The Weight of Legacy

It wasn’t the hall that greeted her but a blackened field. Malwine stumbled as she landed on the unsteady ground, as if she'd hopped down to it rather than simply exited a door—a door that was now nowhere to be seen.

Red lightning rose from clouds that hovered far too low, tearing through the dark until they slammed into the sea above with a bloodcurdling hiss. Vile wisps of brine and the stench of rotting shellfish spread through the field, through the unreality that was the trial.

Something not unlike a presence rose to counter it, pushing the worst of it away, but Malwine frowned—it carried far too much weight for something that felt like it should have been as flimsy as a light breeze. And that was before getting into how… familiar it felt, perhaps in more ways than one.

Nothing is forgotten until none wish to recall it.

Nothing is lost until none remain to find it.

Okay, {Legacy}, either you stop getting creepy or you go on the timeout corner with {Foresight}.

Nevermind that a part of Malwine wanted to reconsider {Foresight}’s worth—if just having inherited it was enough to get her cursed, she might as well make use of it! For people with an Affinity literally called {Foresight}, the idea of this 'Court' of theirs being so oblivious to something as blatant as self-fulfilling prophecies amused her to no end. Going out of their way to hunt down any outsiders with it sounded like a great way to get hunted down right back.

Malwine hadn’t allowed herself to truly dwell upon it, but {Foresight} might be a decent Root to get down the line, if only out of sheer spite. Teach might have suggested secrecy, but that ship had already sailed the moment she was born to Beryl.

Katrina was still running. Either regular trees with bizarre ideas of what roots should look like or the universe’s most unreasonably tall mangroves rose from the distance, in the direction Katrina was headed towards. The area was unreasonably charred for plant-life to have developed with it in this current state, so Malwine guessed something happened at some point before their 'arrival'.

Three figures rushed out from the unmarred vegetation, each a blur in their own right—beings of loose tunics, long hair, and bare feet, all other details impossible to make out as such speeds. Neither Katrina nor these assailants seemed to notice Malwine's presence.

The nearest of them was cleaved in half within an instant of having appeared, and Malwine yelped despite herself. In two lives, even with as much access to media as she had during the first, she didn’t think she’d actually ever witnessed someone being torn apart like that.

All of the space surrounding Katrina shimmered as if minuscule specks of glass floated around her, sending the already sparse lighting of the area into—frankly glorious—disarray the moment any slivers of it got close to her.

The tiny pieces combined and split, an array of impermanent blades that looked more like a halo of fleeting mosaics than the weapons they were.

Your party has slain a Level 179 opponent! [One Who Hovers Beyond the Walls {Gale} - Fell Courtier {Psyche} - I̷n̶v̴a̵l̷i̶d̶ - Fortuneteller of the Unfathomable {Foresight}]

(❗) Error: You do not belong to this party.

(❗) A promise made is a promise kept.

Malwine shuddered involuntarily. The force of it was such that she couldn’t help but wonder if her real self was shaking too. If she'd had any semblance of control over the trial in the first place, that was long gone. Panels seemed perfectly willing to show up now, utterly disregarding her Trait's opposition to them materializing within the trial.

That notice. She’d seen it before, of course—it took her a moment to place it. It was the same warning—it might have been an error message, true, but Malwine had noticed its lack of a label calling it one—that the system had displayed when she inherited {Foresight} despite being promised an Affinity based on her first life. It had given her {Legacy} anyway after that.

At the time, it had read like it was related to that promise specifically. But seeing the message again had Malwine hesitating. What did this trial have to do with her decision back then? It could simply be a standard message, somehow related to Affinities, but what would that have to do with promises?

By now, she could no longer track Katrina’s movements—her grandmother would have been a sight to behold in any battlefield, had Malwine been granted a slo-mo feature. Even with the enhanced perception she was pretty sure she had within her trials, all she could make out were flickers of light reflecting from impossible metals. A scream echoed.

Your party has slain a Level 187 opponent! [Wraith from the Fog of Ends {Mist} - Fell Courtier {Psyche} - I̷n̶v̴a̵l̷i̶d̶ - Fortuneteller of the Unfathomable {Foresight}]

(❗) Error: You do not belong to this party.

(❗) A promise made is a promise kept.

Aside from the different subject, it was practically the same message as earlier. A new color. Malwine frowned. Did the overarching core ranks follow a progression similar to medals? That silvery hue would fit right in. What’d be the highest one, then? A golden one?

