Black Heart Chapter Six

Sophie's journal was still Malicia's most treasured item, as her fourteenth birthday came and went with little fanfare.

Admittedly, the celebrations for the blood-related Ravensworths weren't much of note themselves, from what she had seen. Edward or Adrian would be allowed to choose the meals for the day, as long as they decided on them far enough in advance for the arrangements to be made, and they would be given a purse with money that they could spend on whatever they took it into their head to buy, as long as the funds lasted.

As introductory money-management lessons went, it was alright, Malicia supposed. They wouldn't go hungry if they spent their money unwisely, which was how most commoners learned that they needed to fix their budget planning, but the Ravensworth household was not very prone to giving gifts or spending money 'just because'. A lot of money was going to Adrian's training, for example, but that was practical. Spending money with a purpose.

Malicia couldn't resent that... too much, even as she contrasted it with the casual 'So it's your birthday? Congratulations.' that she typically received in passing. Not the response of a parent that was celebrating. Closer to the disinterested but obligatory well-wishes that might come from the parent of a friend. If she had expected more... Well, Malicia had not expected anything more. To be frank, just counting the tuition that would be paid for her as gifts already greatly weighted the scales, if she chose to look at it that way, rather than resenting her circumstances.

In the abstract, it wasn't upsetting at all. Of course people preferred their own by-blood children to an adopted one, especially when there was nothing preventing them from having those children. Treating the situation as though it were the same as a barren couple adopting the child they couldn't have on their own wasn't reasonable. She doused the sparks of frustration with that acknowledgement.

As long as Malicia didn't have expectations for more than what she was getting, what she was getting was already very good. Three fair meals a day, most days, and a personal room that very few others could just barge into whenever they felt like it. A bathroom for herself, with no fighting over the toilet or hot water. Compared to the orphanage, wasn't that alone pretty great?

She still didn't really understand why the butler was so willing to ruin the expensive clothes that she was given, over and over and over again, but when taken in the light of 'training materials' similar to the monsters that had been captured and shipped in... it sort of made sense? To some degree, at least. Getting her accustomed to having blood all over herself, willing to discard even very nice clothes... Was that it?

Somehow, she felt like the man was just an asshole, though. But, asshole or not... the circulation speed and effectiveness was definitely increasing. Malicia felt like it would have been increasing even if she wasn't getting blood splashed on her every time, ruining her clothes and pushing her to respond in stupid ways when she knew full well that it would be strange to lick it off her hands. But it was increasing.

That didn't stop her from needing to restrain the urge to lash out. But it could be worse. Malicia wasn't sure how well her temper would hold up if the brothers' birthday celebrations were more elaborate, for example. If they really went all out for it, and her own remained a nothing-at-all nod of acknowledgement and business as usual...

Well. No reason to get emotional when she had no expectations in the first place.

The one thing that she had to watch out for was the butler staining Sophie's journal with blood the way he did the fancy dresses. That was one thing that couldn't be replaced, if something happened to it.

So she made sure to only read it late in the evenings. It wasn't like Malicia could write down the lines that seemed odder for later review or quick comparison, either. That would make it clear that she was studying the journal for some unknown reason, rather than just reminiscing about the past. In other words, what came to mind was what stood out.

LV. LV and CAP. These were shorthand for something, Malicia was sure, and it would be great if Sophie had ever explained what these abbreviations meant or why they kept coming up.

Malicia's best guess was that they had to equate to something that wasn't listed in the Simple Panel. As for the basis she had for that guess... She didn't really have one. Not unless she counted the page in Sophie's journal that had 'Appraiser or Inspection Lens' written on it, followed by two exclamation marks, underlined, and then circled. As though someone reading her journal might miss that those were important.

Why those two? An Inspection Lens was a specialized magic tool that would, among other functions, reveal the fuller, true version of a person's information panel when it was used on them. Similarly, Appraiser was one of the classes that could develop a skill that allowed them to do the same, in addition to having a few other plausibly useful talents for a team delving into the dungeon... though it would still probably be best if they stayed away from the fighting. An Appraiser that was good at it could determine on the spot if something was much more valuable than it appeared, but they didn't tend to have any benefit when it came to actually fighting. Similarly, a Farmer or a Butcher could be beneficial to bring into a dungeon in the hope of increasing the quality of a harvest, but their combat ability tended to be sub-par. That couldn't really be helped, although it wasn't exactly... it was a rule of thumb, with some exceptions. A high-strength Farmer with a full scythe and some experience could be dangerous indeed to the weaker denizens of a dungeon, particularly if they were plant-based, after all.

