NOVEL WEB Chapter 41 - The Partial Success of an Affinity Heist
In the time since the party, Malwine found absentmindedly staring at the curse panel stopped benefiting her. She was honestly surprised she’d managed to get this much out of it in the first place.
Your [Mental Defense] Skill has improved! 11 → 14
Your [Enforced Longevity] Skill has improved! 10 → 11
As the sting of the panel’s shifting text faded, so did the gains.
By now, Malwine thought she was starting to notice a pattern—while grinding away was certainly possible, Skill growth seemed to stagnate after a while if she didn’t switch things up.
Days went by, and the events of The Snow’s start slowly lost relevance to her. She’d gotten herself some shiny new Skills, sure, but her excitement dulled.
Aside from Matilda’s absence from what Malwine had since dubbed ‘outdoorsy time’, not much changed after the clean-up. A pair of maids had descended upon the area like the wrath of the heavens, even temporarily removing furniture from every room a guest touched. Malwine only caught glimpses, but by the time they were done, everything smelled strangely flowery and things that should not have been glossy, suddenly were.
Malwine eyed the armrest of her chair with suspicion. The lacquered wood of it reflected light now.
Still, Bernie’s staff could be scary. I should take the time to get to know them. Later.
The idea was worrying, and thrilling. It’d be a while until Malwine could safely interact with particulars—she supposed she could call them neither strangers nor acquaintances accurately, even she could not find the equivalent word for it in Grēdôcavan. To her past self, the term would have referred to those known to her, whom she nonetheless didn’t know anywhere near enough to understand or truly distinguish.
And particulars were great for filler research. Sure, she wouldn’t follow in the widow’s footsteps—she would absolutely not be a weirdo and start looking into people’s background unprompted.
…Probably. The thought was almost enough to convince Malwine herself.
But the truth was, being unable to further her research on her own family ate at her sometimes. Malwine only knew what she knew so far thanks to her Skills. There had been no page-crunching, no joy at the sight of a new detail that would tie anything together. Blindly stumbling into Bernie’s seemingly lost family name was the closest she had come to actually discovering something for herself.
Family history had been such a hallmark of the widow’s life—for better or worse—that her next life was outright influenced by it, yet here Malwine was, achieving nothing.
That’s not true, technically. She had leveled, and somewhat improved her Skills. Mostly by just, finally, getting new ones. She’d even managed to get herself a way to temporarily mitigate the curse. That wasn’t nothing.
A tiny voice in her head still reminded her of those feelings of inadequacy. Watch that be why I can’t advance. Her first real root had been {Legacy}.
Coupled with the realization of just how weak her {Foresight} Root was, Matilda going from Early Esse to Mortal Esse almost felt like a wake-up call. If a child without Affinities only needed one Skill to trigger an advancement, what could Malwine possibly be missing?
She was lagging behind a literal 9-year-old. A slight smugness rose from her—she had taken advantage of the celebration to grab Skills from books meant for Matilda, after all—but she pushed it down. Now was not the time to feel proud for managing to steal from her young half-aunt.
So far so good, however. As far as Malwine could tell, she had gotten away with it. Maybe the books would run out of power sooner than expected, down the line, but that couldn’t possibly be tracked back to her.
The thought did have her wondering just how she would fake the milestone once she was that age, but she would cross that bridge when she got there. Far too many things awaited her, and if she wasted time worrying over something she probably couldn’t even reasonably prepare for until years down the line, she’d never get anything done.
As for her newest and flashiest Skill, everything had been smooth sailing only until [Shieldwork] reached Level 5. The Skill growth itself had not halted, but Bernie had taken to practically camping in their room all of a sudden.
With that, her alone time was gone. She had tried waiting her guardian out, but the woman even had a cot brought in.
Adelheid’s episodes had ground to a halt, and her little half-aunt grew grumpy. For some reason, she seemed unwilling to do her disappearing act when her mother was around.
Malwine found the fact that her little half-aunt had trusted her quite touching.
For her, the new normal presented an opportunity, but it also forced her to make a choice. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do both, certainly, but she’d been hoping she could use [Enforced Longevity]’s ‘boost’ to her attributes to see if she could force some more levels out of [Mental Defense] by squeezing the panel with the full might of her Resilience.
Now, she found herself incredibly tempted to use this chance to copy Adelheid’s Affinities. Bernie was unwittingly doing her a favor by keeping the girl in the room. After her latest soup-based dinner at the table, Malwine steeled her resolve—it was Affinity-copying time.
Bernie seemed intent on talking to the literal toddler, and barely paid any attention to Malwine as she sneaked a peek from under the blankets after her guardian moved away. It was somewhat bizarre—did she actually expect to hold a conversation with Adelheid?
Rather than judge her guardian too harshly, Malwine figured she might finally be taking the situation with Adelheid seriously. Honestly, the fact that no one seemed to care about the teleporting toddler had worried her at times, but she’d mostly been assuming children being weird was expected in this world. Between everything Malwine herself got away with and Adelheid’s shenanigans, it had seemed almost certain.
