NOVEL NEXT Chapter 123 - Among the Best and Oldest
An embarrassing percentage of Malwine's successes in this life must have come from the least thought-through of her plans somehow not blowing up in her face. Granted, thanks to [Unpacifiable], she'd always put at least the minimum effort into knowing her ideas weren't bound to bring disastrous results… not that her jump to the Mortal Esse had gone great, despite it not having been dangerous.
It made deciding to once again embrace her recklessness all the more troubling, not because she wasn't willing to, but because she'd actually gone quite the while without having to deal with any messes of her own making. Despite her Skill's silence, Malwine felt as though she were staring down a 'Days since the last incident:' sign and seriously considering how it might look better at 0.
Something tells me Veit knows exactly what he's unleashed… She never really questioned the forester's logic when it came to his suggestions, even if she did think his perspective was beyond skewed—they weren't that different in that regard.
But for someone who'd more than once warned her not to do anything too reckless without consulting him, to be the one encouraging her to just wing it? She hadn't been expecting it.
Even if she'd resolved to fully take advantage of his endorsement.
When I brought Forgery up, Teach asked me if I had any Affinities other than {Foresight}. Malwine had mulled over it repeatedly, yet her conclusions remained flimsy. She'd only know once she tested things, and she had admittedly been putting it off, giving herself the time to review her thoughts after a nap to look at it with fresher eyes. After several naps, maybe.
The point stood that between the comment about Forgery not being solely about Skills, and that question about Affinities, Malwine found she had reason to wonder if she was supposed to be using raw mana for it. That wasn't something she'd done outside of her attempts to grow her Control and Acclimation—not intentionally, at least.
Veit seemed confident that the 'nudging' she occasionally did to get her Skills to behave in certain ways must have counted, but it was so situational that proving it went one way or the other wouldn't be done in a single conversation. He'd confirmed freehand manipulation of mana was something people did, though—a silver lining to how utterly unrelatable she found the examples he was willing to give her.
Why he didn't want to use something more esoteric like {Vanagloria} was beyond her, but things like {Mosaic} and {Bone} weren't conceptual. Save for {Ore}—which was also her only unplanted Affinity—Malwine didn't exactly have any Mana Sources with a form that was easy to determine.
For one, she understood the concept of {Legacy} beyond words, and could raise its values easily enough, but how would that be represented in reality?
I guess stealing Adelheid's good old ambiguous shadowy tendrils could work as a strategy…
A part of her still wanted to use {Foresight} purely out of spite, but in the end, she stuck to the one she knew best, even better for its status as the planted Root of her <Soul> category.
In her initial cursory glance—which she would never call a skim in this context—she hadn't noticed it, but now that she gave it her full attention, Malwine couldn't help but raise her eyebrows at the feedback loop between one of her oldest Skills and its Aspect.
| [Once and Forever] |
| No action is ever truly irrelevant, and nothing ever wants to be truly forgotten. Likelihood of Affinities lost to precursors reemerging greatly increased. You may claim Skills and Traits from any you may have right to inherit from, providing they are too long gone for resurrection and your desired Skill/Trait has not already passed on to somebody else. |
| Trait: [Imitation Beyond Filiality]. The best form of flattery. You may copy a small amount of attribute points, relative to their total value, from anyone who you could inherit from by proving your worth. Upon failure, this is repeatable once per ten months per target. The trials required will differ by target. Carries a minuscule chance of copying anything else. |
| Aspect: [Mana Reclaimer]. If you can prove within reason that someone you could inherit an Affinity for a Mana Source from possessed a specific Mana Source, you may make the Affinity your own. Affinities from famous ancestors of a rarity higher than |
As the description implied, [Once and Forever] itself held a degree of influence over the 'reemergence' of Affinities. One of the Skill's components was what she could only describe as a multiplier of sorts, applying a 'great'—literally—boost to something being referenced from the system. Curiously, she could somehow tell this part of the Skill affected multiple things, yet only one of them was used as reference by [Mana Reclaimer]. The Aspect was benefiting from the Skill's effect, all the while its results fed back to it, somehow informing it of just what those lost Affinities were.
Malwine couldn't tell if this applied only to those she'd actively used [Mana Reclaimer] on, but it was… interesting. If [Once and Forever] was somehow tracking the Affinities she encountered on her ancestors, what was it doing with that information beyond what she could see? She knew for a fact that there was more to it than what looped between the Skill and its Aspect.
