Reincarnated as a mana core

Nearly four days later Argul was sitting on the roof of the camper in her human avatar, her legs dangling over the edge. Her daughter sat right next to her, leaning her head on Argul’s shoulder for a change and not the other way around, and together they stared at the clear night sky.

The majority of the firmament was populated by a multitude of different stars that glittered beautifully in the vast darkness. The other fourth of the view though, was a black void that stood in stark contrast with the rest. Only three lonesome stars, three bastions of light, could be seen in the ever dark space at the edge of Lotusriver.

From the centre of the universe the star Erod orbited around was surely one such light too. The planet had to be pretty far out if they could only see three stars in such a large section of the sky and for the number of stars visible to depend on the position of the planet in relation with their star and the centre of the universe, Argul thought to herself.

Even more striking was their moon Luna however. It had changed quite a lot during the last year as moongrass had spread ever further from the portal. 

Most fascinatingly Luna now had an atmosphere with clouds that hung lazily in the sky. Without the stronger gravity a larger terrestrial object might have, part of that atmosphere kept being lost as it slowly drifted out of the gravity well of the moon and as a result, Luna left behind a white trail of millions of billions of small ice crystals that reflected light every which way, making them visible to the eye.

Argul and Alyra continued staring at the night sky, both of them enjoying the company in silence and waiting until the age timer on Argul’s status finally hit 1 year. When it happened a few minutes later Alyra sat up upright and the two faced each other with big smiles.

“Happy birthday!” They said in unison and hugged each other, Alyra sporting a big grin while Argul was a bit stiff at first before she eased into the embrace. They sat like this for a few minutes, their foreheads touching and gently swayed, playfully trying to pull the other in this and that direction.

Argul was the first to stop, easing out of the embrace and grabbed into the illusion beside herself, pulling out a gift wrapped PA. Neither of the two had been fooled by the illusion. With their mana sense it was becoming increasingly more impossible to surprise the other, but they played along as fooling around would become much more difficult otherwise.

Argul handed the PA to her daughter and watched as Alyra ruthlessly tore the gift wrap apart. Her daughter looked at the PA for a moment, taking in the appearance and moved one finger along the lines carved into the wood. 

She activated the PA and a blue-ish screen appeared in front of her. For a second only her name was shown, but the screen then started to fill out with other stuff, most of which were skills or achievements Argul had too.

“Thanks mom, I love it!” Alyra smiled and hugged Argul again.

Argul didn’t know how to reply to that in a way that wasn’t forced or fake and so, she just gave voice to her feelings instead. “Thanks for being with me Aly.”

Her daughter squeezed her gently, looking her in the eyes without saying anything.

At the same time a change went over the PA as the intent suffusing it shifted and became purer. Where before it had been a gift to be given, it was now a gift well received and that somehow strengthened the foundation of the PA’s identity.

Argul took a moment to push her annoyance aside and concentrated back on her daughter. Of course the thing wasn’t an artefact before. Being a gift with a recipient had been central to its identity after all and that practically made the act of gifting it part of the crafting process. Though finding out what would have happened if that never had come true would be interesting too.

Anyway, she looked at Alyra eagerly. Now it was her daughter’s time to give her own present and she took Argul’s hand, putting the PA down on her lap. “I have two gifts for you and this is the first.”

Argul waited for a moment, wondering what it was. There was nothing physical around them and, for that matter, nothing magical either, which left her to look confused at the expectant face of her daughter.

The only thing around was a weird knot of feelings she couldn’t quite put her finger on in her chest and they were getting stronger by the second. A bit weirded out, Argul put part of her focus in her core, hoping that she would find something in her domain, but the only thing unusual around were the massive earthquakes hitting most of her floors and that only happened when her domain grew, which was dependent on the increase of her stats.

A quick look at her core confirmed that it was growing at a visible pace, the mana crystal making up her body expanding and becoming more dense, which would explain the weird feelings she had. She hadn’t ever grown that fast and how would she know how that felt?

