The Weight of Legacy

Chapter 25 - Violence Against Ancient Books Is Discouraged

The combination of [Learning by Reading] and its Aspect was truly a sight to behold, coming off as more formidable the more Malwine thought about it.Access requirements and limitations——were waived. Similarly, [Remote Reading] only required that she knew the location of the eligible text.

As such, at no point had the Skill or Aspect stopped her from trying to read non-existent books all across the hall. Nothing would happen, but the lack of negative feedback was promising.

The whole 2x2 grid was—as far as Malwine could tell from her testing with this room’s own books—based on her impression of what 2x2 worth of tiles was, back on her Earth. Presumably, that was yet another carryover from her first life, like the fact that this explicitly applied to

Malwine’s first—if abrupt—discovery was a simple one.

Apparently, she could not read book covers.

Oh, she tried, reaching outwards from the book she had——managed to reach, but it was, at best, blurry.

Of course, Malwine wouldn’t let this discourage her—even if she would have appreciated the books having the decency to state their title on the inside, at least.

Malwine couldn’t help but wonder if she might have found the library sooner had she been putting more effort into her search.

Still, this was undoubtedly a Triple-checking to ensure Bernie hadn’t walked in while she’d been focusing, Malwine allowed herself to grin.

That smile fell as soon as she started actually reading the book. Malwine would still insist she wasn’t the type to blush—in fact, in her past life, one of those unsolicited reports a DNA-matching site had once given her claimed, with high certainty, that she was unlikely to.

But new-life Malwine clearly lacked that blessing.

And it was absolutely Bernie’s, given the label.

Had the book been in her hands, Malwine might have tossed it as far as she could, but given this was [Remote Reading], all she could do was shut the connection down and try to reach for a different book.

Therein lay a weakness of the Aspect that Malwine hadn’t encountered before now—that margin of error was a double-edged sword.

Malwine was trying to reach unknown books, but her perception of was being influenced by the book she was trying her hardest to ignore. Whichever other unknown books were here, were so close to it that the Aspect’s margin of error was redirecting her to the one book she had the misfortune of already knowing about.

She shifted her aim to around two feet beyond where she visualized this book being—and nothing happened. She bit her lip and refocused on the book for a second, then tried the same but in the opposite direction, where she knew the hall was.

As nothing happened, Malwine could guess that meant she’d indeed hit the hall again.

The thought alone made Malwine consider quitting the endeavor altogether. Her guardian clearly had a side to her Malwine had neither known nor to know of.

But giving up over a suspicious alchemy book would be silly at this point—even if she hoped to never find out what Bernie was doing reading such recipes.

Malwine ate breakfast absentmindedly, quite numb by now to how strange the green oatmeal tasted—it wasn’t , just not as sweet as she’d have expected.

Once she was alone with just Adelheid in a corner again, Malwine got back to her search. She fired off failed attempts through the hallway despite knowing the general location now, if only out of hope that she wouldn’t land on that book again. Using it as point of reference would only lead to a repeat of the

This time, she didn’t get a hit on the forsaken book.

Malwine did a double take at what she found, the idea of finding something actually useful this early a shock.

Her priority was researching her options for Katrina's resurrection, really, but this would have to do—considering how was as far as their family tree went, Malwine also couldn’t discard the family had never been in a position where they needed to look into the topic, especially since OBeryl’s time had clearly passed.

That meant reading this book now that she had the chance to was the only course forward. Trying to land on another one might even carry the risk of misremembering where this one had been if she tried to revisit it later, or worse, it being moved.

Malwine mentally flipped the page, eager to find out what this book held in store, only for her heart to skip a beat as she came face to face with the most atrocious handwriting she’d seen since reincarnating. The fact that the syllabary was relatively elaborate made everything that much worse.

She read the text, but it took so much back and forth, comparing the letters of clearer words to other messier ones, that lunch came by just around the time she was confident she could make sense of the first chapter alone, and the thing had five of those.

In a way, Malwine was thrilled. . It reminded her of finding a new records book, or of when a new scribe took over for the previous one. For all she might have understood the language and even the style, every time that happened, she had to relearn and challenge herself. She would have gone as far as to say that the more variation she saw and learned to get through, the easier the next one got.

The results, here, were debatable. It struck her then that most of her earlier reading had been comparatively curated—Bernie didn’t leave any borderline-illegible books in the girls’ room.

Your [The Plurilingual Psyche] Skill has improved! 25 → 26

The chapter wasn’t long, and a considerable amount of the text was dedicated to praising some unnamed Prince that Malwine lacked the knowledge to identify, as well as various ‘local’ and ‘worldly’ noble houses. Given the book’s lack of a publication date, she doubted even history lessons would have clarified anything.

Considering her own ability to basically steal Affinities she’d failed to inherit—and the fact that her past, systemless life had apparently had one—Malwine didn’t believe that last part about Affinities for a second. If anything, she felt like the system liked to hand those out like candy.

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At no point did the chapter explain what a [Forger] was supposed to be, but even with the implication that it was related to the forging of Classes, it was… a curious choice of name for a Class category.

The author’s tendency to boot-lick the reader’s hypothetical liege made Malwine skip a few more paragraphs. She was beginning to doubt the worth of this text—given how it made it clear those who apparently needed others to forge their Classes were those Affinities, the informational value this provided to her was dubious at best.

