When Argul’s mind focused on her true body and domain after her talk with Alyra, the first thing she did was to take a mental step back. What her daughter had said had explained a few things, but also made her wonder about a few others. It was the truth too, which forced her to confront a few uncomfortable things she had been avoiding ever since she woke up as a Mana Core.

Argul let out a mental sigh and tried to clear her mind as much as possible for a while, not that she had much success with that. She had long accepted that her mind was always active, chasing this thought and that curiosity, but she had also learned to simply be for a while despite that.

Alyra had confessed to her that she was siphoning some of her growth to fuel the system, and, when Argul had said she didn’t care, she really meant it. Had her daughter told her the same right after she woke up as a mana core, Argul’s answer would probably be the same as now, though for different reasons. 

Back then the fog of her depression had still been thick and as uncomfortable as it was to think back and try to remember the feeling of that, the best way she could describe it was a state of apathy, meaning she quite literally wouldn’t have cared.

A few weeks later Argul would have been angry at her daughter. The system had provided her a curiosity to chase and a goal to pursue, to make the numbers rise and that girl told her things could develop faster. What an atrocity!

Argul smiled a bit to herself. She didn’t want to confront the depression of her previous life directly, but reflecting on how she had changed in less than a year, how her mental health had improved, brought her joy.

The reason why she didn’t care now was, again, different. Argul wasn’t necessarily chasing after power. She didn’t need power, at least not for the sake of power itself or perhaps control. The only thing that would require more strength from her was her enchanting and magic research, but she hadn’t even reached the point where things got difficult with her current strength and it wasn’t like she didn’t grow at all.

Argul opened her status at that.

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

[Through various activities such as training, teaching and experimenting with mana inside of your domain you have gained: +21 Str; +24 Int; +19 Wis.]

[Status]

Name: Argul Agren

Race: Mana core

Age: 10 months

Level: 13

Structural integrity: 100%

Mana: 449.3/449.3

Mana generation: 4.49/min

—

[Stats]

Str: 149 (+27)

Int: 152 (+30)

Wis: 152 (+26)

—

[Active skills]

general actives: mana manipulation, magic missile, identify (7), analyze, cleaning, mana com

core special: uniphone, ribm, materialization

water magic: conjure, manipulate, banish, fake tears

earth magic: conjure, manipulate, banish

light magic: conjure, invisibility, mirror image

emergency portal

contract

fate contract

increase heat (solid)

space manipulation

Enchanting

—

[Passive skills]

general passives: learning (5), mental fortitude, hidden might

domain skills: accelerated [m] growth (small), accelerated [s] growth (all), core regeneration, knowledge domain

sense skills: sense mana, sense space

curse of harmlessness (s)

magic gunning

 

• neutral magic sniper bullet

 

Stat growth boost (1)

currently:

 

• Str +3

• Int +3

• Wis +6

 

artifact creation

 

• Artifacts: 2 (all +10)

• Lamp pole of light

• Primordial Grimoire of Water Magic (Mia Agren)

 

—

[Floor 1]

Template: Luna (moon), surface

Size (radius): 1540 km

Area [4π*(0.75*r)²]/ Volume [(4/3)π*r³]: 16. 8 M km²

[Floor 11]

Template: Erod, grassland

Size (radius): 1640 km

Area/ Volume: 19. 0 M km²

[Floor 12]

Template: Erod, redwood (tall trees)

Size (radius): 1650 km

Area/ Volume: 19. 2 M km²

[Floor 13]

Template: Erod, Winterland

Size (radius): 1660 km

Area/ Volume: 19. 5 M km²

Argul hadn’t done a lot during the past month despite writing that book and most of her experiments she had done outside of her domain, where she couldn’t get any stats anymore since her avatar was long past the level 1 stat limit. Her daughter could of course give her preferential treatment, she wasn’t at risk of becoming a monster after all, but Argul hadn’t asked for it and she didn’t want it either. As long as her stat potential was as underutilized as right now she could get stats through ridiculously easy quests inside of her domain anyways.

Again, she wasn’t chasing after power anymore and just wanted to tinker with magic.

Having somewhat distracted herself from her depressing mood, Argul focused back on her domain and looked at all that was hers. 

She wanted to try something new with her [knowledge domain] skill. Alyra had hinted that she wasn’t really using it at all since the skill gave her knowledge without interrupting her active thought at all and because of that she might as well not have that knowledge. How was she supposed to use information she didn’t know she had inside of her mind?

She didn’t, unless she stumbled upon it that was.

So, Argul had wondered what would happen if she asked herself what the skill had taught her. In theory that should bring all the knowledge to the forefront of her mind and if she limited it to a certain timeframe, it should be like she got updates. If it worked, she would never have to check her domain manually, not that she minded doing that.

Argul took the mental equivalent of a deep breath and prepared herself for whatever might happen. Maybe it would be like when she remembered something she knew she shouldn’t know or maybe nothing would happen at all. Then, as ready as she could be, she asked herself what [Knowledge domain] had ever taught her and directed the question to the skill itself too for good measure.

