Not long after the "new" old man left, I remained in the room, planning to continue, purely for the sake of appearance, what I had been doing: reading. I tried, for a time, but having spent most of my day here, and frankly losing interest after I'd been given the staff, I decided after about 30 minutes to leave the library. Instead of heading to my room or anywhere else, I went to the one place I, having no training today, had not visited: the Chateau's Dungeon. I was eager to test out my new staff, Elspeth.

  "Elspeth, huh?" I sighed, walking through one of the chateau's many corridors on my way to the dungeon. Elspeth. It’s a bad name for a staff, but given that man’s horrendous naming sense, it could have easily been Staffanie, Sticksy, or worse, Poline.

  "There's no way I'm leaving you with that name," I whispered to the large black staff.

  Naming was a strange thing in this world. In our original world, names are just words used to refer to someone or something. They exist only because humans have this need to categorize and label everything around us, and to be fair, it’s an important practice as it makes communication a lot easier. But aside from that, there’s no need for names beyond humanity's need for them. In a certain sense, it’s not so different in this world. However, with the existence of something like the system that also identifies things using names, things are also very different from our systemless world. Names have a use beyond that of human need for them; they transcend that.

  In this world, because that's how the system operates, when a child is born, he is as nameless as they come. But as he grows up, generally at the age when he would recognize his name, which he is referred to by either their parents, close family, or anyone else, a name will replace the empty name section of the child’s profile. This means that more often than not, a person's in-interface name will either be only his first name or a nickname they're commonly referred to as.

  Having been a child like that not so long ago, it should have been the same for me. I should have only had a name at around six or seven months old, but being the oddball that I was, that wasn't the case. I was born with a name that I had to manually erase to avoid suspicions. Yes, that's something we can do. My theory as to why I could do that is that it's a privilege we are privy to through the authority we used to reincarnate in this world. That being said, I don't mean that only I could change my name. I believe every sentient race of Fiendfell could, but to do so, they would have to change their entire perception of themselves for the system to pick up the new name. That is not something just anyone can achieve, we are one of the exceptions. I could change my name as much as I wanted to; for me, changing names was akin to just renaming a file, a very easy task to do, except perhaps when I'm just reborn. In those times, with the limited mental strength I have just enough to even conjure the interface, and faint a few moments later, in other words I wouldn’t be able to do that until I reached a more stable age.

  For living beings that aren't one of the seven sentient races, namely angels, demons, elves, dwarves, beastkins, and humans, in other words, animals and monsters, they don't have names. Not that they never acquire them, it's just that their system interface is devoid of even the section where the name should be. In a world where some monsters can look very humanoid, this nameless aspect of them is often used as an additional argument to delimit what's sentient and what’s not, regardless of appearance.

  Now, naming is a little different for inanimate objects; they can be named, but since they obviously don't have a mind of their own, their names majorly depend on two factors: those who do have a mind of their own, who can attribute them a name, and their values. In a sense, these two factors are akin to quantity and quality.

  Quantity, because, with the existence of skills like "Identification," I was pretty much living with an in-built internet search-like interface in my mind. If I were to apply Identification on a chair, I would learn that "chair" is called a "chair." As for why it's considered a chair and not something else, I believe it is because the system takes into account the world's consensus on that "four-legged inanimate thing one sits upon" being called a "chair." The system is so embedded into this world that it was able to do that. Now that I think about it, it's a good thing our world was systemless. The existence of such an interface would've driven most conspiracy theorists bonkers. Having had Identification as an innate skill, I've experimented a lot with this skill, and in a lot of ways, this skill and by extension the system, reminded me of how the internet was. Back in the day, I could go on the internet and search for a word and find that the word has a whole other meaning on the internet, where a common recognition prevails over the objective truth, if one could call it that. Anyway that was why one could stumble upon instances where the interface might misidentify something.

  Quality, in a sense, means that the more unique something is, the more likely it is to receive a unique name. Unlike items like a chair, whose in-interface name is decided by people who don't even realize they are making a choice, objects with unique properties like shields, swords, or staffs are more likely to be recognized by the system with unique names. Ironically, despite still being inanimate objects, very much like children who eventually pick up their names, these unique objects or artifacts, as they are commonly referred to, can also pick up a name, names that are usually bestowed by someone who will be seen as their owner. Once again, much like sentient races, they can change names, but after the first name an artifact is given, it'll be hard for it to change again. It's possible but it’s difficult to achieve, but once again that's for most people. I was once again the exception, being built as I was, just like I could easily change my name, I could easily change an artifact's name.

