Reincarnated as a mana core

Argul was currently idly observing her domain while she played around with mana. In moments like these she always imagined her core to roll around in the air according to her thoughts and feelings as a replacement for facial expressions. Her core was of course very stationary and wasn’t doing a thing except producing more mana. Since she wasn’t the size of football anymore anyway it wouldn’t look as cute as in her imagination so it was probably better. 

A rolling ball of crystal with a diameter of half a meter would probably look pretty scary…

A small magical flame discharged in the air, vanishing as fast as it appeared and Argul smiled. The flame had been purely magical, completely independent from the physical laws and very mana expensive. It hadn’t been a planned reaction, she hadn’t played for anything to happen, so it was a nice little surprise for Argul. She couldn’t really tell how the flame would interact with things, but just from this little discharge she knew it was very powerful. Though, as long as nothing was holding the flame together it would flick out just like this. It still proved that just manipulating physics was not going to be the end of it.

Argul changed her view to her first floor with a hum. Of all the floors this one was probably the most populated and she wondered how the plants were doing on the moon outside of her domain right now. There wasn’t really anything strange visible from Erod yet so she couldn’t tell, but with time the atmosphere on Luna should change and maybe it would be enough for clouds to form. That had to look interesting and would likely cause a scientific uproar, but by then they should already know that things were changing.

With just a thought she was back to looking at her 12th floor and the forest of ever growing trees. Besides the Evergrowth two other things evolved. One was a random ant species and Argul couldn’t really tell what was different now, the other was the fern. The fern was much more interesting anyway, because there were multiple different species. 

Her favorite, a fern that was slightly darker than the others, had somehow developed a new molecule structure and the bacteria of the floor seemed to be unable to deconstruct it, which meant that if the fern died it wouldn’t decompose. It also stopped pretty much every creature from being able to eat it for as long as no bacteria was able to adapt and with some luck that wouldn’t happen for some time, laying the groundwork for the first natural coal to form in her domain. Coal and oil were actually some of the rarer resources to be found on Argul’s little planets, because they weren’t really part of the blueprint of Erod and something that formed naturally.

She got back to her enchanting practice, though this time she made sure not to use the things in the village. The villagers were quite vary of her for now, thanks to the Meran lunatics, but if she started to enchant more stuff in addition to teaching Jack then it was unlikely to take too long until she got some more followers and Argul wasn’t ready for that yet.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t curious, on the contrary, she practically yearned to experiment with the faith intent and what interesting things she would be able to do with that stuff. For her it was an exciting prospect to be able to research the religious side of magic. After having expelled the faith of Jack from her core it was probably itching to get more too.

Argul didn’t mind the somewhat different urges that came with her new existence, she was thankful for them. She had been depressed in her last life and wasn’t really sure for how long. It was possible that she had been ill for more than 5 years and had been denying it as a teenager, but the curiosity she now felt for magical things helped her to get out of that cave. 

She also worried about certain things less and less. Where before she couldn’t help but be pressured by all the things that could happen but she couldn’t influence, now she just didn’t. The world would turn and as a mana core she would watch till the end of time. What the sapient races did was surprisingly meaningless for her in the big picture and she wasn’t able to make herself care too much. In a weird sense she was very apathetic towards those that weren’t involved with her. 

However, that was only the case when Argul inhabited her core. Inside of her human avatar the old problems were still present, which was precisely the reason she liked to spend most of her time in her core. Sometimes those human habits carried over to her core, but the higher her level became, the less that happened. She had only started to notice this change after she decided to take care of Mia, because now she had a reason to worry. The girl was not untouchable for the government like her, there wasn’t really anything the humans could do to stop her and they would only lose out if they annoyed her.

Argul’s worry for Mia was one of the reasons for her not being ready to accept being a literal god. She needed time to mentally prepare herself for being the deity of a religion. Otherwise she would blame herself for every life she ruined and while her mental fortitude would help her the pressure would build up. Even the smallest trickle was able to erode a cliff into the stone in the end. 

That was why, until she was able to see past the fact that not everything could be perfect, she would not embrace her godhood. At least she was of the opinion not everything—

Her trail of thoughts was interrupted by the return of the small warband and she focused on that. They were carrying 7 malnourished dirty people that had gone through some small changes during the mana integration through the web of traps around her portal. It looked like the people that changed the most had the smallest chance of survival in the hands of the Meran state.

While the refugees were transported towards the village she listened in on the report of the man called David. It looked like the group had been able to infiltrate the enemy camp without much difficulty, but had been spotted after successfully assassinating the angel in command. Since there was no way they would be able to fight the whole army while being outnumbered 10 to 1, they had been forced to retreat. Their increased strength could only help them so much. David estimated the casualties of the enemy to be around 70 and couldn’t really tell if they would retreat after that nightly assault.

Argul was quite impressed. They hadn’t lost anyone, there were only a few wounds, none of them life threatening and they had managed to kill about 5 enemy soldiers per their own number, likely even more after the enemy soldiers scattered into the trap riddled forest.

She looked over at Jack who was sitting in his small cabin, where he was training his magic and let some dirt fall on his head. The poor boy jolted up in surprise and Argul couldn’t help but grin mentally. That was unreasonable fun for some reason.

Jack took some of the dirt out of his hair, sighing deeply and looked up at the roof irritated. “What?”

Argul needed a second to compose herself and cast her spell before she answered. “Your little village is getting a few new additions.”

Jack’s expression changed to one of concern. “Are the others alright?”

She smiled a little and sent a feeling of reassurance over the link. “Don’t worry, they are all fine. They have a few wounds, but nothing serious and they might have managed to get rid of the little Meran problem.”

Her student breathed out in relief. “That’s good to hear. We need them to survive.” That might sound harsh, but as long as they don’t have working fields they are dependent on the strong to venture into the forest for food.

He settled back down on the ground and continued his practice of conjuring water, though he couldn’t create more than half a mug for now. Argul nodded to herself for his diligence and created a lump of dirt that fell into the mug, splashing noisily.

Jack raised his fist and shook it at the ceiling angrily. “What was that for?!”

He grumbled a bit to himself. “I swear if she continues doing that I will pray to her!” That might have been one of the weirdest threats Argul had ever heard.

She raised her nonexistent eyebrow. “I dare you to, but don’t complain afterwards.”

Then she sent him an image of the rune he had just been using and what he had done wrong. “You need to keep the form here and if you place the checkpoint for the temperature before the water composition you lose a lot of mana. It will also take somewhat longer for the spell to work.” 

She had come to call the little runic parts that were larger than the mana conduits checkpoints for now. They were basically the hardware of the spell that held the software, the instructions for the mana and for the two dimensional runes the order of placement was somewhat important. Her three dimensional runes didn’t have the same problem as they were a lot more interconnected, but also a lot more complex in turn.

Argul threw one last bit of dirt at Jack as goodbye before she got back to her own work. “Have fun and don’t forget my rubies~.”

Jack was left behind and could only sigh. Why wasn’t the spirit treating him like an adult?

Not that it really mattered. The dirt throwing was a bit annoying, but ultimately harmless and he could put up with the strange antics. He got up and tried to brush all the dirt out of his hair before he went outside to prepare for the arrival of their soldiers.