NOVEL FROG Chapter 127
Three days later the group left the last large town of Erdanien before the border behind them and crossed the creatively named Great Current, a major eastward flowing river coming out of Munzumira and followed it upriver. Behind the group to the east lay the great plains of south Erdanien and beyond and in front of the group a multitude of hills disrupted the grassland. The hills were the tip of an arm of the large mountain range that always loomed in the west and thus got smaller the further south they were.
The group travelled along the river, keeping close to it to avoid having to go up and down the whole damn time and getting stuck in some random valley. Just because Argul could technically landscape her way out of pretty much any situation didn’t mean that she should leave her footprint everywhere without rhyme or reason.
As they continued westward they came across a surprising amount of strangers, all travelling in the same direction as them, to the Munzumira Republic. Or perhaps it was just Argul’s increased [Sense mana] range that gave her the impression. With her increased stats she could now see a comfortable 10km and if she really tried she could further increase that to 20km.
Anyway, the point was that Argul noticed quite a lot of people more around herself than she thought normal. Most of those people looked kind of thin, not malnourished yet but if you knew a famine was likely in Erdanien it was hard not to remark on that. Contrary to the few travellers that appeared to be a bit more wealthy, they formed large groups and stared each other down wearily whenever they met.
Argul kept her distance from them to avoid trouble. Even though they were thin, they didn’t require assistance and could help themselves as far as she could see, which was pretty far. Luna on the other hand didn’t seem to share Argul’s opinion and kept giving the few groups Argul couldn’t fully avoid long glances.
Argul didn’t cave though. These refugees still had food and if they managed to get this far, they would be able to get wherever they wanted to go. It wasn’t her job to remove all of humanity's woes.
On the second day Argul spotted a village with a few burned out houses. The damage still looked recent, mabe a few days old. The ash hadn’t been washed away by rain yet at the very least and the debris wherever something had broken down had yet to be removed. A short walk away from the village a graveyard had been built and 14 graves were fresh enough that grass hadn’t grown over them.
In front of the village, the side facing the distant river, stood an old oak tree, 8 rotting male corpses hanging with ropes around their necks from the many branches. Each body had a wooden sign nailed into the rotten flesh and bones, calling the corpse in question names that went from ‘rapist’ to ‘bandit scum’ all the way to ‘degenerated mosquito spawn’ for a body that had vampire-like fangs.
The corpses made it very clear in Argul’s opinion that whoever had attacked the village did not survive and after looking around a bit she came to the conclusion that they didn’t need material help. They needed a therapist and time to heal, something she couldn’t give.
Once more Argul kept her distance from the people, though this time it was at least partly because she had no desire whatsoever to smell the sickly sweet scent of rotting flesh from up close. The whiffs her enhanced nose caught from so far away were already bad enough.
The following villages Argul saw after that all looked relatively healthy, if without much food to spare for the towns and cities of Erdanien. There were still some crops on the fields that had yet to be harvested, but going by the greyish wheat fields most of them were probably a lost cause.
About halfway through the hills the weather turned for the worse and the strongest rain Argul had witnessed on Erod began to hammer down unceasingly. With the rain as incentive she finally got around to making a dedicated shielding spell to keep the water away. She could just use [water manipulation] for that of course, but a specialised spell would need a lot less attention for upkeep from her and travelling was pretty boring.
Not bothered by the weather, with or without the new spell, Argul simply continued travelling, adjusting and perfecting her [Rain Ward] as she moved at what amounted to crawling pace for her. Cultivation for the win and all that, but sadly she couldn’t go faster without risking to seriously damage something in the camper or the camper itself.
[Rain Ward]
A dome-like shield that keeps the rain outside and stops it from flowing in at ground level. Dome size depends on initial mana investment and is larger the more mana is used. If the start connection with the spell isn’t cut the rain ward can be moved around. Otherwise it will remain in place for a short while, the exact time depending on the stress the ward is subjected to.
After it started raining the amount of other groups travelling diminished rapidly until after a few hours Argul and company were the only ones left moving. Everyone else had sought shelter near stone walls, beneath the odd stone overhang, in caves or on high ground beneath towering trees. Nobody wanted to get wet, especially because the temperature was decreasing steadily from the pleasant fresh 15°C.
After a few hours of constant rain Argul had to start reinforcing the ground with her [earth magic]. The cold wet feeling of stepping into mud with her paw was annoying her and the camper threatened to get stuck every few dozen metres, which was problematic because Argul wasn’t sure if her harness could endure the kind of force needed to pull multiple tons out of the mud.
By now the temperature had gone below 10°C and the others were forced to use the stove as a heater, making Argul thankful she had taken the time to enchant it.
Others didn’t have the luxury of Argul’s presence though and when she spotted a gathering of wet, practically swimming tents with around 3 dozen shivering inhabitants a few kilometres south of the great current, she decided that this time she could help. Even better, since she had pretty much left Erdanien and somewhat come to terms with her powers she didn’t need to hide or hold back anymore.
It took a few minutes until she arrived, the [Rain Ward] coming with her and encasing the whole tent village in her presence and came to a stop, staring at the tents. The rest of the group came outside to see what was going on and Argul explained the situation as she waited for someone to be curious enough to come out of their tent. Luna looked very happy at finally being able to do something for the poor thin people and Mia looked around, her gaze halting when she found a tent with two children. The other two though seemed pretty indifferent.
