Reincarnated as a mana core

Now outside, Argul got to work and repeated her experiment with the flashlight once again. The first time it took around 10 minutes for the flash to occur and it went down to 2 minutes and less in the following tries.

This made two things pretty clear for Argul. Firstly, the flashlight was producing something that caused the mana to react after a certain amount had been reached and secondly, whatever caused the reaction either didn’t move at all or moved very slowly.

Now she only had to find out what exactly it was that the lamp produced. It was likely something that was somehow related to mana and Argul should be able to view it with her mana sense.

She started to walk around while using the flashlight and tried to see what the hell was produced, without any success. Argul slowly got frustrated and after about two hours she had the urge to throw the thing at some random wall.

She growled angrily and kicked the house she was standing next to when Luna’s voice sounded out meekly from behind her. “Uhm. Are you having any success?”

Argul turned around and glared at her. “No.”

Luna took a step back and looked at Argul with wide eyes. “M-maybe, you should take a break? Think about something else?”

Argul noticed that she was scaring Luna and immediately tried to calm herself. She took a few deep breaths until she was back in control and sighed. “Sorry for scaring you Luna, I was a bit frustrated.”

Luna laughed it off awkwardly. “It’s no problem. Everyone gets frustrated if something doesn’t work.” 

She was right, but Argul shouldn’t have become that aggressive because of it. At least she thought she was calmer and more self controlled than that.

Argul scratched herself behind her ear. “Do you mind talking a bit with me?”

Luna smiled brightly and clasped her hands together. “Sure!”

The two walked over to a stair that led to the cellar of some random house and sat down. Argul then asked Luna a few things over the town and Luna was only too happy to have someone to talk to.

When the news about mana had become public a month ago most of the people had packed their things and ran away. A week later the city had been abandoned by the military. They would still help to integrate them, but they didn’t have the manpower to keep their control over the city.

This resulted in a few very short lived governments achieved through force until the city decided to vote for a new governor. In the end a middle aged guy got the post and started to implement a guard force and new rudimentary laws. A week later they destroyed every firearm they could get their hands on and declared bullets to be the new currency until something better has been found. Sadly paper money wasn’t something that would work right now.

In the same week the market had been built and people were told to resettle in the east of the city. This led to the western city to become desolate and a place for criminal activities and scavenging. 

The guard force wasn’t checking large parts of the desolate area leaving perfect places for hideouts. They just didn’t have enough people to realistically operate in such a large area.

Argul had to admit that the governor was taking his position seriously and tried to stabilize things. Luna also said that things became a lot safer in the last week, but that was likely over now that goblins were around.

After that Argul told Luna everything she knew about mana. How it was an energy that could be used to influence and change the world to your wishes and how you could only transform mana into things and vice versa, but never create new mana. She told her how mana was colorless and everyone had a unique colored mana signature and how she formed and created spells.

Argul was sure Luna wasn’t understanding much of what she was talking about, but the girl  still listened intently. After she was done talking the two of them just sat there in silence.

A little later Luna threw a question into the room. “You know what really bothers me?”

Argul looked at her questioningly. “No?”

Luna fiddled around with her arm wool a bit. “You said mana was colorless, but why is it that people have colored mana signatures then?”

Argul blinked, taken off guard by the question. Then she thought about it a bit further and asked herself the same question. Mana was indeed colorless, there was no doubt about that, but why had she never found it curious that mana signatures are colored.

Argul looked at Luna, still a bit baffled. “I- I have no idea actually.”

What was it that gave mana the color? Maybe peoples experiences?

No that couldn’t be it. Experiences don’t have any influence on mana in such a direct way.

But then what else?

Argul couldn’t think of anything, so she tried to view the situation a bit differently. She ignored the color completely and instead took what it did as the central question. She was searching for something that influenced mana.

What things did she know about that could influence the mana?

Well, for starters any particle the size of an atom and larger could do so or mana wouldn’t get spread by water and wind. Any living organism could do so too, especially sapients.

How did they achieve this?

Argul did so through her own spells and passively by existing, because she created ever more mana.

But what were spells, so that they could influence mana directly?

That question was easy to answer for Argul. Spells were formations of intent that made mana move in a certain way or hold it together until the mana formation was stable by itself.

Argul had a small revelation. Intent! In the end magic was the practical application of intent to use mana. People never actually manipulated mana themselves, but created intent that did for them what they wanted.

She facepalmed herself. Mana alone was of course colorless, but only because you weren’t viewing the other side of the coin.

Now the reaction between mana and technology made sense as long as intent was produced in the process. In a way these reactions were just natural spells that used physical reactions as a base.

Argul looked excitedly at Luna, her tail wagging fastly and hugged the girl. “You are a genius! Thank you so much!”

She laughed happily. “Thanks to you I managed to see the second part of mana!”

Meanwhile Luna was trying to free herself and mumbled into Argul’s chest. “Cnt brthe!”

Argul looked down at her and loosened her embrace a bit. “Huh? What did you say?”

Luna took a deep breath. “I said, I can’t breathe!”

Argul reviewed what had happened in the last few seconds mentally and blushed. She looked away in embarrassment. “Uhm, I’m sorry for that outburst.”

Luna smiled at her. “It’s no problem really~. I don’t have any problems with hugging and wouldn’t even mind staying like this for a bit more.”

Argul realized she was still hugging her and hurriedly scurried a bit away, blushing even more. Luna looked a bit disappointed and grumbled to herself. “Even though it was so nice…”

Luna wasn’t the only one who found it nice to hug someone else and Argul was occupied awkwardly trying to hide her erection. She turned a bit away from Luna, hoping that she would misunderstand it for her being embarrassed.

Luna turned to Argul and looked at her in anticipation. “Have I been able to help you?”

Argul had a hard time not shouting at her. “Yes! Thanks to you I finally figured out something that is easy to overlook!”

Luna smiled and leaned backwards. “Well I am glad I was able to help.”

She looked at the sun and got up. “I am going back inside. There are inn-things I have to do.”

She waved to Argul and then ran towards her inn. “Have fun with your experiments!”

Argul sighed in relief and relaxed her posture. That had been close, a bit too close in her opinion. She also scolded herself for acting this thoughtlessly in her own excitement, but there wasn’t much she could do about that.

Argul had better things to do anyway and focused on her intent problem. She could already see intent quite detailed with the mana signatures, so in theory she only had to apply that to her normal mana sight.

The world became a mess of colors, though one color was really dominant, so much in fact that if she turned around she could only see that color. Three dimensional it was a bluish silver, but four dimensional it was not and Argul couldn’t quite describe the color. It was likely her own mana and the color of her own mana signature. She dubbed the color mana-color and tried to see without her own mana color showing.

It took Argul a few minutes, but she managed to do it in the end.

What was left behind were a few blends of different colors showing a dominant vibrant yellow. She used the dynamo and the mana got colored in the same way around her hands so the flashlight was really producing intent.

With that Argul now knew the reason for technology becoming wonky. The only question left was why tech was even producing intent and what else was doing so. Argul had a bit of observing in front of her.