Markets and Multiverses

As we walked up the street and towards the temple, we started to come across the same signs of ruin and bloodshed that littered the rest of the Market. Corpses were tossed about left and right, destroyed skeletons littered the streets, and pools of lava, chunks of frozen or cut up matter, shadows that seemed disproportionately sized, and all manner of other weird magical phenomena littered the area. It had been hard to spot from the street, and the road to the temple itself remained curiously free of signs of battle. However, underneath the trees with glistening, gem-like fruits, the signs of battle became more and more abundant, far surpassing anything we had found in the rest of the city.

Finally, we reached the entryway to the temple. It was blocked off by a booth. On each side of the booth, there were multiple stone basins, connected to the inside of the booth via a series of stone pipes. And floating directly above the booth on a much more sanely sized billboard was… another advertisement. This one demanded we pay five Achievement to continue walking forward, or else we would be accosted by security.

After frowning for a moment, I took a deeper look inside of one of the stone basins, before I finally recognized it.

“Hey, aren’t these really similar to the Achievement storage containers we found in the shop earlier?” I asked Sallia. She squinted at the stone basins, before her eyes lit up.

“You’re right!” She said, before she also stepped closer to one. “So these things can collect Achievement too? I didn’t know they had that function. In the first place, how are we actually supposed to move Achievement out of our body?” 

“I genuinely have no idea. Thus far, we’ve absorbed Achievement pretty easily, but getting it back out of our body…” I trailed off, before finally, I shrugged and reached my hand out to one of the stone basins.

Would you like to pay 5 Achievement?

Yes/No

I rejected the request to pay 5 Achievement. “There’s another System prompt. I guess transmigrators needed special tools to get rid of Achievement once they absorbed it?” I said. “At least, I haven’t found a way to remove Achievement from my body without help yet.”

Then I looked inside of the booth. If I could figure out where the Achievement was collected, there might be something left over for us to loot. Whoever had manned this booth was long gone, and the long-dead residents of the Market didn’t need Achievement anymore. I gave the door to the booth an experimental tug, and it easily opened.

The inside of the booth was larger than the outside of the booth. While the outside of the booth made it look like it would be hard to squeeze more than a person and a chair inside, the inside looked like someone had grabbed a smaller gym and stuffed it inside.

To the sides of the room were a huge selection of small pamphlets, scattered across wooden tables that lined the walls. There were also several snacks and chairs, all of which showed signs of dust and decay. 

And, luckily, in the center of the room was a large stone basin. The three of us inched closer to it, before finding that it was filled to the brim with Achievement.

Sallia and I looked at each other, and then at Little Six. We grinned, although Little Six seemed less impressed than Sallia and I, perhaps because he was less used to the concept of how valuable Achievement was. Even so, his eyes were also fixed on the pool of glowing liquid in the room.

“How much Achievement is there?” asked Sallia, looking at the Stone Basin. I stuck my hand into the pool of incandescent liquid.

“300. Not bad at all. Two stat points each whenever we return to the shop.”

We divided up the Achievement equally among the three of us, making all of us 100 Achievement richer. I spent a few minutes sinking into a state of twitching euphoria before I managed to clamp down on the feeling, gritting my teeth as I tried to ignore the sensation.

I did not like how much control I felt like Achievement had over my actions.

However, I also couldn’t deny the results of absorbing more Achievement. I felt strangely… full. Satisfied. For the first time since I came to the Market, I felt like I had eaten a full meal, and the empty and hungry feeling I hadn’t even been aware of before disappeared like a dream.

Then, curious, I turned to Little Six, to see how he was handling ‘eating’ Achievement for the first time since he had died.

He had a blissful expression on his face, making me feel slightly uneasy. However, before I could sink further into the uneasy feeling, his expression suddenly warped into a frown as he snapped out of it.

“I… is there a way to turn this feeling… off, or reduce it a little?” he asked, turning back to me. 

“Not that I’ve found so far. I’ve also been keeping an eye out - while a little bit of happiness when we get some Achievement isn’t a big deal, as it currently stands it feels a little… problematic,” I said.

“Got it,” said Little Six, looking slightly irritated. “In that case I’ll deal with it for now, I suppose.”

Sallia’s expression, by contrast, still didn’t change very much as she chewed through her share of the Achievement. I did notice that at some point she had simply sat down, completely uncaring of where she was sitting as she silently twitched, her expression warping between glee and trained expressionlessness. Finally, she stood back up, her cheeks turning very slightly red before she looked away. .

“Done. Have you two looked at the books and pamphlets on the table yet? Was there anything useful?”

Little Six and I shook our heads. “We were waiting for you.”

We started scanning through the pamphlets scattered throughout the room, before discovering the little pamphlets were all a copy of the same thing. The books were all things like ‘best romance short stories - a collection by Jaia Brezno’ and seemed entirely based around entertainment. While I felt a little disheartened by this, the pamphlets looked promising. I settled down to read one, before I saw Little Six and Sallia both begin making incredibly odd faces as they scanned through the pamphlet as well. A few moments later, I felt my own face begin to warp as I read through the pamphlet.

