“Why is the ninth birthday important?”
Malwine had chosen Thekla as the target of her question, mostly because alternating between family members seemed like the best way to tone down any reputation she might be gaining for it. Everyone might—rightfully—think she was asking a bit much for a child her age, but it wouldn’t be a matter of someone wondering why said child kept asking them questions all day long.
Unfortunately for her, Thekla appeared preoccupied, looking at some guy with glasses and a ponytail who was approaching the estate.
Oh, no. I know that look.
And so, there went one of her sources of information, all because her aunt had decided to pick now of all times to fall for a guy.
I can’t be a jealous niece… Malwine grumbled. Let her live her life…
Whatever. If Thekla ever got married, that was even a bonus new thing to write down on her anemic family history notes.
But with that door closed, Malwine had to go for the closest option—not necessarily the best.
Alaric was leaning on a wall, arms crossed. Malwine approached him, giving him a conspiratorial glance. “Uncle, Matilda’s turning 9. Why is that special?”
Her teenage uncle just looked down at her, almost looking ever so slightly confused by the fact that she asked the question, not so much by the question itself. “It’s not special, it’s just the first anniversary of her birthmonth since she got her first Skill.”
“Oh?”
“…When you’re older, you’ll understand.”
Malwine narrowed her eyes. “Can’t you tell me now?”
“Well…”
“Please?”
Alaric sighed. This was almost too easy. Maybe she should have made a habit of annoying her younger relatives first whenever she wanted to ask something. The fact that they weren’t so overly formal helped, too. “When you get your first Skill, you can get to the Mortal Esse and start getting Skills from books and stuff.”
I’m sorry, what? “Skills from books?!”
“Yeah. I guess it must sound… interesting to you,” Alaric shook his head. “Your first Skill has to come from you, and that doesn’t happen until you’re older. Once you have it, you can get to the Mortal Esse, and there are books that tell you of the other Skills you can get.”
“I thought we just made Skills up?”
At that, her uncle laughed. “You could. But then it’d be… random, unpredictable. The safe way is to try known ones. They’ll be lower rarity, but that doesn’t matter much.”
“Rarity?”
“Right. Look, rarity’s like… a measure of how special a Skill can be, I guess? But if the Skill’s too special, it weighs more, and throws you off-balance. So it’s safer to go for known, common ones, even if it might sound fun to dream of having Rare or Epic Skills.”
Oh, boy, that ship has sailed.
It did explain a lot, though. That strange sense of imbalance she’d felt with her Skills before lined up quite well with what he described.
It also meant Malwine might have to be… slightly more careful.
Her
Class still only had two Unranked Skills, but the rest had gained others aside from their initial two.Shit. Is [Meditation] going to be a problem?
“So if you have an Uncommon you can’t get an Epic?”
She all but gave up on shortening her sentences for now—it wasn’t even as though she’d been consistent about that, and Malwine had yet to get in trouble for it.
If Alaric found the question strange, it didn’t show—he just shrugged. “I don’t know. My tutor always said there shouldn’t be more than two tiers between the lowest and the highest.”
“Two tiers?” Malwine blinked, genuinely curious. “How many are there between Uncommon and Epic?”
“Two.”
Oh, so I’m safe… for now.
This could certainly prove troublesome still, but at least Malwine’s Skills would be following this apparent unspoken rule no one had ever told her about. She, of course, understood the eternal answer of ‘why would anyone ever feel the need to inform a toddler of that?’, but it never stopped annoying her. Understanding was the first step to acceptance, but nowhere did it say she was obliged to actually reach that point and let go.
And as such, she reserved the right to continue to be annoyed.
“How many tiers are there?”
Again, Alaric shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s Common, Uncommon, Normal, Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Mythic. Plus some stuff that’s, as Father calls it, ‘situational’. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. I think—”
“Wait, what’s Normal rarity?” Malwine mercilessly interrupted her uncle. The chance to clear up the most irrelevant item of her half-forgotten to-do list was upon her! “What is it?”
“It’s like the stuff guards have, I think? Copied stuff. When you learn a Skill, it’s kind of personalized. But Normals don’t change from person to person.”
So it’s like a standardized Skill. Who the fuck standardized… whatever OBeryl’s Normal rarity Skill was?
