Chapter 71: Chapter 68

The next few nights Argul spent enchanting the wooden tools of the village inside of her domain with her light spell. Not only would she train a different material this way, but her control too.

She noticed that the best possible way to enchant was to do it along the growth of the wood and not against it. The mana moved more easily through the cells that transport water to the leaves originally and Argul could use them as conductors now that the wood was dead. Because of that she often ended up stretching the enchantment through the whole tool or in case of some of the smaller planks had to put them tightly together.

While Argul enchanted the tools, the villagers themselves spent most of their time preparing for the coming fight. In a sense they constructed a wooden fortress around the portal, just that the goal of the fortress was to keep things inside and not outside. They only had to be careful that the thing didn’t get burned down, but since they kept the wood wet at all times Argul guessed they had already considered that possibility.

What really impressed her however was the plain cruelty of some of their traps. They reminded Argul of traps used in the Vietnamese war, simple yet very effective. One just had to take a wrong step and would find their foot in a small whole, impaled on a wooden spike. If the person tried to pull their leg out it would get impaled by a few more rough wooden spikes, effectively rooting them in that spot. The villagers could then simply shoot the person or strike them with one of their long spears.

There were spikes pretty much everywhere in the fortress to ensure a variety of limps got impaled and the chance of someone getting through that unharmed was quite slim. Once the traps were covered by corpses though, things would become more difficult for the small faction. This was likely the reason why they started to trap the other side of the portal too, at least Argul guessed that was what the villagers were doing with the small spikes they took through the portal.

She wasn’t sure why she was judging the village's defenses, but it was quite fun. Maybe she was rooting a bit for them to win?

Yeah, that was definitely it. Argul didn’t really want the lunatics inside of her domain.

She of course didn’t only work at night. During the day she tested her enchanting on fabrics and leather gloves. Sadly Argul didn’t have success with any of the latter. The material fought against the enchantment in a weird way and enchanting them would be a waste of time. She attributed that to either the animal not being great with magic or the fact that the gloves had been crafted before mana was around.

The failure did give her a possible theory for why organic materials conducted mana worse than metal. They grew with the mana signature of the being they were part of so maybe the materials reacted negatively to mana of a different kind. Since the being was already dead though, the resistance was a lot easier to overwhelm than before. She would have to test that sometime to make sure.

The fabrics were a completely different problem for Argul. She couldn’t just work with them like she did with metal or wood, because they weren’t one thing but the result of a lot of strings that came together in just the right way. This in turn meant she had to create an enchantment on multiple parts and it had to still work when some of the parts shifted to slightly different positions. Doing this precision work while also having to be careful not to overwhelm the fabric with the mana pressure was extremely mentally straining and took Argul a lot longer than any of her other works.

She also tried to enchant paper a few times, but didn’t have much luck with that either. Putting the enchantment on the paper had the same problems as the fabrics, but you had to be even more careful not to destroy the material in the process which put Argul at her mental limit in terms of concentration. Activating the enchantment however overwhelmed the material no matter what she tried, turning the enchanted paper into little more than dust and a one time use talisman. 

On a positive note though, you could actually see her enchantments on paper. They were all yellow as she had only used the light enchantment for now, but it was still cool to be able to see what she had been doing the whole time. 

Argul had shown and explained one of them to Arthur, getting a hopeless shaking of the head in return. The guy couldn’t follow her at all and told her that she wasn’t normal. She could accept that, because it was the truth and her enchantment looked more like an incredibly detailed sketch of some computer motherboard. 

Maybe someone who understood that would be able to follow her?

In between all of the enchanting Argul also worked with Mia to develop a way to do magic for humans. The girl was now able to perform the light spell or rather her version of it on her own. She still needed to chant a few words to not lose her image of the spell, but that was only a matter of training.

In all honesty Mia was doing most of this herself and the only thing Argul helped with was to come up with possible images or explain how something worked with physiks. An example for that was heat being created when atoms move erratically due to them having a lot of energy. They then collide more often and release their energy in the form of heat. At least that was how it worked with metals.

Argul wasn’t sure if it would help Mia, but there wasn’t much more she could do there. It was just that simple with heat being a lot of energy and cold being only a little energy.

She looked over to the couches at the girl where the usual group was playing cards right now and smiled. Now that Mia was able to cast light herself they could play longer and the girl used that quite shamelessly. Argul allowed it, because Mia had worked for this and thus earned it in her opinion. The other men had to work the next day anyway so they wouldn’t overdo it, at least she hoped so. 

Argul took a break from thinking and watched them instead while she played around with one of the enchanted spoons.

The door to the inn opened and a tall man entered, closely followed by what one could call two bodyguards. They observed the room for a moment before casually walking up to Argul.

The leader of the group cleared his throat and pointed at the chair opposite of Argul before he spoke in a clear, but deep voice. “Is this place free by any chance?”

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Argul turned to the group and regarded them fully for the first time. The leader of the group had a dark brown skin color and was wearing casual clothes, a hat and a vest. She could tell that he was quite muscled underneath his clothing.

The man’s entourage was wearing cloaks and Argul couldn’t tell what they looked like. It already made her uncomfortable.

She looked the leader of the group in his deep brown eyes. “Technically yes, but-” Argul made a gesture to the rest of the inn standing full of empty tables and chairs. “So are all the other seats so feel free to take one of them.”

The man acted hurt and Argul had only noticed it was acting due to her higher stats. “Why so dismissive? I just wanted to share a table with a beautiful woman such as you.”

Argul raised an eyebrow, laid the spoon on the table and crossed her arms. Whoever this was she did not really want to have to deal with them. “Look, whoever you are, sweet compliments won't get you any further than this. Next time you approach someone you should consider doing so in a less shady manner.”

One of his bodyguards, or whatever they were, tried to identify her and she immediately disrupted his spell. She squinted at the leader. “Now that’s just plain rude of you.”

The man smiled politely. “My apologies, but I had to confirm that you are in fact the rumored silver witch.”

Argul’s tail twitched in annoyance. “Yes and you could have done so just by asking. Now you are free to leave me alone.”

The man’s smile slipped for a second. “Again, let me apologize for the way this started. We did not mean to offend you.”

Now Argul had enough. The man wasn’t even trying to hide that he was trying to pull something politically anymore and she didn’t want to be part of any of it. Heck, she didn’t even know who she was speaking with and it really pissed her off.

Argul stood up and pushed her chair unnecessarily forcefully against the table. “Whatever you want, the answer is no.”

She quite literally growled at them. “You also don’t need to come back for anything else, I won’t help you.”

Then she turned around and marched off towards the others. Argul would have gladly helped if someone just came to her and asked about stuff related to mana, but people like that didn’t approach with such careful moves and normally non confronting words. 

This guy reeked of politics for her however and she hated it. All the acting and play, all the dirty tricks were a hindrance to her and disgusting. They should just come and tell her what they wanted and not waste her time with shit like that.

The guy sighed deeply and sneakily pocketed the spoon. “Hopefully the next time we meet you will be more amenable.” Then he turned around and walked out of the inn with his guards.

Argul growled again and continued to stomp over to her family. Then she let herself fall on the couch next to her daughter angrily.

Mia looked up from her cards. “Who was that?”

Argul breathed out heavily. “I have no idea and I really don’t want to know either, but he pissed me off.”

She looked at the table for a moment. “Next round I am in.”

The three guys and Arthur groaned together. Their chances to win had just been lowered drastically.

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