The Weight of Legacy

Doing the training equivalent of repeatedly throwing herself against a wall and bouncing back was probably not the intended purpose of visiting the Memorial. Still, if Veit had any problem with that, he should have been better at explaining instead of purposely being obtuse for his own amusement.

Not that Malwine was complaining, for once. Her days had slipped into a predictable schedule, with her only really focusing on making sure she attended her lessons and had her meals before diving right back in.

She'd yet to get any more levels—which confused her to no end—but she thought she was getting ever so slightly better at lasting longer than a couple seconds. Brief debuffs and having to continuously reform her double was chipping away at something. More than anything else, it felt like a grind.

Despite herself, Malwine had to admit she was more excited than confused. Certainly, she couldn't figure out just what kept dissipating her double, but it was ultimately harmless enough. Her [Toll] costs for using [Earthless Glory] had been slowly lowered by {Foresight}'s growth, so she found she could afford to keep at it for longer than expected. The debuffs chipped away at [Enforced Longevity] at a snail's pace—still better than the alternative.

And speaking of a certain Affinity…

That had been unexpected, even if she could retroactively attribute it to just how active the Skill was in terms of mana usage. All her categories had Roots planted for them now, but if she had to name any Skill that seemed exclusively magical, [Earthless Glory] would probably be right near the top of the list with [Timeless Shieldwork]. The one thing she couldn't figure out was why the latter wouldn't have triggered the same before, despite how much she'd used it while trying to evolve it—perhaps context played a part?

Her curiosity grew by the second. While waiting out the latest debuff—she almost congratulated this one on the pointlessness of negating positive bonuses—she formed a small shield on the palm of her hand. It wasn't as if she'd never intentionally used the power of one of her Affinities to reinforce something, but that had mostly been a matter of forcing {Legacy} to bolster the rest, back when that had been the only one of her Affinities with any strength to it at all.

It stood to reason that the same should have been possible for Skills themselves—her only limitation on that front was her [Toll]. She'd dumped the points from reaching Level 81 into Circulation, leaving her with room to accrue up to 256 [Toll] if it came to that. The real, pre-penalty value of that attribute would have probably made her family members weep.

Actually, I can leave that to Adelheid. Her little sister had over four-thousand [Integrity] to her name and if her Presence wasn't already at six digits, it soon would be. The girl could traumatize anyone who found out well on her own.

Pushing mana into her shield seemed deceptively simple. Malwine had woven strands of {Legacy} into her {Foresight} to back it up before, but pressing more of the latter into her invisible construct felt like having her hand against a window. She could see—fee l—the power as it tried and failed to become one with the shield, yet that awareness was simply not enough for her to change the outcome.

Malwine sighed. She was in an uncharacteristically good mood today, and she wasn't about to let something as inconvenient as her experiment not paying off on the very first try ruin that. She'd get other attempts.

…Immediately, in fact. Dismissing the shield, she tried to recapture that impression, feeling surprisingly philosophical about it. One of those comments Veit had made in passing tingled at the edge of her memory—something about how certain things worked better for him if he didn't think about it in system terms, but as things that simply were.

Her understanding of her Affinities was ever-evolving, but at the core of it, she understood her particular flavor of {Foresight} dealt in the matter of preparation. It didn't have to be some deep strategy or a complex plan so much as pieces in place for an eventuality.

Reaching for that feeling, she envisioned the next shield forming slowly. She would want it to be stronger than it would be if she simply let the Skill run its course—it would be identical physically, with the only real difference being how it would be bolstered by what she'd done.

Once the shield was fully formed, Malwine found it shimmered for longer than expected. Reflections of ethereal light and the glow of the {Foresight} that fueled it lasted a few more seconds before it actually became invisible this time, and she didn't need to test it to know it had worked. [A Sense of Pallisades] was an Aspect she rarely paid attention to—between its newness and how she just wasn't exposed to purely defensive effects enough to really notice much—but the feedback from it was beyond clear right now.

This shield simply felt richer than her shields normally did, and she may never have noticed the difference if she hadn't gone out of her way to try. It was a bit sobering—mostly because she was now concerned. Just how many things could she be doing suboptimally because she just hadn't thought to analyze how they could be improved?

Granted, this wasn't really something she could do often. Her [Toll] remained limited.

