Reincarnated as a mana core

After taking Mia to bed and going to sleep herself Argul came just right to witness the end of a long winded discussion in the village on the sixth floor. The smith had discovered the enchantment a few hours after she had crafted it and instead of trying it out what it was, told some of the other villagers about his findings.

Argul had to commend him for being able to suppress his curiosity. She doubted she would have been able to hold herself back from doing anything in that situation.

Anyway, as a result most of the villagers had gathered to argue about what to do. Some of them were outside of her domain doing war stuff or guarding the portal and thus couldn’t come.

It didn’t take the people too long to come to the conclusion that there was some kind of enchantment on the hammer, having grown up on earth with fantasy fiction broadly available. What did take them long however was to search through the entire village for other enchanted things and Argul had enchanted a lot of the stuff.

The villagers found most of the enchanted objects and gathered them at the edge of the settlement, giving Argul a good overview of her assortment of misplaced enchantments. There were the spears that could create a light she had originally started with, wooden planks that could conjure water, mugs that could become invisible and most importantly pods that could shoot magic missiles. 

She had to admit that she hadn’t put too much thought into what she enchanted with which spell and just randomly chose most of the stuff. At least you could use the pods as small shields to cover yourself at close range.

An around 16 years old boy finally voiced out that they should just try out what happened when they injected mana into the enchantments and volunteered himself to do it. Argul quickly scanned through her memories to find out more about him.

His name was Jack and of all of the villagers he was the best in mana manipulation and by her guess his mana sense was the best too. Testing that was a bit difficult, because she couldn’t actually see that skill. She could see what he did with mana though and how he had already created a few small spells for himself, like creating a tiny flame. The spells were quite crude in comparison to Mia’s spells, but Jack didn’t have Argul to mentor him so what he had achieved so far was still impressive. Maybe the enchantments would help him on his path as a magician, who knows?

Jack picked the hammer up and distanced himself even further from the other villagers. They were all eyeing him warily and stood tense as if they were ready to bolt for cover.

The boy looked at the others, wavering for a second before he held the hammer as far away from his face as possible and began to inject mana into the enchantment. Argul watched with rapt attention, curious about the village's reaction.

A minute later a miniature version of the volcano appeared hovering above the hammer. It was slightly see-through like a hologram and rotated at a slow pace. Multiple caves were marked with a red outline, the caves were the ones Argul knew had gems inside of them.

Jack gasped in surprise and looked wide eyed at the hologram. Then a manic grin spread on his face and his tail wagged in excitement.

Laughing and shouting he ran towards the gathered group of villagers. “Hah, look at what magic can do!”

He waved the hammer frantically in the air, nearly letting go of the head heavy tool. “It’s a freaking hologram!”

The village head stepped forward and held up his hand. Argul guessed him to be in his middle ages, it was difficult to assess the age of the lizard-kin.  “Jack, stop! Calm down and tell us what is going on first please.”

Jack stopped surprisingly fast and scratched his scaled cheek before he cleared his throat. “Right. So, as we had assumed the weird spot was part of an enchantment and when I channeled my mana into it a contract was offered to me, but sadly the enchantment broke too.”

The village head crossed his arms. “Let me guess, you accepted the contract?”

Jack just shrugged this time. “Well yeah, there is no real issue if I fail to uphold it, I will only lose a few points on some weird contract scale.”

The man or lizard in this case sighed deeply. “Hopefully that is true.”

A woman stepped up next to the village head and gently put her arm around him. She was more human and only had a few batches of scales here and there so Argul could tell she was past her twenties already or she had simply seen too much in her life. “Don’t be like that Ronald.”

She looked at Jack. “So, don’t keep us in the dark and share that contract of yours.”

He nodded eagerly. “So, my job is to get a few gems and have them processed, though I think they want me to polish them. Anyway I already got my reward.”

Jack pointed at the hologram of the volcano. “I got the locations of multiple caves that have gems inside of them and they are inside the volcano of this island. The system provided me with a 2 dimensional map so that I still know once the hologram dies.” Oh, so Alyra had the system copie some of the information.

Jack waved them all away. “But that isn’t the most interesting part. Because of this hammer we found all these other enchanted items and now that I got a glimpse on this one my [identify] should give me a hint on what the other enchantments might be.”

