Markets and Multiverses

“How many people are there?” I whispered to Sallia.

“Seven,” she said.

I took another look at the batch of silver-colored souls, and relaxed a little.

The Orukthyri had incredibly large, difficult to destroy ‘candles of life,’ which made killing them very difficult. Their resistance to magic amplified their already massive life force, which ultimately meant that I had to spend a huge amount of shaping essence just to kill one Orukthyri. This was the reason I could only kill one and a half Orukthyri with my entire pool of alteration essence. They were simply too resilient to damage compared to regular creatures with less absurd levels of life force.

However, the ‘candles of life’ I could see in front of me were much weaker. I could probably extinguish the entire group on my own if I had enough time. Even if I took into account the fact that members of the group would attack me and distract me, I had no doubt that I would at least be able to kill four or five members of the group if a fight broke out. Sallia would easily stomp two or three people if they got close to her. In other words, the other group of people wasn’t able to kill us, unless they had some sort of unique attunement similar to my ocean of souls abilities.

Of course, I had no intention of attacking them unless they attacked first. Unless they tried to hurt me or my friends first, I was more than happy to get along with anyone we met. But if we didn’t have the ability to defend ourselves against them, I would opt against making contact with them. There was always a chance the other party would try to kill or rob us, and I didn’t want to make contact with a group that we couldn’t fight back against because I wanted to stay as safe as possible. However, since the other group was fightable, we could talk to them.

Sallia waited with me as I watched the silver souls keep moving past us, as I hesitated. Was there a reason to make contact with them? I hesitated for a few more moments, before I decided it wasn’t a bad idea. They might have news that we would find useful if they had recently come from another city in the underdark, and they might also have some medicine we could give to the sick members of our group. Some medicine in addition to my healing ability would give us the best results.

“Is there anything or anyone else nearby, besides that group? I think I want to talk to them and trade news and medicine, if they’re willing,” I said..

“I don’t see anything else in the area. We should be good to go,” said Sallia.

The two of us started creeping forward. I had to admit, I was a little curious to know what brought this group of people into the wastes. Was it a group of adventurers? Travelers? Someone fleeing for the destruction of their own city? I hoped it wasn’t another group of refugees: if it was, they might not have any medicine either.

“Hello?” I asked. I made my voice loud enough that it was easy for the other group to hear me.

The seven silver-colored souls stopped moving.

“Hello?” called out a different voice. It was a man who sounded a little on the older side: I estimated he was probably in his early eighties, the human equivalent of being forty or so. “Is someone there?”

“We’re over here,” I said, lowering my voice a little bit. “We won’t attack if you won’t.”

“May I know who I’m speaking to? You sound quite young,” said the man.

“I’m Miria. May I ask why you’re in the wastelands?”

“We’re adventurers. What about you?”

“We’re traveling from one city to another, since our city got invaded.” I paused. “Do you have any medicine?” I asked. “If so, we’d be willing to trade news and some food and water.” I wasn’t sure how much the other party would value whatever medicine they might be carrying, but there was no harm in at least trying to trade. If we got our sick people up and moving faster, that would save us a day or two of waiting, which would reduce the strain on our food reserves anyway. Or they might have a healing-related attunement, if there were any shapers in the group.

“We have something that could work. What specifically are you looking for medicine for?”

“Fevers and coughing. It seems to be mixed with black sun exposure, amplifying the effects of the illness.” I said. I also started reaching for my alteration essence, just in case the other party took this as an opportunity to attack us. Luckily, even after hearing we had sick people nearby, they didn’t seem intent on making any hostile moves towards us.

“Oof. That sounds rough. The black sun has been getting worse and worse for the past few years, and it’s especially bad this year. We should have something that can help with the symptoms you described. How much food and water are you willing to trade? And do you have anything else you can throw into the deal?”

I relaxed a little more. I didn’t completely let my guard down, but I had a good feeling about this group of people.

“We have a few extra day’s worth of food and water that we’d be willing to exchange, as well as a map of this area. I imagine you already have a map, but by comparing the two, you can get a clearer image of this area. It was created by my teacher, a former adventurer, and so it should still have a good amount of useful information in it. We can also share some news about the underdark that might interest you, especially relating to the city we came from.”

“Hmm…” the voice paused for a moment, considering my offer. “I’ll admit, I’m not too keen on adventuring past this point, which would be the biggest reason I would be interested in your map. We’re planning on heading back to our city and retiring. We already know the route back home, so I doubt the map will be of much value to us. I wouldn’t mind an update on the underdark, though. You mentioned fleeing from your city? I doubt it’s anything too relevant to us, but there’s no harm in checking. How about one and a half day’s worth of decently-sized meals for the seven of us, and a similar amount of water? I’d also like the information about the underdark. In exchange, we’ll use our healing item on the sick people? If you have any precious metals, we’d prefer to exchange for that, but we are running low on supplies.”

I thought about it, and then nodded. “We don’t have any precious metals with us, but the food and water sound reasonable.” If anything, the other side was undercharging us. Since they had mentioned a healing ‘item,’ rather than medicine, I suspected that they were offering use of something magical. Which was probably why they were offering us use for such a low price: it wouldn’t damage the magic item any. Magic items in this world seemed firmly built to repair themselves no matter what happened to them.

“All right. We’re heading over to you. Don’t attack us,” said the man, and the seven silver souls started making their way towards us. I kept my alteration essence ready, but I was pretty sure that the adventurers weren’t going to attack us at this point. They seemed to be trading in good faith.

