SCT-Novel Chapter 96 - Old People Were Built Different
Chapter 96 - Old People Were Built Different
—wasn’t that how most guides on meditation started? Malwine had tried countless methods by now, all formed from bits and pieces of the widow’s remaining memories. Counting seconds between each inhale and exhale, pursed-lip breathing, and whatever passed for void meditation nowadays… she thought she’d tried them all.It didn’t help that technique wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to address the core of her issue—she [Meditation] to change, but she also had next to nothing against the Skill as it was, even if one of its features bordered on useless.
She the visualization it provided for the sake of working on her core—even if all that had ground to a halt thanks to her own actions—so the Skill had to evolve without losing that…
…not that Malwine had any clue as to to make sure that remain a part of it. She could only hope the [Depicture] Aspect worked to keep the Skill on track.
As she finally accepted her best impression of a headless chicken wasn’t going to get her results, Malwine felt back to consulting her frenemy—Beuzaheim’s library.
That thing was still as disorganized as ever, enough that she’d started to doubt anyone without something like [Remote Reading] could navigate it at all. She’d half a mind to take her time checking it out in person—well, in person with a double—sometime. Perhaps librarians had Skills to make sense of the chaos?
But no matter. Books about Skills were practically a dime a dozen in the library, so long as she didn’t look for Skill books. This served her purposes, still.
Unlike in the early days, where she’d been practically starved for reading material, she no longer wasted her time looking through absolutely everything on the off-chance it might contain one or two interesting throwaway lines.
Malwine must have skimmed dozens of books—and ignored countless more with clearly unrelated titles—by the time she found something of note. The book’s cover was a rustic thing, with hastily written upon it. The ink within was just as oddly runny, but the contents were legible enough.
Further criticism went on for pages on end, repetitive at times.
Malwine wouldn’t deny this made her curious. Strictly speaking, she’d inherited [Write Anywhere] from OBeryl, but she had a feeling the author of this would still consider that an improper way of obtaining a Skill. And they probably wouldn’t be wrong, at least within the confines of their own argument.
While she would have preferred to insist that her ability to salvage Skills from dead ancestors had to count for , she wouldn’t deny she would have been far better off if she’d actually gotten to learn from said ancestors directly.
Malwine scoffed at her own thoughts. She hadn’t even managed to evolve one Skill yet, and she was already getting annoyed about what the inability to evolve meant for her starter Skills.
All in all, the book was a surprisingly enlightening read. It might not have helped her learn anything about what other types of meditation Skills might be out there, but it did bring some facts to her attention—things she honestly doubted she would have thought of on her own.
Sadly, the matter of the nameless author’s neighbor wasn’t ever address again, despite how it very much should have been. Malwine had to squash her overwhelming curiosity with a wince.
Though perhaps it might have been for the best—near the end, it seemed the author could no longer help themselves and just started rambling about Skills in various contexts, not all of which felt really relevant to the book’s topic.
It also seemed Veit was not the only one out there with a bone to pick with Forgers… if for a somewhat frivolous reason.
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There was something precious about getting to read again. It wasn’t as if anything had been stopping her, but she’d certainly slacked off on this department since she started spending more time with Adelheid. Her priorities had changed.
Though [Remote Reading] was an ability that felt impossible to burn out, Malwine felt her growing fatigue. As much as she’d started to enjoy this search—despite it being fruitless so far—browsing the contents of so many books still drained her mental energy.
Superhuman toddler in the Mortal Esse or not, it seemed breaks were still necessary if she didn’t want to end up groaning at the mere sight of the written word.
It took longer than she would have cared to admit for something worthwhile to pop up again. Certainly, many of the books she skimmed had seemed interesting enough. But for someone looking to evolve [Meditation], they simply hadn’t been .
While Malwine never did find something directly addressing cultivation techniques, books seemed fine discussing cultivation as a concept. Had she not heard of the stages leading to Immortality already, she certainly would have now, and while she hated to admit it, one such source agreed with what Veit had told her. It was also engrossing enough that she kept reading, despite it having nothing to do with her
Malwine grumbled.
She nodded along—though, much to her chagrin, she found she wished she were on better terms with the one person she could have asked follow-up questions to. Was that implying core visualization was a crutch? Or that visualizing her core was supposed to become second nature at some point? The ambiguity was troubling, and it very much did affect her right now.
Malwine had known that was what Kristian’s stage was called, for quite the while now, and she recalled reading about how the growth of hollow cores was stunted, but this clarified much.
Malwine squinted—she knew for a fact that Abelard only had one Affinity. Limited as their true interactions had been, [Nosy Old Lady] was good at making those details out, even if actual specifics about people’s Affinities required personal knowledge on her end.
That was the first and last section the book had on Immortality. Malwine exhaled slowly. Then again, the mere concept was something she wouldn’t get close to anytime soon. Her annoyance stemmed from a place of curiosity, not actual need—which admittedly wasn’t particularly unusual for her.
It didn’t help that she’d spent so long skimming books by the time she’d even stopped to read that one, that she was just about tired enough to allow herself another break.
And so another day passed without the [Meditation] problem being solved.
Malwine fell into an uneasy pattern. With Adelheid back to her disappearing act habits, even Anna Franziska rarely came by. One of the estate’s older scullery maids, Anna Wilhelmina, had taken over the task of bringing meals to her in lieu of those being organized around their lessons.
For days on end, the search through Beuzaheim’s library became a matter of finding vaguely interesting things to spend her time on, even if they weren’t related to meditation in any way. Her actual goal became something to be accomplished incidentally—it was more than clear to her that focusing on it would lead only to disappointment.
When The Forgetting came, Malwine found she was only slightly embarrassed by her lack of answers and progress alike.
“Happy birthmonth,” she told Adelheid when she caught the girl waking up one day.
Her sister’s expression shifted from her now-perpetual pouting to confusion. “What do you mean?”
“It’s The Forgetting,” Malwine explained. “That means you’re five years old now, since you were born on The Forgetting of 5798.”
Adelheid tipped her head. “The Forgetting of 5803,” she spoke slowly. “That number’s… big. But taking 5 from 103 would leave it at 98. Is that how years work?”
“Close enough. But it keeps going up. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred… eventually you get to eight-hundred. 803 minus 5 is 798.”
“I get that,” the girl shook her head. “Is it supposed to be special? Like Level 20 was?”
That had Malwine taking a step back—she hadn’t been paying as much attention as she should have, maybe. She reached out and identified her little sister.
Adelheid fon Hūdijanin - Human - Level 23
She started at Adelheid, bewildered. “You’ve reached the Mortal Esse.”
Malwine found she wasn’t bothered, or even concerned—with how the girl operated, she’d expected this to be an eventuality. She was simply… surprised.
“Yes,” her little sister nodded. “But it wasn’t anything special. It should have been something special.”
With that, the girl was gone.