Reincarnated as a mana core

Argul decided to follow her daughter's advice to train Jack, though she did it more because of the possibility of something interesting happening than anything else. To do that she had to create some form of communication for them so that the guy didn’t have to pray to her all the time. The faith intent was really ticking her off, leaving a constant smudge of yellowish white on her beautiful core, so avoiding more of that was an absolute must. 

With that goal set Argul had tried to create something similar to her [uniphone] skill, but she wasn’t quite successful in that. The part that she got right however, was enough for now to entertain the little lizard boy.

[Mana com]
Utilizing a mana connection between you and an individual in the range of your mana perception you are able to communicate with said person without having to speak out loud. The longer the distance between the communication partners, the longer the message takes to be transmitted.

It was by no means perfect and there was a few seconds of lag between Argul and Jack, but since she could sense everything in her domain it was all she needed for the time being. She would have preferred to be able to create some kind of psychic link between their minds to speak, sadly she had to give up on that for now since she had no idea how to do that with mana.

With that done Argul worked on her enchantments for the next three days, while simultaneously teaching Jack. That the guy hadn’t been able to see mana was quite a surprise at first, but after a bit of asking around he discovered that some people could see mana without sensing it. The skill was still the same for everyone and with their focus on surviving the fanatics nobody had noticed the difference yet.

Argul however found that quite curious. She had been able to feel mana from the beginning and in her opinion the feeling was a lot more important than actually seeing it. The visual perception helped a lot for creating and adjusting spells, but wasn’t strictly necessary since you could still do without, though it was more difficult. It did however not stop you from feeling the intent around you. On the contrary it was more accurate than seeing the intent since there was only so much you could glean from a color.

So after teaching Jack mana sight Argul instructed him to try to teach some of the villagers the mana sense they were missing. For her it was an experiment to find out if the first method of sensing mana influenced you somehow and for the guy it was helping out his fellow villagers. In the end it turned out that those that could feel the mana had it a lot easier than the others. Argul would keep an eye on that in the future to make sure, since the current sample size was too small in her opinion, but it could be an indicator for magical aptitude. Who knows?

The next thing she taught Jack was sensing intent. The boy had some trouble with that as the concept of intent was in a way not scientifical. He described it as looking at nature like a poem that you had to interpret in school. Argul shuddered at the memory of that, but Jack was kind of right with his analogy. The only difference was that you didn’t have to tell someone else what you saw, which made it a lot easier for her.

Argul’s own progress was somewhat slow, but acceptable. She did not only have to improve her enchantments and had to consider the combination of them too. The latter part proved itself to be a bit of a problem without the identification skill she still needed to create, but she should be able to focus on that in a week or two.

The only other interesting thing that had happened inside of her domain was about the kraken. Two of them had done the deed in a wriggling mess of tentacles and the female kraken littered the ocean floor with eggs afterwards. The eggs turned out to be surprisingly small, not much bigger than those of a normal octopus, but the amount was simply mind boggling. There had to be billions of them, covering an area big enough for a town.

The kraken had left her eggs alone afterwards, choosing to explore the ocean like her two siblings rather than guarding her progeny. Argul could kind of understand though, she wouldn’t want to be responsible for so many kids either. Sadly, that opened the lake of eggs up for the taking and a myriad of crabs and fish chose to enjoy the feast. They wouldn’t be able to finish all the eggs in the next few months though, so Argul wasn’t too worried. It was just the flow of nature, not that the mini kraken would have it easier once they hatched.

Outside of her domain people were slowly returning to Newport from the sermon. Nothing much changed in the short time, the only notable thing being a sense of life in the people. It was hard to describe, but before the sermon people had lived for the sake of surviving and now they were full of purpose, now there was something larger than them, something to live for. Even Tania seemed to be more full of life.

Argul didn’t share the sentiment, but she was still happy for the people. It was clear that religion helped them deal with the situation and go on. She didn’t believe things would stay this way however. Things would definitely change and she could already see things like going to church and praying become mandatory relatively fast.

So with that in mind Argul had sent Arthur off to search for a wagon. Well, she asked him because he seemed kinda bored and he accepted.

Argul had no hope for them to get their hands on a medieval wagon and honestly getting one would be a waste. Instead she planned to use the trailer of a truck, nobody had use for them anyway and they were large enough for them to build a small house on there. They shouldn’t overdo it with the weight of course, or they wouldn’t be able to move it. That said, between Alyra and herself they should be able to pull a lot more than some puny horse.

Speaking of Alyra, Argul and the little fox had spent quite a lot of time together in the last three days. The reason for that was simple, Alyra needed ideas for improving the system and Argul was happy to oblige.

Together they changed a few things like how the skills shown or that the stat increases since the last time a person had looked were visible now. In effect those were only small cosmetic things, but they were still nice. 

Argul also proposed that Alyra should open up the stat distribution. Her daughter had chosen to let the system manage that, to avoid people killing themselves because of their stupidity. The intention behind that was nice, but it ultimately restricted the potential of the things nature could create. Sure there would be some people that mess up, but that’s how it has always been. Not everyone is meant for greatness in the same way and choosing the wrong path would slow you down or outright damage you, that’s the harsh truth.

Alyra wasn’t really fond of the idea, but when Argul asked her what the best ratio between the stats were if you focused on strength she at least promised to try it out with the beasts inside of Argul’s domain. It was pure irony that the both of them had pretty much created the system together, but they didn’t know everything about it. The system was meant to be a helping hand and as close to how things are naturally as possible. Stats were just a method to quantify the state of your body, though Alyra had tweaked a few small things to make it more orderly. Yet neither of the two knew everything, since they hadn’t seen everything that nature had in tow for them. As such it was not a good idea in Argul’s opinion to restrict some things.

She caressed the hair of a sleeping Mia and smiled softly before she transferred her main consciousness to her core once again. They would just have to see how things ultimately played out, it was nothing they should worry about too much.

Argul snorted in her mind. That was strong coming from her.

Then she smiled and shook the idle thoughts away. Now was not the right time for this, it was time for the next floor.