Amusingly, the aftermath of the search for two children, too caught up with the power they had gained thanks to their magic, was just as exhausting as the search itself had been. Just a very different kind of exhausting, where the search had been slightly exhausting physically and a little worse when it came to magical and mental exhaustion, the aftermath was a thing of emotions, which could be incredibly exhausting in its own right, even if there shouldn’t be any real investment on my part. Sure, I had met them and considered them quite talented when it came to magic, but other than that, there were a few hundred children of similar age living in the Denver-Springs area and the number of children who had perished in the change was mindboggling enough to avoid thinking about it. Well, the number of people who had perished in and shortly after the change was something nobody wanted to think about, with children sadly being a statistically overrepresented subset of that number. Adults, even untrained ones, had an okay chance to evade and escape the Shattered but a child, especially one trapped in a home with the Shattered who used to be their parents? None of them would make it out alive.

Maybe my desire to protect these two children came from some sort of subconscious need to protect the young of the species, triggered by the knowledge that literal millions of children had died that pushed me to find and help them, maybe it was a need to demonstrate my ability, maybe one of the reasons I had given Luna had been compelling me, I wasn’t sure and now, in hindsight, I couldn’t really tell why I had pushed myself as I had.

Not that it truly mattered, I merely noticed an interesting data point and promised myself to look into my own behaviour some more, especially as I sought to understand the mysteries of the mind. After all, if I wasn’t able to understand my own mind, how would I ever be able to understand the mind of another person? Let alone extract the memories of Sigmir which might possibly, with a lot of hope, be encoded in some way into the Legacy of Morgana thanks to the EXP she had gifted me in her last moment? No, I needed to understand my own mind, just as much as I needed to understand how other people functioned, though given just how important my mind was to me, I would be a lot more cautious when it came to the exploration of my self.

But that was something for later, first, there was the aftermath of two dumb kids to deal with. The first part of that came when Maggy caught up to us with Silva and Jack, all of them looking slightly harried, only to spot me, sitting on a comfortable seat of Ice and the two kids who had become very introspective and quiet during my lecture. The sheer incredulity on their faces was something I would savour for some time, especially the canine expression of disbelief on Silva’s face was one for the ages.

Jack was the one breaking through his stupor first, looking at Maggy with a bit of annoyance and confusion, asking why the hurry had been necessary, only for Maggy to shush him and grab the two kids into a hug, barely looking at me for the moment. Then, once she had hugged the stuffing out of them, possibility breaking a bone or two in the process given how much Liam had groaned as he was hugged, she tried to do the same with me and it was only thanks to my supernatural resilience that I escaped crippling injuries. Maybe the woman wasn’t some sort of thief and spy, maybe she had missed her calling as an assassin, capable of killing people in a single hug. Bewear of the Maggy, for she is a hugger.

Once the hugging was done to Maggy’s satisfaction, or maybe because she realised us puny mortals needed to breathe, she demonstrated that she most certainly did not. There was no other explanation for how she could be able to deliver an impassioned scolding, lasting for multiple minutes without pausing long enough to draw a single breath, at least not one I noticed. Sure, there was the possibility that she had excellent breath control but given the volume and vigour of her address, I was personally leaning more towards some sort of ability that allowed her to absorb oxygen through her skin.

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Once that was done, and a short apology from Liam, Sandy and Maggy was delivered to a now fairly bemused-looking Jack, we returned to the tower and to the other part of the aftermath, the slightly unexpected part.

But I should have expected the situation, I certainly had seen a sign of it before. The second part of the aftermath came from Luna, who I now realised was deeply unhappy about the current situation and feeling more than just a little neglected. As such, she barely looked at me when we returned to the tower, though she was present and her entire body-language and expression screamed that she was unhappy with me, almost louder than any words could.

It only took me a moment to realise where the problem was. Just earlier, I had promised her that she, Luna, was my priority, only to disappear from the spot I had been sitting on, leaving her behind. No matter how mentally mature she was, thanks to the effect of her system on her mind, there seemed to be a component of emotional maturity and stability she hadn’t attained yet. The situation also drove home that Luna had gone from what was essentially an only child to somebody who had to share their parental figure. Before, we had been spending numerous hours every day together, only interrupted by my experiments, which she occasionally joined, her own interests or certain basic necessities. And if I wasn’t with her, Silva made usually sure that Luna wasn’t left alone and endangered, acting as companion and protector at the same time.

But now, with the amount of teaching I was doing and the fairly high security in the area, especially within the tower itself, Luna was left alone a lot more than she had been. Granted, she also had additional responsibilities, mainly when it came to teaching and guiding the students we had collected, but I had a feeling that those weren’t enough to make my daughter happy.

Walking over, consciously separating myself from Jack, Maggy and the two kids, I briefly tried to find the right words to say, only to come up empty. So, instead of trying to speak, I simply placed a hand on Luna’s shoulder, even as she demonstratively looked away from me, studying some object nearby intently.

“Would you like to show me how much you have managed to accomplish with the Kara’kesh we found in the dungeon? You had it for quite some time now and I’m curious if you found out something we didn’t know before,” I asked her, my voice quiet so nobody else could hear. Well, maybe Silva would manage with her canine ears, but nobody else.

For a moment, Luna continued to look away from me before starting to walk, heading roughly in the same direction Maggy and I had used earlier, when looking for her, thinking the two kids were with her. After taking a few steps, she looked over her shoulder and made a brief, almost curt, motion with her head, indicating I should follow.

If it was anybody but Luna, I would have utterly ignored the implied insult, the gesture that she had a right to command me but for my dear daughter, especially in this particular case, I wasn’t about to chastise her for it, at least not harshly. We would talk, and I would make my displeasure at her behaviour quietly known, but I wasn’t about to throw away a chance to soothe the hurt I had inadvertently caused her.

So, I followed after her, waiting for her to talk if she wanted to. If now, I was perfectly content to wait until we reached her clearing, the place we were most likely headed to, and I had seen her recent accomplishments with the curious device we had recovered in the nearby dungeon.

Thinking of that place, we might want to go there again at some point, get some extra EXP, maybe find out if the supplies we found there continued to be generated or if that had been some sort of one-time thing.

Either way, that was for later, for now, I had some accomplishments to observe and to assure my daughter that she was, and would remain, important to me, not somebody I would leave behind for any real amount of time. As long as she wanted to remain by my side, she would have her spot, just like I wouldn’t send Lia away, though that was an entirely different topic. One that might come up somewhat soon, depending on how her continued relationship with Samantha developed and what priorities she decided to set for herself.