But when—not if—she handled the curse, sooner or later, she would be taking full advantage of her seventeen-thousand-plus [Toll] then and there, and see just how far she could push the abilities that accepted additional power like this.

Besides, it's 17k now, but it might not be by then. Who knows just how much I'll have put into it by then? Spending so much on Circulation was theoretically a temporary measure, since it took ridiculous amounts of points to get that up even accounting for her one Class's bonuses, but she doubted she'd be changing her ways anytime soon.

Wasting no more time distracting herself like this, she dismissed the new shield. That'd been the confirmation she needed, but she feared doing the same for [Earthless Glory] would be a whole different beast. I'm going to laugh if I do end up leveling that a lot, but not for whatever reason Veit had in mind.

By now, sending her double off was a matter of pure instinct. It was something she just thought of, and it happened—simple as that. Being forced to reexamine the process, especially with all she now knew thanks to [System Eye], affected how much effort doing it took. She had to slow herself down, watching as the Skill did its work to create her intangible copy out of nothing. Not out of nothing. Out of the mana from {Foresight}.

If she had to guess, the [Toll] it used as fuel had to be under Controls, going off the terms her new Forgery Skill used. Both the list of compatible Skills and the double's appearance were referenced from somewhere vague, but one thing did strike her as clear, then.

She wouldn't be able to simply try and use her double to become someone she'd never seen—that realization crushed her newfound dream of using [Earthless Glory] to find out what her ancestors looked like almost immediately after she got the idea. Whatever… It's not like I have a shortage of alternatives to try. And a certain Skill… Malwine had to stop herself from reaching for [The Things We Do For Family]. It wouldn't work when she had no justification to use it, and there was something else she should have been focusing on at the moment.

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The point between where the target appearance was referenced from her own mind and the formation of the double was where she'd have to intervene. Since raising her Acclimations, she'd noticed circulating mana without letting it linger on anything in particular—such as an ability—had her accruing far less [Toll] than what would come from specific usage, so she allowed the blue-purple of {Foresight} to flow through her intangible channels, lying in wait. The window to act would probably be small.

I'll get it in one try this time… Even within the confines of her mind, Malwine's reassurances did not sound very convincing to herself.

True enough, she let her mana pounce on the Skill the moment her double started to form… at which point, she got the distinct of the coalescing mana ballooning instead of growing humanoid, popping soon after. Had she used too much? Or had she miscalculated when she picked her timing?

Either way, Malwine liked to imagine the echoes on the other side were quite confused by the display.

Even with only one attempt to look back to, she had a general idea of what had gone wrong. The template that [Earthless Glory] had used was not compatible with what she wanted to do. It stood to reason, then, that this would be what she had to target.

She'd never put much effort into the widow as a disguise before. Her age was easy enough to play around with, with the memory of her appearance something that refused to leave her despite how many other important details she felt she'd lost forever.

This time, the usual wouldn't be enough. It was also different enough from her shields that simply imagining suffusing it with her mana would probably either not work or outright backfire again, so Malwine tried to focus on it as an entity at the basic level. She knew her double was intangible and made of mana—giving it the ability to touch things made her accrue more [Toll], which made her suspect it was a reflexive version of what she wanted, or at least close enough. Bypassing intangibility was a way to shove more mana into the projection.

I'm going to use this as an example next time Veit complains that I don't analyze things enough before trying new stuff. Malwine allowed herself the smug thought, knowing full well that the example would probably be nowhere near the front of her thoughts the next time they had an argument.

Even if she couldn't directly supercharge the double, by design it carried with it the option for her to do just that. A bit too thrilled about trying again, Malwine manifested her double in full. She wasted no time trying to feel the ground under the widow's now bare feet, trying to breathe in the annoying air of the area that was the Memorial—humid and almost perfumed. Through the double, her senses were beyond flawed, but they'd come to her almost immediately. Her decision to crouch and press her palms against the smooth stone beneath her now felt unnecessary.

She had little time to dwell on that, feeling the widow's long hair flow back on one side before a force slammed into her, making her all but spin in place.

Malwine rolled, trying to gather her bearings without yet standing. She saw the notification at the edge of her vision, and it caught up to her that her experiment was actually paying off.

Yet her double was still here. If Veit asks, I meant to do this. It was wholly intentional and he should be proud.

