NOVEL NEXT Chapter 123
For the rest of the afternoon the group continued on at their usual pace of about 30 km per hour. The small river that the road kept somewhat close to entered a much larger river that would over the next week or so lead them to another river, where they would turn westwards and enter the Munzumira Republic.
Half an hour before they settled in for the night, they came across a town, but kept away and chose to camp by themselves. The group went about their evening routine and once the humans were asleep, Argul took a look at her domain.
The talk with the trade, especially when they had talked about the Meran church, had reminded her of something she needed to do, but dreaded the consequences of and kept pushing it away.
Right now every bit of mana that had intent that didn’t come from Argul and was uncontrolled got shunted out of her domain. The problem with this was that everything not living didn’t progress. There was no stone becoming more or different through the slow accumulation of mana bound to it with the intent the stone produced simply by existing. The same was true for any other material and that led to those materials becoming weaker in comparison to living things. Wood on her 13th Floor for example was stronger, more durable and more magical than stone.
The absence of intent also made her domain feel hollow to Argul in her mana sense and why would it not when there was a whole layer of reality practically missing?
What really bothered her however, was that because of the absence of intent her domain was becoming less magical than the outside. It hurt her pride, something that hadn’t happened in so long that she wasn’t sure she had last felt the need to one up someone or something because anything else wasn’t acceptable. Breeding an aberrant Ankylosaurus that was absolutely bonkers when farming metal to dominate an entire semi-official ARK server was a strong contender though. Those were good times.
Anyway, the point was that Argul found it unacceptable for her own domain not to be the most magical place in the universe. She was the [Origin of Mana] and practically the mother of magic for goodness sake.
To remedy that and make it feel more natural she had to change how mana travelled through her domain. She even had an idea, but hadn’t acted on it yet because of her daughter who threatened to stop preventing mana from entering her domain once she changed this rule. Not because she was trying to be mean or anything, but because Argul had until now avoided coming to terms with the fact that she was a special being, a god according to Alyra and they both knew she would keep ignoring it if she had the chance. In a way that meant her daughter had shielded Argul from her own reality for a while and didn’t want to continue, which would allow Argul to receive prayers from outside her domain.
Argul abhorred the idea of being a god though. There was so much cultural baggage to that term that she wanted to have nothing to do with, that not having access to a special kind of mana, faith mana was more palatable.
There were other ways to go about this of course, which is what brought her to this crossway in the first place. In her opinion she had three options she could choose from. One, she could keep things as they were, which would keep haunting her like an unscratched itch. Two, she could accept being a god, which, no. Just no. And three, she could come up with her own term to describe what she was, leaving her to live free of cultural burdens. The third was obviously the way forward here.
Having made up her mind, Argul changed her focus back to her avatar to continue tinkering with the PA. Over the next few days while she worked, she kept thinking about this.
To begin with, the question of what the beings her daughter called gods were and what made them so special had to be answered. It couldn’t have anything to do with definitely-not-gods being the target of prayers, because for all she knew a person could believe into a mountain and nothing would come of it. At least until enough faith mana accumulated to do something about that. No, what Argul found much more likely was that being able to do anything with the faith mana without purging it of its intent was the defining trait of not-gods.
Beyond that however, she could only theorise, for she knew only two things for sure. One, she could use faith mana, which might have something to do with her [Origin of Mana] title. That too was something she had to look into, because not all titles were system given. Some of them had to have an effect on reality and Alyra just categorised that.
Back to her original thought, the second thing she knew was that faith mana and magic could be used to create buffs, spells that strengthened a person temporarily.
What she didn’t know however, was what rules faith magic followed, what was impossible to do, not because it really was, impossible wasn’t a thing with mana around, but because mana costs simply became impractical and this lack of knowledge seriously hampered her ability to come up with something.
It annoyed her so greatly that she had to slow down her work on the PA, lest she made a mistake. In the end she had to follow the old ASS adage, always simple stupid, to make any progress and decided that the only thing that really mattered was a not-god’s ability to use faith mana. Everything else built upon this foundation and was thus not strictly necessary.
Still, coming up with a new term that satisfied her remained difficult and she often became distracted by daydreams about the things she thought about. It was one of those dreams however that finally gave her the inspiration she needed.
