Argul’s desire for violence vanished as fast as it appeared when she watched her [magic missile] quite literally bitch slap the person on the other side of the door to the ground, partly replaced by a twinge of worry. She had wanted to hurt them, yes, but her attack was more powerful than she had anticipated and now she feared that she might have broken something, which was not her style. 

Usually she wouldn’t even have resorted to violence, but her current ‘visitors’, botherers more like it, had crossed a bit of a line. To say she wasn’t a violent person would be a lie however, Argul could very well just force her way with might, how she simply killed one of the mutated guys without much thought after first leaving her domain being a good example, but she prided herself with not resorting to violence when there can be reasoned and, despite what some people might say, anything that is sapient can be reasoned with or at the very least annoyed away. It can just be difficult to get them to agree to civilized measures at times.

Anyway, despite the potential injury Argul somehow had to deal with the bishop and had to do it differently than planned, so, to buy herself some time, she used her [mirror image] spell to ramble at them via golden floating letters. That the bishop and his goons did not simply enter the inn like, well, you would enter an open inn namely through the open door, threw her off a bit.

She looked around the mainroom for a bit until her eyes came to rest on Alyra, Mia and Aina and let out a deep breath. Maybe it was for the better that these people didn’t come inside and, now that she had a choice inn that matter, Argul would rather keep the bishop outside than let him get anywhere near her family.

—----

Thaddeus looked in shock at the guard who was carefully standing up again, wincing at every other odd movement and only then did he manage to say a quick [prayer] to Meran, wishing for the guards wellbeing. A wave of reassurance answered him immediately and he let out a relieved sigh.

That relief though, was quickly replaced by anger at the Silver Witch. How dare she attack God's envoys?! Did she not already commit enough sins by staying away and hiding from his holy majesty?!

This had to be punished! It didn’t matter anymore whether the witch was misguided or simply ignorant, her actions were inexcusable!

BUT, Thaddeus forcefully calmed himself down guided by the connection he had to god, doing so angry was unsightly and not befitting of an envoy. 

Of course the anger didn’t simply disappear. It kept simmering in the background where it couldn’t influence Thaddeus decision making, slowly feeding into his determination to see this affront to Meran disappear.

Having made up his mind, Thaddeus stood up, opened the door and stopped again when he was greeted by a new sight. His guard was slowly walking back towards the carriage, every wrong movement causing a spike of pain to flare up in his neck. Thankfully, it didn’t look like he had any broken bones, though half his face would probably become a massive bruise.

What made Thaddeus stop however wasn’t the guard, but the large red-rimmed, golden letters floating in front of the door. He stepped out of the carriage a moment later and started reading.

“Good, no stop, terrible day to you Mister bishop of rudeness and misguided arrogance!”

Thaddeus already struggled to believe what his eyes were seeing, but continued on reading, trying to keep his anger down.

“You see Mister, usually you make an appointment when you want something from someone you don’t know. Now, I’m aware that from your POV I shouldn’t have known of your visit and that you couldn’t simply notify me via the internet, but then again, you do have a god as boss who should have been able to do something about that, no matter how young he is, no?

Ahh, but you wouldn’t know about that, would you? Because your terrible ‘benevolent’ god keeps telling you lies and spinning his own narrative. Otherwise why would you come here to this inn, incredibly full of yourself and demand to talk to me without even entering! It’s an inn for goodness sake and Luna opens it every morning, so just enter like a gods-damned normal civilized person without breaking down the open door!!”

At this point Thaddeus was seething inside. This, this BITCH kept insulting not only him, but also his holy majesty! Worst of all, the message wasn’t even over yet!

“Putting all those offenses and the fact that I didn’t like you before we even met aside, you would and will fail with whatever you had planned anyway because you are a nazi in a nazi-religion worshiping a nazi-god, really Meran should have called himself Hitler or Goebbles or something and I do not tolerate intolerant schmucks of the highest order, especially not when I’m trying to raise children, so please kindly go fuck yourself.”

It was at this point that the door to the wooly sheep opened and the silver bitch casually stepped outside, looking expectantly at Thaddeus and his guards. Thaddeus himself didn’t bother to continue reading and put all his energy into a prayer. It was time for a reckoning!

—--

Argul stepped outside, waving away her magical writing and gave the absolutely livid bishop her sweetest possible smile, or at least she tried to. She wasn’t exactly the best at socially faking herself through situations, only masking her own thoughts and even then if people actually cared they would know when she fled into her mind.

Before she could really appreciate the disgusting mess of intent that swirled around this city, her attention was caught by the small wave of mana leaving the bishop. A prayer, Argul realized a moment later, and one that promised violence to her.

Watching this was actually very interesting, even if the circumstances left much to be desired. Sure, she had already seen an actual prayer in the past, one that was actually targeted at her as a god, but at the time she had been way too disturbed by the implications. So much so that, if she remembered correctly, she had been disgusted by the faith intent and tried to push it away.

Yet, now that she had had some time to think about it and come to terms with this reality Argul didn’t have that problem anymore. Well, it was less coming to terms with it and more realizing there was a misunderstanding in the terminology. 

Back then a god had been an omniscient being lording over mortals and directing how they had to live their life for her. She realized now though that that wasn’t how Alyra had defined what a ‘god’ was or perhaps she just didn’t know a better name. What mattered was that now with mana around ‘gods’ were a lot more tangible and thus the word describing them had a much more defined meaning.

So, what was a god?

