The Weight of Legacy

Helpful source or not, there were many things Malwine did not like about Veit, and his tendency to ruin moments for her was fairly high on the list. Her first proper lesson on cultivation, safety, and whatever else she could get out of the forester had been something she greatly looked forward to. She’d considered how it would go, down to her entrance!

And he'd ruined her plans. Again.

Their time together on the first day of The Snow had so far mostly consisted of her getting glared at. Quite rudely, as Adelheid would have put it.

Still, if Veit hadn't already been in such a suspiciously good mood by the time she arrived, she suspected he might have given her more of a hard time. It was only because of that, that she chose to endure all that glaring in silence.

Malwine had gone over the broad strokes of what she'd done. Mainly her rank-up, the harvestable, and the Debuff. She might have embellished a detail here and there—as much as she liked to fantasize about it, she wasn't actually going to tell the man that she did it just because he'd said she couldn't or wouldn't, not when she needed his help.

“Well,” Veit broke the silence. Even before she'd found herself explaining her actions, an undercurrent of awkwardness had plagued the conversation. It had taken her so much insisting for the conversation to happen in his cabin instead of the mangal that Malwine half expected him to be hiding something in there. She hadn't seen anything—yet!—but she considered the matter to still be up in the air.

The forester coughed, drawing her out of her ruminations. Once she'd stopped staring off into the distance, he continued. “I suppose this does prove you can, in fact, act your age, no matter your claims.”

“Excuse me?”

“In thinking of how to handle you, I hit a wall more than once. I have known countless others who were prodigies in their youth, some having reached the Mortal Esse naturally by your age,” he told her. “But I never knew them at the time, only later. Forgive me, but there's something inherently vexing—almost uncomfortable—about addressing a child one barely knows. When one teaches, the expectation is that one must do so responsibly, and in a case like this, knowing which boundaries to set is… difficult.”

“Why?” Malwine asked. She found she didn't have to fake curiosity there.

“Because you're young and it's troubling. Even if you have mentally lived longer than four years because of time dilation brought on by stasis, I still have to make a conscious choice as to what to tell you. You chose to set a sibyl ablaze at the urging of some dubious book, but should a child your age know about such things, let alone be involved with them?”

“...Probably not?”

“Exactly,” Veit laughed airily, much to her surprise. “Your actions have brought me some much-needed clarity.”

“Oh?”

“You have the understanding and impulse control of a toddler, with the capacity to act—and the impulse control—of a bratty teenager.”

“I take offense to that last part,” Malwine shook her head. “But seriously… does this matter?”

“It does, because it means I can have peace of mind. While the wisdom of teaching you certain things could be up for debate, I believe the risk of letting you continue basing your actions on uneducated guesses is too considerable to ignore, even if it means broaching topics that should normally be left to actual teenagers and up.”

Malwine gave him her best attempt at mimicking his earlier glaring session. “Like what?”

“Sibyls. Cremation. Just to name a few,” Veit's smile had faded, but it was clear he was still having a bit too much fun at her expense. “We do need to agree on something, however.”

“What?”

“Do not do something like this again,” the forester started, his tone cooling abruptly. “Do not rush things just to prove you can do them at all. And when I tell you how to do something, or not to do something, you are to heed that advice. I did make promises… but I will not teach someone who will go out of their way to be a contrarian.”

Malwine gulped despite herself. “I won't be pushing myself to the Mortal Esse ahead of time again, that's for sure,” she let out an uneasy laugh. “...But fine. I get it. I'm not going to lie and tell you I don't know what I'm like. So long as you keep your end of the deal, I will listen to you.”

The silver-haired man silently stared at her for another while. “That will have to do, then.”

“Okay… So, Veit…” she decided to just go for it—while she'd learned he wasn't easy to push, they were here so he could teach her things. “I don't suppose you know how I can get rid of the Debuff.”

“Oh, I do. I believe you will be particularly fond of the answer.”

“Great! So what do I—”

“You will need to think long and hard about your mortality.”

Malwine's eyes narrowed. “Don't joke like that.”

There was a glint to Veit's gaze, and his smile had returned. “I speak nothing but the truth.”

She groaned. Had she been a fool to expect literally anything else?

“If you wish to keep anyone with decent Perception from noticing you, the first step you must take is working on understanding your foundation. Understanding your Affinities. The cores we weave for ourselves are subject to our whims, obedient to our thoughts and desires. I assume, from what you've told me, that you've encountered this in practice.”

Malwine considered the statement. “I don't think I've ever thought of it that way. But yes.”

