The Weight of Legacy

Within the cupboard of a tiny house that barely met the minimum requirements to be considered habitable, something was moving, all the while a silver-haired man deftly caught the falling plates before they could meet a tragic end upon hitting the ground.

The spices had long since been cleared out—it was almost as if he'd suspected something might happen to them if he left them there.

"VEIT!"

"I told you it was a bad idea," the forester in question said, clearly amused. For all he liked to complain about both the property damage and her actions themselves, he'd yet to actually do anything to stop her.

Malwine could have sworn she felt a smug shrug all the way from where she was. Her fellow literal bastard was most definitely enjoying this. "If you'd helped me get up how I wanted to, it might have worked."

With a grumble, she kicked the cupboard's door open, leaving it to flop on its hinges. Veit had refused to endorse her idea, so she'd had to climb up on her own. Now, as she slinked back down, she lay the responsibility of any and all ruined furniture at his feet for not helping her out.

Veit simply eyed the wooden plank as it continued swinging, one light breeze away from just falling off. "50 Strength, she says," he muttered. "Sure."

"Not my fault Bernie gave you a house made of cardboard."

He just rolled his eyes at that.

Honestly, she couldn't even deny her attributes were making her at least slightly superhuman by now. A real seven-year-old would almost definitely have had trouble mimicking her feats of debatable athleticism. While she felt like the Curse had her at next to no attributes compared to what could have been, her view of how much of a difference stats made had to be warped. She'd been so busy loathing how lowered her effective values were that she genuinely hadn't put much thought into the fact that they might already have been somewhat above average.

Malwine let out a long sigh—the countertop was as good a lounging spot as any. "Why is it taking this long? It's been ages!"

Was she being dramatic? Certainly. But did she deserve the chance to be? Absolutely. Nearly every waking moment she hadn't spent on either family mealtimes or taking lessons with Hildegard, went towards trying to evolve [Shieldwork]. Her patience was managing to grow even thinner than it normally was when it came to these things, and Veit's house was simply caught in the crossfire.

Of course, it wasn't as if she hadn't justified herself. Risking damage to the areas she frequented—let alone her room—wasn't something she could really afford to do. Her family members' cluelessness when it came to raising actually children was likely the only reason she hadn't been subjected to more scrutiny, but there had to be limits. Her experiments with pushing [Shieldwork] to evolve had proven more destructive than she expected, and she'd had to accept something would probably go wrong if she tried this within the family home.

"'Ages'? You've been working on this for two weeks and four days," Veit told her—how he was tracking time was beyond her. She'd already asked if he just had a higher quality pebble somewhere, but he'd just said it was instinctive.

I'm definitely not insanely jealous right now.

"By your own admission, evolving [Meditation] took you far longer than this."

Malwine simply grumbled, refusing to address that and sliding further down until she could sneak under the sink.

"I can give my constructs any shape within reason," Veit had the gall to sound annoyed, when he was the one whose glass constructs were unbreakable to her despite his assurances. She couldn't tell if the annoyance was genuine. "Must you really tear my house apart?"

Ignoring him, Malwine continued pressing her shield forward. The plumbing was strange—not that the widow had much experience with that, for her to think back on as a reference. Still, what little piping she could identify clung to the wall, far more compact than she would have expected it to be. Just how the plumbing made potable water show up was also beyond her, considering they seemed to be surrounded by seawater in most directions.

The piping survived the first shield-flexing session, at least. The same couldn't be said for most spots she'd tried out.

It wasn't that she had anything against Veit's tiny kitchen—she'd just noticed small spaces seemed to make it easier for her [Shieldwork] to improve, as the Skill didn't seem to differentiate between damage it blocked and being damaged by the force it applied against anything in its way.

Certainly, the improvements brought forth by her now-fixed imbalance helped, but the Skill had gotten 10 levels in what felt like a relatively short time. The evolution eluded her, but for all she wouldn't outright tell Veit he was right, she found some measure of comfort in knowing it at least hadn't been as bad as the whole debacle with [Meditation] had been.

No Aspect had developed for its thirtieth level. Perhaps she'd finally get it next time around… or so Malwine hoped. For now, all she could do was keep trying.

She formed another shield and pushed it outwards.

Through the creaking of wood, she could still make out the latest of Veit's exasperated sighs. Still, she'd prove him wrong.

Eventually.

"Aaaand, it's done!"

Malwine collapsed on the floor of her room, having practically leapt out of the portal Veit made for her. Her exhaustion was such that she didn't even have the energy to call it a glass kite to his face.

"What did it change into?"

She crawled to her bed before addressing the question—while she could have just stood up, her time ruining the forester's kitchen had made her realize such over-the-top displays were more than a little bit fun. However, Veit had at least been patient enough to let her return before asking, so she didn't mean to leave him hanging for much longer.

With a groan, Malwine brought the panel up. Her efforts had paid off—not only had [Shieldwork] finally evolved, but the evolution had ended up perfectly timed alongside its fortieth level.

The new Aspect's name only slightly annoyed her. While she'd never outright hated the shields' invisibility, it had been an inconvenience, and if putting up with the name was what it took for her to shore up on that potential weakness, she'd take it.

Using [Stylus in Style], she copied the contents of it over to a regular blank panel. It took longer than simply relying on [Write Anywhere]—and she'd since noticed [Write Anything] let her mimic the divisions found in true panels so long as she focused on giving them meaning—but she wasn't about to waste a chance to use the Skill. It was the least convenient of them to practice, given its visibility.

Her efforts were rewarded with level-ups to both.

