Chapter 40: Chapter 38

Argul had carefully toned down her magic missile while Arthur was speaking with the idiots. She didn’t want to kill or heavily injure people in front of Mia.

As opening Argul shot 3 missiles simultaneously at the three fastest bandits and hit them all in their chests. The air got pressed out of their lungs and they were thrown backwards without even being able to scream.

One of them hit another bandit, who screamed in surprise and both went down in a heap. All of the bandits stopped where they were and exchanged puzzled looks between each other. “Wha just happened?” one of the ones who stood left of Argul asked.

To make a point Argul pointed at him and shot him too. Now five bandits laid groaning on the ground and two of them were bleeding from abrasions.

Argul made a finger pistol and blew the imaginary smoke away. She put her other hand on her hip and tried to speak as deeply as possible. “Who wants to be next, huh?”

Mia peeked out from behind Argul and pulled a bit on her pants. Her voice was full of admiration. “You are so cool auntie!”

Alyra laid down and yawned noisily. “Wake me up when you are done playing mom.”

That seemed to trigger the guy next to the scrawny leader. “Look at them not taking us seriously. Let’s get em!”

Argul pointed her finger gun at the dude. “Bam!”

A white ray shot from her hand and hit the guy's chest, throwing him backwards. He landed on his back and did a forced backroll before he stopped.

Alyra mumbled to herself, just loud enough for the bandits to hear her. “Really they should just run away like the dogs they are.”

Argul could only sigh at that. A bit of fun and salt was good and all, but Aly always took it a step too far.

A few of the bandits became angry, but Argul could still see three that weren’t quite sure about this. The scrawny leader took over and tried to give his band some courage. “C’mon guys what are you waiting for? We are—”

A magic missile interrupted him and he bit himself on his tongue on his landing. “Arhgblerg!” Never let a wanna be villain speak without punishing it. With true villains you should be careful about that move though, depending on their personality they might see it as rude to interrupt them and then you are likely fucked.

One of the bandits took a step forward and Argul shot a full power missile in front of him. The asphalt of the street cracked in response and the guy looked at the spot wide eyed. A dark spot formed on his pants between his legs.

Arthur clasped his hands together with a clap to get everyone's attention. “Alright, looks like playtime is over. Now is your last chance to run.”

The three usure of before immediately chickened out. “Fuck, I’m not getting paid enough for this.”

Another one of the three gestured wildly towards Argul. “I told you she looked like the silver witch and see what happened because you thought I am stupid!”

The third punched the second and they rounded the corner into a sidestreet. Argul looked at the rest of the group in anticipation. “Are you going to run now too?”

She took a step forwards and the rest of the still standing group took their leave. Argul shouted after them. “Don’t forget the downed idiots!”

Four of them turned around and helped the six wounded before they ran away together again. At least they had a bit of camerady.

Argul looked at Arthur as if nothing had happened. “So, where to next?”

Arthur could only shake his head at the whole szene. “We are too close to the inhabited part of the city to find some houses that haven’t been looted completely.”

Mia took Argul’s hand and pulled her forward energetically. “Let’s go sightseeing!”

Argul let Mia take the lead and they walked further into the city. The deeper they were in Newport, the taller the houses became.

After some time they found a small church surrounded by three story buildings. The building looked old, but well cared for and the plot was surrounded by a stone wall. Argul tried to open the metal fence gate, but it was locked. They walked around the site and discovered a small graveyard at the back of the church.

An old woman was sitting in the middle of it and praying by the looks of it. Suddenly a cloud of mana left her and started to move away. It slowly dissipated with time and Argul watched the whole process in fascination. She had no idea what the goal of the skill was and it intrigued her.

They continued their walk and Argul turned towards Alyra. “That was a praying skill wasn’t it?”

Alyra hummed in agreement. “Yes, but it doesn’t do anything other than wasting your mana.”

That was a bit disappointing, but it still excited Argul to see others do the magic. Maybe it was time for her to stop limiting herself?

Argul calmed herself down. It was a bit too early for that and she wanted to give others the chance to discover magic and create spells and skills. Once people had done that she could stop putting a limit on her experiments.

Some distance away from the church they entered one of the three story buildings. Its door had been broken open and the windows of the first floor were all destroyed, but it looked to be intact otherwise.

They didn’t find anything on the first floor. Well, nothing except the shopping bags that Argul took with her. As someone raised in Germany she had to have an unnecessarily large collection of them, even if she would never use most. She was also pretty sure that Arthur had pocketed something, but she hadn’t seen what.

On the second floor one of the three flats was still closed. The group searched through the other two flats first before breaking open the third one.

The two open flats were picked empty of most useful things. Argul had yet to find any technology that still worked. There had been two computers or rather their empty boxes. Whoever had been here had taken the rest with him for whatever reason.