  Glancing at the black staff, I muttered as I walked, "I will give you the name Elspeth as he suggested for now. But as soon as I get the right opportunity, I'll give you the glorious name you deserve."

  The reason my wand remained named "Wanda," despite me not liking that name and having the ability to change it, is simple: the presence of the late Old man. Possessing the appraisal skill, which he never revealed the level of, I didn't dare to change the name. While even at high levels appraisal can't be used on inanimate objects, at high levels it can display the name of equipped items, so he would most likely have noticed the name not being "Wanda." Therefore, I never changed it.

  The old man is gone now, and with him, that problematic skill of his. No one else in this family or serving this family has the appraisal or identification skill, or at least no one I have heard of. So, it should be safe for me, but I believe there is no harm in being cautious for now. That old man isn't coming back from his grave, but with how the family has been bolstering the chateau's personnel numbers after his death, they may still hire someone with appraisal to keep an eye on my progress. While "Father" isn't as annoying and controlling as the old man, he is just as involved in his father's dream of seeing this family restored back to their royal status. Which is why I decided that it was safer to just leave things as they are for the time being.

  Ideally, instead of hiring someone, I wish they had stuck to using an artifact like an appraisal stone as an alternative. Actually, that wasn't even the ideal; the ideal would have been that they simply didn’t hire anyone and let me have my privacy.

  For the last few weeks since the old man's death, I've never felt so free, and I wanted things to continue being like that. In most of my incarnations, not to say all, since I had a few where it was known by my family that I was a Verdenkind, a human with access to the system, I've always, for pertinent and reasonable reasons, valued discretion. Even at that time when I had to admit to the family I was born into back then that I was a Verdenkind, I didn’t reveal anything to them about my true level, my skills, and even less about my abilities, or at least I made an active effort to not to do that.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Anyway, that is to say that for the most part, I would level up away from prying eyes in each of my reincarnations. I wasn't able to do that in this incarnation; what I usually kept secret was, in this incarnation, laid bare, overseen, and to some extent, something they wanted to completely control. I'm not allowing that.

  With the old man out of the equation and the appraisal skill out of the way, I felt, instead of sadness, a sensation of true freedom, one that I now realized I had yet to experience in this incarnation. And now that I finally got to experience it, I’d do anything to just keep it.

  Musing about what I could do to maintain this freedom, I thought, "Perhaps I should act and only act more open about my 'level' and overall 'skills' and 'abilities,' giving them the impression that there's no need for an appraiser or an appraisal stone since I'll be the one to do the report myself, out of, of course, pure goodwill."

  After pondering it for a while, I realized that while it might help, there was a chance that just doing the reporting might still not be enough. To make sure it does, I had to add a little something extra, adding a bit more spice to the good and obedient daughter act that I'm forced to be playing.

  When the old man was still around, I could more or less ignore him or at least not put too much focus on him, the one I was focused on garnering the love, attention, and affection from being the old man; now I suppose it's time I refocused some of this effort toward my "beloved father."

  "That sounds like a good plan of action," I mused as I walked, pondering how I could concretely execute my plan.

  Unconsciously humming a lullaby, I, when closing in on the entrance to the Dungeon, saw coming from the end, several of my half-sisters along with their respective servants. Leading them was a girl that resembled me, and to be fair, a lot of them resembled me, but the one leading clearly looked older, around 16 years old. She was Clemantine, the older sister of Cleon, the boy who had hurt himself in the Dungeon.

  Seemingly surprised to see me, she bolted in surprise along with her half-sisters, but quickly gathered herself to continue her march. As they approached, I greeted, "Good evening, Sister..."

  She wasn't alone in her silence; taking a cue from their elder sister, the others also refrained from greeting me back, mimicking their "leader's" behavior.

  My relationship with my siblings was an aspect of this incarnation I never really had to worry about; just doing the bare minimum was usually enough. There are seven of us. Two, the eldest and the youngest, were born from the same woman, our father's official wife. The others were all born from our beloved father’s concubines. Well, I say concubines, but they were less than that; they were more like breeding machines through which he was desperately trying to have an heir, since he seemed to struggle with that with his wife.

  Our father, marrying a bit later than usual for a noble like him, and his wife, being the newlyweds that they were, tried and they had their first daughter. So, they tried again and the results weren’t exactly, let’s say, "great," to not go into details. After a few more attempts, they eventually gave up for a time. It was around then, desperate as he was at the idea of being, I suppose, heirless, he began sleeping around. And by sleeping around, I don’t mean that casually but rather that he was pursuing two goals at once: the first one was obviously to have an heir, and the second was, in that process, trying to produce what the Wei? family had been dreaming of for several generations already, a child with the potential to restore the family to their royal status. He did so by sleeping with women whom he believed had the potential to give him both an heir and the second coming of their ancestor.

