The Weight of Legacy

The remainder of The Flowers was a bittersweet blur. Malwine wasn’t sure if she considered things had gone well or not.

With Veit having all that ‘patrolling’ he was supposed to be doing, she found their lessons slowly falling back into old patterns. Whenever she had time after Hildegard’s more mundane classes, she’d be trying to follow his directions, all the while their next meeting was scheduled for vaguely around ‘later’.

Her main goal was simple enough, given how Veit had declared developing the ability to properly hide her Affinities on her own was to be her priority for the time being. According to the forester, reaching at least 100 Control on each of her remaining Affinities would be the first step in the short term—only then would she have the bare minimum she’d need to begin hiding them. That’d be the foundation for everything else.

Why do I get the feeling I’m getting some shade thrown my way here? Granted, Veit had told her how hiding her Affinities worked from the actual mana perspective a long time ago—she’d just been too busy dealing with the problem that was [Meditation] to achieve much. Now that she had [Riffle In Excelsis], not only did she lack an excuse for not progressing much on that front, but she honestly looked mediocre. Especially compared to Adelheid.

It didn’t help that he’d all but told her the Skill she’d been counting on wasn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

[Close to my Chest] currently only protected her from anyone at or under Level 240, and she’d been quite displeased when Veit told her that her grandfather would have likely found her out by now, if he’d had the prerequisite ability to sense Affinities. Kristian, as it turned out, was Level 307. That was… concerning.