Chapter 60: Taking From a Distant Future

[An Anchor of Heart and Home] had a cost to it, presumably. The system said it cost ten units of something, but whatever it was, the system hadn't been able to parse it. This was worrying for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that the system was evidently capable of parsing some very esoteric costs — Misa remembered Max's skill costing 'an opportunity', whatever that meant.

Ten units, in this case, was vague and worrying. But not knowing what the skill did was potentially even worse, and so once Misa was properly outside the village (or the assortment of tents that currently passed as 'the village'), she hesitated only one final time. A small nod from her mother was all the reassurance she needed.

She activated the skill.

There was a noticeable twist in her stomach.

Misa couldn't explain the sensation of exactly what was wrenched out of her as she activated the skill — it felt like potential. Like possibility. But that potential wasn't drawn out of her and lost to the ether; no, it was instead offered to her, like clay for her to mold. It took her a moment to get over the nausea the skill induced, and another moment to understand exactly what the skill was offering to her.

It would take from her a fragment of raw possibility — a potential future. Someone she could become, given enough time. Ten units meant it would be ten steps harder to achieve, though it was unclear whether that would be ten times harder or if the growth was linear.

But in return? It gave her the ability to take that raw potential and shape it into someone else. Someone that she considered part of her 'home', to be specific, and right now it meant anyone from her village. What she created would be closer to a reality fragment than a full person, connected to the real version of that individual back in her village.

It was all very convoluted. Misa wasn't surprised that the system had given up and simply said 'error'. Simply put, the active version of the skill was something like a summoning skill that she could use to summon... copies of the members of her village, for lack of a better term. They would be able to control those copies at a distance, giving them the ability to act on her behalf, if they so chose.

Right now, the skill hovered at half-spent, still pulling that fragment of potential out of her — and as she considered the possibilities, Misa frowned, and slowly canceled the skill.

She felt the potential rubberband back into her, the feeling of relief nearly overwhelming. Misa grinned.

It was a good skill. But it was good to know that it was something she could cancel; that she didn't have to spend something that felt like it had such a high cost, if she began to cast it and it became unnecessary.

And she needed to ask before she started summoning clones of people, obviously.

"Misa?" Charise ventured when nothing seemed to happen, and Misa looked up, startled. Her mother stared at her with an eyebrow raised. "I don't know if you realize this, but from the outside it looked like you just started grinning for no reason."

"To be fair," Orkas added, sounding amused. "You did this a lot when you were young, too."

"Oh, fuck off," Misa grumbled good-naturedly, and her father only grinned wider at her. "The good news is that I didn't need to complete using the skill to figure out how it works, and I don't want to pay the cost right now. I know what it'll do, though. Roughly. I wanted to talk to you guys first, make sure that you know to be ready."

"It involves us, huh?" Charise said with a raise of her brow, and Misa nodded. She explained the active effect of her skill, as best as she understood it through whatever instinctual understanding had been granted to her, and her mother's brow furrowed. "You should try it now. At least once. So that we know what it's like, and if dismissing the summon restores the cost."

"Yeah, that was the plan," Misa agreed. "Uh... which one of you do I... copy?"

Which was easily one of the strangest questions Misa had ever had to ask. Maybe third strangest.

"Make a copy of me," Charise suggested. There was a flash of the smallest hint of a smirk... Misa narrowed her eyes at her mother suspiciously.

"Okaaay," she said, drawing out the word slightly. But she activated the skill nevertheless, and now that she was slightly more braced for the gut-wrenching sensation of having her own future torn out of her, it took her much less time to recover. It took her a moment to figure out how to shape it, but the system seemed to take over as soon as she thought of her mother. It told her how that future potential needed to be molded, nudged it into a perfect recreation —

— there was a flash of light, mana gathering into a sensation that made her skin prickle and her hair stand on end. There was a corresponding gasp from her mother, though no impression of pain. Surprise, maybe? The skill seemed to halt for a moment, as if waiting for something, and then all of a sudden she felt the skill resolve; it finished pulling from her, and then in front of her formed an exact copy of her mother.

Misa wasn't sure what she'd expected.

Charise, on the other hand, seemed delighted. She looked down at herself in her new body, patting it down quickly as if to make sure everything was still in place. For a moment, both versions of her mother were oddly mirrored — everything one version of her did, the other copied in perfect sync.

But then one version of her mother — the original — strode forward with a confident grin.

Directly towards Orkas, who suddenly looked a lot less sure of what was going on.

"Uh," he said. "Hi?"

"You know, honey," Charise began with a grin, in a very specific tone of voice.

Misa made a face and stared at her mom. "Mom. Really?"

"Hey, it's my extra body, isn't it?"

"You're not—" Misa sighed. "You know what? I'm not going to question it."

"You should see if you can dismiss the skill," Charise suggested. "Don't dismiss it if you can't get back whatever you spent on it, though."

Misa frowned. There was an option for her to disable the skill — she could feel it in the so-called mental interface of the system, allowing her to choose to pull the skill back. It'd dissolve her mother's extra body, for lack of a better term, though Misa also immediately resolved to find a better term.