To get into the third flat Argul simply shot at where she guessed the hinges of the door to be until the door fell open. They looked around the flat a bit. This one had also been picked clean, but Argul pocketed some of the colored pencils as a gift for Mia. 

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Mia on the other hand took a few bobble hats with her. Argul could understand, bobble hats were great no matter what people said.

Alyra was rather bored the whole time. There wasn’t enough space for her to walk around freely and the amount of things to loot for a 2 m tall fox was rather nonexistent in this human city. If Argoul found a large dog bed she would make sure to tease her daughter with that.

They also searched through the third floor, but it was already looted too. From there the group started to look through the various houses. Argul felt a bit as if she was inside a post apocalyptic video game and the comparison wasn’t that far away from reality.

She could also tell that Arthur was pocketing something now and then, but she wouldn’t ask. Argul trusted him enough for that and the guy didn’t have any obligation to tell her everything, even if she was curious.

During their looting Mia found a few nice card and board games. Argul put them in one of her bags, which had proven themselves useful, so they could take the games back to Luna. The girl surely wouldn’t mind. Argul even wondered why Luna hadn’t done so until now, but she could hardly relate to all the worries people had in these troubling times.

Argul herself pocketed a few useful things like scissors or paper here and there. She also took a few mechanical tools like screwdrivers or similar things. You never know what could be useful in the future.

The group continued looting and scavenging until the late afternoon, when Argul finally managed to find something she could use for her experiment. She had found a flashlight you could power with a small dynamo that was already built in and it actually still worked.

After that they started to walk back to the wooly sheep. Arthur had wanted to continue, but Alyra was about to eat someone or something in her boredom and Argul could tell by her dreamy expression that Mia was exhausted.

On the way back Arthur suddenly stopped and turned towards Argul with a serious face. “You promised to tell us who you truly are once we were behind the first city. We are alone right now so it should be a good opportunity to do so.”

Argul blinked and stared at him for a second. She had honestly completely forgotten about that.

She looked around with her mana and space sense to make sure that they were truly alone and then looked at Alyra for confirmation. 

Aly nodded at her, so Argul took a deep breath. “Alright. I am not a human, not even a humanoid.”

Mia looked at her in wonder, but Arthur just raised an eyebrow. “And?” Seriously, that was his only reaction towards her revelation?

Argul scratched her cheek like she had always done in her last life when she wasn’t sure what to say. “Uhm, I have been a human once, but I had depression and killed myself. This somehow led to me becoming a mana core and all of humanity being banished by our old universe.”

She created some water and let it fall to the ground. “As a mana core I create mana so the spreading of the mana zone is in a way my fault.”

She looked down on the wet ground, upset at that fact, but then sighed and relaxed. She couldn’t do anything about it anymore. “I have my own domain that is connected to this universe through portals.”

Argul looked at Arthur. “You were really lucky or unlucky, depending on how you want to look at it, to be extremely close to the first of them. With the spreading of the mana zone there will actually open more of them and one already has done so.”

Arthur looked at her, intrigued by what she had said and nodded. “Now at least a few things make sense. Let’s talk about this later a bit more.” Argul was a bit disappointed by the lack of shock in his reaction.

Arthur turned towards Alyra. “What about you?”

Alyra set down on her hind legs, cleared her throat and put one of her forepaws to her chest. “My humble self is Argul’s daughter, born of her mana and connected to her through a bond of fate.”

Argul rolled her eyes at the theatrics of her daughter. Alyra continued in the most nobel voice she could manage. “I am the collector of knowledge, the keeper of wisdom, but to most I am known as…” 

She made a short break to build up tension. “... the system creator and operator.”

Alyra put her paw down and Arhtur stared at her in disbelief. “That-”

He looked towards Argul. “Is that true?”

Argul shrugged in response. “While the titles are constructs of her own imagination, Alyra is the true system operator.” 

She sighed and looked at Alyra. “That’s also why she isn’t talking that much. She knows literally anything that is happening as long as mana is around. Right now she is restricting herself so you can live mostly normal lives.”

Arthur looked at Alyra with wonder as well as pity. “That is just wow.”

His voice became soft. “That has to be hard.”

Alyra just shrugged and Mia looked at the group of sober adults. “I am hungry.”

Argul had to laugh at that. “Yes, let's get back to our inn.”

The group started walking and Argul turned to Mia. “Were you not interested in who we truly are?”

Mia looked at Argul and smiled brightly. “I was! But auntie is still auntie and Aly should just speak more and be herself!”

Argul smiled back at Mia. The girl truly was innocent still, despite all the things she had seen. Argul also agreed with Mia, Alyra should stop restricting herself only because she feared she might say something the others weren’t supposed to know.

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