Reincarnated as a mana core

Arthur stopped every now and then to look closer at the strangers his group had decided to help. Their uniting trait was that they were all thin, but other than that they were pretty diverse in ethnicity and age. Those that stood closer to Argul were much cleaner than others. They had likely been hit by a cleaning spell cast by Argul with little thought. He found it unlikely that she was aware of how otherworldly amazing that spell was, having gotten used to it. Arthur could only shake his head at that.

He turned to the tents and took a closer look, walking through them. Some of the tents were grouped closer together, he noted and had a bit more space to other tents. Whether the groupings came about due to familiarity or factionism wasn’t clear and without getting to know the refugees more it would be impossible to tell. Arthur doubted that they would stay with the refugees for long, what with how flighty Argul could get around strangers, so the relationships between the refugees wouldn’t matter anyway.

Arthur let his gaze sweep over the tents searching for something, anything interesting and found two men sitting alone at the edge of the tent groupings. They were both still dirty, one with unkempt blond hair, the other with brown hair. He walked towards them, wondering what they were cooking up so out of the way.

“...n will the other shoe drop?” He came into earshot and the blonde pointed at Argul’s towering figure. 

The brown haired nodded in reply. “You are right. They are suspiciously nice and that thing,” he glanced at Argul, “that beast is just unnatural.” He shuddered.

Blondy gave the other an odd look, raising his brow. “You think it is gonna eat us? I was thinking more along the line of them wanting us to do something to return the favour.”

“No.” Brown hair shook his head. “Hopefully not.”

Arthur searched around for something to sit on while they talked and found a foldable camping stool. He sat down a bit to the side, behind the brown haired guy, but definitely in sight of the blond and continued to listen.

“You are being ridiculous.” The blond tried to reassure the other.

Arthur couldn’t see brown hair’s reaction aside from his back tensing slightly. “Ridiculous? Have you looked at the beast? The thing just sucked most of the rainwater out of the area and is still keeping the rain out somehow!”

“Come on man. You heard about magic being a thing and we even saw soldiers creating light from nothing that one time.” The blond looked critically at the other.

“Yeah sure, but there is a difference between that and this, all of which is ignoring the fact that a 4m tall wolf-fox-thing is doing the casting. What if she wants our souls in exchange for help?!” Arthur snickered to himself. It was just so unlikely that Argul would do that and what would she do with them anyway?

Blondy shook his head, stopping mid motion and looked squarely at Arthur. Arthur smiled at him and even gave a small wave, taking great joy in the confusion of the blond man.

Brown hair jumped on the lull in the conversation and waved his hand in front of the other. “Hello? You already compromised or what?”

Blondy pushed his hand away and shook his head again. “No you annoying dumb fuck. There is this random guy behind you, just sitting on a stool and I’ve never seen him before.” He pointed at Arthur. “He feels odd, weirdly belonging here even though he is clearly not part of our group.”

Brown hair turned around for a short moment to look at Arthur, dismissing him. “You can explore your gay feelings later, man. We have a more important problem right now.”

“Fuck you too.” The blond punched the shoulder of the other. “Are you not at least a little worried about the weird stranger?”

“I don’t care about some random guy!” Brown hair raised his voice and pointed at Argul again. They were doing that pretty often. “There is a potentially malicious monster helping us right now. Why don’t you give me ideas for action in case something happens instead of worrying about a random human?”

Blondy’s shoulders sagged a little and he looked away from Arthur at his mate. “Fine, have it your way then.” He paused, shifting a little. “Why don’t we pack all of our stuff so we can run away at a moment's notice?” That was a surprisingly sensible suggestion.

“You don’t want to fight?” Arthur and Blondy stared incredulously at the idiot. 

“Fight?!” The blond advanced, poking the other in the chest. “Are you stupid? I’m not going to fight a 4 m tall predator that can suck the water out of an area hundreds of metres in diameter and likely turn me into a dead dry husk while you blink!!”

Brown hair recoiled and threw his hands up in defeat. “Okay, okay! You are right, that was a stupid idea.”

Arthur left them to their own devices after that. Suspicious people confronted with hard to understand situations could do incredibly stupid stuff and pose a danger, in this case to themselves, if not handled right. The blond guy had a good head on his shoulders though and should be able to keep the other in check.

Looking for something else to do, Arthur followed Luna and two of the refugees around as they collected potatoes, carrots and all matter of other foodstuff. He watched Alyra give a lightshow for the 8 kids in the refugee group for a while, wondering why it felt like she was using massive amounts of mana even though his mana sense told that wasn’t the case.

When Alyra looked at him like she was about to rope him into playing with the kids, Arthur hurried away, whistling to himself and did his best not to look back. He quickly found himself back in the gaggle of refugees that stood a ways away from Argul. The woman herself was staring at nothing, as was customary for her when she was concentrating. That she forgot to move her body to signal where her focus lay currently was honestly not surprising at all. Arthur would probably have the same problem if he could perceive anything in a kilometres wide sphere.

One look at Argul told him that, of course, it was her that was moving around massive amounts of mana and he decided not to activate his mana sense fully. The only feedback he would get from that monumentally stupid decision would be blinding pain, quite literally blinding.

Needless to say, the woman was being insane again.

Arthur moved to the centre of the group and lessened his intent layer a bit, looking at whatever it was Argul was doing. 100 or maybe 200 metres to the east of the tents, dark nearly black stone rose out of the ground, forming single room cube-like houses. He stared, much like everyone else around him, as a small village grew in front of his eyes in a matter of minutes.

Arthur had known Argul was hiding her strength and the lecture about her being a Focus and not a god had given him a hint at what to expect, but actually seeing it was a different matter altogether. It appeared that she truly meant it when she said she wouldn’t hold back anymore after they left Erdanien.

“Is that normal?” A woman next to him addressed him with a slight indian accent and every other conversation around them stopped, everyone's attention bearing down on him.

He didn’t turn to her, staring at the remaining few growing houses. “No.” If Argul were to be normal the world was doomed.

The woman waited for a few seconds, probably hoping for more but Arthur wasn’t inclined to give more. “Then what is normal?”

Argul stopped whatever she was doing to move all that stone around and Arthur activated his mana sense. Yup, the mana density around him was now level 4 and around the houses probably even higher. Until now that had only happened after Argul experimented for multiple days in the same area, but this time it took not longer than 2 dozen minutes or so.

The amount of mana she had available had to be staggeringly large. Arthur had no idea how much she would need to do what she did, but it had to be in the tens of thousands at the very least. Or maybe it was her mana regeneration that was insane, but that would be even more of a cheat. She and not being special, hah!

Arthur let out a sigh as he looked at the dark stone houses. What he would do with that amount of mana! He wouldn’t have to struggle at all as he did now and could just throw mana at every problem until it solved itself. Then again, he certainly wouldn’t bother creating efficient magical spells usable by all like Argul did, so that power was invested much more responsible in Argul. Still, a man could dream.