Argul immediately focused on the young boy. She hadn’t experimented much with the skill. Quite on the other hand, she kept forgetting to use it so what he said was new knowledge for her. Jack perked up as if he had felt something, but didn’t seem to give it any more thought.

The rest of the villagers relaxed a bit, but still kept their distance from the enchanted things and Ronald thought about Jack’s proposal for a minute before he nodded. “Alright, go for it, but read out loud what the system tells you.”

Jack brightened up in excitement, let go of the hammer and rushed to the spears. There he knelt down and touched them. “It says enchanted wooden spear. What would you give for the sun in the night?”

He looked up at Ronald. “Maybe some kind of light enchantment?”

The village head nodded in agreement. “It’s possible. Check the other things before you try anything.”

Thus Jack got to work. The spears were all the same and he got over them relatively fast. The planks told him they were a blessing in the desert and they didn’t quite get what it would do exactly, but it logically had to do something with cooling or water. The mugs asked if it wouldn’t be nice to always see what you were drinking, which made it pretty obvious and the pots, well the pots were the weirdest of the bunch. They would cook for you so long as you shot for them. 

Argul watched them a bit longer while they tested out the different enchantments and changed her view to the jagged mountain islands on the other side of the floor once they brought the pots to the portal. She might be the reason for the fanatics to be killed by pots…

Argul shook the thought away and concentrated on what she originally had wanted to do tonight. Her ocean was teeming with life and should be able to support a gigantic predator species now. The only thing that was still a bit lacking was the whale population, but there were smaller things like dolphins and sharks that could be eaten instead.

With that said it was finally time to create her krak-

Something weird connected to her core. “Oh spirit of this world, please take this insignificant me as your student!”

Argul’s mind blanked for a second. What the heck was that now and hell no, why should she take a random person as a student.

The connection vanished and a new one formed, only this time Argul noticed that it was a cloud of faith intent that got absorbed by her core. She groaned loudly in her mind before the next prayer manifested. “Oh spirit of this world, I would gladly get to know you if that is all that it takes.”

This time Argul waited until the faith cloud was fully gone before she did anything, her last thoughts clearly having been transferred back. She looked inside of the village and found Jack behind one of the houses prostrating on the ground. That cheeky brat.

She sighed, she wasn’t sure what to do now, but she could guess by the faith intent what was going on. To put it simply she was also some kind of god, the question was if she was the same as Meran or something entirely different. 

Only, what should she do with the boy? “Aly-”

A text box appeared and cut her off. “No, deal with this yourself or wait till tomorrow. I’m busy right now.”

Ahh, Argul could wait. She would rather create her kraken than deal with godhood problems. Jack looked up, realizing that nobody answered him anymore and went back to the village. He didn’t look like he had given up though so Argul didn’t make herself any hope.

She mentally shrugged and went back to the jagged mountain islands. The kraken was important!

Argul took some time to think of what she really wanted. A kraken would obviously be some kind of gigantic octopus. It was basically the king of the oceans and to a certain degree arrogant. A kraken was a predator, but not necessarily super aggressive. Why should it be, if there was nothing that could take it on. That was part of its arrogance.

Somewhere around 4000 meters under the ocean surface she initiated her [ribm] and watched a few dark blue krakens emerge. They didn’t grow much bigger than a fisher boat, but weren’t fully grown either. On the contrary, they still had a long time of growing ahead of them.

[Kraken]

This is a large to gigantic creature. Kraken are the apex predators and rulers of the ocean, unmatched once they are fully grown, easily able to drag entire fleets into the abyss with them. It takes a long time to reach that point however and due to their arrogant behavior they rarely reach that age with their arrogance still intact.

Kraken have tough bodies despite their squishy appearance to survive the strong pressure of the deep sea. Once they are fully grown they develop an innate ability for water magic.

Argul smiled as she watched them explore their surroundings. The Kraken were truly fascinating and majestic, so long as you could watch them as she did right now that is. She wondered how older Kraken would be like, since they likely reached the level of an evolution at some point.

An unassuming shark swam near one of the Kraken and was grabbed and eaten without being able to resist in any meaningful way. 

Maybe they were a bit too extreme, but she had to admit she slowly got used to it.