Though her initial conclusions about {Foresight} had ultimately felt like a simple click of something falling into place without fanfare, everything that followed was about as subtle as the bursting of a dam—enough that Malwine was having a terrible time parsing the whole of them.
Your Acclimation to {Foresight} has grown! 12 → 13 Your Control of {Foresight} has improved! 5 → 6
If she let herself ponder even the most irrelevant of previous events, she found herself at risk of spiraling. By the day, she grew less and less fond of Teach’s opinions—{Foresight} was just stupid.
Malwine now meant that both with her original intent—in that the Affinity made no sense— and in just how strong it had the potential to be.
Forget prophecies, this thing could clearly just trigger convenient harvestable reveals!
She hadn’t a single clue as to how that worked, either. Mercifully, she was pretty sure she didn’t need to. Her understanding of {Foresight} afforded a degree of freedom when it came to sparing her brain of the inevitable breakdown that would follow trying to grasp the mechanics of it.
Still, the Acclimation and Control values of {Foresight} had not skyrocketed as {Legacy}’s once had. Maybe that was for the best—the more she thought of her first and best Affinity, the clearer it became to Malwine that she understood that one on such a deep yet wildly esoteric level that while she could likely push it with ease in the future, she might trip and fall on her face the moment she tried to put any of her thoughts about it to words.
That left {Vestige} as the next on her list. She intercalated focusing on it and {Foresight}, but she had to confess the contrast between them threw her for a loop. {Vestige} stood between {Legacy} and {Missing}, and at times she believed it a cross of the two. She could understand it almost as well as she could {Legacy}, albeit with reservations.
{Vestige} was about that which remained, yet would never be whole again. It was about loss and broken things. You could build upon legacy, for it was—by nature—a foundation. Not an obligation, not a promise. Legacy was that which stood before, to serve as a different or better starting point for those who came after.
Vestiges, meanwhile, had to be sought after, for they would not always be apparent in plain sight. They were ruins that might be built over, curious sights in the distance.
Malwine couldn’t help but wonder whether the visualized space within her core would someday reflect that.
Still, it was that, that had her drawing parallels to {Foresight}, flimsy as her justifications were. If {Vestige} was about what existed in the past and left remnants seen in the present, {Foresight} was almost about what could be done in the present to intentionally make pieces available in the future.
{Legacy} might have had elements of both, if Malwine really thought about it.
She started fantasizing about what a cycle involving all three would look like, but she’d likely be skipping several steps if she actually put effort into that—not to mention, she’d yet to determine where {Implicit} would fall in the great scheme of things.
It was a fun exercise nonetheless.
----------------------------------------
For {Implicit}, talking to Adelheid felt like the right thing to do. It had been the girl’s Affinity to begin with, and Malwine could acknowledge she wasn’t anywhere near ready to interpret it on her own. One day, between lessons, she asked.
She hadn’t been expecting her little sister to give her an answer this… elaborate.
“When it says there is much still left unsaid, it’s about just how many things people literally don’t say. Like when I spoke with great-grandma… She couldn’t speak, not really, but I could tell what she would have said,” Adelheid explained. “I guess that’s got to be how yours works, too?
But for what’s not done.”
Malwine pondered this for a while—the girl was kind enough to remain in the room until Malwine got back to her. “And what of how there is still much that may yet be said? Or done, in my case.”
“It’s the same,” Adelheid shrugged, as if the answer were obvious. “None of what she would have said was really said, but I found out what would have been said anyway. And I replied as if it had been said.”
So it’s like… by knowing what would have been said, you act as though it had been? And that makes a difference?
Malwine simply nodded along, but her little sister had given her much to think of.
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Your Acclimation to {Foresight} has grown! 13 → 17 Your Control of {Foresight} has improved! 6 → 8 Your Acclimation to {Vestige} has grown! 10 → 15 Your Control of {Vestige} has improved! 5 → 7 Your Acclimation to {Implicit} has grown! 0 → 8 Your Control of {Implicit} has improved! 0 → 4
By some miracle, all that indirect focus on {Legacy} hadn’t gotten its values to increase and further throw off her goals, but overall, The Fog was proving to be a great month as for Malwine
as far as training Affinities went. Her maximum [Integrity] was at 1046 now from the Acclimations alone.
As far as the lessons with Anna Franziska went, however, she remained somewhat stumped. Trying to keep that stupid fingertrap from pretend-maxing her [Toll] within an instant was like trying to stay in the air after doing a little hop. Malwine could only put up the smallest amount of resistance before her inevitable loss.
On the bright side, at least I’m lasting… one second or so.
It was progress, even if far from impressive. Perhaps there were better exercises out there for someone like her, who could cultivate—then again, Adelheid didn’t appear to be having any problems with this.
