SCT-Novel Chapter 57 - The Census Shall Not Be Stopped
Chapter 57 - The Census Shall Not Be Stopped
There was something inexorably weird about talking to a girl whose Mana Source values were several times her own. Especially about a Skill with such an ominous name.That said… Malwine was getting increasingly confused. She stared at the panel between them, gesturing in Adelheid’s direction.
[That Which Lurks]
The more you hide, the better you hide. The longer the hiding period, the better the benefit. Improves everything.
“Just ? as in what?”
“I don’t know,” Adelheid shrugged, all too casually. “I think it means everything. Just everything.”
“Everything related to the
Class, to hiding, to {Missing}…?”Another shrug was the only answer she got.
Malwine shook her head. It felt heavy—the closest comparison she could think of would have been what happens when you try to shake wet hair—despite being perfectly fine, as far as she could tell. “Okay. Let’s go with that. Does it increase every time you ‘hide’?”
“I told it not to go up,” Adelheid explained. “But now I’m going to ignore great-grandma. So it go up.”
It was almost impressive to see how much her little half-aunt had achieved so far, seemingly in no small part due to her utter refusal to overthink anything.
“Okay,” Malwine motioned for Adelheid to move forward, which the girl did without hesitation. “Let’s see it, then! If you start hiding and coming out, does it increase?”
“I think it will,” Adelheid said as her expression shifted to an adorable impression of a frown. “How many times should I…?”
“As many as you want?”
Adelheid disappeared. The act was silent, but Malwine was starting to notice a pattern. It oddly reminded her of the snuffing of a candle, imperceptible wisps of smoke trailing around where she had once been. It wasn’t something she saw or smelled, but closer to how she could see the mana in her core or feel it moving through her body—it was some other form of perception she didn’t know the name for.
Malwine had, frankly, neglected to ponder the matter often enough. It seemed independent to Skills, Traits, or Aspects—as far as she could tell, there was no need for her to get something specialized to sense mana, at least . Visualizing her core had all but come naturally, after all.
Everything else was harder to pinpoint, however. She didn’t actually have much to go on, since people around her didn’t seem to be regularly doing anything that would lead to her noticing mana. But it was almost obvious with Adelheid now—as the girl popped in and out of the room, the sensation only grew easier to identify.
It wasn’t the same type of impression she got from using [Nosy Old Lady], either—it was something far more generalized. Malwine reviewed the Skill, the very same she’d used to first find out Adelheid had Affinities. She tried to ignore the slightly disconcerting realization that six months had already passed since she’d derived {Vestige} from her {Missing}.
[Nosy Old Lady]
The Skill description still felt like a personal attack, but reencountering that mention of it enabling her to feel the Affinities of others without needing ‘access to their core’ gave Malwine an idea. Could she improve this proto-mana sense by putting a Trait on this specific Skill? It was certainly the closest she had to a sensory Skill.
Besides, it was an Unranked Skill—putting a Trait there could lead to some utterly broken results, if [Imitation Beyond Filiality] had taught her anything. A part of her regretted attaching [Identify] to [Cool Head on Your Shoulders], even if it hadn’t been as though she could have put it anywhere else.
Still, a Trait could… Malwine tried not to think about how unlikely she was to get a new Trait anytime soon.
“It’s up to two!” Adelheid reappeared with a grin, breaking her out of her reverie. The girl proceeded to vanish again without awaiting a response.
Perhaps Malwine shouldn’t have been surprised—she’d had Skills that soared through the early levels herself.
“Three!”
Malwine nodded, almost making a thumbs-up gesture before it struck her that she wasn’t even sure whether that was a thing here? it? The worst part was that, short of going out of her way to observe people, she had no idea as to how to find out. She certainly couldn’t ask—how could she explain even knowing the gesture?—and she’d have better odds at trying to reveal a harvestable that wasn’t a restorative than learning anything useful about social norms from her family.
“Four!”
“Five!”
It wasn’t as though she could bring herself to be mad, but watching the girl recite her increasing Skill levels while doing nothing was quite the odd experience. She stood still given that implicit expectation that she’d wait for Adelheid to be done, but there appeared to be no end in sight, and the girl had somehow gotten to level eight already.
“Maybe that’s eno—”
Adelheid kept going.
With a sigh, Malwine just gave up. This would clearly take more time than she expected. . She couldn’t really blame Adelheid for being so excited to keep leveling it. While she was at it, she might as well prepare for the third round of this Skill-sharing game they’d gotten going.
