The strangeness come next breakfast-time was palpable. Well, more than usual. Even Malwine’s initial annoyance at how, no, she couldn’t just stay locked up in her room had faded thanks to the circus-worthy interactions she was getting to witness. If anything, she only grew more and more curious as to just what the hell the adults had been up to after she and the rest of the kids were taken to their rooms.
Kristian was playing a boardgame with three other men—strangers to her—and for Malwine, the only thing more surprising than that was how he hadn’t chosen violence yet, despite repeatedly mentioning how the waves should take each and every one of them. The second most interesting sight was how several guests had somehow managed to get lost inside the manor and were currently being offered drinks within suspiciously potion-like containers, courtesy of Bernie.
Malwine still wasn’t sure what the limitations for [Identify] were, but—much to her curiosity’s chagrin—distance clearly played enough of a factor, at least when it came to objects. She’d realized, mere minutes earlier, that she didn’t recall ever trying to go out of her way to use the Trait on random objects before. The only peculiar items she frequently interacted with were the books that interested her, and while [Remote Reading]’s distance constraints might as well have been non-existent, that did mean she'd never really been in contact with all of those books.
Yet another thing she’d have to test later. Mostly because it had really only occurred to her when she wasn't exactly in a position to freely experiment.
As she ate her watery oatmeal, Malwine checked on her latest ‘draft’ panels. She'd been running [Write Anywhere] via [Multitasking] in the background for what had to be at least an hour, ever since concluding she'd have to leave the actual Skill training she wanted to do for later.
She debated whether she should have tried to pull an all-nighter, but it hadn't felt right. If she seemed tired when she should’ve been waking up, that might lead to concerns from Bernie, and the last thing Malwine needed was for her guardian to remember three-year-olds did indeed require frequent adult supervision.
Malwine figured she probably owed Adelheid one—her little half-aunt had clearly ruined the entire family's perception of childcare.
Speaking of the walking disappearing act, Malwine hadn't seen her since the girl revealed one of her Affinities to her, and as such, she hadn't managed to try copying it for herself.
Strangely enough, she was both disappointed and thankful. The way Adelheid had spoken of her Presence, vague as that had been, frankly had Malwine worried. Even if she ran [Enforced Longevity] for her 10 seconds of power, would that be enough for that Perception against Presence check to work?
Malwine struggled to justify her concern, but the fact that she'd kind of been underestimating Adelheid stood. Her little aunt might as well have been stepping in and out of reality for all she knew, and that Affinity being called {Missing} did it no favors. If it could somehow directly help with disappearing—or at least hiding—like how {Legacy} interacted with the abilities that bore any relation to its name, that would certainly explain a lot.
And it would most definitely be worth the effort to get, even if that meant having to wait for Adelheid to show up. Beyond that, the next step would probably be to familiarize herself enough with it, so as to use it without making the fact that she copied it obvious. It was one thing to copy Affinities from the dead, as it was undoubtedly easier to get away with it, but Malwine didn't even want to think of opening that can of worms, of what people might think if there were suddenly two very obviously disappearing toddlers in the family.
But for now, Malwine worked on what she could. Regardless of whether the bottleneck on [Write Anywhere] was purely because of the imbalance, she refused to believe its growth would be halted completely. She'd grind away if she had to.
Unless effort matters more than I think. But still, even if the progress from using it idly is low, it can't possibly be zero.
Your [Multitasking] Skill has improved! 5 → 6
Well, at least something's leveling.
She couldn't get too complex with her background scribbling, given [Multitasking]’s limitations, but Kristian and his buddies were giving her more than enough material for her to take ‘notes’ on. Some of the insult variations she’d heard so far were wild. Not necessarily good, but definitely worth mulling over in case she ever needed to express her discontent in a more world-appropriate manner. If otherworlders were common knowledge, Malwine didn’t want to ruin the relative secrecy her special circumstances might be allowing her by actually cursing in any language from her previous Earth.
‘Wave-sputtered crab’ has potential, though I’m not sure what the criteria for calling someone that is.
Malwine frowned before correcting her expression, then went to take an actual relevant note in yet another panel. ‘Crabs apparently exist.’
“What do you mean, that is not a valid move?”
“It’s in the rules.”
At some point, Malwine had become so engrossed on the show that even [Multitasking] had fluttered out, her full focus being on watching them ‘play’ without smiling to herself.
