NOVEL FROG Chapter 122
After her two day break Argul began to work on the Plank of [analyse], which she shortened to PA as the name was way too long and annoying otherwise.
Her goal was to get the enchantment right the very first try and as such work was slow going. Argul had two reasons for doing so.
For one, she wanted to give her daughter the best she could achieve. It wouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t manage, but it was the thought that counted here and planning ambitiously helped keep her in the right mindset.
The second reason was that when she had carved the plank, Argul had also passively infused it with intent that clung to it. She didn’t really have control over this beyond being able to stop it and wasn’t sure what it did either. Compared to pre mana products the plank had a certain metaphysical weight or identity in her mana sense though and she found that intriguing.
The problem was that when Argul made a mistake while enchanting she had to clear out the liquid mana, either by dissolving it or simply pushing it out. With there already being intent bound to the PA it could easily become a part of the liquid mana and a mistake would mean at best that she diminished the identity of the plank. At worst it might even destroy it completely. Not using the intent for enchanting wasn’t an option either however, since she would have to displace some of the bound intent to make place for the enchantment, which likely had the same consequences.
To summarise, without her willingness to compromise and experiment on Alyra’s birthday present, Argul had to test on something else first and put this interesting phenomenon on her mental ‘Look into it later’ list. New things had to be crafted anyway and she would have a lot of test subjects if she really searched for them.
Except for one component of the enchantment, the one that would [analyse] the target, didn’t contain anything new and so she could apply her existing knowledge, which meant she only needed to train to enchant with a contaminant intent present.
Argul kind of doubted that the identity of the PA would become a problem. Hell, it might even be helpful in binding the liquid mana to the PA, but it served to be safe rather than sorry.
With the help of the system and her [enchanting] skill it took her about a day to become proficient enough in enchanting with a single contaminant, though a few tests with two or more unwanted intent increased the difficulty exponentially. Thankfully she only had to account for the one as keeping anything coming in from the outside away was par for the course.
This enabled her to start figuring out the [analyse] part of the enchantment.
The [analyse] spell Argul had created back in Newport was, despite its simplicity, exceptionally difficult to cast at targets a reasonable distance away. She had learned that any kind of mana connection required not only a lot of concentration to establish, but also constant focus to maintain and the difficulty increased with distance. It was in fact so hard to do that even Mia, who was arguably the most magically capable being after Argul and Alyra, had only managed about two metres with both [identify] and [analyse] herself. For anything beyond that the system had to do most of the heavy lifting.
The spell [analyse] required 2 connections to function. One that served only as targeting with minimal information transfer that could be made quite flimsy as a result.
And a second on that only had length because it was easier for a person to imagine and accept that information travelled a short distance before arriving. This connection was meant to query the mana archive, meaning Alyra, for information. Since Alyra was already connected to every being through their mana and system, translating the information she sent into something understandable was easy. It wasn’t even necessary to enable the connection to receive knowledge since Alyra could do it directly over the system in the first place, but the PA didn’t have that luxury. The PA also didn’t have the system to translate the knowledge received into a status of some kind, which meant the questions asked had to be precise to a point.
The most pressing problem was the connection however, as the longer a connection was the more the caster had to constantly adjust it in reaction to changes in the mana in the surrounding area and her enchantment would be static and unable to do that. Some computing might help, but alas, she had no idea how to translate her theories into reality.
This meant that the target would have to touch a specific area of the PA for the enchantment to work, but for the intended purpose of giving guards or police the ability to check suspects it was enough.
The infrastructure required to project the acquired information was relatively straightforward after that. First, Argul had to design an interface. Then she would assign space to where the knowledge should appear. This meant the PA had to ask questions in a specific order and unique signals for each letter and number as well as a signal that told the PA when to shift to the next box in the interface. When all was said and done, the PA would hopefully project this image.
Argul was forced to limit how much could be shown as there wasn't an unlimited amount of space for her enchantment. As such, names could not be longer than 30 letters, the level and stats wouldn’t show anything above 9999 and the amount of titles and skills were limited to 8 each and 15 letters each. To work around this limitation the PA would ask about the 8 most important titles and the 8 skills the target was most proficient in.
Before Argul could work to make her design reality however, they finally caught up to the trader and she interrupted her theory crafting.
She could already see the wagon in the distance, trundling along much slower than herself and the camper. It looked much like the wagons used by settlers who invaded America were often depicted in cartoons and pictures. Argul had never seen one in reality though and there was a certain margin of error she had to admit. The only outstanding difference was that the roofing cover, whatever it was called, wasn’t the white-ish she knew, but blue like one of those hydrophobic plastic blankets.
Once she had seen the trader it didn’t take long until they were close and she had to slow down. The rest of the group had already gathered on the porch upon her urging.
Then the man, the myth, and the legend, the guy who’s name she had never bothered asking for in the villages, appeared in the back of his wagon when Argul was only a few metres away, likely having heard their approach. Their mobile house wasn’t exactly subtle after all, even if Argul was surprisingly silent and light footed for her size.
The old man, for he had dark brown but greying hair and his fair share of wrinkles, which meant he was positively ancient in her books, scrutinised them with a raised brow. Argul looked right back, noting his lean build and a solid amount of muscles that were unexpected, but she guessed carrying heavy boxes around was physically demanding. Once the trader appeared to be satisfied with his inspection he waved them over with a grandfatherly smile and went back to the front of his wagon.
