Argul threw Aina in a high arc to Alyra, who caught the happy little slime and hugged her before throwing her back. The two or rather three of them were currently waiting for Mia to finish her talk with one of the inn's patrons and decided to pass the time by playing a round of ‘throw the slime’. Argul wouldn’t do something like that normally, but Aina wanted to be thrown and seemed to like it so it should be okay.

She caught Aina and gave her a hug. Then she threw the slime back and watched as her daughter caught Aina, all the while she listened to Mia’s conversation. “Look, Mister, you don’t have to make the lines rigid! It works just fine even if you curve them and it’s easier!”

The man tried to retort, but was immediately interrupted. “But the Silver-”

“No! Just because aunt does it that way doesn’t mean it’s easier and better for you to follow her example.”

The little teacher huffed in indignation. “You yourself already admitted to curves being easier and still you want to do it with straight lines and corners in the mana path. It doesn’t make sense for you to bother Mister, it’s just a difference of half a point of mana!”

Argul and Alyra shared a look and grinned. It was always interesting to see Mia teach others. The girl had adopted Argul’s teaching style, but she was a lot more emotional and straightforward at times. Argul mostly held herself back from teasing the little girl with this, though her daughter took the utmost joy in it.

The reason Mia had started to teach others was pretty simple. First and foremost, she was the one who created the two dimensional runes for all of her spells and Argul just helped her out, and secondly, Argul tended to overwhelm other people with magical theories that had little to do with what they wanted, what they needed. 

Sure, those theories would help in studying more magic, but that wasn’t the goal of most people that came here. They just wanted to know that one spell to make their life easier, not the whole package.

The man finally gave up with a sigh. “Right, half a point of mana per bucket of water doesn’t make that much of a difference and the spell will make things that much easier either way.”

He smiled and offered Mia a hand. “Thank you for your time and patience little Miss. Is there anything I can do to repay you?”

Oh! Argul perked up and took a look at the guy. Most people didn’t offer a thing and both she and her niece had never asked for payment so those that wanted to repay them always stood out.

Mia thought about it for a moment and looked at Argul questioningly. She smiled back at the girl and inclined her head. Whatever the girl wanted, she had her approval.

Mia’s expression brightened and she took the man’s hand energetically. “It’s no problem, teaching helps me too!”

Then she looked somewhat sheepishly up at him. “Uhm, can I ask you to just give the kids without a home something to eat now and then?”

The man looked at her surprised before he laughed loudly. “I hadn’t expected that!”

He smiled and ruffled Mia’s hair. “You are a good kid. Consider your request done.”

The man waved one last time to the girl and headed out of the inn. Mia happily waved back before she rushed over to the couches where Argul and Alyra were at. “I’m done! Are we going to do it now, aunt?”

Argul caught Aina one last time and put her down on the table before she looked at Mia with a serious expression. “Yes, but are you sure you are okay with this?”

Mia just rolled her eyes exasperated. “You asked me the same question yesterday and the day before that too! Of course I want to be part of this, it could give me insights into magic!”

The girl gave Argul a judging look. “Who wouldn’t want to witness how you created a new spell, aunt, let alone be part of it!”

Alyra smirked and nodded. “Our little teacher is quite right.”

Mia blushed and sidled over to Argul, who just sighed as she noticed everyone in the inn focusing on them. It looked like Mia’s outburst had been a little loud, not that this stopped Argul from doing what she wanted to do.

She gave a quick nod to Alyra. Her daughter would do her part in this and integrate the skill she was about to create into the system as fast as possible. Alyra had been preparing for this, but something unexpected might happen so it was better to focus.

Then Argul turned to Mia. “Alright, you don’t really have to do anything, but I would prefer it if you kept sitting. Please tell how this feels, the spell is going to be intrusive and I don’t want to hurt you.”

The girl nodded with a determined expression. “You can count on me, aunt.”