It looked like Alyra had suspended whatever she was doing to keep Argul from growing naturally. Argul wouldn’t say no to that. More mana meant she would have to worry even less about it than ever and larger floors were always welcome, but she worried what that meant for her daughter.

The part of her mind still in her avatar watched as Alyra’s eyes glazed over as if she had a fever and she began to slump over. Argul pulled her in another hug and cradled her head with the hand holding her. “Thanks Aly, but please stop. I can see it’s not good for you.”

Alyra sighed and mumbled something Argul couldn’t understand despite all of her stats. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” Alyra sighed again but complied and the weird feeling of growth Argul had felt vanished. She still wondered what her daughter needed all that mana normally used to grow Argul’s body for.

Alyra gave a weak shrug at that. “It takes mana for me to maintain an active consciousness and even more so with the ever expanding system. Using the mana cleaned of any and all intent that is usually used for your growth is just the easiest and the mana out in Lotusriver I can’t really use because of the pact.”

She looked at Argul sheepishly. “I’m just not used to taking mana with intent and it hit me much harder than I expected.” That she didn’t have anyone helping her since she was the system remained unsaid, but then again, she was the system and so long as people became more skilled so would she.

Argul scratched her behind the ears and Alyra began to purr. “On the flipside you now produce much more mana than I need, so I could let you grow without compromising my health if you want?”

Argul took a moment to think and shook her head. “Thanks, but no. I like that I have to do something to get stronger. It makes it feel more like I earned and deserve it and was the second most helpful thing that got me out of my depressive fugue after you. Please just make sure my mana production stays above your needs so something like this doesn’t happen again.”

Alyra hummed in acknowledgment, but didn’t say anything more. They both kept silent, loosening their embrace at some point so that they could sit next to each other again.

Argul used the break in the conversation to look at her status and exhaled in surprise.

Stats gained through quests: Str +23; Int +21; Wis +22

Artefact reward: All +5

Alyra’s present: All +120

Her stats had pretty much doubled and her mana and mana regen had quintupled. Cheers to exponential growth! 

That wasn’t even all there was to look at either. Her first floor was now much larger than the actual moon Luna and her last floor was closing in on half the size of old earth. Erod was probably close enough in size to Earth that it didn’t matter, but without actually knowing any comparison would be wrong so it was better not to.

The large growth in floor size explained the massive earthquakes on all of her spherical floors at least, though it also posed a danger to the denizens. Looking at her floors though, it looked like Alyra had directed the growth so that a part of the floor remained untouched by the catastrophe. Otherwise Doombluff would have been swept away by massive tsunamis and not gotten away with only their volcano leaking a bit.

It also looked like the mana currents had grown noticeably stronger. Especially the lower floors mana currents had increased, sometimes by a factor of 3. On the higher floors the increase in mana was mostly balanced by an increase in connections between floors, but still a bit more than before. With a mana density of 14 being the hard limit right now there wasn’t much room to grow into for them anyway.

Argul closed her status and returned to watching the slowly brightening sky. It still took nearly an hour till sunrise, at which point the others began waking up.

She hopped down from the roof, fully in control of her newly strengthened body and Alyra followed her. They both offered their help to Luna, but were shushed, sat down on two chairs outside the camper and told to stay put. “This is your birthday. Sit down, do not help and let yourself be pampered!”

Argul could only watch helplessly as a generous breakfast assembled itself in front of her. A few minutes later Luna, Mia and Arthur went into the house one last time and came back out with an honest to god cake, blessed be the enchanted fridge and oven.

The cake was pretty tall, as if it had multiple layers and completely covered in colourful sprinkles. On top stood two candles, one for Argul and one for her daughter.

Mia carried the cake to the table, putting it down in front of the two birthday adults and beamed a radiant smile at them, like a little angel that was about to torture someone. “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Argul! Happy birthday to you.” Argul might be projecting her own suffering onto the girl. It was honestly quite cute, but she could only really notice when the same was sung for her daughter and she wasn’t the target.

