nice things in the open around others.

Argul smiled and went upstairs to feed Aina. In the hallway of the second floor she met a sleepy Luna and greeted her. A happy Bubble was following the sheep-girl.

The rest of the morning went over as usual. They had a nice breakfast together and afterwards Argul taught Mia some of what she knew about ethics. This subject had always felt unnecessary when she had been in school herself, but it had shaped how she viewed the world and how she thought about things.

After lunch Argul experimented with the knife Luna had lent out to her in the backyard. She was still on the lookout for suspicious persons now and then, but she did so less and less with each day.

Argul repeated her tests for the next three days with objects that she guessed to be made of different metals or at least different alloys. She had no idea how to tell what object was made of what except for guessing by their color. If she did so however she would have tested three different kinds of iron.

Anyway, metals turned out to overall channel mana relatively well. Argul could move her mana through the material at half the speed she did it in the air or her body if she pushed it to the limits. There was one problem to this though, namely that the mana also got expelled out of the metal faster. 

This was of course the average for the metals. There had been a few test objects that had taken better to the mana than others. Luna’s knife was in the category that wasn’t too fond of being flooded with mana. Sadly Argul couldn’t tell why for as long as she had no idea what the knife was truly made of.

Now that she was done with most of the basic experiments she only had to discover a method to enchant things. Saying it like this almost made it sound like an easy task.

Argul picked up Aina and went out of the inn. She had to clean at Tania’s stall again today and thought about a few crucial things she would need to figure out for enchanting.

Most importantly Argul had to find a way to secure the spell formation inside of the target. Depending on what she was enchanting this could already become difficult because it was harder to recreate a spell with a smaller formation or it should be. For some reason it was quite easy for Argul to simply rescale the formation. That had likely something to do with her not being human anymore.

Once she had managed that she would need some kind of mana input for the enchantment to work. The type of input would highly depend on the kind of tool and its purpose in the end. Creating a cooking knife that was linked to a single mana signature for multiple persons would be stupid for example.

Argul reached Tania’s stall and greeted her. After they were done with annoying niceties she began to clean the clothes and things people had left with Tania for the last few days.

She would have to connect the mana input with the spellformation next and maybe even create some kind of mana storage, not that she had any idea on how to do this. A storage would be useful if she managed to create a mana input that collected the ambient mana though, so it was still a valid idea.

Argul moved all the clean stuff to the side before she continued with the next row of baskets and bags. Aina was following her every step and seemed to be observing what she was doing.

The thing about enchanting was that she would have to create a completely new spell formation in the end, a spell formation that didn’t depend on a caster. Argul would also have to create a targeting spell for enchanting or otherwise things could get very dangerous very fast. She would rather not have a sharpness enchanted knife sharpen its hilt.

Argul thought her idea through once more and realized she would have to add some kind of intent filter too. Otherwise the enchantment might break or do something it shouldn’t do, like setting a house on fire. 

The intent filter would be difficult to create and the easiest way around this was to find something that blocked intent. You could also create a small spell that just created intent and thus kept any other intent outside of the enchantment, but then the enchantment would require more mana. For small items that were produced for the populace this might still be the way to go around things. For specialized and mana intensive items the former method sounded more feasible though.

She already knew a possible material for this. On every floor she had there was a small amount of stone that had changed due to extreme amounts of mana traveling through it. This stone was in the places where her core had been for some time and had taken on Argul’s mana intent. The stone would be perfect for the filtering.

There were also a few other materials she could test, but so long as she had this stone there was really no need.

Argul cleaned the last basket and stretched. Then she turned to the stall front. “Hey Tania, I am done back here. Have there been any new orders for me?”

A moment later Tania answered her. “Yes, a few new ones have come in, though it’s less than usual. I will let people know that their orders are ready.”

Less than usual huh. Argul didn’t really mind of course, it just meant that she could spend more of her work time playing with Aina.

She worked and played for a few more hours before she called it a day. On her way back home Argul had to walk around a pretty huge group of people that had gathered in front of some stage. 

If she remembered it right this was where the criers announced the news. That such a crowd had come together likely meant that there would be an announcement so Argul distanced herself, but kept close enough to hear everything. She just wasn’t a fan of large crowds.

A few minutes later a pretty and skinny man stepped on the stage. He took a deep breath before he started. “People of Newport, come and gather! Come and hear the news!”

He repeated his sentence for around five minutes before he finally continued and gestured towards the sky. “People, oh people, as you might know already this new reality is a gift by god, a new chance for us to prove ourselves. This is why the almighty bestowed on us the prayer skill.”

Argul rolled her eyes. The guy couldn’t be more wrong, he did explain why Alyra called herself the almighty though.

The guy received a few cheers and motioned towards the audience. “And now is the first time to show our faith and prove our will.”

He raised his hand to the sky. “Hear people of Newport, in 30 days time there will be a large sermon in the city of Sacra and you are all welcome to take part, no, urged to do so!”

Argul sighed. She wasn’t interested in this kind of time waste and began to head back to the wooly sheep. Contrary to her, a large part of the crowd seemed to be excited about the news, but she just ignored them.

After this Argul followed her daily routine and spent some time reading with Mia after dinner.