The Weight of Legacy

Fine, [Meditation] might have stood a chance after all.

…For a few seconds, at least.

Malwine stared at the panel, unable to burn a hole through it from the mere act of glaring, yet nonetheless wishing she could.

When Veit had first told her about evolving the Skill by pushing it past its limits, it had sounded almost conceptual. Something she could do, certainly, if she wanted to fix the issue of her imbalance, but the actual execution of it felt beyond her.

Her failed attempts did nothing to make her feel any better about it.

Now, however… she had an advantage she did not have back then. Even if she remained unable to actually detect the imbalance as the object Veit used did, she had a general idea about just how she could push for the evolution.

As a Skill, [Meditation] required constant… input. The input, in this case, was that topic she was technically required to dwell upon. As she'd suspected, that was ridiculously broad, which explained how she'd gotten away with just using the Skill however she wanted. So long as she provided that vague input, the Skill would continuously provide an effect that helped her accrued [Toll] drop and restored her [Integrity]—slowly indeed. If she'd thought the 'considerable' bonuses had been annoyingly ambiguous, the 'minuscule' restoration specified here was worse. Not only was it unclear, but just the label was disappointing.

Worse yet, the supposed variance in the effectiveness of the restoration provided by the Skill didn't appear to be functional. It wasn't that it didn't exist—more like it had become a jumbled mess that was being ignored for the sake of letting the Skill work at all. The same went for what Malwine could only guess was the small chance of scalable values being increased, as a section of the Skill seemed to reference that, then go nowhere.

She couldn't help but shudder. When she'd heard of avoiding imbalance, she'd heard of it within the context of how it could affect her leveling speed. How having a Skill of too high a rarity compared to the rest could make her life harder.

But at no point had she heard that a Skill of too low a rarity might collapse under the pressure, yet that was what this felt like. It felt like [Meditation] was nothing but a shriveled up husk that could barely handle its own existence by now. Her only Uncommon Skill was in tatters, to the point Malwine herself could barely make sense of it.

Had she not ended up getting these Forger Skills, would she ever have learned this? Or would she have simply continued wondering just why her Skill was so useless, not knowing it simply could barely get anything done?

No use dwelling on that… Malwine shook her head. Veit had told her evolving Skills was about pushing their limits, so push the limits she would. The real question was—which limits? Should she be aiming for pushing against what she thought [Meditation] should be able to do, given what [System Eye] told her once existed within it, or against what it ultimately did in reality?

It stood to reason that it'd be the former, but that brought in problems by itself, considering the Skill wasn't working as it should. Still, it was as good a place as any to start, and if it didn't work, her options would narrow down even further.

[Meditation] should have been able to raise her Affinities' values by itself—those fit snuggly under the category of scalable values. However, every time she'd raised those, it had been due to her efforts, with no aid from the Skill itself. The fact that the part of the Skill that would've handled that was broken simply confirmed that.

For that, she focused on {Implicit}. She'd come to terms with just how unlikely it'd be for her to ever get as comfortable with that Affinity as her little sister was. For Adelheid, it was natural, but Malwine had to admit simply giving herself the Affinity hadn't bridged that gap for her. She still felt distant from it, by far.

How would [Meditation] have reacted to this, if it worked as it should? Even with some creative applications of [Multitasking], Malwine found it difficult to keep track of how the Skill's actual activation in practice compared to the theoretical. Her mind flashed back to Veit's warnings about Skills that split her consciousness, and she couldn't help but agree—while also continuing as she was. There was no other way.

The Skill wanted to go down a path that was no longer available to it, she realized. It reminded Malwine of muscle memory, somehow—she didn't get any impressions directly tied to any of the broken elements on the Skill, so much as she got the impression that the Skill was trying and failing to reach for them.

Malwine had to admit she didn't have a knack for the Affinities side of the system. Certainly, she could manage identifying them if she had enough information, and grabbing them had been easy enough—the problem was actually making something out of them.