The particular boardgame they were playing involved a large map and humanoid chips in a variety of colors. Malwine didn’t know what they meant, but she could make some guesses from context.
Kristian pointed to his chips. “I have fifteen times your forces!”
“Yes, but you can’t conquer any tiles that have allies without sending at least one diplomat ahead.”
“Why in any Devil’s name would I need to send a diplomat for a conquest just because you have allies? What would that even achieve? A conqueror would go for the surprise attack, not reveal their own plans beforehand.”
That was another type of curse that had Malwine raising her eyebrows. She’d heard variations of it before—Thekla seemed particularly fond of them—but she’d yet to figure it out. Unlike with sea-based ones, the usage of such phrases didn’t seem to imply they were cursing at these hypothetical Devils, which raised a whole new slew of questions for Malwine.
“You can’t do surprise attacks like that, you have to announce your intentions to my allies first.”
Her notes on the matter were far from eloquent, now that she thought of it—that was probably what she got for relegating the task to her background Skill combination. ‘Sea bad. Devils good? What.’
Sighing, Malwine took the time to refine those while Kristian continued to argue about how requiring him to send a diplomat pre-slaughter was the height of stupidity. ‘The sea’s bad, got that already. Some curses are in ‘any Devil’s name’ or even ‘any Devil’s sake’, which, for one, implies multiple Devils, but doesn’t quite put them at the negative side of the phrases. I think. Which is weird because gods exist, but I haven’t really heard of those outside of trial context. Something to look out for?’
Strangely enough, she’d have expected to run into the topic by now when browsing the library. Malwine had only found a few books that spoke of anything even remotely cultural, despite their antiquarian’s fervor for anything Grēdôcavan—granted, she’d barely skimmed said books, so maybe she’d just missed it.
Teach had seemed confident in how some ambiguous ‘Her’ could probably have helped Malwine manage the curse. If only she knew who the masked woman had been referring to… It wasn’t as though she even knew how she could go about establishing contact with a god, but it meant the possibility was out there. Whether Teach had believed that because of her personal connection to the deity, or if it was something open to helping people troubled by curses in general, was up in the air.
Hey, [Unpacifiable], I don’t like how you aren’t telling me that fantasizing about maybe contacting some random god is a bad idea.
It buzzed lightly, but in the same way it had for the two guests at the party. No blaring alarms.
Malwine huffed. It wasn’t as though she could actually do it anyway—maybe that was it.
She’d unfortunately found she had to tune out her grandfather’s argument after the tenth minute or so. The game seemed to have reached a standstill, purely because Kristian remained intent on conquering the other guy’s tiles via sheer numbers instead of doing what the others insisted was in the rulebook.
I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t resorted to violence yet.
The worst part was Malwine somewhat understood where Kristian was coming from, at least judging from what she’d overheard of the rules so far. Numbers were the only thing that mattered for most tiles, and that allies feature seemed to only exist to inconvenience the invading player by having them send a diplomat ahead while the allies and target could gather forces using the mercenary feature.
Had this been a game back in her first life, the widow would have most definitely gone for the surprise attack too. Seeing a feature that appeared to exist purely to prevent that strategy irked her—it was almost as if the rules themselves didn’t want the players to be dicks.
The widow had never been a fan of when games insisted on limiting the paths players could take, especially if they were also supposed to be strategy games. Being an ass was a strategy. Then again, the widow had never been a boardgame fan—those were more rule-based than the types of games that could presumably be programmed around various routes implicitly, while people at a table were probably unlikely to be eager to read an incredibly long set of the rules and possibilities just for some casual fun.
In the games she did play in that life, she hadn't always relied on pure brute force—power gaps could only go so far with level caps and whatnot—but she’d certainly done everything she could to give herself as comfortable an advantage as she could manage, when possible.
She simply hadn’t liked losing when she could instead stack the deck in her own favor, and it wasn’t really something limited to how the widow had approached games.
Malwine thought back to the widow’s last day, to that confrontation with the professor. Could she have approached that differently? Argued? If she had known he’d be like that, then maybe…
Oh, who am I kidding?
She knew the answer already, for it always came back to that.
If the widow had known she’d be on the losing side of that conversation, she’d never have had it at all.