Argul took the invitation without much thought and sped up until she brought her head in line with the front of the wagon, keeping a good distance from the two red-brown horses strapped before it. The trader sat on a bench, holding the reins of the horses and was focused on the road.
“Ho there traveller!” Argul’s voice rumbled out, positively vibrating her surroundings and startling the horses. She had had to say it though and in as deep a voice as possible too. No matter how embarrassing and cringe it felt, the desire to do this at least once in her life had to be fulfilled.
The trader took a moment to calm his horses before he turned to her. “And a good day to you too. I must ask, but what did they feed you when you were small, Miss Silver Witch?”
Argul was a bit taken aback at that. Sure, he was being friendly, but that he even knew her, or rather of her was a surprise. It would certainly explain why he was so calm in front of a four metre tall quadruped predator.
After a short moment she decided to go along with his question. “A lot of meat and magical beans.” she answered with a smile and he laughed at that. Technically speaking, it only took a healthy dose of suicide and fighting depression with the help of her magically born daughter to get her this tall, but he didn’t need to know that.
Argul waited until he had calmed down and asked after his name, which he answered happily. “Ah, I’m Clemens Henderson, but please just call me Clemens, young Lady.”
“Young Lady?” she muttered to herself, though apparently loud enough for him to hear. “You can’t be older than 25.” he shrugged.
“How so?” Argul wondered how he came to that conclusion and highly doubted he could tell the age of her avatar.
“Just a feeling,” he answered. “It’s like you hesitate a moment before you speak, which I’ve seen in a lot of young folks after they came of age and were suddenly surrounded by people who weren’t more responsible than them.
Ok, was all Argul thought at that. She knew it took her a moment to speak up, but she couldn’t judge if that was a common thing. Nonetheless she introduced herself and answered his implied question. “My name is Argul Agren, but Argul is just fine and I’m 20, close to 21.” In this life she wasn’t even a year old, but she figured that wasn’t what Clemens wanted to know.
“Will it be a problem if I walk a bit ahead of the horses so that the rest of my family and friends can join the conversation?” she inquired, not wanting to cause more trouble with the horses.
Clemens took a moment to think about it and then shook his head. “It should be fine so long as you keep a bit of distance, but what about you? Won’t you be unable to be part of our little gathering then?”
Argul let out a small sigh at that. She was getting better at social interactions she felt, but she would rather not be alone in a long one with a stranger if she could avoid it. “I will hear you just fine and hearing me shouldn’t be a problem either.”
Clemens gave her a look and shrugged once more. Argul then trotted ahead until the porch was aligned with the bench. The horses weren’t quite fans of her, which was understandable and it took a bit of wrangling to calm them down. They remained wary after that, but she didn’t need horse friends and couldn’t care less.
Another round of introductions followed and they conversed for a while, travelling next to each other and exchanging stories and information. Argul kept silent for the most part, only speaking when it pertained to her in some way or it was interesting.
Through Clemens they learned quite a few things, such as Erdanien joining the fight against the Meran cultists and being on track to have them routed or a few somewhat hilarious other things.
“Did you know? The church of Meran put a bounty on you to be brought to the alive Argul.” Clemens said while they were talking about the church.
“Really?!” Argul asked. She could hardly believe that, because she thought it a monumentally stupid decision. They had to know that she was strong and that she wouldn’t let herself be held by some pricks with too much ego.
“Yeah,” Clemens shook his head. “Whoever brings you to them gets to become a baron and a bit of territory to lord over. Usually that would be enough to get folks on their side, but you are known as the one who figured out how to help others initiate and a lot of lives have been saved because of that. Let’s just say it wasn’t their best PR move.”
Yeah, Argul could see that happen, though she hadn’t expected to be known like that, but it looked like doing good had done her good in turn. Better that than the other way around. It was also kind of hilarious to think about how the church would react should they find out her true capability, which they would do soon enough. Once they were in Munzumira she was done hiding.
Speaking of the Republic, they were apparently increasing their military presence on the border and upon inquiry Clemens shared his concerns.
“You surely have seen the bad state of most of the settlements on your journey?” He received a round of nods and continued. “Well, the military contrary to the Munzumira Republic did not take the management of most farmlands in hand and because of that there was no concerted effort to feed the country. The problem is that most people don’t know how to work the land and of those that do most don’t want to share if not doing so means more profit, but because of that a famine is all but guaranteed and that means banditry or war or both.
The Republic though, has made an effort to teach as many people as possible and with the system around that translated into available skill pretty fast. They are going to be an appealing target because of their available food, not that I think Erdanien has a chance of achieving anything. Their pretty good prepared overall, good leadership pays off I guess.”
That was disconcerting to hear and if what Clemens told them was true, a lot of people would suffer. It wasn’t Argul’s job to do anything about it though and she was helping in her own way by developing enchantments and magic.
There were many more small things they talked about and Doombluff seemed to remain unknown and undiscovered, good for them she guessed, but at some point the conversation stalled. Not much later, some time in the late afternoon, they said their goodbyes to Clemens, leaving a few light figurines with him as thanks.