“LuxCorp Employee manual - booth position!

Expectations:

1) Collect Achievement from all customers without exception. Any customers who enter the pool of reincarnation without first paying will result in a deduction of YOUR pay.

2) If any of my clones give you special requests or orders, you are to follow them.

3) If a transmigrator attempts to brute force their way in without first paying, simply yell ‘security’ to activate the security golems. If anyone attempts to harass you or inflict bodily harm upon you, you should also say ‘restrain’ to ensure the golems know to capture the intruder instead of just robbing them and cutting off some limbs. If they have somehow prevented you from speaking, you may use any of the alternate signals, detailed further on in appendix A.

4) You are allowed one snack break every 24 hours of work. These snack breaks are not to exceed more than one hour. You may use any of the snacks provided in the break room, and may additionally use any materials you have brought with you as entertainment during your break. You are not restricted from leaving the booth, but please ensure that you return by the time your break is over. You may engage in any other activities you desire during your break, with a few restrictions detailed in other rules.

5) In case a Transmigrator attempts to commit suicide in front of you, please ensure that their soul is properly forwarded to the nearest authorized tether for further questioning. Commiting suicide in public is a crime punishable by law with potential imprisonment or small to moderate fines, as it can cause a disruption of business.

6) If you wish to engage in cannibalism during your break, please do so out of the public eye. Eating humanoid meat in public is bad for public image reasons, and if caught, you WILL be fined or possibly fired. If you fail to get the other person’s permission to eat them before engaging in the act of cannibalism you may be subject to further legal action, including becoming a forced participant of the cannibalism festival for the year or being imprisoned for a few centuries.

7) Whenever going to another world to begin another reincarnation, please wait until a replacement is available to take over the booth. If it has been more than 500 years (your individually tracked time) since you returned to man the booth, you will be considered to have forfeited your job at LuxCorp and will be taken off the roster, as well as subject to reasonable fines.

8) Whenever manning the booth, you must do so for at least 2 weeks at a time. Abandoning your post outside of scheduled snack break periods may result in a fine, imprisonment, or being fired, depending on the circumstances of your departure.

I felt increasingly strange as I read through the employee manual. The sensibilities of transmigrators were…

Very different.

I flipped through the rest of the book, but most of the ‘rules’ in it were more of the same kind of thing. Things like following orders, not dragging down the company image, etc were more normal. However, mixed in with these rules were all kinds of incredibly bizarre, transmigrator specific rules such as ‘publicly killing people is only to be done with permission of a clone or a golem, and is otherwise punishable by fine or imprisonment.’ 

What the heck was up with this rulebook?

After looking through the increasingly odd employee manual, I finally shook my head. Even though some of the tidbits were rather entertaining, there didn’t seem to be too much that was useful here. Still, one of the earlier rules mentioned the ‘pool of reincarnation.’ After the other two finished looking through the manual, we decided it was worth a further look inside of the temple. This wasn’t the first time we had seen a ‘pool of reincarnation’ mentioned, and learning what a pool of reincarnation was and how it worked would be critical for our future in this place.

The moment we stepped through the archway, the smell of apples and pomegranates cut off completely. The temple’s interior had no smells whatsoever. Instead, the inside of the temple seemed incredibly hollow. The massive structure had no internal walls – it was one massive room. At the far end of the room was a pool of violet-black water. It looked very similar to the ocean outside. As I stepped closer to the pool, I realized that it seemed to have no depths. It simply continued on forever, an endless abyss of water that seemed to expand as I gazed into its depths. Idly, I wondered if the pool of water was taken from the water outside of the ship. Then, I realized with a start that the messages we had seen earlier referenced long-distance teleportation costs. Maybe this wasn’t taken FROM the ocean outside- instead, some part of this building might just be a portal into the ocean or something.

The only other thing in the temple, besides the pool and some decorative mosaics detailing weird blobs of light, were large quantities of bodies. There were dozens of bodies and hundreds of destroyed skeletons littering the area.

However, skeletons weren’t the only monstrous creature we found inside of the temple. We also found what looked like a giant humanoid being, with orange-red skin, pus-filled blisters, and rot covering every inch of its body. It had probably stood at four or five meters when it had walked, though it was now cut in half at the waist. 

Even in death, it had an unnerving grin on its face that sent shivers down my spine, and its mouth looked like someone had taken a relatively human face and jammed a shark’s mouth inside of it. All in all, it didn’t look like something I would ever want to see up and moving.

I didn’t really know what to make of the giant things for now. At the very least, it seemed to affirm the earlier suspicions Sallia and I had - there were things besides skeletons which had attacked this city.

Since nothing got back up to attack us, we were free to examine the room. However, sadly, we couldn’t find anything else that was either informative or useful.

Finally, we stepped closer to the pool at the back. Sallia, upon drawing near it, made a similar expression to the one I was making – caution and fear.