Malwine wished she could remember what the Skill had been, so she could outright have an example of what sort of thing could become a standardized Skill.
She just nodded along.
“So if I ever get an Uncommon I can’t go higher than Epic?”
“You could, but it’d make Skill gain slower,” Alaric said. “I didn’t pay much attention in that lesson, really. But Common to Rare is more… realistic. You’d have to miss out on a lot of stuff if you want to just get Uncommon to Epic. All the Common Skills for studying and lessons, and stuff.”
Her uncle gave her a funny look. “I liked to dream big, too. But, like, it would have made my life harder, as Mother put it. Maybe later, if I can evolve the Commons…”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
By then, he seemed lost in his own thoughts.
On one hand, that last comment of his gave Malwine hope—if evolutions could affect rarity, she could evolve [Meditation] and have no worries about going beyond Epic! But as it turned out, she would apparently have to avoid lower rarity Skills, too.
She’d have to stick to that ‘Uncommon, Normal, Rare, Epic’ range from the rarities Alaric had told her about, and avoid both Commons and Legendaries.
Is this this world’s equivalent of first world problems?
She knew there were more rarities, of course. The harvestable rarities, of course, a likely example of that situational rarity, and Malwine had outright Unranked Skills. Alaric had at least clarified who had told him that part, so Malwine knew who to harass next.
“Grandpa! What Skill rarities are there?”
Kristian frowned. “You are a little too young to be worrying about that.”
This is getting old, and I’m not even sure if that’s a complain I can make without it somehow sounding like a pun.
“But Alaric already told me!” Malwine shamelessly blamed her teenage uncle before listing the ones he had told her about. “Then he said there were others! He said you told him! So what are they? Please.”
Malwine did put some effort into her limiting her words there—Alaric was a kid himself. But Kristian was grown, and perhaps likelier to raise an eyebrow if she went over the top. Though she was fairly certain the expectations for mental development in this world were different—seeing as mana affected growth—the line had to be drawn somewhere.
After a long sigh, Kristian answered. “Yes, there are others. For one, crafted items often show as Custom or an alternative. As for Skills, Zayden had some with curious rarities.”
Who the fuck is Zayden?
“Grandpa, who’s Zayden?”
Her grandfather flinched, almost as though he’d surprised himself with the fact that he’d mentioned whoever that was. “…A friend. Our party leader. He was an otherworlder, strongest man I ever knew.”
Oh, dear. I mean, I kind of saw that coming, but still, that confirms ‘heroes’ being summoned is in fact a thing here. I think.
“Other-worlder?”
Kristian’s lips thinned and he looked like someone who’d just been tasked with telling a child that the tooth fairy had been them all along. “Yes, Malwine… There are other worlds out there, and sometimes the Saints bring people over from there, for one reason or another. It can be a complex matter, and one I fear you will not grasp until you are grown, but I was involved in the work of one such Champion.”
Malwine had to contain herself, to avoid the temptation to somehow turn this into more questions about this Zayden man, or worse yet, shoehorn in a question about wherever Kristian came from.
“The other worlds. They’re above the sea?”
“I suppose you could say that,” Kristian let out a wry laugh. “Considerably above.”
“Mhm,” Malwine nodded. “Grandpa, how’d you meet him?”
“…Zayden?”
“Yes.”
“We met in… a place far away.”
“In another world?”
Kristian coughed. “No. Just far from here. He was young, and so were we. We lived in an… an institute for children in need of a place to be.”
“Like the nursery? Where Adelheid and I go?”
“No, it was different. We didn’t have a nursery or anything.”
“Didn’t your parents have one?”
She’d have felt bad for the question had Kristian not been the one she was talking to—he might have been her grandfather, but Malwine knew he wasn’t one to be polite when he was the one asking questions, from what she’d heard.
“No,” Kristian shook his head, his reaction limited. “My parents died a long time ago, when the sea fell.”
The what now?
It was almost as though her grandfather picked answers that just worsened her confusion.
“But the sea’s up there.”
“It used to be somewhat higher up,” Kristian clarified. “These parts are now under it, but they were not always so.”
“So they were… above the sea?!”
Malwine channeled all her previous befuddlement at having a sea in the place of a sky into that question. She supposed the sentiment transferred well enough.
