Sophia made a quick trip to the capital to collect the king because she didn’t want to bother explaining the portal plan to the mayor of the city they were currently in herself. Naturally, things still took quite a while as it was far from an easy topic, especially because Vess, the mayor, still needed to learn about the advanced magic the blonde and the others had introduced to the capital.
"Wow, that took a lot longer than I had thought…" The group was back on the streets when Sophia let out a sigh.
“Really?” Maya tilted her head. “I was expecting for it to take the entire day.”
“At the very least.” Ari nodded a few times.
“Well, fair enough.” The blonde couldn’t argue against that in the end. “Too bad the portal hub in the capital isn’t done yet. That means I have to return here once they finish it. For now, I just put it underground here and in the capital.”
“It will take you a grand total of seven minutes to do that.” The jaguar rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you’ll be able to pull through with it.”
“Barely!” As usual, she couldn’t do without complaining. “By the way, we’ve been walking around now for a little while, and while the city is quite pretty, it looks exactly like a smaller part of the capital. Nothing new or exciting, I mean. How about we get something to eat and then get going?"
“Sounds good!” Steph nodded. “Traveling is more fun~.”
“Yeah.” The others also agreed.
Afterward, the group briefly looked for a nice-looking restaurant to eat something together before leaving the city, as there was nothing of interest to do.
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They traveled for about an hour, but as the meeting with the mayor had taken quite a while, it was already getting dark, and they decided to return to Sophia’s domain.
“Alright, let’s go and start the bioluminescence biome!” Back in the cottage, Steph was still full of energy and wanted to start the project they came up with two weeks ago.
“Ohh!” Maya liked the idea because she also wanted to play around with it back then.
“Hmm,” The blonde tilted her head. "I mean, it's still kinda early, and we've already eaten, so we might as well play around some more!"
“Let’s go!” And so, before getting comfortable, the group decided to immediately head out again.
“Alrighty, this way!” Outside the cottage, Sophia opened another one of her portals. “I placed the samples from the hot springs forest there.”
“Perfect!” Highly motivated, Steph was the first to step through it before everyone else followed after her.
“Uhh… You sure about that?” On the other side, Maya tilted her head while looking around. All there was, was the endless white void of her standard domain.
“E-Eh?” Sophia looked the most surprised. “I am 100% certain I had put it here.”
“Well, it’s not a surprise that your sudden surge in navigation abilities was just a fluke.” Maya didn’t sound surprised. “Be it your domain or not. You having no sense of direction even here makes much more sense."
“True.” Everyone besides the blonde agreed with the cat-girl.
“Hey!” She didn’t like that. “Wait a moment!” Sophia then looked into the distance to her right. A moment later, she was gone.
“Huh?!” The others hadn’t seen that one coming.
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Instantly after disappearing, the blonde arrived in another part of her domain. However, the new area had nothing with the previous all-white nothingness in common.
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“What happened here?!” She found herself inside a massive forest she hadn't seen before. It was far from a regular forest, as well. The place was littered with very old-looking trees covered in moss and vines, while the entire area felt very moist with an incredibly high humidity. Mushrooms had grown everywhere, as well. Not to mention that they came in all sorts of healthy and unhealthy colors, and some of them were even taller than Sophia. All of this wasn’t the most striking in the forest, though. Half of the trees, moss, vines, and mushrooms were glowing in a pale blue light that illuminated the entire area and gave it a slightly eerie but fascinating feeling.
A few moments after her arrival and taking in all the sights, the blonde was suddenly swarmed by countless pink and purple magic particles that started swirling around her while it seemed like they were even more active than usual.
“Oh?” Sophia curiously watched them dancing around for a little bit. “You seem quite excited! Did you all make this forest?” She took a wild guess. Hearing that, the particles increased the speed at which they were moving around the tiger. "I guess that's a yes, huh?"
Being happy they were understood, the ambient magic left inside the forest also swarmed the tiger.