She didn't have Adelheid's talent, so she could only truly go so far. Not just with those she'd taken from her little sister, but with all of them. Even {Legacy} had fallen behind by nearly a thousand, compared to Adelheid's {Missing}. How much of a difference would an actual functional [Meditation] Skill have made? Would she have been further along by now?

Veit's technique for cultivating her Affinities worked better than anything Malwine had done on her own, so try as she might to deny it, she'd found herself having to question whether she was just personally bad at that part of cultivation. Considering her core stage would always serve as the base of her total level, that was… not great.

I…

Malwine pushed. She wasn't even sure what she meant to do. How did one push against a limit, when it was impossible to determine what the limit was? Amidst the wreckage of what should have been [Meditation]'s additional features, she could make none out. She could barely guess how the small chance of gains worked, let alone what its limits might have been.

{Implicit}. {Implicit}. {Implicit}.

She repeated the Affinity's name like a mantra—one far less entertaining than the 'you are a wave in your own ocean' thing. She might have been too quick to judge that one, actually. It would have been far more entertaining than this. Her attempt at focusing here amounted to repetition, but she hoped it'd work.

Something shook within the Skill, then, and Malwine kept thinking of her evershifting opinions on the Affinity. Things left undone. Things that may yet be done. That was what her personal version of the Affinity stood for, to the point it hadn't been a perfect copy of Adelheid's original one.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

[Meditation] was indeed reaching for something. Without the senses given to her by [System Eye], Malwine might never have noticed. It wasn't a useless Skill so much as it was a hopelessly broken one, its impact on the balance of her categories impossible to miss due to that. Not a Skill that weighed too much on the totality of her Classes, but one that had fallen apart to such an extent that it was growing thinner and weaker by the second.

Even pressing against it felt ill-advised, as if her very attempts at getting it to notice what it should have been capable of doing it were somehow exacerbating its decay. Whether this Skill had always been vulnerable, or the impact of her getting [Enforced Longevity] had taken it to this point, Malwine couldn't tell. She had no frame of reference, having lacked these senses back when she'd first gotten either Skill.

It started to feel like a rickety platform. The visualization of her core and the pier was shaking, an earthquake moving through the depiction of her very own nature, for she had relied heavily on [Meditation] to make it a reality.

On a whim, she reached for the vines she'd woven from {Foresight} and {Implicit}, selecting one from which to take the latter. It spun like a particularly unruly wire being undone, stubbornly clinging to the shape it had once held. By the time it gave in and did as she commanded, the shaking had worsened.

Malwine held on to the strand of {Implicit}—she didn't need [Meditation] for this, did she? Even [Depicture] was stated to work with any ability that handled visualization. It didn't need to be just the one.

"Where should we be?" she asked of the voiceless Affinity, as if it would actually react to being spoken to—not that she doubted it could.

Again and again, [Meditation] fell flat on its face, reaching for that which it could no longer do. It was unnerving—she had some measure of pride about having built this place, yet it was falling apart due to her own actions.

Malwine focused her visualization's false eyes on the quivering waters. Just a little longer.

At some point, she went and started shamelessly ripping the booklet off, letting go of [System Eye] to view it with [Remote Reading].

You are a wave in your own ocean, — born of ripples, shaken earth, — rise from the depths, to quiver and wander, — cross the sea, across the surface, — looming highs and tranquil lows, — reach the coast, graze the sands, — start anew, now that you are gone.

The pier faded from view, and all of a sudden, Malwine found she could imagine this. Strange as the contents of the booklet had been, now that she actually put them to practice, they were surprisingly appealing.

Soothing. Especially for someone who just so happened to have a core that was built like this, in a world where most lived in fear of the sea.

There seemed to be no end in sight for the metaphysical earthquake, but it did get easier to bear, even as [Meditation] continued playing the part of a siege engine against its own faulty components.

By now, Malwine was convinced simply trying to push the limits of what the Skill could do still wouldn't have been enough. No, it had to be this. She had to try and push it past the limits of what it was made to do.

