NOVEL NEXT Chapter 108 - Out of the Box
By the time The Flowers came around, Malwine couldn't even justify having her mandatory regrets about having gotten something done—evolving [Meditation] made that much of a difference.
"What I don't understand is why it felt lighter," Malwine admitted. "You said my <Soul> was heavier than the rest."
Veit only shrugged. "Without having witnessed the change in person, I can only guess the rest of your Skills there were being forced to overcompensate for it. Your Class was presumably already used to a level of power it could not maintain with one Skill faltering, and in its attempts to stay afloat, it overshot."
Malwine nodded. She had to admit the difference had been immediate. A single trip to Beuzaheim—as her double—had granted [Earthless Glory] two levels, with [Stylus in Style] and [Write Anything] reaching 11 and 13, respectively. And [Write Anywhere] had budged, after what felt like an eternity. It was at 31 now. The lack of an Aspect there still stung, but her newfound joy was overshadowing any and all complaints.
Her <Body> and <Word> Skills could once again grow.
"The next gaps in power you should keep an eye on are both relative to your <Body> Class still," Veit noted. Malwine still had no idea how this bookmark that detected category balancing issues worked, but it was a creation of Veit's father—after that Forgery book, that man could have made tissue paper and claimed it let people fly, and Malwine would have still given him the benefit of doubt. "Your <Mind> category is now the heaviest—no doubt the work of your new Legendary Skill. Both it and <Soul> remain far beyond <Body>, but it appears to still be within a healthy margin. Perhaps—"
"Veit, Veit," Malwine narrowed her eyes, thinking of how this conversation had gone the last time. "How many lemons are we talking?"
The forester matched her expression, and she could have sworn she could see the gears turning in his head as he recalled the analogy he'd made when first explaining this to her. "…Oh. If we reuse that comparison, <Body> would have four; <Word>, five; and <Mind> and <Soul> would tie at seven, with the former bordering on eight."
Something told her Veit very much regretted having explained imbalance to her like this, as she would absolutely take the opportunity to force him to translate whatever he was getting off the object into something at least vaguely numerical. Even if it was this.
"So <Mind> is nearly doubling up on what <Body> has, got it," Malwine nodded. "Would it be reasonable then, for me to get another <Body> Skill?"
She'd thought of it before, though her future Skill acquisition plans now included holding off on adding anything to those other two categories for now—not that she was going to mention that, since Veit still thought she'd run out of slots there.
"Perhaps—but you could just as easily focus on improving the ones you already have," Veit seemed to consider this for a second. "How far are you from Level 80?"
"Uh," Malwine frowned. Given the nature of levels, there wasn't any strict path she had to take just to get one more. "Eight more levels on <Mind> Skills would take me there, or nine on either <Body> or <Word>. Why?"
Instead of answering, Veit tapped at the table, having long since dismissed the object he'd used to sense her categories' balance. With how he'd redone his manicure and gotten right back to overdressing, it was easy to forget the scare he gave her when he'd gone and slept for months on end.
"What do you want to do?" Veit asked, his tone bordering on hesitant. After all the time he'd clearly just spent thinking about what to say, he still managed to sound unsure about it.
"What do you mean?"
"I am not talking about which Skills you want to train, to be clear. I mean, what do you want to do with your life?" Veit pressed on. "What do you want to be?"
Malwine found she genuinely didn't know what to say. "I don't know. An Immortal, probably."
"But beyond that," Veit shook his head. "What do you want to do in the meantime? Devils, how do you want to get to that point? You still need more Skills, and the amount you can take on will only grow if you manage to make it past the Mortal Esse. Do you wish to spend your years Forging, investigating… censuses, or something else?"
"I don't know," Malwine repeated, scowling. "Though I don't think I'd go as far as to actually spend my days Forging—I don't even know what that'd entail. I'm learning this… for me. And for those close to me, I suppose. But when you put it like that—no, being a Forger isn't a life goal for me."
It's just a step along the way.
"Then what?" Veit gave her an odd look. "Do you have any plans at all? For what you want to be when you grown? Nothing concrete at all?"
I do have long-term plans! Malwine had to keep herself from shouting. Most of her goals might have been hard to explain. Or to justify. She gave her panel on the topic a glance.