As much as it pained her to admit, it was starting to look like she was the problem, and maybe mana control was going to be relegated to that list of categories she refused to acknowledge in their entirety, to avoid letting anyone know just how bad she was at it.
Like math, or remembering things without checking her notes.
A part of Malwine just wanted to try and circulate her mana then and there, just to see what would happen. Her only concern was the fact that Anna Franziska was right there. Adelheid already knew about her, and Franziska was just a child. Even if this triggered anything flashy, she was confident in being able to explain it away.
That left Anna Franziska as the main obstacle—and so, as the lesson came to an end and their teacher left with her daughter, Malwine turned to Adelheid, whispering despite how unnecessary it might have been when they were alone. “Can you borrow one of those fingertraps without being seen? I want to keep practicing.”
“One of those what?”
“The fingertraps,” Malwine pantomimed her fingers being stuck, to represent the item.
“You mean the mana control sleeves?”
“…Yes, that.”
“Okay!” Adelheid nodded with a smile, fading from view with a smooth pop. As she returned with one such item—which Malwine had half a mind to keep calling a fingertrap—she handed it to Malwine with a raised eyebrow. “Anna Franziska has lots of those. None in pretty colors, though.”
“Aw,” Malwine patted her little sister’s back. At one point, their teacher had asked if they happened to know what happened to some of the missing supplies, and while they’d denied it, Adelheid had chosen to return the coloring pens. The poor girl was now without anything to practice her [Shadow Manipulation] with.
It struck her then that they hadn’t discussed their Skill growth in depth much in recent times. If nothing else, the incident with OHeidi had somewhat squashed their enthusiasm. Still, she’d noticed Adelheid had gotten to Level 18 already.
Malwine couldn’t help but wonder just how much further ahead the girl would be if she had more Skills.
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Your Acclimation to {Legacy} has grown! 50 → 51
Malwine sighed. It was bound to happen eventual, and she had to confess she wasn’t exactly unhappy about it—she’d been simply holding on to the hope that she might actually get the others to those respective 50 and 25 milestones before it happened.
As for the aforementioned three others…
Your Acclimation to {Foresight} has grown! 17 → 21 Your Control of {Foresight} has improved! 8 → 10 Your Acclimation to {Vestige} has grown! 15 → 18 Your Control of {Vestige} has improved! 7 → 9 Your Acclimation to {Implicit} has grown! 8 → 13 Your Control of {Implicit} has improved! 4 → 6
…Why couldn’t [Toll] improve like this? Her [Integrity] was already up to 1059, and The Fog wasn’t even over!
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Thoughts of a cycle between her Affinities had grown more frequent, but for once, she put some active effort into keeping herself from blindly trying something when she could just ask Veit.
As for that meeting with her new cultivation teacher, the one she kept putting off… She’d go speak to Veit after {Foresight}’s Acclimation reached 25. Definitely.
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A small child sat in a corner of her room, glaring at a fingertrap with hate in her heart.
Listen here, you little shit. Malwine grit her teeth, ready to go for another round at this infuriating exercise. She had to give credit where credit was due—it certainly excelled at confirming she could feel her blood pressure going through the roof. Today, her practice would go better, or so she told herself.
She’d managed to find a compromise between her impulses and her common sense, settling for cycling the relatively safe {Legacy}—alone—before trying her luck with the fingertrap.
Sensing it came as naturally as breathing, she imagined she was taking the Affinity out for a walk through the park.
That the park was capable of pretend-maxing her [Toll] mattered little. It was a park with behavioral issues, but something she knew she could cross nonetheless.
A spark of citrine light flew from the {Legacy} chair within her core, a shooting star going up and out. It set her channels alight, vaguely reminiscent of the sprinklers people waved around when celebrating a new year back on the widow’s Earth.
As that conflagration rushed to her hands, Malwine did her best to time it properly.
She activated the stupid fingertrap at what she believed was the right moment, hitting with the full weight of her actual accrued [Toll]—and she’d been generous in just how much power she drew for that.
[Toll] 0 → 190
Take that!
Her stunt might have been slightly more successful than she anticipated, as soon enough, the warmth she felt in her fingers was no longer only coming from within, and the fingertrap started veritably smoking.
With a yelp, Malwine ate the [Integrity] cost of shielding her fingers without a second thought, throwing the fingertrap as far as she could manage.
Wait, is this room flammable?
She had no desire of subjecting her own room to the fate that had befallen OHeidi’s basement.
Mere seconds after tossing it, she found herself rushing after the object with shielded hands, touching it only for the instant it took for it to disappear into her inventory.
She strongly hoped inventories couldn’t be damaged.
With that done, Malwine finally moved to look at her hands with a wince—to her surprise, they appeared unmarred. Not even slightly reddened.
She’d known her attributes—even after the curse’s effects—were higher than the norm for her age, having Adelheid as comparison for everything save Presence, but it was another thing to witness it so plainly.