"Hm," Veit spent longer than she'd expected eyeing the description on the panel she'd made. He still clearly wasn't entirely comfortable with her open usage of Forgery, but he was the reason she had more Skills for it now—at worst, he'd probably reached some state of begrudging acceptance. Their deal would benefit him, after all. "This is genuinely better than I expected," he admitted. "I'm… surprised you could pull these specific changes off."

No thanks to you! Veit had been trying to get her away from his furniture the entire time. Or at least pretending to—she had her suspicions that the forester had about as little love for the cramped hut as she did, despite it technically being his house. Still, Malwine narrowed her eyes. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

Her comment was swiftly ignored, as the forester continued. "In any case, greater [Toll] efficiency is always good, though your overreliance on keeping [Integrity] as 'alternative fuel' for Skills continues to worry me."

"I just have more [Integrity] to go around," Malwine shrugged. They'd had this argument before, though he didn't exactly have the full picture to fully understand the reasoning behind her opinions. Her <Soul> Class's multiplier did make raising her Circulation slightly easier than it had originally been, but her [Toll]'s growth remained a drop in the ocean compared to how many points she had to spend on the corresponding attribute.

Just because she'd adapted to it, didn't meant she'd ever stopped hating the constant attribute penalty. As her thoughts wandered to that, she bit her tongue. This was one of those things she kept flip-flopping about—strictly speaking, she had a walking and talking source of niche information right in front of her. "Veit…"

"Yes?"

Malwine shook her head, immediately backing out. It was a good idea—or was it? She found she couldn't push through. "Nevermind. I was just… thinking about something."

I have trust issues, don't I? The widow had been a very private person—sometimes to her detriment. Considering her love for outing the secrets of the dead, she'd also been a shameless hypocrite. Now, in this next life, Malwine struggled to open up. Even sharing some details hadn't made her any more willing to share the rest of them. It just didn't feel right—while it probably bordered on a persecution complex by now, from her first waking moments in this world, she'd known it was possible for her to be targeted for her mere existence, given what one of her Affinities was.

Other secrets might have seemed innocuous—but how was she to know? What guarantee did she have that she wouldn't be getting herself into even more trouble if she revealed anything else? It felt like every time she admitted to something, she was rolling the dice.

Thinking about it, despite their back and forths, Malwine found she didn't even distrust Veit that much. She wasn't sure if she could ever bring herself to truly trusting anyone in this life, but he'd become someone she found herself willing to rely on.

When she'd first decided to annoy Veit into continuing to teach her, she hadn't known just what she'd been getting herself into. Even having assumed he knew more than he let on—and to be fair, the man had been quick to drop the act the moment he thought he'd encountered a threat—at most, Malwine had expected Veit to be just some dude hiding his strength.

Not that she'd been wrong, but. Him actually being a Cambion had very much not been on her bingo card, and she'd yet to wrap her head around the implications of that, in a world where Devils were treated as superior to gods.

"I confess that look in your eyes is worrisome," Veit noted, watching her.

"I'm just busy trying to figure out how long it's been since I last reminded you you're old. Anyhow—just what do you have against [Integrity] as a backup? Having that honestly makes me feel safer with a Skill like this, that visibly costs me something to use."

"While it may be true that your [Integrity] is higher than your [Toll] right now, you cannot allow yourself to forget [Integrity] can only ever go down. You may delay that, true," Veit didn't take his eyes off her, the judgmental glint on them making her suspect he thought she'd been trying to deflect or something. "But [Toll] has no upper limits to be encountered. At worst, you will reach the point where its growth outpaces its decay."

That did get her interested piqued, even if Malwine continued trying to squish the evergrowing belief she might actually have something to gain from trying to ask for his advice. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like—sooner or later, assuming you keep growing your Circulation, you'll be able to immediately accrue more [Toll] than what you could reasonably recover from in a short timeframe."

Malwine considered that. "So [Toll] restoratives are less useless than I thought. Huh."

"To an extent," Veit shook his head. "If you've encountered restoratives, I assume you noticed they tend to be on the lower end as far as rarity is concerned?"

"Yeah. Common, I believe."

"Well, rarities are not arbitrary categories. Value and effectiveness are part of it. Before you ask, no, I do not have specific numbers on it. But if your accrued [Toll] is high enough, a low-rarity tonic will barely make a dent on it, no matter what the description tells you. They simply work on different scales."

Something told her they might have different ideas of just what high accrued [Toll] meant. "Define 'high'."

Veit seemed to actually consider that for a moment. "From what I recall, past perhaps the late five digits to early six, your assessment on low-end restoratives would be accurate, because they would achieve next to nothing there."

Blinking slowly, Malwine almost regretted having asked—just as much as she could feel herself starting to preemptively regret her next question. "…How high is your max [Toll]?"

The forester looked unbearably smug for a moment before shaking his head. "Perhaps, someday, I might answer that."

"Come on," Malwine insisted, a bit too true to whichever characteristics had made the widow deserve a Skill named [Nosy Old Lady]. "How many digits are we talking?"

Veit sighed. A moment later, he shook his head again. "Eight. And that is the most I will say."

Thanks, I hate it.

"…I suppose I did ask," Malwine sighed. She'd walked right into these feelings of inadequacy. While she knew he was absolutely not someone she could compare her current self to, the reminder of just how ultimately low on the totem pole she was did not sit well with her in the slightest. Even if she'd already known that. So much for being somewhat above average.

And I…

Ugh.

Fuck it, here goes nothing.

"…Veit, hypothetically speaking," Malwine took a deep breath and pressed on before she could stop herself, "how would one go about getting rid of a curse?"