Still, Bernie’s sudden concern for her daughter benefited her too much for her to complain, even internally.
At first, Malwine wasn’t even sure how to start. A part of her wondered if she should wait for her {Foresight} Root to stabilize before shoving a fourth Affinity into her core, but Bernie’s presence probably wouldn’t last forever. Sooner or later, Adelheid would go right back to disappearing.
Slinking back under the covers, Malwine reached out with her senses. After using [Enforced Longevity] during the party, a few things had grown somewhat easier to understand—namely, attributes were tools. There was undoubtedly more to them for her to discover, but she now knew she could treat Perception as a probe she could somewhat control, send out.
Gingerly, she did just that, closing in on Adelheid. Slowly. It was no replacement for her real senses, and she couldn’t tell what the girl or Bernie were doing from where she lay, eyes closed. Could Bernie notice? That was the risk.
Malwine kept her Perception clutched tight, focusing on the tangled mess of Adelheid’s Affinities. She hadn’t been able to make sense of them before, but now she knew the name of one. She hoped that would be enough.
It was hard to tell where one began and the other ended, close as they were. Malwine couldn’t help but wonder if something like this could have happened to her own Affinities, had she used her original two from the start.
It almost startled her to realize both of Adelheid’s Affinities were Roots—still, it explained how monolithic they felt. They were stalwart, and though it hurt to admit, she perceived their combined power as something that could overshadow even her own {Legacy}.
That confirmed it—at least in one way, she was outclassed by someone actually her age.
Malwine suppressed a sigh—don’t be a sore loser… It wasn’t a competition in the first place!
She’d yet to activate [Enforced Longevity]—as much as it might have helped her make sense of Adelheid’s Affinities, ten seconds wouldn’t be enough. She’d get {Missing} through her own efforts, then push through with [Nosy Old Lady] and [Enforced Longevity] for the second one. The boost would be best saved for that.
Though she wasn’t using [Meditation], it surprised her to learn simply focusing on the tangled Affinities could be somewhat relaxing. Perhaps it was the novel experience of spending this much time focusing on mana, but she felt she could get lost in it for hours.
Maybe she had. The process certainly hadn’t been fast.
At some point, she grew capable of identifying the signs of one of Adelheid’s Affinities, and Malwine was quite confident on which one it was. All around Adelheid, there would be minuscule strands of mana that simply weren’t. It wasn’t a true absence, given how she could still tell they were there, but it was comparable enough. Those strands all but melded into streaks of swirling, cold darkness that reminded Malwine of black ink, the strong sort used to cross words out.
She gripped the {Missing} strands with a thought carried by [Nosy Old Lady]—the fact that the Skill relied on her own capacity to identify the Affinity was probably the only reason why it worked. It certainly would have achieved nothing for the second one as it was, at least.
The Skill provided her with what had to be the saddest panel she had seen in her life.
{Missing}
Holy fuck, could you have made that any less legible, [Nosy Old Lady]? Malwine felt like cursing out her own Skill, even knowing it matched the hue her senses connected the Affinity itself with. She could barely tell {Missing} apart from the panel. While it was probably on brand for an Affinity with that name, she couldn’t help but pity future Adelheid—someday, she’d probably forge a Class and have to deal with the fact that even looking at its name would be eye-straining.
Still, this should prove enough—hell, she’d probably had enough from the moment Adelheid had named the Affinity to her. But had she not spent this time examining her little half-aunt’s power, she’d have stood no chance at getting both of them.
Malwine pulled. She’d taken Katrina’s Affinities and made them her own. That had been easy enough. In some ways, there had been little to no emotion attached to it as well—she cared for the idea of her grandmother, but she had not known her. Had yet to know her, if she had it her way.
Reaching out to {Missing} through Adelheid was harder. She wasn’t even sure it was because Adelheid was alive. Their connection was not direct. Not only was she a relative—not a precise ancestor—but Adelheid was younger than her. While the limitations of [Mana Reclaimer] certainly allowed this, it did not appear… endorsed, if Malwine could describe it in such a way.
Cloning the Affinity for her own purposes felt like an uphill battle, and after enough minutes went by that Malwine feared she might fail, it struck her that something was wrong. She was going about this the wrong way.
Adelheid Rīsanin's possession of {Missing} is proven.
(❗) Missing IX confirmed.
You may not directly inherit Missing IX from Adelheid Rīsanin.
Fucking Mythic tier 9. It was almost enough for Malwine to lose focus, ridiculous as the Affinity was. She pushed her desire to look into that to the back of her mind—it probably implied a bunch of things about Bernie’s family, but now was not the time to start thinking about it.
Malwine had almost pulled back, given up, when she noticed something. [Mana Reclaimer] had not let go, however. That surprised her more than the tier, given how the Aspect was refusing to let her copy the Affinity.
