After going back into the inn to get a chair Argul sat down next to the limp body of the bishop, hoping that he would be out of it for a while, and that was indeed the case. All in all she had a bit more than an hour to prod at the blessing to hopefully figure out how it worked before both city guards and military came by to take care of the man, though he was still unconscious.

Funnily enough it wasn’t the guards that had previously run away that got help but one of the random people that saw her sitting in the middle of the street next to a body, not that the bishop deserved or needed any help in her opinion. First, he wasn’t really in danger as she wasn’t doing anything to him except the magical equivalent of intensely staring and second, he definitely deserved a few hours of lying on the cold asphalt. If he were to get ill because of that then she would consider it a failure of Meran and his weird blessing.

Speaking off, finding out what the blessing did and how it worked was a lot more difficult than she had expected. The faith-bound mana seemingly infused the bishop’s body and soul to a degree and strengthened something. What exactly Argul didn’t know and she got the impression that the mana wasn’t sure about that either.

Like, if her interpretation of things were true, then the blessing enhanced the bishops muscle strength, agility and reaction time a bit and gave him an aura of authority, though her own aura had quickly blown his away, but she also had the feeling that his aura got weakened because his blessing also tried to make him more stealthy. It was as if all the mana got told was to make the bishop stronger, make him better and then did everything at the same time which led to some improvements canceling each other out.

Then again, she supposed she shouldn’t have expected too much from a crude application of faith magic like this. Perhaps the blessing would have had a more notable effect if Meran had a special trait and wasn’t just a god. A god of war’s blessing increasing one’s fighting prowess and tactical acumen for example, but Meran wasn’t anything, not even a god king. Until she could test these things herself though, this wasn’t anything more than speculation.

The one thing she could say for sure after her hour with the priest was that the blessing wasn’t permanent and, for a lack of better term, consumed itself to keep its effects going. It was a slow process and more than 90 percent of the original blessing still remained by the time she handed the man to the authorities, but nonetheless a noticeable decline. Considering that the weird channel connected to the bishop that she had destroyed earlier seemed permanent and stable besides its weakness, it should be possible to create permanent blessings too. Another thing she would have to test herself it seemed.

Argul hadn’t been able to discover more than that in her time next to the bishop and she had to say goodbye to her testobject in a suitable awkward handover. Awkward because she was pretty sure the guards and soldiers wanted to do something to her or at the very least arrest her or something, but couldn’t after what had happened to the bishop and his goons earlier. After all, arresting someone was quite hard when all they had to do was look at you funny for you to keel over into oblivion.

Shaking her head, Argul went back inside and immediately got distracted by the chaos that greeted her. Alyra was sitting in the middle of the room disassembling chairs and tables; Mia was in the back right corner, packing all the games and books into plastic sacks while Aina tried to assist her, and Luna was, going by the stuff stacked in front of the kitchen, packing everything there too.

Argul blinked once, not quite comprehending what was going on or rather why they were doing this and walked over to her daughter. “What are you doing?”

Alyra looked up from her chair and gave her a little smirk. “We are packing, mom.”

“Yes, I can see that and you know what I mean. Why are you doing it?” Argul rolled her eyes.

Her daughter shrugged nonchalantly at that and continued taking the chair apart. “Well, as you may have noticed mother, someone just royally pissed off a bishop and by extend the entire church.”

Argul nodded to herself. It was hard to miss when you were the one to do the deed and were proud of it. No remorse whatsoever, the guy had deserved it and the church deserved it even more for their concentration camp tactics. Utterly despicable.

“What this someone didn’t notice however, was that they also frightened the bishop's god, a god that is now very furious and making plans to exterminate this particular blemish on their muddy record.”

It looked like Alyra either noticed her disdain for Meran and his followers or had an equally low opinion of them as Argul, probably both though. Now that her daughter phrased it like this, the packing also made sense.

“We are leaving.” Argul stated. 

A different person might have stayed and fought, she did have the power for that, but righting all the wrongs in this world was not her responsibility and she never wanted to get involved in things like this, especially now that she had a life she looked forward to living. 

It wasn’t fair for those that were suffering under the greed of others, but she wouldn’t help them, at least for the time being, because if she did she would give Meran and his church exactly what they wanted and through this conflict they would profit, they would twist the minds of the people further and drive their rotten foundation ever deeper into the ground. 

Argul wasn’t part of this society by choice and thus it wasn’t her responsibility, but perhaps sometime in the future, when she had healed enough to be able to look beyond herself and reach out to others without exhausting or injuring herself, she would be able to give people a choice, whether they were deserving or not.

Alyra nodded in agreement. “Our little mobile camping house is mostly done, so yes, we are leaving and I agree with you that this is not a fight you should engage in and neither is it worth fighting in the first place.”

“Thanks Aly.” Argul hugged her daughter and sat down next to her. “So, I assume we are going to take as much with us as possible, but how are we going to transport everything to our new house, because you made it sound like we should be gone by tomorrow and multiple trips would take way too long.”

“The same way you intend to pull the house.” Alyra said without looking up. Argul thought about it for a second and yeah, that made sense.

She watched her daughter work for some time, content to do nothing because she would have to do all the heavy lifting later and thought about what she had learned today. At least until she got distracted by a totally unrelated thought that piqued her curiosity.

“Hey Aly, the system gave me achievements and as a reward some stats and maybe a skill, but is that all there is to achievements?” Because the stats were ultimately underwhelming as a reward, she thought but left unsaid.

“Hmm, I wondered when you would ask about that. The achievements, that’s what I call them, were not my idea. It’s a magical phenomenon where a part of your mana soul that isn’t your mana signature changes permanently and becomes sort of a second signature. My guess is that it allows one to use mana better when doing something related to the achievement, I’m not really sure though.

I don’t know why it happens, for ones, either. Is it mana acknowledging something you have done? Or is it the acknowledgement of a lot of people? I’ve seen both, the former for you and me and the latter for the king of Erdanien. I just give these marks a fancy schmancy name, add a reward for it and that’s it.

The only thing I can say for sure is that achievements like the [Skill Creator] series are not the same. They are rewards, incentives, that I created to make people explore more.”

That was certainly interesting, though it didn’t help Argul all that much and she would have to look into it herself or hope someone else did it for her and Alyra would tell her. 

System specific things like the [Skill Creator] achievement weren’t anything new either. Most skills for example, came from within, from the person and would forever belong to that being even if the system would cease to exist for some reason. 

Skills like [learning] and [teaching] though, came from without, they belonged to the system and had nothing to do with the being. Perhaps some of it could be learned naturally, there certainly were teaching and learning methods out there, but how the system intervened to make a person understand the teachings of another was definitely not natural. Mia and how she could comprehend something even though Argul’s explanation was utterly shit, was the best example for that.

Well, nothing she could do about it at the moment anyway. Argul slapped her hands on her thighs and got up. She looked around, seeing everyone except her at work and let out a sigh before she went to her room. Since she was at least somewhat at fault that they didn’t have days to pack now, she might as well help to get things sorted.

Otjag

Last chapter of volume 3!(Still haven't edited the second, but who cares?!) Do you know what that means? It means we get the fluff back, may her fur be ever soft!!