The thing was... Certainly, either of those could theoretically be useful. But how useful they were depended on how much Sophie expected to understand of what they could tell her.

It wasn't like nobody had made any study at all of classes, skills, and status. These things were important, so of course they were investigated. But... there was no clear explanation given in the information panels as to what any of those things actually meant, or what they did. In great part, anyone who made a study of such things had to draw inferences and make assumptions that... Well, that they had no way of being certain were really correct.

It wasn't all as simple as 'Strength lets you lift heavier things and swing any weapons you might be holding harder', which was obvious. There had never been a visible explanation for even that, when it came down to it. Sometimes you had skills like 'Pray', which would occasionally cause a minor miracle of some kind. But with no consistency as to what, and no explanation that it would, in fact, sometimes do something? Whoever first had that as a skill had certainly been... Well, it had been figured out eventually.

The thing was, most of the things that weren't featured in the simple panel just weren't relevant outside of highly specific situations. If Sophie knew some way of telling what was important in there and what wasn't, when all anyone else had was guesswork and tentative theories that were waiting for someone to be born with the right class and status combination to either confirm or refute them? Well, Malicia would dearly like to know just how she had managed that.

LV and CAP... Well, it shouldn't be impossible for Malicia to get her hands on a book of theories, even if hiring someone or getting her hands on one of those Lenses might be pretty difficult at the moment. She would try to remember to take a look sometime, and see if there was something that looked like it might match up with those abbreviations, and if there were any reasonable sounding theories around them.

For the time being, though, there was no choice but to wait. It didn't seem like that kind of speculative theory text was present in the Ravensworth library, and she didn't have either the money to arrange its purchase or the freedom of movement to go to somewhere that did have a copy in order to borrow and leaf through it.

Instead, Malicia flipped back to a brief rant on a different page.

The topic was Porters.

Malicia halfway understood why. There had been an orphan back then, who happened to have the Class of 'Porter'. The girl had stood out for different reasons than her Class, though, as an indication of her ancestral heritage had been clearly visible... in any case, Malicia supposed that the girl must have said or done something that annoyed Sophie and left her wanting to air her grievances in her journal.

... The other half, however, Malicia didn't really grasp at all.

A Porter was a highly useful class, in dungeon assaults or in daily life. There were similar classes, such as Hauler, but not all of them operated in the same way. A Porter had the advantage of having the Inventory Skill, allowing them to put things 'away' into a secret magic space and take them back out again.

It was a Skill that was very useful for transporting low-volume-high-profit goods, or smuggling, though it also made the Class a priority target for bandits and highwaymen. It was on average actually safer for a Porter to start off by tagging along on dungeon assaults, despite the fact that they were teeming with monsters that would want to kill them. They were just as valued there as well, since a Porter could store away the most valuable of the treasures found in an assault and carry critical emergency goods with far less risk of loss than the usual methods of moving items.

Absent such an individual, dungeon explorers and invaders would have to rely on carrying things in sacks, packs, and various forms of bags. Space was always going to be a factor, even when using the highly expensive sort of magic bags that folded and expanded the space inside them magically somehow, and it was typically hard to fight when you couldn't move freely.

The thing was... it seemed like that greatly frustrated Sophie. She spent a few lines on it complaining about how it was unfair that something like that was restricted to only certain Classes like Porters, or mages with a focus on twisting space and time. Sophie seemed to think that every class should have their own Inventory.

Malicia didn't grasp the reasoning there at all. That was just how things were. Was it also unfair that someone whose Class didn't involve fire magic couldn't conjure a floating torchlight so they didn't need to keep a hand free to hold one in the dark? For what reason could Sophie resent that not everyone had an Inventory like that? It would make harvesting treasures from dungeons simpler, certainly, and it would also make legitimate transportation of goods a little simpler, but there was still a limitation of some kind on how much space a Porter had available. So more than anything it would result in an increase in smuggling illegal objects and restricted drugs, wouldn't it?

Overall, Malicia felt like that was a situation that would ultimately have more in the way of bad results than good. Still, as long as she only focused on the optimistic and helpful uses, it wasn't a bad fantasy to have. A world where every adventurer and mercenary had their own Inventory would certainly be wealthier all around, wouldn't it? With more treasures coming into the market, the dungeon explorers would have more coin to spend and the profits of those catering to them would increase, with further effects stretching outwards.

It wasn't a bad daydream. That Sophie had clearly been annoyed that the dream wasn't reality... it was just one more item, in the end, of things about her that, looking back, might not have always been as clear as they had seemed.