The Weight of Legacy

Huh. I wonder if this means it doesn't have to be tied to a Trait? Now that she thought about it, none of these elements specified whether they had to be tied to a Trait, Skill, or else. She tried not to cackle maniacally at that realization.

There was nothing keeping her from shoving that particular effect into any Skill, given the lack of a requirement, but this Skill seemed to only be able to act upon things that had already been broken down. [Imitation Beyond Filiality] was one thing, and it's sacrifice would be remembered—not really—but Malwine wasn't willing to start smashing Skills left and right for something that simple.

Tokens are another story… She supposed the rule she'd learned from Veit still applied—if she wanted to get decent reveals, she had to keep spacing those out. That unfortunately meant her dreams of revealing a bunch of harvestables for tokens to break apart would not become reality anytime soon.

That left her to examine what she had for the time being—just what could she build with this? Despite its lack of requirements, something told her trying to shove the effective levels into this would probably be a waste. Her best shot was to try and make something similar to [Imitation Beyond Filiality].

Her hopes were surprisingly up—she was missing those 'conquest conditions', but they would be missed by approximately no one. The loss of a trial function sucked, but the element would stay there, in any case. There had to be something she could make with the rest.

One of those queries could seek out an ancestor, but it was clear that queries couldn't, by themselves, do anything. It was the simplest of them and also the only one to require nothing—probably for a reason. As far as she could tell, while that particular one was self-targeted, it was the second one that actually narrowed it down to an ancestor of her own, specifically one that she knew.

The definition itself, coupled with the impression [System Eye] gave her of it, painted a hilarious yet grim picture. Malwine could probably use that first reference to send off queries to herself about ancestors—which was about as specific as the vague concept of ancestors on its own—but it would achieve approximately nothing. At most, she might get some feedback based on her own knowledge.

The second, she might have been able to work with. It could seek out scenarios based on her known ancestors and past events—and since it was a query to the system, it wasn't affected by Malwine's own limitations. There was potential there, especially considering how she could attach any two controls to. Since the requirement that it be known was handled by the narrowed reference itself, whichever part this element had played in the original Trait was probably locked behind both switches.

That realization made the last of the queries feel odd. While it required a single control, it also didn't seem to specify that the ancestor the query was sent about had to be known. Presumably, the ancestor-specific control had been tied to that. Granted, it could have come from a bonus additional option that was lost when she shattered [Imitation Beyond Filiality], but this was what she had to work with. Considering the alternatives sounded like a nice way to get a headache.

As she was ignoring the effective level bonus and the trial effect was literally unusable, the only effect she truly had access to here was scenario generation. Curiously enough, while it required a reference, she didn't have to use the reference that was tuned to a scenario, specifically.

Malwine froze as it hit her. Reaching forward, she touched the third element among the references. She wasn't surprised to see she could all but drag and drop her, the panels moving to her will until she had three elements hovering before her.

They clearly weren't what the Trait was meant to be, yet they fit together, each of their quirks compatible enough with each other.