Malwine resettled in her bed and reached for one of the dictionaries in the family library, if only to confirm what that word on Adelheid’s third Skill name had been.
“It’s not going up anymore,” Adelheid sighed, sitting on the floor after what had to be close to an hour of teleporting in and out of the room. “I’m sad now.”
“How high did it go?”
“[That Which Lurks] has a thirteen next to it now.”
“Awesome!” Malwine reached over, hoping a hug would cheer the girl up. That had worked just fine before. “leveled up, too!”
Adelheid Rīsanin - Human - Level 11
It was something Malwine had noticed a while ago, but hadn’t even been able to bring up with the girl constantly disappearing.
“Yep! Now I’m…” Adelheid’s gaze grew distant as she pulled away. “It’s counting the numbers next to Skills?”
“What do you mean?”
“On the status thing… It says ‘Lifetime Skill levels’ and 14. One in [Shadow Manipulation], thirteen in [That Which Lurks]. But why is it counting?”
“Oh. The more you have on those, the more attribute points you get per level. I don’t know all the exact points where it increases.”
“So I level Skills!” Adelheid nearly shouted the revelation, looking surprisingly incensed for her age. “Great-grandma is so dumb!”
“Shh!” Malwine took a finger to her own lips and gestured for silence. “Someone might hear us!”
“No one ever hears me.”
“But we still have to be careful. To keep this secret!”
The girl’s eyes lit up in realization. “Oh! Okay.”
“Yeah,” Malwine nodded, before going on to describe the last of her own three chosen Skills. “Anyhow—[Write Anywhere] is a
It was strange. Malwine found she was having talking to Adelheid. Maybe she’d been desperate for human interaction, but it felt like something more. All tied to that looming concern about how she didn’t even know who she was, not really. There had been a time when she’d simply thought of herself as the widow reborn, especially early on.
As time went on, she felt less and less sure. It wasn’t even just about her struggles with both keeping up appearances and suppressing her urges—the widow hadn’t stood at the pinnacle of maturity to begin with, but she did often wonder whether being young again was affecting her.
Nowadays, she just thought… Well, she was . Did it really matter in the end? She was enjoying her time here, her time with her little half-aunt—with her little kind-of-sister, apparently.
She refused to consider herself a child, though, at least when it came to this internal debate. It just made her uncomfortable—as if thinking that she was, indeed, technically an age 4 toddler would somehow be the greatest possible admission of weakness.
“It’s cool that you can write like that,” Adelheid conceded. “But what do you use it for?”
“Taking notes. You know, writing about stuff,” Malwine started, just as she grew suddenly aware of the opportunity before her. “Oh, do you know what a census is?”
“Nop! What is a census?”
“It’s like a list of people who live in a place. Their names, their ages… Here, let me show you.”
NumerationNameRelation to HouseAgeMarital StatusChildrenOccupationNatureFather's NatureMother's Nature1Bernadette fon HūdijaninHead of Household32Married4HomemakerGrēdôcavan??????????2Kristian RīsanHusband?Married9???????????????????3Thekla RīsaninStepdaughter?Single0Unemployed?Grēdôcavan??????????4Anselm RīsanStepson32Single0Unemployed?Grēdôcavan??????????5Kristoffer RīsanStepson20Single0Unemployed?Grēdôcavan??????????6Alaric RīsanStepson15Single0DependentGrēdôcavan??????????7Matilda RīsaninDaughter9Single0DependentGrēdôcavan?????Grēdôcavan8Paul RīsanSon7Single0DependentGrēdôcavan?????Grēdôcavan9Adelheid RīsaninDaughter3Single0DependentGrēdôcavan?????Grēdôcavan10Benedikt RīsanSon0Single0DependentGrēdôcavan?????Grēdôcavan11Johann FastēnEmployee71Single?AntiquarianGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan12'Veit'Employee?Single?Forester???????????????13Anna FranziskaEmployee33Single1CleanerGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan14MariaEmployee52Single0CleanerGrēdôcavan??????????15FriedrichEmployee49Single0CleanerGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan16HelgaEmployee44Single0CleanerGrēdôcavan??????????17MariaEmployee27Married0CookGrēdôcavan??????????18JohannEmployee28Married0CookGrēdôcavan??????????19MariaEmployee36Single2CookGrēdôcavan??????????20FranziskaEmployee41Single0GardenerGrēdôcavan??????????21GretelEmployee53Single0ChefGrēdôcavan??????????22HildaEmployee45Single1AttendantGrēdôcavan??????????23MargrethEmployee46Married3AttendantGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan24Anna MariaEmployee47Single0AttendantGrēdôcavan??????????25KlausEmployee44Single0AttendantGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan
“Oh! I’m there!”