That kind of heat should have singed a normal person, at minimum.
Huh.
She had been holding off on using the points from her latest level-up, but she would have been lying if she denied being tempted to just dump them on Endurance and see what happened if she tried that again. Very tempted.
In the end, her common sense won out, and she did no such thing.
The rest of what would have been her training session went towards coming up with plausible excuses to give Adelheid when the girl asked for the fingertrap back.
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Mana Sources
Root Acclimation Control Legacy ∞
19 9 Locked - - Locked - - Locked - -
Other Affinities: Ore III
Looking good, if I do say so myself.
Having finally reached the point where she thought she might not die of shame if she spoke to Veit about her progress, Malwine stood before the forester’s hut. Such intrusive thoughts and insecurity were far from valid from a realistic standpoint—she had gone much further than even she’d believed she could, let alone in a single month!
Still, it was probably better that she only came here now. It meant she could show off her progress this time, instead of complaining about being unable to achieve anything.
“Hello?” she tried asking as softly as she could. It was a hard balance to strike, between being loud enough to be audible and not drawing attention to herself, but she figured a Level 400-plus must have had decent senses. “Veit! Hello!”
She narrowed her eyes. Having stood around for the better part of half an hour—she’d gone as far as to dismiss the double just to check on her stopwatch pebble—her patience was running thin.
“Veit!”
Malwine circled the hut, trying to pinpoint possible locations for the man. There were several paths she figured someone might take if they wanted to leave the area on foot, and countless others someone like Veit could take regardless.
Letting the double fade, she reappeared within Veit’s hut. She’d swapped [Write Anywhere] out for [Shieldwork] just in case. This should have been a relatively safe place to investigate, but one never knew. She’d stopped taking safety as a given when it turned out an Immortal zombie had been under their manor all along, casually pinned to a wall. [Unpacifiable]’s silence did keep her from true concern, however.
She hadn’t paid much attention to the inside of Veit’s living area before, beyond complaining about how small it looked. He had a tiny desk with some cramped seating arrangements and a kitchenette. There was barely any space for their lessons, let alone for guests—not that anyone ever came here, as far as she could tell.
Malwine eyed the only two doors within the structure. Even if she made her double tangible for a moment, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t be locked. And if she got caught, who knew how Veit might react?
Probably by calling me out on acting like a literal child or something.
She steeled her resolve, ignoring how her mind brought up images of [Nosy Old Lady] staring down at her, its name once again proven accurate.
Of course Veit might simply have been a private person, but he was a high level who chose to work in the middle of nowhere, being a forester of all things. She wouldn’t have questioned that hesitance to invite her in on their first lesson had it being anyone else.
Veit, however, was exactly the kind of person who could be keeping dangerous secrets.
She accrued [Toll] to turn the left door’s knob before she could think better of it, and was greeted by a surprisingly modern bathroom. It was blessedly empty, but she took the time to acknowledge how the facilities appeared to have a full-sized toilet rather than a latrine.. Is that a shower I see?
She and Adelheid had a bathroom, strictly speaking, but they could only get there when taken there by whoever would be bathing them—not that such a rule could stop either of them if they really wanted to get in—and the place itself left much to be desired.
Having wasted a considerable amount of time examining such a mundane room, Malwine shut the door as silently as she could before moving on to invade the next room. To her surprise, it might have been the biggest of the chambers.
A lump of sheets was on the bed, and Malwine froze. Uh-oh.
Her initial shock at the implication that Veit was not only asleep, but had remained asleep throughout all this shifted to concern. Was he okay? If she wasn’t, what was she supposed to do about it?
Slowly, she crawled her way to the other side of the room, hopefully beneath eye level. There is no explanation I could give for this that could ever suffice.
But she was worried now. This was no longer about trying to pry on his secrets.
As she rose, the forester showed no reaction. He was asleep, the long silken sleeves of his sleepwear peeking out from under his numerous blankets. With his brown eyes closed, and resting on a white bed, his features made the sight quite unnatural, everything from his body to his surroundings nearly colorless.
The only thing that stood out was the locket he clutched in his sleep, much larger than the one Anselm had given Malwine. Silver framed a painting, embossed as a cameo necklace might be. A woman was portrayed within, bearing the features of an older woman with graying hair. Next to her were a depiction of the man himself, with slightly shorter hair, and two children who could have been no older than ten.
Malwine’s blood ran cold. She’d known he had a wife that died, but he’d never mentioned children—and she hadn’t been inclined to ask.
Here she was, having wanted to pry into his private life, and the man was just asleep. Too soundly asleep, but that didn’t change the facts—she had very much overstepped.
Malwine licked her lips, closing the room and dismissing the double. For the rest of The Fog, she didn’t even attempt to return.
Now I actually have a valid reason to feel like I’m about to die of shame the next time I talk to him.