Reincarnated as a mana core

After her daily lessons with Mia and a shared lunch Argul went outside to send the girl off to her secret training with Arthur and Alyra. She wanted to go to the outside today too, braving the dangerous adventure that was society.

Jokes aside, Argul planned to visit Tania to apologize for not coming there last week and look through the market in case there may be something that could be helpful during their travels. 

She had enough money as far as she knew, which now that she considered it wasn’t very far. Alyra kept track of that and the only thing Argul knew was that she had already paid Luna for the next 3 months. Next to that she still had quite a bit more bullets thanks to her cleaning job, though she had no idea about the exact amount.

Argul gave Mia a light clap on the back to send the girl off. “Be careful out there, okay?”

Mia stepped over to Aly and Arthur before she turned around to face Argul. “I will as always mom.”

Then she ran onwards down the street.

Argul just smiled. She was indeed a mom and thus had the privilege of being allowed to be overly worried at times. She nodded to Alyra and Arthur. “Have fun during your training.”

Arthur grimaced a bit, but hid it relatively fast. Alyra waved at Argul and the two began to follow Mia at a more measured pace. “You too, mom and make sure you take your time in the fresh air, your body needs it.”

Argul watched them in mock offense. She had been more than enough outside of the inn during the last two weeks. Heck, she had even practiced outside. There was just no way she would become an indoor person like in her last life.

Argul turned away from the others and started to walk in the opposite direction from them. She was just barely able to hear Arthur speaking to Alyra. “Did you have to tell her?!”

Her daughter retorted teasingly. “So what? Don’t tell me you thought my mom would actually mind so long as it is only training. She can still hear us by the way.”

Argul looked over her shoulder at Arthur with a smile and waved. The guy was in for a heavy mocking from Alyra. She ignored most of it though and went on her way to the market.

The closer Argul got there, the more people were around. More than there had been two weeks ago in her opinion. Many of them were going to or coming from an inn, giving her the impression that the new population had to be mostly merchants of some kind. For people to try to create a working trading system between settlements made sense and it would also help villages to sell their goods more easily.

Something was starting to bug Argul however and the feeling got worse when she entered the market. The crowd just seemed different to how it had been two weeks ago, like something was missing. 

She went on nonetheless trying to ignore the feeling and looked at all the different products on sale. The overall available products were slowly changing from the things that had still been in stock from before mana to new handcrafted pieces. There was also less variety, especially if you didn’t have a lot of money, or bullets in this case.

Argul went past most of the stands that were selling clothes. She was quite fine with the things she had right now and with her cleaning spell she could wear them pretty much permanently. They would get worn out eventually, but that was a problem for the future.

Argul stopped at a stand that was selling jewels and good looking rocks in interest. Having something like diamonds to experiment enchanting on would be incredible. 

The vendor tried to get her attention after some time, but she mostly ignored him and instead compared the samples to the ones that could be found inside of her domain, much to the guy's annoyance. She wasn’t calling out the fakes and didn’t bother other customers however, so there wasn’t much the vendor could do about it.

Argul didn’t think she would find anything at a temporary street stand like this and was quite surprised when she found a fist sized piece of cobalt ore of all things. There was nothing special about the stone except for a slightly blue sheen. Most of the other stuff was fake and or mostly useless to her.

She picked the ore up and looked at the vendor. “I would like to buy this piece.”

The guy crossed his arms and looked at her sternly. “And why, if I may ask, silver witch?”

He had said the last thing in mockery, but it still made quite a few people turn to them in interest. 

This was going to be really annoying. Until a few seconds ago Argul had been nondescript between the other market visitors. There was just so much variety in species on the market that she wasn’t exactly special, that is of course until someone dropped the name of silver witch. In a minute or so everyone would be looking out for those silver ears and tail of hers and the locals knowing she was the real deal would only keep the interest going.

Argul looked irritated at the vendor. “You may ask, but I refuse to answer you.”

She took three small bullets out of her money pouch and leaned towards the guy, before she continued in a hushed threatening tone. “I will pay 3 bullets and if you refuse I will point out all the worthless pieces and fakes in your collection to the audience you just attracted.”