  Most of these women were Verdenkind who had managed to level up to a reasonably high level. How high exactly, I didn't know, but it was high enough to catch our father’s attention, yet low enough that the woman I should be calling mother could be purchased with money, unless, of course, the person was very greedy, which couldn’t be argued she was until her last moment. One more thing that led me to believe her level couldn't be that high is the fact that both he and the old man were so easily willing to dispose of her. My bet was that they were female Verdenkinds between level 10 to level 20.

  I also heard that he went after another woman for a skill she had awakened, an unique healing-related skill, as a Verdenkind. Most likely wanting to have that skill, he had that woman give him a child. Ironically, the child born was neither a boy nor did she ever awaken her mother’s skill, or any healing-related skill, despite being born a Highbreed, a humanity’s subrace known for their heightened potential in healing related skills.

  Four times in a row, my father’s attempts at both eugenics and spawning an heir failed until I, his sixth daughter, was born. While I didn’t exactly qualify as an heir, from what the old man saw, I qualified as a good enough, if not outright perfect, product of their amateur eugenics attempts. Another ironic thing is that some time after my birth, several years later, as he no longer attempted to have or produce another child as most of his focus, and that of his father, were on me, he eventually got his heir, with none other than his wife.

  Anyway, that is all to say that if one were to speak of factions among us siblings, there are three: my half-siblings from my father’s official wife, my four other half-siblings who, while all born of different mothers, are all very close to one another, and then there's me.

  If one were to speak of a hierarchy between us, then up above there’s me and my one-person faction, since I was, let’s admit it, heavily backed by the old man and "father," then close second, if not beside me, were my two siblings who were backed by their mother. She very obviously hates me but is smart enough to know not to show any form of hostility towards me. Instead, it is mostly through her children that this hostility shows. The youngest is too young for that hostility to show properly, but it’s there. As for his elder sister, she’s showing it clearly, mostly by how she does her best to never have to interact with me, making our earlier interaction rather normal.

  At the bottom are my four other half-sisters. They're quite the tragic story. They aren't exactly unloved by everyone; they're actually quite loved by their father despite them falling short of what he was aiming for. However, these poor girls have to deal with a woman who doesn't hide her hatred for them like she does with me. Our beloved father's wife does not like them and does not want her children to be anywhere near them. This is why they can mostly be seen in a specific section of the chateau, so seeing them together as they were today was a truly unique sight, one that actually surprised me. Thinking about any recent event that could've made this possible, I thought, "Perhaps death drew them closer. Hahaha... if it's that, then well done, old man."

  As for their relationship with me, well, I was their 6th sister. I was, for the most part, not so different from them. I too was born a failure to become an heir, but there's a certain someone's obsession over me that made it so they're usually all-kowtowing and all-acquiescing when interacting with me, as if afraid of what I could be doing to them if they were to misbehave in front of me. In a sense, despite never doing anything to them that could warrant that fear, it always seemed to me that they're more afraid of me than they are of their step-mother, who doesn't pull her punches. It seems that with the death of the old man, I'd have to revise that assessment of mine.

  Unfazed by the strange encounter I had just experienced, I continued on my path and soon reached the entrance to the Dungeon. To no longer my surprise, the portcullis that was usually raised was now firmly lowered. This seemed to be the sole consequence of the incident involving Cleon in the Dungeon, about which I had heard nothing further. The entrance was to be kept shut.

  Under normal circumstances, Justaff would be here to lift the portcullis for me so we could start our training session, but since I wasn’t visiting for training today, coming merely on a whim, it looked like I would have to open it myself.

  Pointing my staff at the base of the portcullis, I effortlessly summoned a magic circle with [Ice Magic]. As I channeled my will into it, ice began to form at the bottom of the portcullis, swelling in volume and soon starting to exert pressure on the barrier.

  As the ice expanded, the portcullis rose, inching upwards until it was high enough for me to pass underneath. I swiftly moved through the opening, and once safely on the other side, I dispelled the magic circle. The ice supporting the portcullis melted away instantaneously, causing the heavy metal grid to slam back down with a resounding crash that echoed ominously through the empty dungeon corridors.

  A smile crept on my face as I nodded, "Not bad for a demo, but let's see what you're truly made of."