Little Six, on the other hand, just seemed fascinated. He looked at the pool of nearly-black liquid-gas.

“What do we do with the pool to use it?” asked Sallia, looking at me.

“Touch it, maybe?” Little Six said as he curiously grabbed a bone from nearby and threw it into the pool of water. I didn’t know what I expected to happen, but it fell into the pool with a plop and began sinking into the watery depths. After a few seconds, I couldn’t see it anymore.

“Hmm… You know, I think the employee manual said something about entering the pool of reincarnation, didn’t it?” asked Sallia, after a moment.

“So do we just jump in when we want to use it?”

“Maybe. Is there -”

I heard something new. A kind of quiet, skittering sound that was just barely audible to me. I whirled around, trying to locate the source of the noise, before I saw something I really didn’t want to see.

Walking up the path towards the temple was a group of skeletons. There were at least thirty of them, far more than Sallia and I had ever faced before. At the head of the group of skeletons were two skeletons who bore no weapons. They gave me a much more dangerous feeling though - even if I didn’t know why my instincts were screaming at me that they were not to be trifled with, I had a sudden urge to be well away from them. At the back of the skeleton war party were three more of the giant humanoid beings. Each of the fleshy, pus-covered giants were four meters tall and carried giant warhammers.

I looked at Little Six and Sallia, before I frantically looked around the room. There was nowhere to hide.

“Shit,” whispered little Six, also looking through the doorway.

The skeletons also seemed to see us. I saw one of the two weaponless skeletons raise its hands, pointing a finger at me.

“More new residents of the city! Welcome! I knew more would come here eventually! I’ve been waiting soooo long for more prey, you see, and it’s so very boring guarding this building. Please dooo stay a while, for I’m always eager to meet new people” The weaponless skeleton said in a raspy voice, giving usa skeletal grin as its fleshless jaw clacked. “Now, I’m sure you’re confused, and I really didn’t expect someone to slip past the entrance while I was looking around, but I regret to inform you that this is as far as you can go. But make yourself comfortable. I’m sure you’ll make lovely skeletons, and you won’t be needing any answers as long as you follow my orders.” I was stunned, looking at the talking skeleton in horror. The skeletons we had seen so far were barely intelligent, but this one could talk. It was intelligent, knew more about our situation than we did, and had a pack of skeletons obeying its orders.

Before I could finish processing how terrifying the talking skeleton was, a scythe of green light flew out of its finger. It moved faster than an arrow, whizzing through the air without a sound. Before I could react, it slammed into my arm. Bright pain exploded through me, and I realized with horror my arm was melting. I stared at my ruined limb, wide eyed, and noticed a swath of flames shoot out of the hands of the other weaponless skeleton, flying towards Little Six’s stomach.Little Six began to emit a horrifying, burning smell as his flesh turned into charcoal in seconds. Then, the three giants hefted their warhammers, charging at us as the armed skeletons followed them.

“Wha-” I gasped, pain lancing its way through my thoughts. I stared at the mangled remains of Little Six’s stomach, and then looked back at my ruined arm.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the talking weaponless skeleton raise its hand towards me, apparently intending to finish me off since its first spell hadn’t killed me.

Sallia, thinking more quickly than Little Six and I, grabbed us and jumped into the pool of reincarnation.

acaswell

A few notes about narrative, meta narrative, and how I want to continue this story that I think are relevant. Now seems like a good time to introduce these thoughts.

First, I want to develop the first world the MC and company go to as something of a tutorial about how this story’s worldbuilding and dimension building work. I expect it will be longer than other worlds because it’ll give everyone more time to get to know each other, and also introduce some mechanics about how I intend to run the rest of the story. That being said, most of you who have read my other work have probably also realized that I tend to like more detailed, longer stories that are a bit slower paced over ones that don’t take their time and rush through parts of the story. That’s part of my preference and style as a writer, and I expect this story will be more slowly paced than some of the stories that inspired this one, such as Cadence Lee. It’s up to you if that’s a good or bad thing, and it does depend a lot on reader preference - but I envision many worlds taking at least thirty or forty chapters before everyone returns to the Market, with some worlds, such as the first one, perhaps taking a little extra so that I can introduce important points of the meta narrative, focus on more detail, or otherwise accomplish extra stuff that I think is relevant to the overall story. Of course, that’s a rough estimate - some worlds may have notably more, or notably fewer chapters than this. So don’t rely too much on the estimate. I’m just trying to make clear how I want to plan out and write each world within the story. The idea is to make every single world feel like a complete story, really, rather than a shallow half-baked world. So I will take the number of chapters I feel are needed to make each world come to life instead of feeling hollow. Hopefully, you're all also interested in seeing relatively fleshed out worlds, I guess? Anyway.

P.S. Writing the rulebook for employees was really fun XD.

Shameless plug - On Patreon you can read 5 chapters ahead for $3! Or 10 chapters ahead for $5! Or 20 chapters ahead for $10!