I can’t believe I’m finding Kristian relatable.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
It was almost funny, and a part of her almost found him immature for his complaints. The widow wouldn’t have approved of voicing them, even if she—and probably also Malwine as she was now—would agree with the sentiment itself. It really didn’t help that, by now, she’d become painfully aware of how her grandfather was probably, like, half her age. How was she supposed to not start thinking of all the parallels between her own antics that she’d grown to judge in hindsight after decades upon decades passed?
Malwine stopped herself from pondering all that much further. She was getting dangerously close to having to confront the disconnect between her current and total age when it came to how she viewed her family.
Beyond Kristian’s antics, it was harder to pinpoint what the rest of them were up to. Paul and Alaric had been at the table when Bernie brought her here, but while there was a lot of movement in the area, it was mostly staff cleaning things up. Thekla, Anselm, and Kristoffer were nowhere to be seen. Abelard, too.
When did I start counting that guy on my checklist?, Malwine held off on actually adding him anywhere, least of all her tree, but Thekla wasn’t exactly subtle.
With a sigh, Malwine got right back to rereading the notes she’d taken via her literally multitasked Skills, settling on a comfy chair next to the door that led to one of the outdoor areas. There was no reason to stay outside anymore, when she’d not only eaten but also gathered plenty of pebbles from the path, for later.
----------------------------------------
After some time, the three men stormed off, muttering something about Kristian. One of them outright asked the others why they’d ever thought this would be a good idea.
Malwine thought they got off pretty easily, considering all her grandfather did this time was argue and cancel the game—the vague events involving Kristian, Margreth, and property damage were still quite fresh in her mind.
She managed to catch Kristian as he crossed the room, before he managed to backtrack after realizing she was there.
“Who were those?”
Kristian hesitated for what felt like an uncomfortably long time. “Why?”
“They were your friends!” Malwine nodded sagely. “Grandpa’s friends!”
“Oh, dear,” her grandfather seemed to grow increasingly regretful of ever allowing this conversation to start. “No, they were guests for Matilda’s party. I confess I did not ask for their names—Bernadette might know?”
“You don’t know the guests?”
“No. They were almost all from Beuzaheim.”
“Is Beuzaheim close?”
“Relatively,” Kristian looked off into the distance. “I have some work to do.”
Malwine doubted that, considering he wasn’t even wearing the cold-weather clothes she’d come to associate with, well, The Cold and The Snow—not that the detail stopped her grandfather from walking out the door.
How can you regularly get into fights yet still run off at the first sign of an actual conversation?
…At least she hoped she wasn’t the source of that type of reaction.
In what had to be a struck of luck, Bernie went by shortly after.
“Nap, please,” Malwine closed her fists and placed them under her chin to look at her guardian with a wide-eyed look. “Please.”
Bernie simply sighed and picked her up. “Very well.”
Victory!
Her lucky streak continued as Bernie didn’t linger in the room, leaving Malwine to her own devices. She figured it made sense, seeing as she pretended to go to sleep almost immediately.
Still, Malwine waited for a bit longer just to be safe before shifting to a sitting position. The room’s lighting was far from great at the moment, given how Bernie had dimmed the green light scones for Malwine’s alleged nap, but she could work with this.
[Toll] 0 → 17
Malwine found herself immediately wishing she’d closed her eyes before using [Shieldwork], the light stunning her for a second. It didn’t look that different from how the bubble around her fist had, but the shield somehow looked brighter from within, its texture more detailed. She saw how it darkened then lost visibility, not leaving her with any more time to admire how the full thing looked.
She figured she probably just needed to get used to it—not that she’d resort to casting it repeatedly just yet, but she needed to inure herself to the shock of those lights, however brief it might be.
As for the shield’s shape this time… It wasn’t lost to Malwine that it went flat, separating her from the bed, as if she were within a dome with a floor, for lack of a better descriptor.
Curious, Malwine dismissed the shield and stepped off her bed, squinting as she prepared herself to stare off into the mini-sun of the {Foresight}-fueled Skill. She did a little hop as she fired it off.
[Toll] 17 → 42
As her feet touched the ground, the sphere around herself did not shift as it had with her hand the first time she tried—instead, it sunk into the floor. Leaping again just made it follow her up.
Apparently, the ‘anchored to you’ part of [Shieldwork]’s description was incredibly accurate. Malwine didn’t dare move too far from her bed, but she walked in circles next to it, watching as the shield moved with her.