"Wait a moment!” It seemed like she noticed something. “Does that mean you all stole the swampy biome sample from the place I put it?” Instantly after, every single pink and purple particle in the air froze as they got caught. A moment later, a part of the particles left Sophia and covered a small area of the forest that looked relatively normal. Then, that area disappeared, leaving behind a small hole.
"Did you just return it to where I had initially put it?" Sophia tried to guess what they were doing as she watched the particles without interrupting. After they were done, the magic returned to the blonde while moving up and down a few times.
"I guess that means the others will have something to play with before I return, huh? Good!" It seemed like she first wanted to spend some more time in the forest. “How did you all even do that in the first place?”
Trying to answer her question, some of the magic particles formed into a big ball while swirling around before suddenly jumping around two meters to the side. “Ah, you just took it and put it somewhere else, huh?”
Hearing her guess, the magic stopped their act and returned to swirling around the blonde. “Haha, just like that? How fun~.” She liked how carefree they were. “You still should’ve said something, though! I kinda embarrassed myself earlier when I wanted to show the samples to the others, and nothing was there…”
Learning that they caused trouble for her, the particles stopped moving once more. They’d become noticeably less sparkly, as well. “H-Hey! There’s no need to get depressed over that!” She immediately felt guilty. “I told you that you can do whatever you want in my domain, so it’s totally alright! Glowy spooky forest sounded like a fun idea, so you wanted to play with it, right?”
Seemingly relieved about that, the particles perked up again and happily circled around the blonde for a little bit while also playfully hitting her with light wind gusts. “Still, why didn’t any of you tell me and simply took it to a different place?”
The pink and purple magic took a bit of a distance from the blonde and then started darting all over the place in an uncoordinated way before suddenly hitting Sophia with a gust of wind so hard it swept her off her feet, and she landed butt-first on the ground. "HEY! Don't surprise me like that!" She wasn't a fan of that. The particles then also immediately swarmed her once more, and it seemed like they were trying to help her up, too, "Oh, wait, is that what it was? You wanted it to be a surprise for me?”
In response to that, the particles started jumping up and down once Sophia was back on her feet again. “I see!” She looked quite happy about that. “Thank you! I wasn’t expecting that, but I love it! It turned out super well, too! Maya and the others will have to try really hard to do something nearly as impressive~.”
Delighted by the praise, the ambient magic around the tiger looked like it started dancing again. "Hehe~." The blonde watched them for a little while with a big smile on her lips. “For the future, though, whenever I bring new samples into the domain, and you see something interesting, could you leave something for us to play with, too? My other friends also love creating stuff, and I want everyone to have fun in here.”
The particles stopped their dance momentarily to move up and down before returning to their previous rhythmic movements. "Thank you!" She was glad they understood.
Afterward, the blonde stayed for a little longer and chatted some more with magic before she eventually decided to return to the others she had left earlier to search for the biome sample.
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“Where have you been?!” Back with the group, Sophia was immediately greeted by Maya. “You were gone for like half an hour!”
“Ahh…” She scratched her cheek in return. “I went to look for the swampy sample we had gathered back then.” She pointed at the few mossy trees and mushrooms that were now behind them. “Once I found it, I tried to understand why it happened. Turns out domains are a little more complicated than I had previously anticipated, I guess?” As usual, Sophia kept those things vague. “It shouldn’t happen anymore from now on.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, let’s go!” It seems like Steph had gotten even more impatient while her sister was gone because she was already circling the samples with an expression showing that she was raring to go and play with it.
“There was no need to wait for me, you know?”
“SEE!” The dog-girl raised her voice. “I told you we didn’t have to wait!”
“Ahaha…” The others weren’t sure how to react to that.
Once all that was taken care of, the group started building with the swampy biome sample while Sophia was secretly cheering them on to match and surpass magic, who had done the same in a different corner of her domain.