The day after she finished her 13th floor Argul was absolutely ready to start working on the present for her daughter. She had been preparing for this for months now and the part of the night she didn’t work on her floor, she had rested watching Jack and Rash as well as the rest of her domain.

There was one thing she wanted to do before that however. In her past life Argul had had the bad habit of not doing time-limited tasks until the very last minute, projecting herself to an unnecessary and probably unhealthy amount of stress and pressure. She didn’t want to make the same mistake this time, wanted to do better and that meant she had to write a small book teaching the basics of water magic.

Now, technically speaking, she didn’t have to write the book for the trader and could just take the wagon once it was finished. She was strong enough to do that, so strong in fact that the others wouldn’t be able to do anything against her. She was also not bound to human standards anymore, not being a human and all that.

Argul still had her moral code however and believed in decency as well as the basic concept of give and take, so there was no way she would do something like that. Actively choosing to make the life of others more difficult just because she was stronger sounded like a petty thing to do and she believed herself above that.

Sighing to herself, Argul took one of the notebooks they had looted and spent a few minutes rummaging through their stuff in search for a working pen. She found what she had searched for underneath a pile of messy clothes and, ignoring the fact that she desperately needed to fold and tidy up her clothes, went down stairs.

It was already around 9 am, so there were a few people up and about besides her group. Most of them were watching Mia practice while they enjoyed a drink, though those that actively came and spoke to Mia and herself had yet to arrive.

Argul smiled at her foster niece, who was creating little spheres of water and let them fall for Aina to catch them before she grabbed a chair and made way for the backyard of the inn. 

She didn’t want to get interrupted while she worked and the weather allowed her to do the writing outside. It was still a bit wet from yesterday's rain and somewhat cloudy, but she hadn’t planned to write on the ground so it shouldn’t matter.

On her way out Argul gave her daughter a nod, thankful that she was keeping an eye on Mia. Otherwise Argul wouldn’t feel safe leaving the girl alone, the possibility of her being abducted by some stupid greedy mut was much too high for that.

She left the inn and sat down on the wooden chair to the side of the door, noting the two figures that were shrouding themselves in dense clouds of intent with her mana sense. They were probably keeping an eye on her and her family, they were a bit of a special case after all, but she didn’t care too much as long as they didn’t get handsy.

She did have to smile about their stealth method though. Shrouding themselves in the intent to keep hidden might make them less noticeable for regular senses such as sight, but for her mana sense they were practically suns in the darkness. If they really wanted to keep hidden, they would have to hide their mana presence from her too, but she supposed they wouldn’t know that and neither would they know how to do it. She didn’t know how to do it herself, but she had ideas on how to achieve it.

Choosing to ignore the two spies or whatever they were, Argul opened the first page of the empty notebook and began to think of some kind of introduction. She couldn’t help herself but try to be as professional as possible, not that she had much experience in that regard.

The basics of water magic (Mia Agren)

Magic, as well as the utilization of mana, are endlessly discussable topics and fields of limitless possibilities. There is not a thing that can’t be achieved and the only question one should ask themselves is how to reach their goal.

This book is a guide for the basics of water magic (Mia Agren) and will introduce the buildup and natural laws of mana to the reader.

…

Once she was done with that, Argul nodded to herself in satisfaction.

She had, surprisingly, managed to write at an acceptable pace and still have a readable handwriting. Usually her writing was extremely worse and basically not readable, she was still impressed by her teachers that had somehow managed to translate her scribbling when she had still been in school, but now thanks to her stats and her increased control over her body, it wasn’t all that demanding for her anymore to write in an acceptable manner. If she were to write like she normally did she could probably go as fast or even faster than a printer.

Argul read the headline again and smiled to herself. She had put Mia’s name behind magic everytime it referred to her type of mana utilization, she used her own surname since she had no idea what Mia’s was though. Argul didn’t want to give the impression that this was the only method out there to use mana, so she had to do it and even explained what the meaning was somewhere near the end of the introduction she had written.

Turning two pages, leaving one for the table of contents, she got the more interesting, more technical part. This would also take a lot longer and she had to think carefully about what she taught in the book. She was already trading a city for a house in a way and there was no need to give the merchant even more.

This would also take quite some time, though and barr Argul even longer from working on her daughter’s present. She had actually thought about doing the writing with magic and creating a spell for this. It would be quite difficult to do, because not only would she have to create the ink and put it on the paper, but she would also have to link what was going to be written to something, which was most likely her thoughts. That would require her to concentrate and not get sidetracked however and she was very aware of the fact that she liked to let her mind wander, especially because she always got new ideas when she was working on something.