Directly. That was the operative word, wasn’t it? But just what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t exactly indirectly inherit it, or at least, didn’t know how to.
Yet… Malwine had trusted her instincts before. And it had always worked out. Mostly, probably. Ironically, the widow probably would have had a better grasp on the subject, she who had warped and bent the definition of inheritance so many times.
She focused on the shape of {Missing}, almost as dark as the night sky she had not seen since her death. So easy to lose track of. An absence that wasn’t.
And at last, she understood.
It settled like a conclusion with no true sense of finality, and its presence sung of loss.
Of loss forever devoid of closure.
It reminded Malwine of that type of ancestor for which you never found neither timelines nor death, those that persisted only as names or figures documented once in their youth then never again. Of the missing in action, the lost at sea.
Of the willfully neglected, and unknowns none ever stumbled upon.
For a split second, the echoes of something else buzzed through her perception of the Affinity. A line that ended. Frustration, unfairness. Bernie.
Malwine wouldn’t deny her curiosity, but in that moment, she had to put it—and this feeling—aside.
This wasn’t about whatever may or may not have caused the Affinity to exist—she somehow knew that, despite its tier, this hadn’t always been there.
Adelheid hadn’t inherited this directly, either. Something had prompted its creation, something too subjective to be copied.
If Malwine wanted to not only take this, but be able to use and nurture it, she had to interpret it as it made sense to her.
Only then could it truly become hers.
Her proneness to hyperspecific analogies reared its head again. Something like buying a house owned by an ancestor wouldn’t miraculously make you part of its history. Taking back that which was lost was not the same as inheriting it, no matter how justified or else. There would always be a divide. The widow had known that, once.
As the widow, she’d taken for herself many things denied to her ancestors, more out of anger than anything else, and the hollow victories had changed nothing. She’d waved the middle finger at dead people who’d never be impacted by her actions.
Nothing had changed. The past had tainted things forever, and she was never able to truly make any of it her own.
So why would using [Mana Reclaimer] be any different?
No wonder it had yet to work—wishing to copy this would never be good enough.
Malwine could recognize the weight behind the Affinity’s origins, accept it.
There was a history there.
In some ways, she could be connected to it.
But it wasn’t hers. Just like whatever had come before hadn’t been Adelheid’s.
Only upon realizing that did Malwine feel the shift and truly, her entire mental tirade to reach that point had been the type of logical leap she knew she could never try to outright explain to anyone, lest she come off as a madwoman.
You may derive Vestige IX from Adelheid Rīsanin's Missing IX. Would you like to make this Affinity your own?
No tier up? Maybe she shouldn’t complain. Even with how hopeful she’d been, Malwine found she was slightly surprised it had worked out. But of course I’ll take it. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Gift Affinity. Whatever.
Vestige IX
Unyielding and unrelenting, some refuse to ever truly be gone.
This Affinity may be increased to Vestige X by reaching Acclimation and Control milestones—or automatically for the next generation—to evolve its core effect.
If you turn this Affinity into a Root, you may use Vestige-aligned mana as Mana Source regardless of origin.
Oh, now I’m mad. Why are you cheating me out of the Mythic? C’mon.
Honestly, Malwine could kind of see it, however. {Vestige}’s description felt oddly right, somewhere between {Legacy} and {Missing}. Something yet unfound that could nonetheless still be discovered.
Mana Sources
Root
Acclimation
Control
Legacy ∞
50
25
Foresight IV
0
0
Available
-
-
Locked
-
-
Locked
-
-
Locked
-
-
Locked
-
-
Other Affinities: Ore III
Had her {Foresight} Root not been as frail as it was, Malwine suspected its values would have increased during her struggle against the curse’s effect that had tried to keep her from examining it.
She stared at the panel within her mind for a little longer. Technically, she had four Affinities. Enough for all four Classes. Naturally, she couldn’t plant four yet, not with the next slots locked, but once she could…
Malwine almost couldn’t believe it, for all she’d aimed for it.
That meant it was, of course, time to get picky. She was glad to have snatched {Ore} from Katrina—from her hypothetical great-grandfather, even—but what would she do with it? What would she do with {Vestige}, for that matter?
Her remaining categories were
I’m going to have to get a fifth one just for
Malwine didn’t plant {Vestige} in
She just couldn’t see how she could put the source of that in the same category as [Multitasking] and [Learning by Reading]. What was she going to do, manifest metal books into existence or something?
Malwine sighed—strictly speaking, things had gone well. She’d wanted Adelheid’s Affinities, and she’d gotten one. Somewhat. Still, it had been taxing. Her [Integrity] was fine, but exhaustion came in many ways, and at her physical age, she still needed plenty of rest.
Not to mention, unraveling Adelheid’s second Affinity without knowing its name would take longer than a day, if not far more.
She should count her blessings while she could.
After all, she’d never truly know for how long this peace would last.