Argul smiled at that and took a deep breath to focus herself. Then she closed her eyes, giving herself completely to her sense of mana and began to weave her mana into a rune similar to that of [identify].

The difference was that the tether she formed went straight through her target, in this case Mia, before it connected to the [Archive]. [Archive] connections were always weird since it wasn’t a material thing and basically everywhere where mana was. Because of this the task became more difficult the more you thought about it and tried to understand it.

Mia let out a queek of surprise, but it didn’t sound painful so Argul continued and created another tether that was supposed to transport the information from the archive to her. Before the spell could take hold, she noticed quite a few inefficiencies and reshuffled the whole thing several times until she couldn’t find anything amiss anymore. Luckily she didn’t have to move the tethers so the refining process only took about a second. There were probably still some things she could improve, but it would take time and training to find them.

The spell finally took hold and Argul lost control over the chunk of her mana as it did its thing. While 40 mana was quite a lot for most people, it wasn’t a notable number to her and her floors of mana reserves.

A red shimmering screen appeared in front of her in her mind's eye.

[Analyze]

Name: Mia Agren

Race: human (squirrel-kin)

Level: 2

Mana: 74/ 133.45

Mana regeneration: 8.84/ hour

—

[Stats]

Str: 24

Agi: 19

Per: 16

Int: 30

Wis: 40

Wil: 20

—

[Skills]⁺

Argul opened her eyes and blinked as she read through the screen. It showed her the status of Mia and she could even view the girl’s skills if she wanted to. There was a complete lack of achievements and titles though and Argul suspected that Alyra had trouble implementing a title system. Otherwise Argul would have long since gotten an achievement and title for being the silver witch, but she hadn’t.

There were two more differences that made Argul ignore the baffled looks she was getting from everyone except Alyra. First, Mia had the same storage capability as Argul had with 30 [Int], but only had a tenth of her mana regeneration and second, Mia’s [stats] were less balanced than her own. The simplest reason for that Argul could think of was that Mia had more attributes the [stats] could be distributed to, which increased the chance of one attribute getting left out by [quests].

She closed the screen and looked up at Mia, who seemed to be a little lost. “How, how did you improve that spell so fast?!”

She pouted. “I couldn’t even see what you were doing.”

Argul shrugged and smiled. “You haven’t been the only one that has trained the last few weeks you know? But I can show you what I did a bit slower sometime later if you want.”

That had been the main purpose of her enchanting practice. It made her more adept at noticing irregularities and inefficiencies in spell runes, which would help her with every spell she created in the future.

Mia returned the smile and crawled on Argul’s lap. “Thanks aunt.”

Nobody even considered asking Argul if her try had been successful, because no one had doubted her in the first place.

She gave Mia a quick hug and leaned back. “So, what did it feel like?”

That was what Argul was especially interested in. [Identify] was very subtle and it would be difficult to notice the use of the skill without a passive mana sense. [Analyze], the skill she just created, was a lot more invasive on the other hand so there was a good chance that it created some kind of feeling for the target.

Mia thought about the question for a minute or so before she answered. “Do you know the feeling when it feels like somebody's watching you?”

Argul nodded and caressed the girl’s fluffy squirrel tail. “So it feels like that?”

Mia hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, but the feeling is a lot stronger. It’s honestly a bit creepy!”

Argul patted her head. “That’s good to know. I won’t use it on you again.”

The moment she had stopped caressing Mia’s tail the girl had turned her head to look at Argul over her shoulder. Then her tail straightened a bit and the tip of it ended up in Argul’s face, tickling her nose.

Argul sneezed loudly and Mia giggled. Before she could escape though, Argul hugged her and turned her around with a predatory grin. “You haven’t thought that through, have you?”

Mia looked at her with wide eyes and screamed when Argul began to tickle her. “Heeeelp!!”

No help arrived, even when Arthur entered the room and took in the whole situation, murmuring to himself. “What the hell did I miss here?”