The real reason why she wanted to write the guide by hand wasn’t something as trivial as that that could be solved by a simple failsafe measure like simply preventing the writing from coming into contact with the paper until she was satisfied. No, the real reason had to do with something she had been observing in Doombluff, the lizard village in her domain, and her lamp pole of light artifact.

Ever since she had noticed that manual crafting created intent that actually infused the work, Argul had the sneaking suspicion that this was exactly how artifacts, objects that had some magical trait, were created. Her lamp pole for example, had the ability to slowly repair itself, something that was likely caused by it being the first ever enchanted object. There was significance in that, it was the primordial enchantment after all and this had seeped into the metal rod, granting the repair ability.

Argul had noticed however, that the same intent infusion didn’t happen when she utilized her magic to craft something, because the intent was used for the spell and to create the intended effect, so there was nothing left to infuse the object afterwards.

To put it simply, magical creation or crafting used intent while manual crafting created intent and there within lay the problem. Things crafted by hand had, ironically, a lot more potential than things crafted with magic.

This didn’t necessarily mean that magically created tools or objects were bad, it just meant that with a good craftsman or craftswoman it could be better. It was like the difference between having an enchanted rifle that shot bullets that homed in on their target or having the same enchanted rifle, only that it had been created by a smith and because of that the bullets shot moved three times at fast. 

The intent basically created a need for craftspeople, a reason for them to exist because, despite there being faster methods, they could produce something better and Argul was excited for how that influenced the future. 

For her though, that meant she had to write her guide manually if she wanted to increase the chance of it becoming an artifact. It being the first written book teaching magic gave it a bit of a chance already, though probably not as much as her pole.

So, with that in mind, Argul got to work on her guide. She began with introducing mana sense and how to sense intent, since these were required to seriously start anything and followed with a simple description of how to move mana, teaching [mana manipulation]. Argul took great care though, not to hint at any method to improve one’s skill since she had only offered the most basic guide and that was not basic in her opinion anymore.

With the introduction into mana done, she got to the actual topic of the guide, basic water magic and in this case freshwater to be exact, though changing this wouldn’t be all that difficult. 

For this purpose, she had to teach [conjure water], [water manipulation] and [banish water] as these three skills formed the foundation of pretty much every other spell one could create. Argul figured that starting with [water manipulation] was probably the best, since water was a readily available resource and it would give the reader a feeling for how things worked. The risk of someone creating some horror by accident was also a lot lower in her opinion than for the conjure and banish spells. 

Up until this point things proceeded smoothly for Argul and she proceeded rather quickly. With the actual spells coming into play however, she had to do something that took her quite a bit longer. She had to draw the runes and because they were quite intricate and her not being the best at drawing it took more time. She also made sure to use one whole page for the rune, not only to make it easier for the reader to inspect them, but also to make it easier for her to draw.

Argul was occupied with this for pretty much the rest of the day. She could have been an hour or two faster, but she had chosen to draw each rune twice, one version with little notes that explained what did what and one version that was ‘clean’.

Once she was done she closed the notebook with a satisfied sigh, looked up at the darkening cloudy sky and smiled when a system message appeared in front of her.

You have created an artifact: [Primordial Grimoire of Water Magic (Mia Agren)]. All stats +5

Use [analyze] or [identify] for more information!

Argul raised an eyebrow at the last part, but still complied. She could accept that the system was unwilling to give out information when there were two skills with this purpose and she had both of them.

[Analyze: Primordial Grimoire of Water Magic (Mia Agren)]

This is the first ever written book dedicated to teaching magic, in this case the water magic of Mia Agren and was created by the [Origin of Mana] herself. Because of this it holds incredible significance that is enhanced by the potential (mana) of the universe itself.

Effect: When read, some of the writer's intention in teaching is transferred, thus making it a lot easier and a lot more likely for the reader to understand the text’s meaning. People who do not know how to read the language will still understand the purpose of the book.

Argul frowned a bit when she read the description. Perhaps she herself was also a reason for the book to turn into an artifact, which would mean that the titles the system bestowed gave some kind of wobbly power or maybe the system just classified the power gained as title and rewarded the person even further?

She shook her head and tried to concentrate on other more tangible things like the magical effect the book had. It increased the value by a lot, maybe even so much that would be hard to put any kind of prize tag on it. Now it was more like she would trade a whole kingdom for a house.

Argul smiled again, looking down at the plain notebook. She didn’t mind and the merchant would have no idea what she was giving him. As long as she got her moveable home in time she would be happy!