Malwine frowned. Someone out there was making a great effort to make it to the top of her shit list—she just didn’t know yet. And while, yes, this didn’t apply to her, and , she was unlikely to do something about this, this clashed with her impression of her new world so far enough to make her uncomfortable.

Nobles that could get bullied off the premises by her grandfather were one thing, but actually deep-rooted things like these were very much not something Malwine wished to encounter, lest she get tempted to give anyone a piece of her mind once she grew stronger.

Her grandfather married to Bernadette, who—to the surprise of no one—was apparently a Lady, but Malwine had had her suspicions about their status being somewhat muddled ever since Bernie had dragged the poor Lady Margreth to her fifteen minutes of fame as their governess. Not to mention, she’d overheard the estate’s staff tell that story far too many times for the imagined scene of Lady Margreth fleeing from a chandelier to leave her mind.

Yet Kristian clearly had Classes, where Bernie didn’t—that meant she hadn’t been the one to forge his. Bernie didn’t even have an Affinity.

Malwine wondered who this estate belonged to before the family got it—even if the system could seemingly just create things, some parts of it she’d glimpsed looked weathered. The cycle might have played a part in that, but she doubted it wasn’t at least some decades old.

As far as she knew, both Kristian and Katrina had been orphans, if what she’d since considered about that ‘school’ they’d been to was accurate.

She’d have to ask those questions eventually—coming up with a way to ask without raising eyebrows would be the problem.

Malwine was already fairly certain she wouldn’t have avoided suspicion as well as she had were it not for the fact that Adelheid constantly stole the spotlight as far as strange behavior went.

Sighing, Malwine browsed the remaining pages in a rush, skimming at such speeds that she barely caught anything. The last page did, however, have something of note.

Malwine’s brief frustration at the washed-out authorship details was soon carried away by the relief that this old and outdated.

It was harder to make out than it would have been with the alphabets she’d used in her past life, but Malwine was confident in her interpretation of that.

Even if [The Plurilingual Psyche] didn’t give her another level for the valiant effort.

She shook her head—the rest of the book had been in decent condition as far as text went, but that was the ruined part.

Steeling herself and promising she’d try to avoid being flippant at the book for at least a few minutes, Malwine moved back to the second chapter—maybe it wouldn’t be as irritating as the first!

That hope hadn’t been entirely misplaced—the frequency of the author’s asskissing had significantly diminished, but subtler parts of it remained. If they’d at least named whoever they were trying to get attention from, at least Malwine might have garnered some historical insights from it, but no, it was just vague mentions of noble houses and the different months they liked to perform Class forgings on.

It was slow work, embarrassingly so. Malwine thought she had grown decent at reading the language, but this had pushed her back. Only the fact that learning how to read manuscripts with the world’s worst cursive on her first life had been a learning experience kept her from being discouraged.

Dinner came and went, and thankfully, the book didn’t move—Malwine wondered if anyone even visited the mysterious book room, aside from Bernie. She doubted it had much traffic given book being there, but for all she knew, Bernie might have kept some under lock and key.

The third chapter proved more promising, though the details were hardly revolutionary.

That section caught her attention soon enough.

Malwine pushed her grumbling aside to look back at the mention of Courts. Against all odds, the book had managed to provide her with information on Courts that was frankly far more useful—or at least, was frankly clearer—than Teach’s talk of the seablooded.

It was almost funny, the idea of some seablooded fairy ironically having such a weakness, being limited in their circulation of mana. Then again, if the point of circulating mana was to cultivate and extend one’s lifespan, it might not be that big a blow to beings that—presumably—didn’t age past maturity, and [Toll] increased with time anyway. They’d just lack the advantage of being able to dump the points from leveling into Circulation.

Still, Perception and Adaptability were , and unless they gained points on the attributes through more mundane means, there was truly no replacement there.

That wasn’t surprising. A lot was different here, despite humanity being similar to the one Malwine recalled, and it went without saying that attuning yourself to Mana Sources was bound to have an effect on you.

The confirmation merely made Malwine more conscious of that detail—how different were mortals without Affinities from the humans from her Earth? Was it just a matter of being systemless? Or was it something more?

She almost regretted she’d realistically never learn the answer to that—her old world was presumably distant, as much as she tried to avoid thinking about it.

Malwine wasn’t too fond of the author’s tone, either—not that she’d liked the person behind the book to begin with.

But death had been final on her Earth, too. From what she’d learned, these beings lacked a Class, which was probably related to them being soulless.

Given the fact that they were apparently dangerously possessive over certain Affinities—Malwine had already made a note to avoid {Psyche} like the plague if she ever came across it, even if she could somehow get it—and the fact that they didn’t actually start off with any Classes at all, there had to be some core difference between the beings of the Courts and mortal humans. Or humans, in general.

Something didn’t quite line up. They were clearly a threat if they could just dish out curses, unless Beryl somehow managed to pick a fight with the strongest of the seablooded, and that was doubtful.

Just how reckless could Malwine’s new family be? Kristian to take up most of the quota.

Tempted as she was to keep pondering on the nature of the seablooded, Malwine had grown tired, to the point [Remote Reading] grew sluggish.

As much as she feared the book would disappear overnight if she didn’t read all of it , Malwine let go of the Skill and Aspect, turning in for the night.

Her luck couldn’t possibly be that bad.