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MAIN THINGS TO FIGURE OUT: — Why was Beryl cursed? — How can I make Elflorescence regret Existing and/or possibly handle the aforementioned Existing? — How did I become me if Beryl's kid was supposed to be dead? — When was I born and how did stasis affect the timeline for me? — I should get everyone's birthdates while I'm at it, it's essential information. — Who does {Ore} come from? Elves?! — What's up with Katrina's parentage? — Was OBeryl in a cult? — What the hell do you mean, 'history of fell presence'? — Seriously, what is this area called? — What's up with the supposedly inanimate Devils being credited for actions in the past? — What happened with the Tacit Saint and should I be looking into what the Saint equivalent of deicide is? — Where's Widuzhain and what's the fastest way to raid their archives? Orphanage and local. — What the hell is going on with Anselm and ominous golden text? |
"I'm seven, Veit," she scoffed. "No, I don't have any big plans. There are things I want to do—" like killing an elf and potentially a Saint "—and things I want to learn, but I've never put much thought into what I might spend my time doing. It's not like anyone else in this family of mine does anything for a living."
"To my understanding, your mother's siblings are an alchemist, an interior decorator, a sect master, and literal children," Veit noted.
Hey, I bet you aren't asking any of the other literal children about their future career plans—are you?
But Malwine found herself interrupted mid-pout as her brain caught up to what she had just heard in full. "A sect what?"
Veit ignored her. "It's true that they don't appear to have had the best luck maintaining their status as employed, and have since seemingly settled for working on their own time, as far as I've been able to gather. You could do something like that—just work for yourself. It's no different from what I do. But you need to have something in mind, if you're going to be using any of your limited, remaining Skill slots. The Skills you choose will be with you forever, even if you evolve them later. You cannot afford to be shortsighted."
"I am not shortsighted in the slightest," Malwine said. Not even she believed that.
Her teacher glared at her.
"Fine, I might have made a decision or ten without fully considering the ramifications of it, but I stand by them," Malwine shrugged. "It's not like I can take anything back so I might as well own up to it and work from there."
The staring continued until Veit broke eye contact and once again shook his head. "I would recommend you refrain from getting new Skills, then. At least until you have a better idea of what you plan to do in the long term. Just max out the ones you have, for now."
"About that…" Malwine bit her lip. She'd been thinking of how she could get around to asking about this, yet nothing ever felt like a proper segue into it. "Can I ask something?"
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"It depends on the question, but I'm open to hearing it."
"Is there any chance," Malwine couldn't help but fidget, "that I can convince you to help me level my Skills? Properly? Hildegard is my teacher now, but I'm not telling her about most of these."
To her surprise, Veit laughed. "I confess I have been curious as to just what you've been telling that woman, ever since I heard you got the estate's butler to teach you."
"Technically, that was Adelheid's doing."
"The point stands," Veit argued. "I… I am not opposed to resuming those lessons—perhaps for the better, now that you aren't going out of your way to lie to me."
Malwine pouted in full now. "Hey!"
Not that it was exactly false.
"However, I would ask something of you," Veit tipped his head back. "You are a Forger in the making, now more than ever—I have come to terms with that."
"Okay?"
"I will teach you to the best of my ability, and keep your secrets, as is your preference, so long as there isn't great danger to it," he continued. "But once you're capable of it, I would ask that you Forge changes to certain abilities I am no longer satisfied with."
That did catch Malwine off-guard. "If you have Skills you don't like, can't you just evolve them? Or use tokens on them?"
"I have told you before, that certain Kinds have disadvantages, be they genuine—such as how the fell lack <Soul> categories—or artificial—like the issues my late wife encountered," Veit spoke between excessive sighs. At least he was putting in the effort to keep his anger in check. "In my case, anything I want done takes more power than it otherwise should."
Malwine only briefly debated whether asking what his Kind was would be some type of social faux pas before determining she didn't care. "What are you, then?"
Veit eyed her. "Do you know what a cambion is?"
Her confusion must have shown, even as she searched the widow's remaining memories for it. She must have heard of that, yet she could not recall the context of it.
Malwine scowled, all the while Veit's expression seemed to grow increasingly distraught as he came to terms with the likelihood that he would have to explain.
With a drawn-out sigh, the forester closed his eyes. "Long ago, my mother had an encounter with a demon. From it, she brought my sister into this world, and a millennium later, myself."
'How does one have children from the same encounter a thousand years apart?' was somehow the question at the forefront of her mind, for all she suspected Veit had no intention of further elaborating.
"So you're half-demon," Malwine said. A stiff nod was the only response she got, so she moved on to the next thing that came to mind. "What's the difference between a demon and a Devil?"