As for the Skill itself, the active ability to target ancestors relied on input. Once she locked in on a specific ancestor, their eligibility would be determined, and the Skill would either activate or send her the panel equivalent of a denied request. Part of what was tested for was actually visible to an extent here—the Skill seemed to explicitly seek out conditions that may affect the durability of their obits, only seeking out the obit itself as a last resort. I wonder how something like my [Enforced Longevity] would affect that?
There were probably other abilities that made obits last longer out there.
If the ancestor she used the Skill on was eligible, then their Skills and Traits would be probed to give her a list of options, much like what she'd gotten with OBeryl. It was deceptively simple, but even after looking it over repeatedly, Malwine found herself growing curious as to just how the Skill was fueled—there seemed to truly be no cost here, beyond the information it required. Its limitations were considerable, requiring knowledge of ancestors on her part or at least on that of those within 2 generations of her.
So if someone else in the family were to find out who Kristian's parents were, for example, that'd work? That might have been worth keeping in mind, though it explained why she'd been able to target OBeryl—Katrina had known her mother, after all.
…Yet none of that was what she needed to know, was it? And she could only procrastinate so much.
[Imitation Beyond Filiality] detected ancestors in a much simpler manner, relying solely on her input. Since it didn't care for whether her targets were alive, it only seemed to confirm their existence before sending out a flurry of queries to the system. The trial was presumably made with whichever feedback it got from that, and once it was ready, the Trait seemed to just send her on her merry way to work on the trial of its own creation. Its last act was to flip one of the two switches tied to the specific ancestor she'd run a trial for—the cooldown. Only if she conquered the trial would anything else be done, as the second switch would remove that ancestor as an option of flipped.
For a Trait behind so many of her headaches, Malwine wouldn't deny she'd been expecting more. Maybe a lengthier set of elements, or a setup as confusing as the trials themselves.
Malwine sighed. She wanted to keep thinking about it. To keep telling herself she wasn't ready to actually start experimenting. Something about the idea of actually trying to start hacking away at a panel related to one of her abilities was making her nervous, even if she had no guarantee it'd work. If something goes wrong, Veit's not hearing the end of it…
Her core was still a mess—with her current stance about remodeling again being 'I'll do it later'—but drawing upon {Legacy} had always been relatively easy. Its meteoric growth certainly helped, for all she was starting to accept she'd probably always be lagging behind Adelheid in terms of raw numbers.
|
Mana Sources
</div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Other Affinities: Ore III <Rare> At least this exercise had provided her with an excuse to focus on her best Affinity for a while, if only in preparation for the inevitable. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Choosing just how to go about it was another thing that required more creativity than what she'd normally be able to muster—not because she lacked ideas, but because she needed to force them to make sense. Making strands of {Legacy} compress and twist like branches was simple enough, but actually getting it to keep that form when she moved to circulate it felt implausible. Her channels weren't built for this. It was something she'd never actually considered—seeing mana as simple energy, it made sense that it would just flow. The rest of its characteristics might as well have been secondary. Her immediate struggle with trying to give {Legacy} shape and circulating was the that she couldn't bring herself to pull those off simultaneously. Giant trees weren't exactly compatible with small channels meant for intangible energy. But how would it work for someone who had something like a {Fire} Affinity? Would fire just go everywhere whenever they channeled magic? That seemed unlikely. Fine. Malwine focused on the remnants of her pier, manifesting a version of herself to sit upon the {Legacy} root before giving her Affinity a pointed glare. "We're going to try something. You better cooperate." It'd been too long since she'd last yelled at it, after all—or at least, too long since she last remembered doing so. With that done, she brought up the Skill panel again. She couldn't quite separate the Trait from the Skill, no matter how much she wished to, but within her core, it seemed to be possible to at least isolate what she saw. Much like with everything else here, this was a matter of visualization. After a minute, only the Trait remained visible, for all something told her the entire thing had to be there still. If she had to guess—and, admittedly, guessing was all she could do—the main problem with [Imitation Beyond Filiality] stemmed from the looseness of its rules. It'd benefited her to no end in some ways, but it lacked control to such an extent that most of her attempts turned into a jumbled mess. Without much further though, Malwine made her {Legacy} chair into the