If vaguely, she was fairly certain she recalled something about golden cores in cultivation novels, so it would make sense. It was another hypothetical to add to the list of Malwine’s assumptions and theories.

On second glance, however, Malwine’s eyes wandered to the Classes—it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together there, with the text next to the kill notification itself following a format similar to how her own unforged Classes presented themselves.

Even if the broken spot where would be hadn't made her suspect something was afoot, the whole Fell Courtier and Fortuneteller of the Unfathomable Classes both had possessed would have. I’d half-expected Teach to be spewing some superstitious crap with that ‘soulless’ description, but I guess there’s that.

Certainly a nuanced subject that Malwine was likely unqualified to unpack.

Beyond what the notifications allowed her to learn, however, Malwine found a knot tightening on her imaginary stomach. She’d been leveling just fine… bottlenecks aside. Were it not for the curse, she’d probably be formidable, at least for her current age.

Yet it struck Malwine that under absolutely no circumstances could she fight like this, no matter how hard she may wish to defend herself. She didn’t even know what Katrina was doing or how, let alone what the flying fey non-mermaids were up to. Well, the remaining one.

For all she’d delved into her preferred games with a passion in her first life, Malwine wasn’t an expert by any means. Her skills had been situational, developed around a role that she fought tooth and nail to cling to rather than adapt as the game had. The few tournaments she’d attended on that server told her she was fine, and when faced with the type of player that would PvP anything that moved, she could hold her own.

But she’d avoided finding out how far that could be pushed, intensely so.

Was that really something she could also do here? Bernie sure didn’t look like she went around stabbing anything, but Malwine would no doubt face the same type of enemy her grandmother had.

There might have been something to learn from this, from knowing Katrina was likely at odds with the same group that cursed Beryl—and by extent, Malwine—but she lacked information.

And she lacked certainty. Leveling didn’t require combat here, as far as Malwine knew. She couldn’t grow strong enough to solo everything when there was likely nothing to solo in the first place—confirming the location of the books in her new home shot up through her priorities. Malwine had to find out if this world had monsters, or dungeons.

Could I somehow remake the almighty hybrid class here…? She thought of her wondrous bard-rogue, rogue-bard, the thing she’d used to have in her favorite game, the name of which slipped from her. Granted, she drew the line at singing—pressing a button didn’t actually require her to exert the functions of a bard.

Would humming be compromise enough? She was already starting to fantasize about whether mana could bridge the gap to make those unfeasible whip maneuvers happen for real, when a burst of light nearly blinded her, dust rising from the collision just in front of her.

Malwine couldn’t move closer—this trial had relegated her to the role of bystander.

Then the world slowed to a halt all over again.

Would you like to forge a Class with {Legacy} as its Root?

Several requirements not met.

Several requirements bypassed.

Her imaginary blood ran cold. Malwine blinked, shaking her head, but the panel remained. She didn’t even know what forging Classes truly meant, let alone what the requirements for such an action were. Even in telling her those were being bypassed, the system clarified nothing about their nature.

Realistically, why would I ever say no?

As far as Malwine was concerned, there was nothing to debate over, even if this came out of the left field. Classes were clearly something to aim for—if her Affinity nonsensically hijacking her trial for Katrina would net her a benefit, she’d take it.

It was sudden, and a part of her wanted to be apprehensive as to whatever was steering these events, this strangely-behaving trial, but if she viewed these system actions that way, she'd have had to question why it reincarnated her in the first place. It felt like the sort of thing she could ponder for ages without scratching the surface.

You have chosen to forge a Class.

About as abruptly as most of what had happened in this trial, an itch started within her, moving through her channels. Malwine had thought she’d channeled her mana before, cultivated it, but apparently, she’d been wrong. She couldn’t so much as gasp as floodgates opened, {Legacy} flowing through her with what had to be the true value of her Circulation.

Something within her channels stretched, from her short life to the widow’s long one, to eons of a legacy she knew she could never begin to even place.

You have forged a Class! 3 Skills, 1 Trait, and 2 Aspects under referenced.

(❗) Root's Timeless status has influenced results.

You are now the [Curator of Fallen Branches {Legacy}]

Your Acclimation to {Legacy} has grown! 6 → 50

Acclimation milestone reached for {Legacy}!