“You are. The ages might not be perfect since people might have gotten to a full year since I made that. I’m also missing a lot of people…”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you missing people?”
“I got most of the names from talking to this maid in the kitchen, Anna Franziska—she’s on the list, too—but she didn’t know everyone’s names or their facts. Plus I think I was starting to worry her with the questions.”
“In the kitchen?”
“The part where they bring the food out. She’s a maid and she was cleaning around the table when I asked her this stuff.”
“Okay,” Adelheid said with surprising seriousness, turning to the door. “I don’t like it when things are missing—”
That certainly sounded ironic to Malwine, considering the name of the girl’s seemingly main Affinity, but—
“—so let’s go!”
For a moment, as Adelheid gripped her arm, Malwine thought the girl might have been about to pull her towards the door. That’d have been acceptable enough—maybe if she kept going up and down the stairs, she might get her Endurance to go up a little more, pointless as it would be.
Instead, the world blurred. The sensation returned, but magnified, now bordering on disorienting. Instead of getting an impression of a candle being snuffed out, she momentarily like wisps of smoke going up. It passed blessedly quick, and the sensation faded even from memory.
The disorientation was another story.
A giggling Adelheid held her arm still, and they were next to… chair legs? They were in the dining room again? Indeed, as Malwine oriented herself, she recognized the chairs she—and Adelheid—used whenever they ate here.
“It worked again!”
Malwine was too busy making sure no one had been around to see them. Why would she be surprised? Adelheid clearly operated on a different version of logic.
Anna Franziska exited the kitchen just then, trusty broom in hand. She was smiling—said smile practically melted off her face the moment she noticed them. The maid was looking at Adelheid as though she were a cryptid. “The child!”
“Hi, Anna Franziska,” Malwine greeted her, only slightly surprised by the same maid being present cleaning the area. Maybe they all have assigned rooms or something, and Malwine had simply neglected to notice prior to forcing herself to learn their names.
“Hello?” the maid gave her greeting a questioning return, still focused on Adelheid. “How did you… get the child to stay around?”
“I still haven’t learned everyone’s names,” Malwine said. “And I told her about it, so she wanted to help.”
“Yes!” Adelheid nodded emphatically. “We can’t let the census be missing names.”
Anna Franziska blinked. “…?”
“I read that word somewhere.”
Adelheid was ready to back her up. “It means list of names!”
“It… I see,” Anna Franziska spoke slowly.
“So, Anna Franziska,” Malwine smiled, her hands folded behind her back in the best impression she could make of propriety. “Could you take us around so I can learn more people’s names?”
If Adelheid was going to throw her off the deep end here, she might as well get that census done. Sure, it was bound to have some inconsistencies thanks to future entries corresponding to a different month, but Malwine’s answer to that risk remained the same as it had been to the possibility of Anna Franziska being wrong about things—she did not intend for this to be the last or only she made, so there would always be room for improvement in subsequent versions.
“…That, I can do,” the maid replied, after a pause.
From the glances she kept sneaking at Adelheid, Malwine suspected Anna Franziska agreed to it only for the sake of watching the girl. Whether it was because the staff were under some kind of order to keep an eye on her if she showed up, or out of curiosity, Malwine didn’t know.
Just going through the kitchen alone, she finally got to see the faces of three of the other people Anna Franziska had mentioned the first time, the cooks—specifically, the married Johann and Maria, as well as the other Maria.
It was with that Johann that the census—which Malwine kept updating in its hidden panel—finally started to grow again. He was acquainted with two caterers Anna Franziska didn’t know, the both of which were currently on leave. They’d been on leave for a while, actually.
Johann was slightly concerned about their wellbeing, but this wasn’t Malwine’s problem to solve.
He was also able to shed some light into something Malwine had wondered more than once— The answer, as far as she could tell, was that they had a lot of people on standby as ‘support’. It supposedly had something to do with the property’s original territory and its quirks, which enabled Bernie to hire people and change their positions on the fly so long as they were qualified. The same went for assigning tasks, with the same requirements.
It did make Malwine a bit curious as to how the system worked as far as properties went—Johann made it sound like these were all system features, after all.
The next interesting tidbit she learned was that most of the household staff was organized not by Bernie, but by a butler who rarely showed her face. Apparently, she was the widow of someone who served under the Hero whose party Kristian and Katrina belonged to. She was also .