Her [Integrity] was still at 1000, so she could probably go wild with testing it. The only problem was she wasn’t entirely sure as to what all the ways to test it could even be. For now, she’d start with trying to figure out just when the shield would need more [Toll] to sustain itself.
Malwine summoned a pebble from her inventory and tossed it—within a second, she realized how bad an idea that would have been were it simply shot back, but the pebble stopped the moment it touched the shield.
It almost clung to it, before abruptly sliding off along its curvature. As it reached the floor, it remained there when Malwine and the shield next moved—the shield didn’t seem to care about keeping anything other than Malwine herself within.
That would probably be a problem if she ever needed to use [Shieldwork] to protect somebody else, but thinking of situations where that’d actually happen had her going blank. If it really came to that, Malwine could probably just drag people along and make the shield bigger, or at worst, try and get a range Trait or something. That had to exist. Probably.
Around the eleventh to twelfth pebble—Malwine’s patience might have slightly slipped—the expected notification popped up.
[Toll] 42 → 43
Only a dozen hits or so? How can it be so weak?
Then again, it was a level 1 Skill, and [Shieldwork] had unfortunately been the one
Skill from the list that didn’t clarify how it was leveled—so far, Malwine suspected that either creating or changing the shields mattered more than the damage they took, or the imbalance penalty was that bad for her poor category.[Toll] 43 → 44
And with that second dozen of pebbles, the Skill finally moved.
Your [Shieldwork] Skill has improved! 1 → 2
Then some twenty-six or so pebbles later…
[Toll] 44 → 45
Malwine would have dared guess the extra level about doubled the effectiveness of the shield, at least in terms of how much longer it could last against pebble-based warfare. That was good to know, but there was no way she would be measuring things via pebbles in the future.
Her decision to stop this part of the testing there had undoubtedly been unrelated to how she’d run out of pebbles by then, certainly. She had no choice but to pick them up so Bernie wouldn’t notice them, but that task was more than enough for Malwine to conclude she never, ever wanted to do clean-up duty for fifty-plus pebbles again.
Disappointment flushed through her as she found a certain aspect of the Skill had remained unchanged—recreating the same shield she’d tested their durability with still cost Malwine about the same [Toll].
[Toll] 45 → 70
She sighed—the Skill’s description didn’t say it would, but she still hoped that cost would also drop as the Skill leveled. Malwine had chosen the Skill with the knowledge that she’d probably have to rely on [Integrity] to use it, but the fact that it had some limited usability with [Toll] even then had her a bit frustrated, especially after how the next attempt had gone.
[Toll] 70 → 79
[Integrity] 999 → 967
At least number-wise, that confirmed the Skill was more expensive to cast with [Integrity], though Malwine neither knew nor had the math-sense to delve into what the specifics of it might have been.
[Integrity] 967 → 917
Alright, that’s a bit much.
It was also probably what she got for continuing to dismiss the shields—by now, the clearest quirk of the Skill seemed to be that the shield creation itself was costlier than their maintenance, considerably so.
Malwine thought back to her inventory, imagining the pile of pebbles sitting somewhere in the void.
She imagined herself having to pick them up, and immediately canceled all budding plans to retry her experiment now that the Skill was being fueled by [Integrity]—guessing the cost to sustain the shield might have also been around double the original one seemed like a safe enough guess to Malwine.
Now, the grind.
[Integrity] 917 → 867
…
[Integrity] 867 → 517
Your [Shieldwork] Skill has improved! 2 → 3
That was as far as Malwine was willing to go with tanking her own [Integrity] in one go. It seemed the biggest hurdle for leveling [Shieldwork] would simply be time—she’d have to just keep making them until the Skill wouldn’t level anymore.
She wondered just how much she could push it if she used [Meditation] in between sessions, but a part of her really wanted to move on to [Mental Defense] next. Now that she mostly knew how [Shieldwork] functioned, focusing on her new
Skill didn’t feel like a burning priority. Malwine could level it slowly throughout the days—she’d have even dared hope she might get it to that ubiquitous bottleneck of 25 within a month or two.If only I’d gotten it to level 10, though… My first level with 1k attributes to spend! It was a bit of a silly milestone, considering she’d only just learn it even existed, but Malwine was glad nonetheless.
Her mood brightened at the thought of leveling [Mental Defense]—she already had a pretty solid idea of what to put it up against, and
But first, Malwine realized she should probably actually take that nap while there was still time.