The Girl Who Hacked The Magic System

PoV: Aurea

"Mom?"

"You see what I was talking about?"

Lillian is sitting on a sofa. Her posture seems relaxed, but she is indeed staring at nothing and doesn't seem to be able to notice her surroundings.

"Hmmm… let me see…"

She still exudes that divine aura of the other day, which seems even stronger now than it was before.

I switch to my mana senses, and what I see makes me gasp.

"What? Aurea?"

"Wait, just a minute."

Her magical body is beautiful. It's light blue, speckled with gold, and pulsating with raw power.

No, that's not the whole picture.

She is huge.

I can sense that what I see here is just a shard, a core, not her whole being.

Her magical body seems to expand infinitely in all directions.

And there is a very faint cord going upwards. Maybe that's where her consciousness is?

If so, she is very far away from her body. Maybe doing some sort of godly business?

I can't see the end of that upwards cord, but I need to have her come back.

I extend my own mana body, creating something akin to a tentacle, and reach Mom's cord with it.

The touch is warm and gentle, and I think that I can hear some faint echoes of her thoughts. It's like listening to someone talking in another room. I can hear the speech but can't really understand the words.

If I can listen to her, maybe she can hear me as well. But I need to make my message clearer.

I use all my will to think, as loud as one can possibly think, 'Mom, come home.'

It doesn't take long for her to change. I feel her consciousness approaching through the cord, so I release it and step back to my normal field of perception.

"Aurea? Are you okay?"

It's Levy, worried because I probably looked like Mom for some instants.

"Yes, she is…"

"Oh, Aurea. You're here."

"Good morning, mother. Welcome back."

"I did think I heard you calling… have you been here for long?"

"Not very long, but it seems that you have been wherever you were for quite some time."

"Oh…"

"Lily. Why won't you share with us what is happening?"

"I didn't want to worry you, Levy… but it seems that by doing so I ended up actually worrying you anyway. I'm sorry."

"So, Mom. Will you please tell us what the hell this is all about? Remember that we have Lovelace with us, who's already witnessed a deity rise."

"You're right, Aurea. I'm sorry. Isn't Lovelace with you today?"

"Sadly not, she has some stuff holding her in the main army. But I can try to help you with whatever I can."

"That's sad. I would like to see her. But you're right, there's no point in trying to hide what's happening anymore, so what's been happening is that I've been transported to a weird place over and over again…"

:::

"That sounds like a tutorial area for deities…"

"A tutowhat area?"

"It's an area where beginners in something, normally games in my world, pass through their starting training and learn to use their basic abilities."

"That checks out with my experience… but I don't think I've advanced too much."

"Well, you learned how to wield the emotion that defines your divinity, and it seems to have unlocked something for you. Your magical body changed."

"My mana body… changed? How does it look like now?"

"It is light blue, speckled with gold. It is beautiful and pure like a celestial crystal, and there was a cord, which seems to be the connection between this body and your consciousness."

"A… connection?"

"Yes, and I got the distinct impression that your body here was more like a shard or fragment and not the whole you."

"That makes sense. Aurea, Lily… aren't gods able to be in more than one place at the same time? Like, talking with priests in a temple while at the same time helping someone in a place far away?"

"Well, that's what the stories say, Levy… but I don't seem to be able to do it."

"Yet, Mom. Maybe you are supposed to learn that. Like you learned how to use the emotion that defines your godly status."

"Well… to be honest, I haven't even tried. Every time I went to that other place, I was carried there without any agency on my part."

"The people who started praying for you did so wishing for compassion. Wishing for their plight to be heard, for someone to extend them a hand. That's why you became the goddess of compassion."

I already knew, but spelling it like this really drives home how awesome my mother is.

"You needed to learn how to wield that sentiment because it is the nature of your divinity. It's what drives the prayers of the people and the sermon of your priests. You've already learned how to activate it. Now, try to wield it for an objective."

"An objective?"

"Yes. It can be anything, really. Like… Oh. I know. Try to hear the prayers that are being sent to you at this very moment."

"Hear the prayers…"

:::

PoV: Lillian

Aurea is right. When people pray to me, they empower me. I can feel it in the marrow of my bones, in every fiber of my being.

I can feel the currents inside me, pulling.

I can feel the whispers that form the blue thread that composes my essence.

So, all I need to do is to listen to it, then?

I close my eyes, switching my focus. I choose a thread at random and 'touch' it with my consciousness.

"Saint Lily. Please, help my mother. She has been taken by bad guys. Please, Saint Lily."

A child's voice. She is… oh, Amapytu. But she is not from that place. She came from far away to pray at the temple there. Her mother… Ah, I see. Near the Essendia border, there's some sort of people smuggling gang there.

As I take note of the location of the gang, I focus on another of those threads… no, I'll take two at the same time.

Gods can do that, right?

Yes, they can. I can, at least.

One of those is from that very mother. But she is not praying for her own safety. She is praying for the safety of her daughter.

The other is praying for the war to end so her loved one can come back home.

I notice that there is no difference in weight between prayers performed in temples or at home. But, somehow, I know that it's a unique trait of mine.

I keep expanding, listening to more and more prayers from all of Wesgoth. It doesn't take long before I manage to listen to up to a thousand prayers at the same time.

In all of them, I know the identity and location of the person praying, as well as the condition of all people involved in that prayer.

It's a huge stream of data, but somehow my brain doesn't seem to have a problem parsing through all that, even while I make decisions on what to do with each individual prayer.

"You are right, Aurea."

I try to get back to the conversation without interrupting the flow of data.

"I can hear them. I can hear hundreds and hundreds of prayers that are happening at this very moment. And I can do it all while chatting with you, now that I got used to it."