SCT-Novel Chapter 97 - Boring Variations
Chapter 97 - Boring Variations
As far as completing any of her goals went, 5803 was shaping up to be the worst year of her life.Malwine tried not to think too much about the harvestables she still had—in passing, she’d had the misfortune of seeing a book claim that revealing too many too quickly could worsen the quality of the reveals. It didn’t specify what ‘too many’ stood for, or even the timeframe in question, but Malwine was nothing if not about something like this.
And Veit wasn’t around for her to get any clarification on this. While she’d accompanied Adelheid and Franziska on their first harvest with the latter girl’s mother, none other than the forester knew she could outright reveal harvestables, and not many ideas came to mind as to how to bring this up to anyone else. Not so long after the fact.
Perhaps it was time for ‘Kunegunda’ to go off on another quest… if only she could weigh the options more properly. The time she spent on that would be time she didn’t spent using [Remote Reading] to look for clues, and she couldn’t try without answers, not if she didn’t want a repeat of what happened last time. How many harvestables would be wasted this time—revealed as Common consumables—if she pushed forward until she got herself a token again?
With her indecision, time flew—and she wasn’t exactly having fun.
Had it not been for how all-encompassing her search for ways to safely evolve [Meditation] had become, this The Forgetting would have been the perfect time for another census.
While she’d never recorded exact ages to begin with, so many of her relatives’ ages were currently round years, with no extra months tacked on—Bernie, Thekla, Alaric, and Adelheid.
That last thought was what sealed it for Malwine. There would be no census in 5803 as a whole. she told herself. A decision born from practicality, and certainly not from how limited her time has grown.
…Nevermind that with both of her teachers hellbent on ignoring her and the sudden emptiness of her schedule, that point had become moot. Even then, browsing the library for at least half the day had become the daily ritual.
Malwine tried not to think about how she could have reached this point faster if she’d taken less breaks—she knew herself well enough to understand that if she allowed herself to burn out, she’d start avoiding [Meditation] harder than Veit avoided her.
By when The Snow came, she had what felt like a good working list, nonetheless.
That only made her disappointment worse.
For her efforts, she’d gotten herself six mentions of meditation—two of which weren’t even Skills, just mundane methods for meditation. And that pair barely fit the bill, in any case.
Given how they weren’t particularly fresh in her memory—and the fact that she’d resigned herself to the likelihood that these would be all she’d find—Malwine took the time to go over her list, still clinging to the distant hope that she might yet squeeze something helpful out of them.
The first instance came from a book that was clearly unsure about whether it wanted to be a travel journal or weaving guide, which spoke of the unnamed author’s experiences upon visiting the capital—if tangentially so.
Even knowing that specific book was composed almost entirely of non-sequiturs, Malwine still had to fight off the urge to glare at her transcription of it. The author had admitted to repeatedly dismissing other pieces of advice related to meditation—and didn’t even deign to say what they’d been!
Perhaps their omission had been for the best.
Still, Malwine had been so desperate for information on meditation that even this had made the cut. It helped that her first finds had been the least… Skill-like, between whatever that was and the one labeled as a visualization technique for mortals seeking peace of mind.
On hindsight, she felt terrible for looking down on that manuscript about the seafarer tongue she’d found back home— must have been what scrapping the bottom of the barrel truly looked like.
As for the visualization technique, it was certainly , but given its theme, she doubted the booklet it was from got much use. New ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄhapters are published on NoveI~Fire.net
The repetition beyond that seemed excessive, when it was always the exact same thing.
Malwine failed to find any identifying details on the thing, so for all she knew, this might have been someone’s random notebook that got mixed up with the books. Devils knew that library was impossible enough to navigate as it was.
She wouldn’t deny there was some value to the mantra. Maybe it was [Depicture] at play, but it was easy enough to imagine. At least for someone without an intrinsic fear of the concept of oceans. Good enough as a visualization, but whether it was useful for actual meditation remained to be seen.
Those were few and far between despite the time she’d poured into this. The next section she’d transcribed came from something that actually appeared typewritten, and given the context, Malwine thought she had a general idea as to why.
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The snippet she’d transcribed went on for longer, but Malwine took a moment to copy that part to another panel, before she forgot. This was arguably one of the clearest references she’d gotten as to how [Integrity] and [Toll] worked, even if this was within the context of how meditation-type Skills lowered those.
Predictably, the author did not explain just they got the evolution to happen. And while the insights provided felt far more useful than the odd mantra, Malwine couldn’t really ignore one detail—this was seemingly written from the perspective of a mortal.
There were no mentions of core visualization anywhere, and while Malwine suspected anyone could do that, she sort of rely on [Meditation] for it.
Squinting, she brought her own Skill’s description up again.
[Meditation]
Malwine blinked. actually It had simply felt natural in a sense, to work on her core when she meditated. That made the unnamed columnist’s version slightly better in her eyes, beyond her initial impression of it.
But this entire exercise, ultimately, was about seeing what was out there, even if her sample size was mediocre at best. She to work on getting this evolution if she didn’t want
andshe conceded, comparing it to what the entry described. It was awfully tempting to go for something like this—her quavering attention span would certainly be better off with something passive.
Giving effectiveness up sounded concerning, though.
As with most others, it was an anecdotal mention.
Malwine exhaled. She’d been dealing with this for months and… , the truth was, she was starting to tire of it. As much as she tried to manage her time properly, with such a single-minded focus on this, she’d considered taking a break and looking at it later, with fresh eyes.
Unfortunately, the sunk cost fallacy of it all hounded her.
It wasn’t as she truly had any strong opinions against that type of thing, but… She gotten used to at least being somewhat productive when she meditated.
The final technique just reminded Malwine of the type thing she could have sworn the widow heard in her past life.
Ignoring the mantra and whatever the one about avoiding breathing techniques was trying to get at, that left her with four she could try and compare.
— Passive meditation with reduced benefits
— Meditation that works in combat (potentially similar to the above)
— Meditating by blanking out (?)
— …Fantasy mindfulness???
It was a great list to work with. Not in the slightest.
None of the described Skills provided her with hard numbers for the accrued [Toll] reduction or [Integrity] restoration they’d bring, let alone detailed the necessary time for that to work, but that was just fine with her—the effects of Malwine’s own [Meditation] had never been clear to her, either. Still, this did represent a problem when trying to understand which method was the most effective, especially when all but one of the four seemed to be touted as optimal.
That wave mantra had taken up residence in Malwine’s head and refused to offer recompense for its stay. If she’d known what the Grēdôcavan word for an earworm in written form was, she would have chosen to use it liberally at this time.
The truth was, Malwine did not find any option to be particularly promising. None were , and her own Skill’s promise of potential for stat growth had yet to deliver, but they didn’t really seem… right.
Malwine rubbed her temples and didn’t bother suppressing her groan. She went over her list again, but couldn’t really deny it—she really did have almost nothing to show for it.
Literal spent on this, and she wasn’t satisfied in the slightest with the results. She might have been better off trying to locate Widuzhain—not that she hadn’t kept an eye out—than going out of her way to find this many vague references to [Meditation].