The Weight of Legacy

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—like knowing what book she was even trying to read—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 computer screens.

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—finally!—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 victory. Triple-checking to ensure Bernie hadn’t walked in while she’d been focusing, Malwine allowed herself to grin.

Adding a simple drop to the mixture, you’ll begin to see the effects almost—

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.

Bernie, just why? Why do you own this? Were you brewing this shit or was it just curiosity? If so, for either case, why?

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

PROPERTY OF LADY BERNADETTE FON HŪDIJANIN

This was not how I expected to find out your fancy family name, Bernie.

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 where 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. Follow current novᴇls on novel-fire.ɴet

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

Just how small is this library? …Is this just Bernie’s nook?

The thought alone made Malwine consider quitting the endeavor altogether. Her guardian clearly had a side to her Malwine had neither known nor wanted 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 bad, 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 incident.

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. I don’t think [Learning by Reading]’s bonus applied here either since I didn’t actually browse texts, not really.

On having your Classes forged

Her priority was researching her options for Katrina's resurrection, really, but this would have to do—considering how 'Kristian and Katrina' 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 could 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. Slightly. 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.