“Certain concepts are somewhat instinctive to grasp. Most people with at least one Affinity can exert some control over their core before even comprehending what that means,” Veit said. He raised both hands to the height of his chest where he sat, palms facing each other with some space between them. A flat, crystalline disc formed there. “I’ll show you, how my father taught me.”

Before she could question it, the disc started to crack into a myriad shapes that took on various hues. Despite the material, the swirling lines reminded her of those educational images of sedimentary layers, each distinct. The changes stopped. On the surface of the disc, a series of nested circles was now visible.

It's like a mosaic, Malwine realized so abruptly she almost groaned. Of course it is.

The central circle was off-white, its glow subtle. The one that surrounded it was duller, almost translucent, while the next was starkly unlit. A thinner glowing ring shrouded that one, with the fifth and final circle appearing like a wider version of that second dull one.

As the image settled, Veit spoke once again. “Consider, an Affinity within a core. There may be slight variations in what an Affinity means to each individual, but all have a similar structure in terms of functionality.”

“My Affinities don't look like that in my core, though.”

“Please. This is a representation,” the forester sighed. “As I said, your core bends to your will. It will look and behave however you want it to, because it's meant to serve as that which bridges the gap between you and your Affinities. It enables you to understand yourself, to interact with your power. But what about Affinities? Can you add them and remove them at will? Make them that which they are not?”

“I haven't tried.”

“The answer is that you cannot.”

Malwine wrestled the entirety of her self-control into not snapping back at that.

“Now, back to this,” Veit continued. The mosaic followed the movements of his hands, expanding impossibly. Or maybe the glass just gets thinner?

Gaps formed between the five concentric circles, making all but the centermost one look like rings despite the variations in width, some dimmer than others.

“Imagine an Affinity is this,” his words made that central point brighten. “If Existence is full of incomprehensible powers and endless mana, an Affinity is a light that makes it possible for you to see yourself, and in turn, see and act upon possible paths for yourself.”

I honestly wasn't expecting this to get… poetic?

“Having an Affinity means you are ever so slightly less helpless against the darkness represented by Nonexistence.”

…Maybe poetic isn't the right word.

“The more Affinities you have, and the better your Control and Acclimation grow, the brighter the outlook.”

Yeah, it's just weird.

“Okay,” Malwine interrupted. “I think I get that part. But is that literal? Like, does the secret to keeping people from noticing me as you did actually lie in some metaphor about Affinities being the light of our lives?”

“Tell me, Malwine Rīsanin,” Veit's smile just made her increasingly concerned as to the man's state of mind today. “Why do people cultivate?”

“To become Immortals?” she figured the answer was probably more complicated than that, but that was the obvious part. It wasn't that unlike how people on the widow's Earth worked to avoid starving—people probably did it, well, to not die.

“And why do people wish to become Immortals?”

“To live forever,” Malwine shrugged, voicing her earlier thoughts. “To not die… and maybe for the extra power, too.”

Veit's expression went slack. “You are unlikely to have encountered any…” he paused, frowning. “There are countless people who have died and been resurrected. Do you know what happens when people die?” he did not wait for her to answer. “Nothing. Either they're resurrected, or they stay gone. Once an obit expires, that person is gone forever. Everything they were, everything they thought and achieved—gone. They no longer Exist. Period.”

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Malwine suppressed the urge to raise an eyebrow. She had very much reincarnated after her first death, and that had been after the widow’s systemless life, where resurrection had not been possible at all.

Unless the system somehow disables that option when it makes resurrection possible…?

That was a terribly discomfiting thought.

“Cultivation isn't about living forever for the sake of power. It's about avoiding death. About Existing for as long as possible, because if you do not make the effort, if you fail, if you die, sooner or later, you will no longer Exist.”

“Okay…”

Veit sighed. “You are not getting rid of that Debuff anytime soon.”

“If only someone would help me with that.”

“What do you think I've been doing?” Veit shook his head. The second ring on his apparent representation of Affinity anatomy did not brighten as the initial one had, but it appeared emphasized somehow, as if pulsating periodically. “From an Affinity, come the inevitable effects. Their mere presence has them passively generating a minuscule amount of mana, which may increase as your understanding of it grows. But most importantly, this means the Affinity’s mana has a tangible impact. The consequences of that vary from person to person, even when they have the same Affinity. Increasing an Affinity’s tier can also affect the details.”

Malwine resisted the urge to scowl—though she couldn’t recall the exact wording of {Foresight}’s description, she did recall its initial useless effect had been something along the lines of a 2% accuracy guarantee for predictions. Using her connection to OBeryl and Katrina had improved it, but the description had gotten vaguer.