"I've told you before, what sibyls are," Veit started. His relief—presumably at the conversation shifting from being specifically about him—was palpable. "Demons are the result of… inadequate Executors. Long ago, before people had centuries of experience to inform their decisions, they made mistakes when giving voice to the Devils. They chose wrong, and some would-be Executors lost themselves. They became demons—similar to sibyls in how hollowed out they are, save for the fact that they keep their minds. Minds that now harness their considerable power for the sole purpose of having more of whatever the Devil they failed stood for in this world. In that sense, they are worse than the fell—at least the fell have standards, alien as those may be."
"Okay…" was all Malwine managed to get out. She wasn't sure on how she was supposed to react to that, though at this point, the idea of someone being half-demon didn't faze her. "So. You want me to Forge some things for you, once I can, because any other method would be too expensive for a… cambion to use."
"That is the short of it, yes."
"If it ends up being within my power, and there isn't great danger to it," Malwine borrowed his words there, "I can agree to this. I'll Forge your changes if I can and when I can."
"Fair enough," Veit nodded, before taking a deep breath. "Now. Which Skills do you wish to raise, that you'd rather the butler not know about?"
"Many," Malwine turned to her Skills panel. She was still slightly surprised he hadn't argued, and frankly hadn't actually settled on specifics, beyond gathering the courage to ask. "[Earthless Glory]. [Shieldwork]. [Mental Defense]. Basically all the <Soul> ones."
Veit rubbed his chin a bit dramatically. "Hm. I could max your [Shieldwork]," he said with the confidence of a Level 400+ that would certainly only be stopped by her shields if he wanted to be. "But I still think your priority should be getting rid of its requirement that the shields be spherical."
"We could work on that first?" Malwine suggested, more as a compromise than anything else. While she hadn't particularly liked his methods for that, they certainly had better odds of working than anything she could have tried on her own.
"Very well," Veit agreed immediately. "Is your [Toll] empty?"
"Yes?"
She did not like the smile he gave her. "Excellent."
Before Malwine could react, a box of shimmering glass appeared around her—she hadn't even seen Veit move.
"You can alter the size of your shields after you summon them—correct?"
"Yes," she agreed again, actually summoning a shield around herself for good measure. Veit watched it flash into existence, and Malwine suspected that unlike her, he might still be able to see it after {Foresight}'s light faded from its surface.
"Break this."
"Pardon?" Malwine blinked.
"Make your shield larger, and then some more," Veit said. He had a hand raise, half-closed, and a smaller version of the box sat within. "I am doing the bare minimum to give this form. Increase the size of your shield, and do not let my construct stand in your way."
Through narrowed eyes, Malwine watched him—beyond the fact that he seemed slightly amused, nothing seemed amiss. Besides, this was far less concerning an exercise than when he'd attempted to do a similar thing, except by shrinking the box. She'd take having to increase the size of her shield any day over that.
They'd established already that her shields could theoretically bypass the shape imposed on them, as they wouldn't forcibly incorporate any objects pressed against them. As she made it grow larger, the shield became a box—that much went as expected.
But this would be her first time actually trying to go beyond that.
Malwine wasn't trying to make the shield match the shape of that which encased it—no, Veit wanted her to break it.
While simply making it press against the walls of the box had been easy enough, this goal was something else entirely. She felt as though she were pressing against something unsurmountable.
"And you say you're doing the bare minimum to keep this in place?" Malwine asked through gritted teeth.
"Indeed."
"Why do I have my doubts?"
"Because you are far too suspicious for your own good," Veit insisted. "What's your Strength at?"
"Technically 50," Malwine admitted. The strain of pushing against the box was such that she didn't notice how odd that sounded until after she'd blurted it out.
"Technically?"
"I'll tell you later. I need to focus here," she said, all while not intending to follow up on that. He'd probably bring it up again, knowing her luck, but that would be a problem for future Malwine—as so many other things would be.
Her confidence was steadily headed for the ground as her efforts continued failing her. No matter how hard she pushed, keeping the full force of her {Foresight} and the {Legacy} that backed it as fuel for her shield's strength, it wouldn't give.
Those values had increased significantly since the last time she'd pitted her shields against him, yet she felt even more hopeless than she had then.
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Mana Sources
</div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p style="text-align: center"><span style="color: rgba(236, 240, 241, 1)"><strong>Other Affinities:</strong> <strong>Ore III </strong><Rare></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> She was so much stronger now, and it made no difference. "I… I can't." "Yes, you can," Veit insisted. The worst part was that he sounded like he believed it. |