Your Control of {Legacy} has improved! 8 → 25

Control milestone reached for {Legacy}!

The initial forging of your [Curator of Fallen Branches {Legacy}] Class has generated 1 Skill, 0 Traits, and 0 Miscellaneous.

At last, Malwine could breathe. She gasped desperately despite the irrelevance of it within a trial, clutching at her intangible chest. The whole of it sped past her, as if something fundamental had shifted, but she apparently couldn't reach for her core from within the trial. It felt distant.

Even then, she found herself reaching for the panel she knew awaited her, a Skill of her {Legacy}’s creation.

You have gained [The Things We Do For Family]

May your fondness for dragging the past back from the brink be as timeless as the legacy that fuels it. When done with the intent to restore, sustain, or directly learn from an antecedent, bypass restrictions to system-controlled actions. Said actions must be feasible for you, individually, to begin with, before restrictions were applied. Eligibility is subjective. You gain an instinctive grasp of how to best apply the Skill to an eligible situation, the effectiveness of which is determined by Perception.

Trait: None

Aspect: None

This new Skill was Epic, like the Affinity, but Malwine found the Skill was likely broken—not that her past Skills could or should have qualified for any ‘well-balanced’ tags, but this was on a league of its own. She got a feeling its relative ambiguity just compounded things even more, with parts far more open to interpretation than they had any right to be.

Steadying herself, Malwine smiled, rereading the notifications. This trial had absolutely lost its relative mind, but that had turned out to be a good thing, really.

Only then did she truly notice the ridiculous values her Acclimation and Control had shot up to. What the fuck? If she understood Mana Sources at depth, Malwine might have been able to guess what those ‘milestones’ meant for her—but she didn’t.

Her reprieve from having to pay attention was unfortunately coming to an end, as her surroundings started shifting once again. With the blinding light gone, the shapes of two people, bent beyond recognition, were revealed, and Malwine was glad for how blurry the scene grew.

Your party has slain a Level 199 opponent! [Swift Seeker of the Waterlogged Blade {Haste} - Fell Courtier {Psyche} - I̷n̶v̴a̵l̷i̶d̶ - Fortuneteller of the Unfathomable {Foresight}]

(❗) Error: You do not belong to this party.

(❗) A promise made is a promise kept.

The details of the last dead non-mermaid hardly mattered to her by now, yet it only served as confirmation of a connection. All three had been in possession of the same and Classes, being their only variance.

That her grandmother could kill one nearly at Level 200 somehow didn’t surprise Malwine in the slightest. Still, she winced.

Katrina…

Y̶o̶u̴r̷ Level 162 party member, d̴e̵s̵i̵g̵n̵a̸t̵e̸d̵ ̷a̵s̴ ̵r̸o̶l̵e̵ ̷=̶ ̴'̷T̶h̵e̸ ̵H̷e̷a̸v̵y̵'̸, has been slain by a Level 199 opponent! [Me̵t̸a̶l̷maker, Metalb̴r̶e̴a̴ker {Ore} - N/A {} - N/A {} - N/A {}]

(❗) Error: You do not belong to this party.

(❗) A promise made is a promise kept.

The notification was fraying throughout, as if unwilling to remain in existence for much longer—it fizzled out with a pop, and Malwine coughed as if dust were wracking her lungs.

She focused on her new Skill as a lifeline, [The Things We Do For Family] leaping to the chance as if it had been lying in wait. It sprung from her chest, and Malwine knelt, watching this false version of her grandmother dissolve into literal sparkles.

The sight of death didn’t quite bother someone as used to it as she, even if the violence of it left her shaken. This world was tamer in some ways, enough to make her likely underreaction more justifiable.

Malwine’s hands shot forward, {Legacy} coursing through her channels unbidden, in tandem with her now-active Skill. A shimmering box dropped, hitting her palms with the speed of a slap, only to disappear a second later.

She stood, only half-processing the whole of it as a strange weariness enveloped her. [The Things We Do For Family] practically slipped from her. Malwine’s footing grew unsteady, and she feared she might collapse, the trial’s already tenuous existence going with her.

Indeed, it lasted little longer.

You have conquered a trial to copy attribute points from Katrina Skrībanin!

+2,687 Strength, +3,251 Endurance, +3,155 Stamina, Additional Rewards Gained (Class)

Malwine barely managed to smile in the real world before this newfound exhaustion consumed her.