“Yes,” Kristian had taken a step back. “Dear, I’ll tell Bernadette you want a lesson on this—I’m sure she would be more than willing to accommodate you.”
“But I like talking to you, grandpa!”
Kristian gave her a sad smile that carried across a surprising amount of patience for someone who clearly didn’t like answering questions. “I enjoy talking to you as well, dear. Unfortunately, I just recalled I haven’t finished my hourly patrol.”
He was escaping from her!
“Wait, grandpa!” Malwine reached out. “What were they?”
“What were what?”
She wanted to say ‘your parents’ so, so badly.
“The Skills,” Malwine tipped her head. “What rarity were they?”
“Ah. Limited, and Unranked.”
“Unranked? But how? Worse than Common?”
Kristian shook his head, though Malwine noticed he was still in the process of vacating the premises. “He was an otherworlder—they get four Skills based on their old world. It could be said the rarity of those Skills is that they have no rarity.”
Malwine sat down, right there.
Unranked Skills are an otherworlder thing?
She’d already known they were basically bonus Skills, sure, but she hadn’t quite considered they might be revealing of her situation. Clearly, if ‘Champions’—as Kristian called them—were summoned, their situations were different.
Not to mention, Malwine had eight, not four Skills categorized as Unranked.
At least she might be in the clear as far as the weight Alaric referred to went—Kristian said it was as though Unranked Skills had no rarity, not that they were lower or higher than the rest.
And Limited. I wonder if it’s a limited-edition type of thing? Or is it about requirements?
The mental image of people scrambling to get a timed Skill amused her, though she’d have to admit she wasn’t sure how such a thing could even work with what she understood of her new world so far. If nothing else, that made her lean more towards the second possibility, that they were Skills with some type of requirement.
I should have seen that name belonging to an otherworlder coming, though.
Malwine almost wanted to admonish herself. She’d already known Kristian had been in a hero’s party. The man dropping a name like Zayden should have clued her in immediately, but she’d been so focused on dumbing herself down that she didn’t quite think of it.
Perhaps it was best this way.
Still, she couldn’t help but sigh. Speaking to adults was stressful. She’d come to terms with the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, currently a child. It didn’t matter that the system made some token effort to remember her true age, and it didn’t matter that she couldn’t bring herself to let go of the mindset that came with that.
To everyone else, she was a toddler, expected to behave accordingly.
And that was stressful.
She almost—almost—wished she hadn’t rushed to learn the language.
At least then, she would have been able to use her limited grasp of it as a mask. Sure, understanding others would have been harder—and frankly irritating—but this part would have been easier.
Right now, her relative lack of practice worked on her favor, but having [The Plurilingual Psyche] as a Skill made difficulties impermanent. She wasn’t about to actually complain about it—it was a great Skill—but it wasn’t the best clutch for someone trying to act like the toddler she should be.
And she tried. Still, she found limiting herself to be far harder than it should be. For her, clarity was important. Being curt just left the doors open for misunderstandings, yet she feared the only way to be as inconspicuous as possible was to keep everything she said short.
Malwine was not great at that.
As she continued sulking in the random spot she’d sunk to, she heard footsteps, followed by unintelligible voices. She was perfectly allowed to be outside at this hour, at least within this area that Bernie had designated as safe for them, but she wasn’t particularly eager to interact with anyone right now.
Naturally, that meant the most reasonable course of action was to hide behind the nearest bench. These were solid things, so Malwine could go relatively unnoticed if no one actually got close. It was even a good enough spot to eavesdrop from.
Bernie turned the corner, two attendants behind her. “Have the books I ordered for Matilda been delivered?”
“Indeed,” an older woman wearing what appeared to be riding gear nodded. “We have kept them in the boxes they came in, though give the word and I’ll have them relocated.”
“No, all is well,” Bernie said. “I want them laid out on the desk we placed before the tables, so Matilda can start browsing immediately—she loses interest quickly, no matter her excitement.”
“If I may, do you not fear she may select Skills in the heat of the moment, if that’s the case?”
“She will not be picking any at the party. I merely wish for her to read on her options as soon as possible—she likes reading well enough. We will discuss her Skills later.”
“Understood. I will begin moving the books immediately.”
Malwine grinned, glancing to the building where the tables awaited for tomorrow’s party, for to her, that translated to: ‘Soon, there’ll be new books for you to snoop through!’