It didn’t take long before a man poked his head out of one of the tents closer to Argul and, upon seeing her, immediately retreated back inside. A furious discussion with the other tent inhabitants broke out and gestured wildly at one another. Argul was able to listen in easily and they were mainly deliberating who would have to face her, cursing each other every now and then. She didn’t really care about who talked to her and opted to tune them out after a minute.
In the end the same man as before came out, keeping a healthy dozen, if ineffective for their purpose, metres between himself and Argul. He was quite lanky and thin much like the other refugees. His greasy brown hair had grown over his ears and eyes, forcing him to push it aside repeatedly and his beard had grown wild, requiring some serious care.
“Good day to you mister. My name is Argul Agren.” She looked at him and tilted her head slightly. “Do you require assistance?”
He gaped at her, his eyes moving from her to the rest of her group and back repeatedly and had obviously not expected her to talk to him. Luna and Mia waved at him, which seemed to pull him back to the moment.
“Uhm,” He looked her up and down for whatever purpose. “Good evening Miss Agren?” He turned to the tents, searching for help but only getting a few vanishing heads so he turned back to her and offered her his hand. “I’m Peter Meyer.”
Argul looked at his hand then back into his face. He, Peter, looked at his Hand, at her, lowered it slowly and gulped, looking up at her again.
“Do you require assistance?” Argul offered again to help the poor guy.
“Yes?” Peter looked at her doubtfully. “What kind?”
Argul looked up at the rain clouds for a moment, but focused back on the tents and used her [Water Manipulation] to pull the majority of the wetness from the surroundings towards her, creating a floating sphere of water between her and Peter. “That kind.”
“Okay.” The poor guy looked completely lost so she simply nodded and started to pull more water towards her. This time she was much more careful though so as not to injure someone or damage something.
While she did that, Luna gathered a few of the willing refugees that weren’t stuck staring in wonder at Argul and talked food. The group couldn’t spare much, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t use the refugees ingredients to make them a warm meal. Once Luna had a measure of what was available she sent the refugees to collect everything she needed and enlisted Mia’s help to begin the arduous task of cooking for 37 people.
When Argul had gathered all the water she could, she threw the sphere out of her ward and took a look around. Luna was cooking together with Mia and two strangers. Her daughter and Aina were playing with a few kids, the parents hovering like hawks around them and the rest of the refugees were organising stuff. Oh, and Arthur was sitting on the porch of the camper, cleaning his sniper rifle and being generally ignored by everyone else. Everything seemed normal so she focused on her next task.
With how strong the rain was going and no end to it in sight the refugee group would likely be stuck here for a while. It was probably better if they had some better dwellings and with the help of magic Argul could supply. She had learned a thing or two from the Doombluffers and everything else she would have to magic away somehow.
Argul reached out deep into the ground with her [Earth magic] and started pulling up stone that she then moulded into foundations, walls and roofs until a small village worth of blocky dark grey single room stone buildings stood next to the many tents.
It was ugly but functional, only Argul didn’t feel like ugly right now and could do much better. She pulled up even more stone, connecting the many houses and filling up the space between them with solid stone. Then she began building upwards, going narrower with height until it looked like the upper forty metres of a mountain stood in front of her.
There was now a giant cave one and a half kilometres down deep and again as much to the south of the tents, but Argul decided not to worry about it. Instead she built cave-like entrances into her little mountain, connected the rooms with corridors and formed stairs that reached the upper levels where she created even more rooms. She added a few terraces on the outside of the upper levels for good measure and finished construction with a multitude of air vents.
Argul was interrupted for a moment by the inability to move freely, what with her harness still on and all that and got out of it with her [telekinesis]. Then she hurried to the little mountain, going fast enough that everyone except Alyra lost sight of her briefly and changed into her humanoid avatar.
She hesitated for a moment, feeling like she was forgetting something and looked around. Nothing stood out to her though so she shrugged and went into the mountain, beginning the next stage of her work, enchanting.
First Argul worked her way up, slowly creating light enchantments to brighten up the place. While they didn’t need to recharge, she still added an 8 hour period during which the lights would dim and roughly timed it to be during the night. That way the mana collected during off time could be channelled to other enchantments. Since Argul had a lot of space to use she could go quickly and sloppily as many of the space limitations she had with the fridge and stove didn’t matter.
When all the lights were done Argul worked her way downwards, placing low powered heat enchantments. This made the rooms not only comfortable to be in, but also increased air circulation as the warm air VENT up. Hah! This should also help decrease humidity which could easily become a problem with the cave-like setup.
Due to the upwards moving air the rooms of the lowest levels cooled down drastically and Argul chose to keep a few of them that way, placing cooling enchantments instead of heating ones. These rooms could then serve perfectly as storage places for perishables.
Argul also refitted a few rooms into latrines where anything that wasn’t a living being larger than a rat got transformed into mana by a monstrously complicated cleaning enchantment.
Last but not least she connected all of her enchantments to a large mana storage hidden in a section of solid stone that served as structural support and made it so that all excess mana and mana created through cooling and cleaning got moved there. Then she connected the storage to a collection of massive rain ward enchantments that would keep most of the mountain dry and funnel rainwater into four reservoirs accessible over the terraces of the upper floors. The reservoirs would overflow into channels that would lead the water down the mountain and a few hundred metres away from it.
When everything was done and Argul stepped out of the mountain it was already late afternoon again. She was greeted by her daughter who was staring at her oddly. Alyra’s lips kept curling upwards before she schooled her face again. Did Argul have something in the face or what was that about?
Argul looked down on her body, her very very naked body and her mind blanked. Alyra doubled over, barking and laughing and heaving hysterically.