center of her attention, drawing a single part of it to the side, where it branched out like the fingers of a hand might. Gingerly, she reached for it, letting those delicate fingers of wood that wasn't wood touch the edges of the Trait's panel. She watched carefully, moving slowly—if something was about to break, she'd probably be better off catching it early. Though her eyes were closed, this was her core, and she couldn't not see what was happening in front of her. Shutting them was a crutch more than anything else. Had {Legacy}'s small fingers been her own, this probably wouldn't have been possible. The branches were thin, and unreal enough that there wasn't any limitation to just in which ways they could twist and bend. Still, her actions reverberated through her visualized self—perhaps through her real self, too. With each poke her Affinity gave to the panel, came the sensation of dipping her fingers in icy water before swiftly pulling away. So it's, like, literally testing the waters. Ha! Alone as she obviously was, given the context, her thoughts went unheard even as they echoed through her core. Well, {Legacy} might have poked the panel a bit harder this time—it was hard to tell. Malwine understood, within the depths of her being, that this was achieving at least something. A growing yet formless confidence had bloomed in her the moment her Affinity locked in on that Trait, serving as confirmation to her that her interpretation of what Teach said must have been at least partially correct. Inhaling deeply, she commanded the branches to expand, until they became something closer to a web, with countless pointed ends tapping away at the panel. The memory of working on Thekla's gift—which coincidentally adorned her own head right now—was still fresh enough in her mind. She could imagine glass and the grout between. The elements that made up the abilities represented by panels were something far more even than that, feeling closer to the work of someone who just now figured out how to add flowcharts to a presentation and could not be stopped, but the similarities were there. The specific layout just meant she had a lot more space between to work with. So work with it she did. Malwine pulled at what felt like a double-sided arrow—a connection that went both ways—and allowed {Legacy} to pierce through the emptiness around it. It shattered with the mental image of pulverized drywall. Easy. Disturbingly so. Yet the newfound gap in the inner workings of the Trait did not come without consequence. That sudden absence wasn't painful so much as it was discomfiting, like a numb cramp that wouldn't stop. It gnawed at her awareness, wanting to be front and center even as its edges visibly started to regrow. For a moment, she debated letting it. She could take this slow, now that she knew this much was possible. Maybe she could experiment further before fully committing to tearing the Trait apart. A part of her wanted to soldier on anyway. Malwine was no stranger to rushing through things. In a sense, she'd hoped to gain not only knowledge but a result, something to discuss with Veit and potentially complain about. She hadn't been meaning to start down the path of investigation. Unfortunately for her, the rational part of her brain was winning out, and she was starting to suspect she wouldn't be going al out today. Certainly, [Imitation Beyond Filiality] remained the perfect test subject… but a test subject was all it would be for now. Three more naps later, no trace could be found of the hole she'd made on the panel's workings. According to the pebble, it'd been roughly half a day, something like 13 hours. That was fast. Then again, she'd made {Legacy}'s branches thin for a reason—whichever damage she did would probably be at least slightly less of a mess if kept to a minimum. For her next experiment, Malwine decided to chip away at the edges of the panel itself. This was where the first curiosity arose—namely, she could touch all of its 'sides' save for one. Even when dealing with its intangible existence, something about the Trait felt immutable. An attachment to something else. Ah. That was it. Somewhere on that backend of the system that she could barely glimpse with [System Eye], wherever it was that everything on her Skills panel truly was, there was a point where each Trait and its Skill met, like a loadbearing wall that somehow allowed communication all the whole being immutable. Frayed as they were, the other edges of the Trait recovered within minutes. This exercise had been less impactful than just punching it might have been… …And she was quite tempted to try that. Before the intrusive thought could get the better of her, Malwine resumed her probing with {Legacy}'s branches. The idea of proceeding without experimenting more wasn't very appealing to her, but her imagination could only go so far. Days went by as she tore at different empty areas of the Trait, near touching the elements themselves. Some 'healed' faster than others—if it could even be called that. This wasn't harming her. As far as she could tell, the only consequence of interacting with her Trait in this manner was discomfort, and of the mental variety, at that. The more awkward realization was something that didn't feel particularly surprising yet genuinely hadn't occurred to her—her Affinities were a part of her, but she wasn't sure if the same applied