The limitation that sorcerers, wizards and magicians had to use some kind of focus to do magic, be it a staff, gem or familiar, had been thought of and thought through in many fantasy novels and what were not-gods if not Foci of the masses?
Argul was very content with that term. The idea of being the one to do the magic as service while others provided the mana appealed to her and allowed her to go about with a more mercantile mindset. She did not want to just take, that wasn’t who she was as a person and instead would take some of the mana for herself as payment for services rendered. How much she didn’t know yet, but it would kind of depend on what she was able to do.
That left only prayers, but she could just treat them as requests and ignore the implications so long as she wasn’t called a god.
With that done, Argul decided to finish the PA before following up on her ideas, completing her work in the middle of the night 4 days before her daughter’s birthday.
Sadly, the PA did not become an artefact and a bit dissatisfied, Argul wanted to know why. She didn’t have the book [Primordial Grimoire of Water Magic (Mia Agren)] anymore, but luckily Luna had brought the [Pole of Light] with her or Argul would have a bit of a problem.
Using her [telekinesis] spell, she quickly and quietly manoeuvred the pole and a wooden ladle Arthur had crafted, which would serve as a sorry attempt of a control group, out of the camper and laid them down next to the PA. While she could sense the three items with her mana sense just fine in a pretty large radius around her, comparing them accurately would be nearly impossible without having them next to each other.
Next, Argul felt out the metaphysical weight of each item and ordered them in a row least to most intent, or ladle, then the PA and then the [Pole of Light].
The ladle had barely any intent to it, which made it much more difficult for Argul to feel into its metaphysical makeup and harder to try interpreting the intent bound to it. It was good practice though and would help her progress her [sense mana] skill.
The wooden ladle was not a passion project, but created to help the maker pass time and for the joy that was woodworking. It had been intended, pun fully intended too, for the ladle to be used in the act of cooking, a task it could fulfil to satisfaction, yet it was never assumed a guarantee for that to happen. It was in a sense, her mana sense, by its own admission neither special nor particularly loved by its creator.
The plank of [Analyse] was heavy in intent in comparison. It was created with love and with the goal of sharing that love with someone. It was a passion project and seeing that written so clearly in reality was embarrassing, but also the truth, so Argul powered through it. The PA had been delicately and meticulously, if not skillfully, crafted and the creator took care that nary a mistake marred its existence despite their lack in ability. It was a gift to be given and that was its purpose, its main reason to exist.
The PA had function too of course, a spell etched into its being without hurting what it was, showing where the competence of the creator truly lay. Yet, despite the uniqueness of this function, it remained inferior to the purpose of being a show of motherly affection.
There was also a hint of both the creator and intended receiver being special and important somehow, but Argul wasn’t sure what to make of that. She only knew it wasn’t imagined because she could find it again every time she searched for it.
The [Pole of Light] wasn’t all that much intent heavier than the PA, but it was a lot more intense. It was also simplicity in itself.
The [Pole of Light], the result of an experiment gone right, was the first spell made manifest in reality, the first enchantment and with every new enchantment it became that much more important. It was a pioneer.
What made it decidedly different from the PA was that there was a finality to its identity. This here was its being, its foundation and while it could grow and add to this, reality would always strive to return its whole being should something happen, meaning the artefact would heal damage given a bit of time.
That finality was probably what made an artefact and Argul could even see why the two she had created deserved this status. The [Pole of Light] itself wasn’t special, but what it represented was enormous like the first wheel.
The [Primordial Grimoire of Water Magic (Mia Agren)] on the other hand was a guide to establish the foundation for a school of magic centred around water made timeless in a book. That alone would probably be enough should the school of magic become important, but it was also the first of its kind in the influence of mana, much like the pole.
Argul wondered what it would take for the PA to become an artefact. She could also see why Alyra would reward the creation of one with recognition, even if the bonus stats were a bit lousy in her opinion. Though in the future 15 stat points could make a hell of a lot of difference to an already powerful person.
Still somewhat bummed, Argul put the three items away, taking care not to wake her family and then focused on her domain while she thought about what she had learned. After she took in the knowledge of the things that had happened and were happening, Argul searched for Jack and prepared herself for what she would do next, smiling when Alyra’s little avatar made an entrance. It was good to know she wasn’t alone.