About a minute later, I saw five men and two women emerge from the underbrush. They were all in their thirties or forties, and had a grizzled look to them. They also smelled rather… ripe.

I suddenly realized it had been several days since I last had a bath, and tried not to think about what I smelled like. 

“Well? Where are the supplies and sick people?”

“They’re back at the cave we’re taking shelter in,” I said.

“Then lead the way, kids,” said the oldest man in the group, who seemed to be the leader of their party. I also noticed that the group of people was highly alert, scanning our surroundings at all times, either for monsters or humans. I nodded to myself. They were keeping their guard up as well.

Sallia and I began moving back towards the cave. After we reached the area where everyone was located, I paused for a moment. “Ella! We found some guests. We’re trading medicine for some food, water, and information!” I called out.

I didn’t hear anything for a few seconds. Then, Ella nodded. “Okay!”

After that, I quickly led them inside the cave. Ella quickly listened to the trade deal I had hashed out, before she nodded. “That’s fine with me too. How about we exchange news, then you use the medicine, and then we give you the water and food?”

The man paused. “Give us half the food and water upfront, then half later.”

Ella nodded. She quickly divided out about a day and a half of our rations, then gave half of the pile of supplies to the man. 

“Now, for the news. Our home city recently fell to an Orukthyri warband. There seem to have been around 200 of them, originally, and about thirty warriors seem to have broken through the front lines before we fled. Our spellcasters were either out of mana, or unable to use high enough circle spells to damage them, and these orukthyri were highly magic resistant…” Ella began describing the battle, and our narrow loss against the creatures. The adventurers took Ella’s words in stride, thinking over it, before they nodded.

“That’s quite close to our home city. The information you provided us was quite valuable. Thank you.” Then, he pulled something out of his backpack.

When I saw it, I froze.

I… recognized the feeling from the item he had pulled out.

It was clearly a magic item. It looked like a cube. However, I could feel that within the cube, there was something very familiar to me.

It felt like it was related to the ocean of souls. It wasn’t exactly the same as the ‘concept’ of the ocean of souls my attunement was based on. However, it was very, very close.

Most importantly, it was clearly derived from the ocean of souls.

This was shocking to me.

Someone else from this dimension had made contact with the ocean of souls?

Was it another transmigrator? Had one of the natives of this world somehow made contact with the ocean of souls on their own? If so, how?

Truthfully, while I knew that we were somehow connected to the ocean of souls, I didn’t really understand how dimensions worked on a macro scale. I knew that the laws of reality could change some from one dimension to the next, and they were all connected to the ocean of souls, but I wasn’t really sure how everything worked together. So if one of the natives had made contact with the ocean of souls, it would potentially mean that we could find important information about how the multiverse as a whole worked if we could track down the source of the cube.

Questions swirled around in my mind, and I found myself staring at the cube in fascination.

As I stared at the cube, the man took a small patch of white paint from the backpack. There didn’t seem to be anything special about the paint, but the man quickly used general shaping to transfer the white color from the paint to the cube.

The cube rippled, and I felt something about the concept of the ocean of souls within the cube change.

Then, the man quickly pressed the cube against the chest of Anise’s father.

I could see the little black tint in his skin start to weaken, and then little globs of black goop started to push out of his body. At the same time, his complexion started to improve. The sweating and coughing he had been suffering from since this morning started to weaken. A few minutes later, instead of looking incredibly ill, Anise’s father just looked like he had recovered from a mild cold. He blearily opened his eyes and frowned.

“My head hurts,” he mumbled, absently rubbing at his head.

“Other than that, are you okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah. I don’t think I’m in great shape for moving, but I just feel a little exhausted now.”

I could certainly see the improvement in his body, so I relaxed. With the effectiveness of the magic cube verified, I stopped concentrating on Anise’s father and turned back towards the Cube. I didn’t want to miss a second of its use.

Something from the ocean of souls had been used to heal. In addition to the questions swirling around my thoughts, I was now also thinking about something else: perhaps I could derive inspiration from this to make a better healing-related ability. My current healing ability was incredibly lackluster. But since the cube had the same origin as my attunement, I could probably learn something from it if I paid attention.

Moments later, the man pressed the white cube against Anise’s mother. And then Anise, and finally Felix. All while I watched, trying to figure out everything I could about what was happening, and how to copy it. 

The way the cube worked was fundamentally different from what I had been doing to heal so far, but it felt more… right. However, frustratingly enough, I couldn’t figure out the core of what was happening. I didn’t have a good enough method to observe the cube and figure out how its healing worked. I had a couple of random guesses and ideas, but I wasn’t sure if any of them were correct.

I frowned. I decided to experiment more once we got to Silver City. I felt like I had seen something familiar to me. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on what. If I tried experimenting some, I felt like I could still improve or completely replace my current healing ability. 

Anise, Felix, and Anise’s parents no longer looked like they were sick at all, just a little weak. I didn’t even throw any healing at them: there was just no point. They were clearly healthy. Ella finished the transaction with the adventurer, and the other party quickly left afterwards. 

Anise, Felix, and her parents were still a bit tired out from their recovery, so we decided to wait until tomorrow before we got moving again. I sat down to think about what I had seen.

 

acaswell

Shameless plug: You can read up to 21 chapters ahead on Patreon!

Join my Discord!