to her Skills. There was a degree of separation she hadn't had reason to consider before. Maybe that was why Forgery was ultimately this unimpactful—it wasn't as if she were actually changing something about herself. She was altering her property, something that intrinsically belonged to her—a panel, a Trait, whatever—but it wasn't her. Should that have bothered her more? Malwine didn't know. Between getting [System Eye] and her more recent dives into how her abilities worked behind the scenes, she was starting to develop many a theory that she'd hesitate to speak aloud. Even to Veit. For one, at times, it felt like the system was as attached to her Existence as Traits clearly were to Skills. The connection was unbreakable, but all the same, it was confirmation that they were separate things. Before she could spiral into an existential crisis as to what that might mean for her—did any of her abilities have permanence, or was their system-only status a hindrance to the idea of keeping them forever?—Malwine decided to just get back to punching through [Imitation Beyond Filiality]. She even threw a real punch at it, and was pleased to see the empty space shatter all the same. Not only that, but its elements shook in place, the impact too meaningful to ignore. Not one to waste an opportunity, Malwine hit the edges on her own this time, all the while having the branches clear out the 'grout' around the elements, letting it delicately remove all that had been too close for her to dare try rougher methods on. And there it was. Before her stood something she intrinsically understood to be [Imitation Beyond Filiality] in truth. She got the impression that it wouldn't get any more exposed than this, even before she noticed the rest of the panel wasn't growing back this time. What she could only describe as a messy flowchart practically dangled in front of her, swaying about in the nonexistent wind. Malwine blinked repeatedly. Nothing changed. She reached out, laying a finger upon one of the two near-identical elements that hung from a larger piece. Endless instances of each existed, one for each ancestor she knew and for all she did not. It was more of a theoretical thing than anything genuinely real, yet as she wrapped her fingers around it, a few things became immediately clear to her. For one, this switch was ridiculously layered. She'd be better off just leaving it as it was, if she decided to do something with it—that applied to its twin as well. They were something she couldn't replicate or change at her current level, and the matter of whether she might ever actually become able to was somewhat of a pipedream. It also had potential. If [Mana Reclaimer] had relied on the type of ridiculously open-ended query this did, or if [Once and Forever] weren't so restricted, she could have been climbing up her family tree and retrieving names without an ounce of effort, Kristian's ignorance be damned. But most importantly… she'd pulled it a little too hard, because it was currently sitting on her palm—still presumably functional as always, but the arrow-like paths it had connected to now hung like threads that'd been cut. Whoops, Malwine mustered all the mental energy at her disposal to pretend that hadn't happened, moving to examine the broken thread. Would tying a knot work? The switch certainly looked like it had a spot the thread could go through, even if context dictated it'd probably been where the arrow had pierced it. As she tugged on the thread to try and clean up her mess, the thread slipped from the element it came from, leaving her with a switch in one hand and a limp double-sided arrow in the other. Something tells me 'whoops' isn't going to cover it if I have to give Veit the play-by-play of how this happened. From there, a chain reaction spread, the chaos of it mitigated only by the fact that [Imitation Beyond Filiality] had never had that many elements to begin with. It didn't look particularly impressive as it fell apart—elements and connections slid free until all that remained was a frame, or the idea of a frame, demarcating the place where her Trait had been. Where it should be still. It took her a moment—with how much effort she put into throwing any budding panic out the window—to realize the elements were very much still there. They were just sort of floating, idling by as she stared at the scene before her. She'd almost forgotten about the two pieces in her hands when notifications sped past her, all elements and threads disappearing from sight and sense alike. Malwine looked around herself, as if they would somehow just have moved elsewhere within her core, but all she achieved was making her head spin. In search of a lifeline, she loosened her grip on the visualization, letting the panel of [Once and Forever] and its companions manifest in its full glory. Clearly, she must have done something wrong there, because it didn't look right. Blinking rapidly, Malwine considered this for a moment before just exiting her core altogether, opening her real eyes. The full weight of whatever had just happened had yet to really set in—being utterly confused probably helped—so when she called the panel up in reality, she mostly expected it to appear as it always had. Instead, she was greeted by the sight of something new yet eerily familiar.
…I mean. Veit did say that if I broke something, I could always just fix it. Right? |