But for now, she reached out to the skill, pulling on the metaphorical lever to disable the effect.

What was interesting was the fact that her mother was right — Misa hadn't expected to be able to gain back whatever she lost to the 'cost' of the skill, but either [An Anchor of Heart and Home] was an exception, or there was more to the cost that she hadn't thought about. A brief thought about it affecting the integrity of the anchor had her heart suddenly racing, but a quick check showed no apparent decrease in integrity.

And as the skill began to unravel, potential flooded back into her. But there was something interesting about it.

It wasn't the same as what had left.

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The potential future that had been taken from her was still gone — Misa had no specific idea of what it had been, but she had general impressions. That was a version of her that would focus hard on using [The Blade Arcane], becoming more of a warrior than a tank; she didn't see herself going down that path, and so had no problem sacrificing it. What returned now was a blank, undifferentiated potential; the future in which all her focus was poured into mastering the sword was still gone, but now she could... what, use it for something else?

"This skill's fucking weird," Misa muttered, and her mother gave her a look. "What? It is!"

"Why exactly is it... weird, as you call it?" Orkas finally asked, walking over to Charise's copy. She winked at him, and Misa groaned. She hadn't canceled the skill yet, but she pulled on that string now, unraveling the copy right in front of Orkas' eyes —

She realized, perhaps a hair too late, that she didn't know exactly how the effect would manifest. Orkas' face went slightly pale as the copy faded in the worst way possible, skin vanishing before everything else; even Charise winced. Her father's eyes shot to the real version of her mother as though for reassurance...

"Sorry about that," Misa said quietly, and her father didn't respond immediately. He just walked over to Charise, and slowly pulled her into a hug. He said nothing else, but Charise seemed to immediately realize what he needed.

They were silent for a moment, the three of them — and then Orkas let out a sigh.

"Better we find out now, I suppose," he muttered.

"That felt strange," Charise said, trying to change the subject.

"It did," Misa agreed, though it had been strange in a different way for her. There was a lump of undifferentiated potential now that she could still feel in her near future, almost like a lump in her throat. It was distinctly uncomfortable. It would shape itself as she acted, she instinctively realized, but for now it was a raw nothing that could be fed back into the skill if she wanted.

And then she realized she hadn't answered her mother's question. It was hard to explain, though... Misa tried to draw on her thoughts of how Vex would have explained it. "Uh. But to answer your question, I dunno, it's some weird shit."

She paused. Not how Vex would have explained it. "It feels like it takes... a path I could have tread — a future that could have been — and it turns it into something real."

"Is that safe?" Charise immediately asked. Misa shrugged.

"I give up something. But I don't think it makes it impossible for me to become that person. It just makes it harder. Moves the goal further away by ten steps, so to speak."

Orkas grunted. "I don't like it," he said, wearing a heavy frown.

"It might be useful," Misa said, but she didn't disagree. It felt... risky. Strange. "What did it feel like, mom?"

"Weird, like you said," Charise admitted. "It was like I had two bodies at once. It was hard to adapt to — I could only focus on one of them at a time. I could still use my skills through them, though, so..."

Misa whistled. "That could be very useful, then."

"If you can use it on more than one of us," Orkas said. "Can you?"

"I... think so." Misa hesitated. "I think I'd have to practice with the skill a bit, but for obvious reasons it's going to be a hard skill to practice. The skill says its grade is maxed, but it feels... I don't know. It feels complicated to use."

"Some skills are like that," Orkas acknowledged. "My brother—" he winced slightly as he mentioned the words. "— mentioned, back when he got his Unique skill, that it felt like it had a thousand different things he could do with it. But he never felt like he understood more than a tiny portion."

"What was the skill?" Misa asked. Her father almost never willingly talked about his brother.

"[A Thousand Hands]," Orkas answered, and then managed a laugh at Misa's flat look, though there was a touch of bitterness in the laugh. "Look, I don't know how he got the skill either. He was an [Alchemist]. It let him transmute things."

"Huh," Misa said. She opened her mouth to say something else—

— And then Max was suddenly in front of her. She blinked once, and Max blinked as well, as though surprised she was there. And then she grinned.

"Hello!" the [Adventuring Clerk] said. "I hear you need an adventurer's help?"

"We sent in for some assistance with sparring," Orkas said, seeming grateful for the change in subject. "The Guildmaster said she would send someone. Are you that someone?"

"Probably!" Max said cheerfully. "Sometimes I go missing because of my skills, and a great way to get me to appear again is to schedule something for me. So if you say the Guildmaster wanted me here, she probably wanted me here."

Orkas blinked at her. "I am sorry?"

"Just go with it," Charise whispered.

"I need you to hit me," Misa said.

"Say no more," Max said. She wound up for a punch, and Misa's eyes widened—

"Wait wait wait," Misa managed. Max grinned at her, and Misa groaned. "Dammit, Max," she said. "You're supposed to ask questions!"

"That's exactly why I don't ask questions," Max said knowingly. "It's a lot more fun that way."

Misa sighed.

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