As Argul understood it, a good was either a being of mana born of the faith and desire of sapient people, or a being of any kind capable of receiving and harnessing faith intent directed at them for a special category of magic, which, admittedly, Argul knew jack shit about thanks to her misgivings.

Anyway, the big difference between the two categories was that the former was dependent on faith as a food source while the latter could ignore this aspect of themselves without any repercussions, though they would lose out on possible benefits, whatever they may be.

Were gods powerful?

Perhaps, Argul didn’t know.

What interested her much more was the ideally symbiotic relationship between gods and sapients. If what Alyra told her holds true then gods were able to buff or bless, though in Argul’s opinion it was the same, their believers somehow with the faith they received. How or what she again didn’t know, but she had a strong hunch she was about to get her first example.

More and more mana left the mana soul, or just soul really, of the bishop and lingert around him, waiting for him to finish channeling his reserves before going off to Meran presumably. Argul watched this, completely ignoring the 5 uninjured guards taking position around the priest, and wondered why it took the guy so long to channel his miserable 100 units of mana. It wasn’t like he was casting a complicated spell or something that required utmost precision!

Still, despite the frankly disappointing skill in mana manipulation she was watching, Argul prepared herself to test one of her Skills that came from the system and not her. She hadn’t used it once ever since she got it for some achievement, speaking of which, she really had to ask her daughter if there was more to them than the system reward.

Argul slightly shook her head and focused back on the bishop as he finally finished emptying his metaphysical juice tank. The faith-bound mana immediately entered some kind of channel she had previously missed due to all of the junk intent around her that led away from the man. Intriguing.

The moment all of the mana was in said channel it pretty much vanished, moving away at extreme speeds and leaving Argul’s perception range that was quite limited outside of her domain. Then again, she could perceive anywhere inside of her own lands, so perhaps that wasn’t a fair comparison.

The channel was much more interesting than anything else in her surroundings anyway, so she didn’t care about the mana. The thing was somewhat similar to how her [mana com] looked like and she got the impression that it was also able to fulfill the same role, at least somewhat.

That was where the similarities stopped though. For one, it was annoyingly, nay disgustingly crude in its make up, like a pipe full of holes and Argul had to stop herself from trying to take control and correct all the glaring mistakes.

Second, besides prayers it was the first application of ‘faith magic’ she had come across and it was permanent. All her spells would instantly start dissipating the moment she stopped focusing on it, the mana losing direction and doing whatever. 

This channel however did not. It was like the mana had been assigned a job and, Argul pushed a bit deeper with her senses trying to figure out more, it felt pleased and content with itself for some reason.

Before she could dig any deeper and satisfy her curiosity though, a torrent of mana rushed back through the channel and into the bishop, fusing both with his body and his soul, blessing him.

Argul’s focus was immediately directed on this new curiosity, but the damn man didn’t let her get the chance to analyze and probe this new and fascinating phenomenon. First, he showed her the height of jerkness and acted like an absolute prick and now he didn’t even let her get a feel for how faith magic worked!

Unbeknownst to her though, the priest, his guards and the carriage driver were all extremely weirded out by her reaction.

“Silver Witch, you have taken it too far! Surrender yourself now and perhaps your punishment for tarnishing his holy majesty's name and endangering society by staying hidden!” The bishop pointed at her, emanating a weird sense of authority and pressure.

Argul didn’t care though. She had just found something new and interesting and would like to keep analyzing it for the rest of the day. It quite visibly annoyed her and she glared at the bishop and his entourage.

Without answering him and unwilling to wait, Argul for the first time let loose her [hidden might] skill. The atmosphere around her immediately changed, mana flowed towards her, slowly heightening the mana density around her. The mana also seemed more eager to answer her, it cheered her on and propped her up, giving her confidence. It was a nice feeling for her, not so much for her targets though.

Where she was encouraged they were oppressed, they were shown the difference in power between them and Argul. The guards knees buckled after a moment, forcing them to the ground and they looked at her in fear. The carriage driver on the other hand took the reins of the horses and urged them to flee, to run away from whatever beast the bishop had just awakened. 

And all that happened when the focus of her ire wasn’t even on them. They just happened to be unfortunate to be associated with the bishop and close to him. The man in question had blacked out already, despite the strength gifted to him by his god and his connection to said god had broken under the pressure, much to the annoyance of Argul.

She let out a sigh and looked at the guards still staring at her, gesturing them away. “Shoo, shoo.”

The five of them didn’t need to be told twice and scrambled away, falling over themselves before they got up. The sixth guard had long since hightailed it behind one of the houses in the street.

Argul watched them for a moment, thinking that it was a good thing that her [hidden might] was hidden most of the time, before she focused on the limp body of the bishop. She had a blessing to research!

—--

Alyra looked up at the terrified squeal that came from outside and grinned. Leave it to her mother to make problems disappear when they stood between her and something new.

“What did she do?” Mia asked somewhat anxiously.

Alyra looked at the girl that had been playing with Aina until a moment ago, an amused twinkle in her eyes. “They showed her something new mana related.”

Mia blinked and then opened her eyes wide in realization. “Oh.”

Alyra laughed at that before she stood up with a spring in her step. “Oh indeed! Anyway, if we don’t want to be caught up in violence it’s time to pack!”

Mia followed Alyra upstairs, hugging Aina close to her chest but smiling despite the things Alyra had alluded to. “Sure thing Sis.”

The church would have been a lot more successful in terrifying her aunt, she would come around to mother at some point, by having a normal conversation with her and not showing her some new magic. That was quite literally the worst they could have done!