Curiously, actually trying to figure out what the debuff was felt implausible. The attempt left her feeling like she'd reached for something too distant—she had only seen those after her double was dismissed before. How that worked was slightly confusing, but Malwine still meant to take that warning about splitting her consciousness seriously, so she didn't try a second time.

She stood and raised a hand. Another unintentional benefit of her practice had her able to use each summoned shield as a lamp for longer, meaning she didn't have to wait for the stars above to illuminate her path. The range of the light was only slightly less mediocre than if had been when she'd used it to examine OHeidi's body, but it afforded her a measure of safety with each new step. Shattered ceramic and stone littered her surroundings, and she wondered if there was a point to this beyond leveling her Skills in an effort to endure the echoes.

The prospect of exploration was starting to regain its charm, right up until a puff of white hit her again. This time, she managed to stand her ground—distantly, she felt the debuff be applied even though she still had the other one. Great, they stack. That's only mildly concerning. Or at least they might have been, if they weren't going to disappear within five minutes. The short timer made even the most debilitating effects feel trivial.

She was starting to suspect the starting area here had been some kind of plaza or gathering spot, circular in nature. There were steps to it, each tall enough for someone to sit down upon them, despite the presence of so many now-cracked benches scattered throughout. It struck her as something that probably had a name, but her vocabulary failed her there. Perhaps it could have been something similar yet smaller than a Greek forum? Malwine wasn't sure. The setting didn't exactly make it easy for her to draw parallels to anything from the widow's Earth.

As she walked up around what she would tentatively be labeling the forum—she wasn't in the mood to descend to the lowest levels of it—Malwine found she could make out the outlines of structures by now. She'd probably sooner hit the limit of her [Toll] and be forced to dismiss the double than actually get much exploration done, but she'd try.

The first structure was thin, two columns framing a tall door. At each side of it, images of flowers and plants she couldn't recognize had been painted with what might have been a metallic substance—it reflected the light, shimmering. Trying to figure the color of anything out would have been a waste of time, with the light from above and her own shield competing to form a confusing impression that sure had her wishing she'd asked Veit if any sources of white light existed around here. She didn't even care that it would probably have been a weird question—it was important.

Malwine narrowed her eyes as she examined the door, unable to find a handle. Was she supposed to just push it? Should she?

One of the debuffs timed out while she tried to decide what to do, which had her realizing the flying puffs of doom hadn't approached her since she got closer to the buildings. Either they didn't like approaching this part of the ruins or they'd taken notice of how her double hadn't collapsed with the past two hits. Malwine wasn't sure if she liked the latter option—it implied a degree of intelligence to the echoes that she could go without—so she hoped it was the former. Very much so.

As she pressed her palm against the door, the world fluttered. For a split second, she felt lightweight, her hand slipping past. Oh, no. She pushed the door harder this time, gritting her teeth. It was far more difficult to touch things than it had been a moment ago. The door swung open, but the tangibility of her double once again faltered.

How? It's been like ten minutes! Even accounting for whichever [Toll] she'd accrued while experimenting, she was reaching her limits too quickly. Just how much was she burning now, just to keep her double solid enough to remain in this place?

She wasn't even sure if she'd have the time to explore the inside of the building—her shield was also a drain. Still, Malwine rushed inside, perhaps a bit too carelessly. Seats lined the walls, only marginally more welcoming than those outside, by virtue of not being in pieces. What looked like an altar stood beneath a skylight on the far end, with objects she couldn't identify at a glance laying on it. She thought she caught a hint of feathers.

No, but Malwine had other concerns. Even the imminent collapse of her double felt irrelevant compared to her heart jumping to her throat.

It was ridiculous—the widow wouldn't have batted an eye at this. This was normal, natural. Beyond the benches and lining the walls, she could make out something that shouldn't exist, not in this world… probably.

She had to step closer, unbothered as she let go of her double's bolstered form in its entirety just to stay a little longer.

Crypts or niches, over a dozen of them. They might have been made of marble, as those she remembered were, but they could just have easily been of that word Veit used—stone that looked far too smooth and glossy. Each had words etched into them, the script foreign to her.

All at once, she felt her excitement grow in tandem with her worries—no wonder this was called a Memorial. And while ruins had interested her from the start, this sent her curiosity soaring.

Malwine couldn't help it—she laughed. This was a mausoleum, and against all odds, she was visiting a cemetery.