What happened next Argul could only describe as a tsunami of information crashing down on her. Thanks to her levels and nature as a mana core it wasn’t too much for her to handle, but the metaphor described the amount in a suitable manner.

She went through everything that came to the front of her mind in the next few seconds, much like one would skim through books in a library to organize them and quickly came to the realization that the majority of information she had received consisted of things she didn’t understand, though she knew at least that much of it was genetical in nature. It made sense too, she supposed, since her skill gave her knowledge of everything that was communicated inside of her domain and cell division could be seen as that. Coupled with the fact that humans and other organisms were made up of an insane amount of cells that had to repair and reproduce the whole time and bam, genetic information drowned out the rest.

The rest of the knowledge didn’t even make up one percent of what she had received and much of it was useless to Argul too, though nonetheless interesting. She took her time to look at a few things here. It was much like watching a video inside her mind and her absolute favorites were bees dancing to each other now that she could understand. It was fascinating to watch something speak through body movements. 

The bees were very closely followed by the image of two slimes angrily popping air bubbles at each other, much like Aina often did.

There was, of course, knowledge that Argul could have done without too. Her only mercy was that the moans of dolphins and the reproduction of whales was buried deep in everything else. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to think of anything else for the next few hours.

Much to Argul’s surprise the skill also gave her access to system statuses or was the plural states?

Anyways, while it was indeed interesting to look at the status of other beings, besides mana capacity and stats there wasn’t much difference compared to hers. Then again, her own status was mostly made up and not nearly as much a reflection of reality as that of everything else according to Alyra.

What really grabbed her attention however, was the glaring proof of monsters she found in this part of the information. Maybe she could have found evidence in the genetic knowledge or the behavior of any animals, plants or other organisms, but she wasn’t a biologist and while she might know certain things now, as long as she didn’t understand it the knowledge was useless.

The warning the system issued and how the beings more often than not subsequently consumed their connection to the system was a lot more obvious however. Argul could then easily compare behavior and body language of said beings before and after their change and, like Alyra had told her, they always got extremely aggressive. No matter whether they were herbivore or carnivore, they attacked everything they could, often leaving the corpses of their victims behind.

She would love to look into the magical side of monsters beyond how they absorbed mana initially, but she would have to find them inside of her domain first and that turned out to be more difficult than it should be.

The few monsters that had come into existence always lived under high survival pressure before. Said pressure was a result of high competition for resources inside of their environment and, since Argul’s domain wasn’t even a year old, there wasn’t much, if any, need to compete with others yet. 

The only reason that there were any monsters at all was that the oceanic beings from Erod had a tendency to lay so many eggs that one of their descendants would likely survive. That also meant that once they hatched they had to compete against their siblings in a relatively small area for food to grow, even though the rest of the ocean around them was practically empty. Mature animals that became monsters probably had a higher survival chance than tiny fish attacking their 50 times larger parents, but there hadn’t been any yet.

Besides the monsters, the arrival of Trevor in Doombluff also caught Argul’s attention. She had thought she would never see that guy again, but Alyra had different plans as it seemed.

Trevor was, apparently, the solution to the monster problem that her daughter had talked about and meant to found an organization focused on hunting them. Argul wasn’t really interested in that though. In her opinion monsters were just a part of their new and changing reality and they would have to live with it. Then again, she wasn’t above helping others if she could. There just wasn’t much she could do much on a large scale against this at the moment. Maybe teaching them how to enchant things, but that was likely to reap more human lives at the moment than monsters.

What interested Argul more was that with Trevor’s arrival her daughter finally introduced the other systems she had been working on. The Sapient Support System (SSS) as Alyra called it, changed quite a few things.

It introduced classes for one. Classes made it easier to gain skills dependent on how related they are to. A hunter would be guaranteed to get a tracking skill for example and would find it easier to get skills like trapping or sneaking. Quests were also bound to classes and one would now always have a quest as long as they had a class. 

Lastly, classes supported mana cultivation up to 5 levels above the level of the mana density. The villagers of Doombluff could level up to level 11 through quests now for example.

The system also added new subsystems for settlements, countries and organizations, all making things easier for humans, especially for leaders though. Argul couldn’t say much about that yet, but the settlement menu allowed the leader to create quests for example and depending on the settlement level, which could be increased and decreased through population, the mana density of a settlement would be increased above the natural mana density of the region.

No matter what, the SSS might be incredibly useful for Argul in the future, so she would definitely keep an eye on that. There was only so much running away from people praying to her as a goddess and the SSS had the potential to allow her to reduce the annoyance to a minimum.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There will be a few changes in RoftA because of this. I also wanted to ask you all for suggestions on the SSS before I create a System screen. I don’t want to have to change it just because one of my readers had a cool idea later :p. (The SSS will be introduced to the rest of the universe when Argul hits level 15, because Alyra needs more mana for it)