Argul gave the girl a hug, kissing her on the forehead and thanked her for the song, closely followed by Alyra. Then, much to Argul’s horror, Alyra turned to her and opened her mouth, a malicious glint in her eyes before she attempted to murder Argul by embarrassment with a second song, only this time in german.

“Weil heute dein Geburtstag ist, (Because today is your birthday)
Da haben wir gedacht, (We have thought)
Wir singen dir ein kleines Lied, (We sing for your a little song)
Weil dir das Freude macht!” (Because that brings you joy)
[Translation by me, though I honestly didn’t try very hard. You will find better versions on the internet for sure]

She sang all 4 stanzas to really give Argul the chance to feel the awkwardness. When she was done the others clapped politely and Argul and Alyra blew out the two candles, getting one last happy birthday from the group.

Luna cut into the cake, revealing the different layers of chocolate and served everyone a piece before they started breakfast. The cake literally melted on Argul’s tongue, revealing hidden pockets of liquid chocolate and she let out a loud purr.

“I see it tastes good?” Luna smiled and Argul nodded without stopping to eat. 

“Yesh.” She swallowed and put another fork full of cake in her mouth. “Absolutely delishoush!”

After breakfast Luna gave Argul and Alyra a hug, wishing them well and Mia quickly copied her, her tail twitching in excitement. Arthur tried to hug Argul too, but she ran away from him, which somehow devolved into a game of catch. When they had thoroughly exhausted Mia they switched to board games and continued to play the rest of the day.

Some time in the middle of the day Alyra pulled Argul aside for a minute, looking exasperated at her. “Your second gift! You didn’t even ask for it after fussing over me!”

Argul looked at a tree that suddenly became much more interesting than before. “Uhm.”

“You totally forgot, didn't you?” Alyra poked her with a finger. “Anyway, my second present is that I’m going to help you with that plan that’s been floating around your mind once it’s more than a vague idea.”

Argul knew what her daughter was talking about. Despite her not wanting to be bothered and being audible about it, people still kept coming and annoying her, mostly the Meran church. On the other hand, she was well aware that working with others had clear advantages and even wanted to do so, but on her own terms and initiative.

The idle idea that had kept bothering her was that she pulled the protagonist move and created her own organisation. That way she could push the bothersome people to others, trapping them in some kind of official application process or something and work together with others, preferably members of her organisation.

She had no idea how to create an organisation though and wasn’t even sure what the organisation should be about. Magic was kind of obvious, but it was also boring.

That all aside, her daughter's help would immediately solve a few problems such as communication and such and prevent one problem every civilization seemed to suffer from, corruption. That was the beauty of two powerful people that gave fuck all about your excuses leading the organisation. 

Trusting her daughter with this wasn’t a problem. She already did so now, so why would she start to doubt Alyra suddenly?

Argul thanked her daughter, pushing her thoughts and ideas away for now and the two went back to the rest of the group, continuing to play games.

In the evening Arthur built a campfire and they all gathered around, making music with whatever tool they could find and danced around the fire, laughing all the while. Alcohol may or may not have been involved, but Argul would admit to nothing. It tasted disgusting after all…

When the campfire had burned low they came together one more time. Mia, with Aina in hand, scrunched her face together and shortly after the image of a small rocket rose into the sky accompanied by a “prrrrshhiouuuuu” from Arthur. 

Argul laughed at the silliness of the sound effects and followed the rocket with her eyes. When it hit its zenith Aina made a *pop* sound and the rocket exploded into a lightshow of colours only vaguely resembling fireworks. It was beautiful nonetheless and quite amazing that Mia had been able to pull it off. They all smiled at each other and gave the girl a small round of applause for her spellwork.

Argul brought a tired and inordinately proud Mia to bed a short while later, staying a few minutes with her until she fell asleep. Outside again Argul changed back to her fox avatar and laid down, mentally exhausted by the day. She relaxed slowly and spent the rest of the night idly watching her domain, especially a large nest of spiders that were slowly travelling towards a connection to the 6th floor.

The group slept in the next morning and had a late breakfast before they continued their journey to the Munzumira Republic.