The only question was whether this could work. This was what would have made the Skill evolve normally, or so she suspected. But Malwine still had no idea if its current state was capable of that. This was far more complex in reality than how it had seemed back when she discussed it with Veit.

Perhaps the wise thing to do would have been just that—she should have stopped, and talked to him again. Maybe he'd have had something else to say. But Malwine felt [Meditation] was on the cusp of something, as hours passed. The Skill thrashed about, helpless. It might not have been designed by anyone, but it still came into reality with a purpose.

It was that sense of secondhand, unthinking yet clear frustration that she clung to as she waited and waited.

Eventually, something gave, as if the pressure building up against the doors of a dam had finally become enough to turn the barest of cracks into the catalyst for a collapse. A weight didn't lift off her shoulders so much as it evaporated entirely.

Her eyes snapped open. Malwine gasped, barely steadying herself in order to at least pretend she'd awoken normally. Relief flowed through her as she reminded herself she wasn't in the middle of a lesson right now—she was meditating on her own time.

No one had seen that.

Gritting her teeth, she turned to face the notification before her, all while shuddering as if something within were being swiftly rearranged.

Malwine blinked—she hadn't expected the mantra to have that much of an impact. Still, she found she could only do so much staring before she broke into a grin. At last, she'd done it. Not only had [Meditation] evolved, but it had changed into something of Epic rarity. That was better than she'd hoped.

Curious, she dove into this new version of it with [System Eye], seeking to find the differences… and it felt like an entirely new Skill. Sure, the basic aspect of meditation remained there, but it was only a part of it now. She'd lost hypothetical potential of randomly raising attributes with it, but it wasn't as if that feature had ever actually done her any good.

The first thing she noticed beyond that was the new Skill's potential to be passive. There was nothing stopping her from simply leaving her mana to circulate, and it didn't take her long to notice the Skill seemed to have safeguards in place to ensure there was always a net gain there. The restorative effects for [Toll] had test conditions that required the drop to accrued [Toll] to always overwhelm the cost of keeping her mana circulating, even if by the smallest possible margin. The formula itself was unknown to her.

If she was interpreting the broad strokes of it right, she had just become capable of constantly circulating her mana. Certainly, if she actually used it to activate Skills and accrued [Toll] that way, the cost would outpace any restoration this new Skill provided, but overall, this was huge.

As for the rest of the Skill, she could see it appeared to have some measures in place to detect when she was visualizing her core intentionally. It might have also applied to her Affinities in general—Malwine wasn't entirely sure. The criteria the test used there wasn't entirely clear to her. The bonus itself was more straightforward—though it did once again dub itself 'considerable', with no numbers given—as was the reinforcement to her core's structure. That part seemed to deal with underlying mechanics, somehow ensuring her core didn't change too much without her input via visualization, all while encouraging it.

This was interesting. Very interesting.

Her near immediate reaction was to prepare herself to send her double off, to tell Veit about her progress with this. She had relied on her Forgery Skills for this—at least on [System Eye]—so she could likely have gotten him interested on the subject despite their recent differences.

It was the hour that had her hesitating. While she still didn't have the clock of her dreams, that trustworthy pebble did warn her it had been a while since the meal she'd come to think of as dinner. Most people would be sleeping by now.

Malwine did know that Veit dedicated time towards both eating and sleeping, so it wasn't out of the question that he might be doing either at the moment. As much as it sucked, she did try to be considerate sometimes.

She'd started to consider a simple matter—sometimes, it was probably for the best to avoid antagonizing people by bothering them too much, especially when she had established a mutually beneficial social relationship with them.

Look at us, Malwine thought as she envisioned the platonic idea of the widow. We're growing, aren't we?

She might no longer have seen herself as the woman she'd been in that past life, but that sense of nostalgia remained.

Malwine would aim to act with some measure of care, even if that mere goal meant admitting she'd changed.

Hopefully for the better.