Neither Johann nor any of the other staff present could tell her more, but apparently, the woman had been in that position before any of the others got here, and seemingly intended to be there for the rest of her life.
There were some other interesting cases, such as a staffer whose mother was Grēdôcavan, but whose father was unknown, as well as two dedicated snow-shovelers, presumably for all the snow that didn’t get anywhere near the estate thanks to the wards.
Oh, and Malwine couldn’t forget Karl—whoever that was, he worked alongside the housemaids, and they refused to give him any title other than, well, housemaid. It resulted in an entry for her census that Malwine was sure would likely look positively hilarious to anyone looking at it without this context.
The flood of Marias and Annas—plus a bonus Anna Maria—refused to end, and Malwine was mostly used to it by now. It was the same as the Johanns, really. She had already accepted she was in for a lifetime of having to distinguish people by their positions or other distinguishing features, because anyone who didn’t belong to a house appeared quite stubborn about not using any surnames, even when Malwine found it unlikely they didn’t have they could have shamelessly lifted from further up on their family trees.
Things went well, all things considered—even if Malwine knew all too well that she wouldn’t have remembered any of these names with only a single mention, had it not been for [Write Anywhere].
Not to mention, absolutely everyone gaped at Adelheid the moment they saw her, and few stopped even after it became clear the girl was not about to disappear.
NumerationNameRelation to HouseAgeMarital StatusChildrenOccupationNatureFather's NatureMother's Nature1Bernadette fon HūdijaninHead of Household32Married4HomemakerGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan2Kristian RīsanHusband61Married9???????????????????3Anselm RīsanStepson32Single0Unemployed?Grēdôcavan?????Regnąfelsian?4Thekla RīsaninStepdaughter28Single0Unemployed?Grēdôcavan?????Regnąfelsian?5Kristoffer RīsanStepson20Single0Unemployed?Grēdôcavan?????Regnąfelsian?6Alaric RīsanStepson15Single0DependentGrēdôcavan?????Regnąfelsian?7Matilda RīsaninDaughter9Single0DependentGrēdôcavan?????Grēdôcavan8Paul RīsanSon7Single0DependentGrēdôcavan?????Grēdôcavan9Adelheid RīsaninDaughter3Single0DependentGrēdôcavan?????Grēdôcavan10Benedikt RīsanSon0Single0DependentGrēdôcavan?????Grēdôcavan11Johann FastēnEmployee71Single?AntiquarianGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan12'Veit'Employee?Single?Forester???????????????13Anna FranziskaEmployee33Single1Kitchen MaidGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan14MariaEmployee52Single0Kitchen MaidGrēdôcavan??????????15FriedrichEmployee49Single0Kitchen MaidGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan16HelgaEmployee44Single0Kitchen MaidGrēdôcavan??????????17MariaEmployee27Married0CookGrēdôcavan??????????18JohannEmployee28Married0CookGrēdôcavan??????????19MariaEmployee36Single2CookGrēdôcavan??????????20FranziskaEmployee41Single0GardenerGrēdôcavan??????????21GretelEmployee53Single0ChefGrēdôcavan??????????22HildaEmployee45Single1AttendantGrēdôcavan??????????23MargrethEmployee46Married3AttendantGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan24Anna MariaEmployee47Single0AttendantGrēdôcavan??????????25KlausEmployee44Single0AttendantGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan26KasparEmployee51Single0CatererGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan27EdithEmployee38Single0CatererGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan28Hildegard fon WerruinEmployee93Widowed1ButlerGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan29GerhardtEmployee48Single1GroundskeeperGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan30TheresiaEmployee33Single5GroundskeeperGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan31VeronicaEmployee25Single2Scullery MaidGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan32Anna WilhelminaEmployee46Single4Scullery MaidGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan33DorotheaEmployee31Single5Scullery MaidGrēdôcavaployee38Single0Parlour MaidGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan47NinaEmployee46Single1Parlour MaidGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan48ThereseEmployee29Single0Parlour MaidGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan49KarinaEmployee44Single4Still-Room Maid???????????????50AnnaEmployee26Married0Still-Room MaidGrēdôcavaployee44Single0SupportGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan85Johann MariaEmployee42Single3SupportGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan86XavierEmployee53Single0SupportGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavanGrēdôcavan
The only thing she was missing was an age for Veit, and while she couldn’t outright show the census to Adelheid with Anna Franziska around, the girl had clearly noticed that last remaining tidbit, as she remained alert, almost expecting Malwine to do something.
…