The vendor stared at her speechless so Argul just placed the bullets on the counter and smiled at him sweetly. “Thanks~.” 

Then she put the ore in her backpack and walked away before he could retort, the small crowd parting for her. 

3 bullets were basically nothing and a total rip off, not that the guy would have known better anyways. He had earned it though, because now she had to deal with all the unwanted attention and had to endure all the lecherous gazes.

In all seriousness Argul always received them, but normally people just quickly checked her out trying not to get noticed. It was one of the reasons she didn’t like going out of the inn much, because she wasn’t used to it.

Now however it was even worse and people pointed her out without a care, because everyone else was doing it too so they weren’t the bad ones in their minds.

If she wouldn’t wear mens clothing it would be even worse, because the womens clothing she had accentuated her female charm even more. With the army jacket she could at least hide her upper assets.

Argul stopped browsing the stalls and hurried towards Tania accompanied by a nearly unnoticeable hush going through the market as people tried to sneakily or openly point her out.

The ever observing stall owner already expected her and let Argul into the back area after a quick greeting. Thankfully Tania’s stall was a lot more solid compared to most of the others on the market and more of a small shack really.

Argul sat down on a random chair and sighed in relief. She had a few minutes to relax listening to Tania dealing with people and customers before the woman came over to her. “You do tend to attract a lot of attention, Argul.”

Argul rolled her eyes in annoyance. “I noticed, but I am not doing it on purpose.”

Tania raised an eyebrow. “You are not advancing knowledge, especially yours, concerning mana incredibly fast on purpose?”

Argul sighed in defeat. If she put it like that then of course she was doing it on purpose. “You can turn around meaning a lot that way, but you know I meant that I don’t want the attention.”

Somebody called out from the front of the stall and Tania shouted back that she would be there in a minute. Argul stood up and looked around. “So, since you don’t seem to have much time I will get to the point.” There weren’t any baskets full of dirty stuff around like usual, much to her surprise.

Argul looked Tania in the eyes. “I am sorry for not coming here last week. Is there anything to clean for me?”

Tania waved her away before she pointed at a single crate in the back of the shack. “Don’t be. I take it you were occupied with something important and if there had been a lot of customers I would have come to get you.”

Argul looked at the crate. “I guess there haven’t been too many people who needed clean clothes then.”

This time it was Tania’s turn to sigh. “Yes. They don’t have endless amounts of money so the stuff we get is either really nasty like in that crate or we will get large amounts at once.”

The customer shouted again so Tania excused herself for a moment. Argul opened the crate instead and discovered why Tania had called it nasty. The clothes inside were bloody as hell and it was a miracle that the stuff wasn’t smelling like a battlefield.

She cleansed the whole crate and began to rummage through it out of curiosity. There were mostly sturdy leather clothes and aprons inside, likely the equipment of a butcher. The kind that killed and sliced up animals, not the maniac that went around and did the same to fellow humans. Argul closed the crate again. She trusted Tania enough to not accept jobs from the latter.

The stall owner came back again, noticed the clean crate and handed Argul 2 medium sized bullets. That was quite a lot compared to what she normally got for that amount of stuff to clean, but with all that blood it made sense to want more. Argul was pretty much the only opportunity to really get that cleaned at the moment.

She packed away the money and looked at Tania. “Is there anything interesting that happened while I wasn’t around?”

Tania thought about it for a moment. “Except for people preparing for the sermon nothing much.”

She tapped her chin. “Well, the christians are silently bullying the other religions into hiding, but that is nothing new.”

Argul wasn’t quite sure about this being nothing new, but she had at least expected this to happen. No matter the sentiment of the 21st century, there was a lot of power on the line here and without the old laws people would of course fight over said power. At least they weren’t doing it as brutally as the Meran church, though they were a bit of an extreme example for this.

Tania perked up a bit. “Oh, there were also the ghost sightings.”

Argul looked at her in interest. “Ghost sightings?”

Now that was news she had been waiting for.