Reincarnated as a mana core

The way to the second store was uneventful and Argul mostly used it to teach Mia some history. You might think it’s useless, but Argul would tell you that looking back on history offered a lot of learning possibilities. If you used them was your problem in the end. 

She didn’t care about the exact dates too much. They were of no use for Mia and as long as the girl knew the correct order and roughly in which century something happened that was okay for Argul. They hadn’t reached the metal ages for now anyways.

It took the duo another hour to reach the second store. It was also a bit further away from Newport.

This bookstore already looked better than the last one. Only one of two display windows had been destroyed. The inside was still a mess and some idiot had even tried to light a fire in the store. Argul could only shake her head in disappointment.

As in the first store she took all the pencils, pens and empty paper she found. The stuff already took half the space of her backpack.

Argul didn’t bother to look through all the shelfs and the books that lay scattered around on the floor. Instead she directly went to the back of the store together with Mia and entered the staff rooms.

This store only had one office room and a bathroom, but again Argul didn’t care and opened the door to the storage. Luckily there were no corpses around this time and it smelled a lot like paper instead of rotting meat.

There was a small window to the left directly underneath the roof that illuminated the room sparsely. Cardboard boxes were standing around in an orderly manner with only a few of them ripped open.

Argul entered the room and went into a random row of the boxes. There were no labels on them so she had no idea which books were in which box. The store owner had likely known so without them, but not putting labels on them still seemed to be an invitation for a personal calamity to happen.

She opened the third box of her room with a bit of force. There seemed to be books about geography and traveling inside so she began to search through them, looking for something useful. Mia chose her own row and started to search for interesting things too.

Argul found a collection of old maps of the world and pocketed it. While most of the maps were useless now she could use a lot of them to describe and visualize geographical processes.

The next box contained books for kids and while Argul really wanted to take a few of them for a possible future use she didn’t have enough space for them.

The duo continued to search through the boxes for more than half an hour, taking some books with them. Mia surprisingly took two more books that were about useful skills. One of them was about climbing and the other book taught a few self defense techniques. 

Argul would have chosen fantasy novels for all the books that would be carried for her, though she wasn’t exactly a good example in most cases.

Speaking of fantasy novels, she did find multiple of them and took a few of them with her. Maybe the magic used inside of them would give her some inspiration, one never knows.

Sadly, Argul had yet to find anything about coding and computers. She of course knew a few things about both subjects, but she was in no way confident in her lacking knowledge.

Argul walked over to the last closed box in her row and looked around. After that there was only a single row next to the wall left for them to check. They would be done in around 15 minutes with their current speed which was good, because they should start walking back home to get there before dusk.

Argul focused back on her box, knelt down and opened it. The movement caused dust to rise around her and she had to sneeze. The whole room had been dusty, but this box more so than everything else so it had been left alone for some time. 

Argul wondered why and looked inside. A few manga shone in her direction, begging her to be taken along. She looked through them, not able to decide which she wanted to take with her. A stack of manga slowly formed next to her.

With a heavy sigh Argul took the last manga out of the box and looked at it. The cover showed some kind of large busted female ninja with a skin tight suit that was surrounded by tentacles. 

Argul blushed and looked around to make sure Mia wasn’t watching her. Then she stealthily put the research material deep into her backpack. 

Argul heaved up the heavy thing and left the manga behind. No matter which of them she would take, she would regret not taking a different one so she chose none of the manga in the end.

Mia looked up from the book she was looking through and put it down on a small stack of books next to her.

Argul reached her and put her bag down. “Allright, do you have everything you want?”

Mia nodded and put a few of the books into her own bag. “Yes, I can’t carry more anyways.”

Argul took the rest of the books while Mia watched her. “Are we going to stay in this city forever auntie?”

Argul put the last book away and closed her backpack. She shook her head. “Sorry, but no Mia.”

She heaved the thing up. It was heavy enough for even her to find it a bit exhausting. “I know it sounds stupid with all the books we’re taking right now, but we can just sell those we can’t take with us and then buy us a horse and cart with the money.”

Mia looked at Argul quizzically. “Isn’t paper really cheap?”

Argul offered her a hand to help her up. “It was on earth, but here it will be worth a lot once people realize that there isn’t any paper for them anymore and no one who produces more of the same quality as before.”

Mia didn’t seem to be convinced by that. “Okay. How long are we going to stay in Newport?”

She took Argul’s hand and stood up. Argul thought about her question. “I don’t know Mia. Half a year?”

She shrugged. “Maybe even a year, but not any longer.”

Mia smiled and took her bag. Argul was a bit puzzled by the reaction. “I thought you would be sad.”

The two of them began to walk out of the room and Mia took Argul’s hand again. “Traveling was more fun.”

They walked out of the store and Mia looked around a bit. “I also don’t like this city. It looks sad and empty.”

Argul had to agree with Mia on that point. The large empty part took away a lot of the charm this city might have had at one time. She squeezed Mia’s hand reassuringly and the two of them began their trip to the wooly sheep.

They had to take a few breaks for Mia, but Argul was fine with that. She could also carry the girls stuff, but she wanted her to do a bit herself. Otherwise how would Mia ever finish quests and grow?

The breaks slowed them down a good bit and it took them nearly two and a half hours to reach the barricade to the inhabited city. They walked along the wall until they reached a gate.

Argul couldn’t see a guard on the little lookout so she shouted instead. A little bit later an armored woman climbed halfway up the lookout until she could see them. Then she shouted at them. “Reason for entry and reason for being inside the ghost city?”

Argul shouted back at her. “We want to get back to our inn, the wooly sheep. We were inside the city to look for writing material for my niece.”

The woman eyed her for a second before she made a gesture towards someone on the ground. “That has to be a lot of paper.”

The gate opened and Argul and Mia walked up to it. The woman was waiting there together with her guard companion. “Can I take a look at your goods?”

The man behind her shook slightly, but Argul tried to ignore him. “Sure. We took books too.”

She put down her back and opened it. The guard woman went through the first few books and then just felt for the other stuff, not bothering to look in more detail. She grabbed something randomly and took out the hentai book.

The woman looked at the cover and then at Argul with a raised eyebrow. Argul blushed and was unable to meet her eyes. At her blush the man’s shaking visibly intensified. 

The guardswoman put the books back without a word and stepped aside. “Alright, you are free to enter. Have a nice stay.”

Argul nodded, picked up the bag and took Mia’s hand. “Thank you. Let’s get going Mia.”

The two guards closed the gate and Mia looked up to Argul curiously. “What was that book aunt?”

Argul blushed again and walked a bit faster. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with Mia.”

Mia cocked her head. “So it’s with sex?”

Argul looked away from her and didn’t say anything else. Instead she listened to the two guards she could still hear.

The man spoke in an agitated voice. “That was the silver witch you idiot! You could have killed us right there!”

The woman answered in an incredulous tone. “Don’t piss yourself, I am just doing my job.”

There was a second of silence before she continued. “She was also no different from everyone else so stop whining.”

They continued bickering a bit longer and Argul wished people would just forget all the rumors. Thankfully she wouldn’t be treated too special at the wooly sheep and the faster they got back the better.