Markets and Multiverses

I had always felt that healing was a major part of my potential abilities. When I had envisioned my ‘image’ of the ocean in my first life, I had pictured the life-giving surface of the ocean as a critical facet of the ocean, just as I had envisioned the madness-inducing depths of the ocean as another facet of the ocean. Both abilities were like two sides of a coin: different, and yet ultimately both had the same origin.

However, in this life, I had neglected my healing abilities so far. Extinguish had become an incredibly powerful part of my toolkit, and one I found to be incredibly reliable in combat. However, it was also very limited in what it did. If I had found a good concept to base the healing half of my attunement around, perhaps I wouldn’t have had to watch Felix’s father die.

Right now, I deeply felt how far behind my abilities were: and I also felt just how far behind my sensory abilities were. This wasn’t just a matter of my low perception: right now, something magical was happening to hurt my friends and I. And I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

Luckily, I at least had a very rough guess. The muscle-expert who had come to heal us had given me some mild inspiration on what might be happening, at least. Right now, I knew two things about our injuries so far.

First, I knew that something had been left behind in our injuries as a result of the fog creature’s strange gaze-based attack. Sallia was just barely able to see it with her rune-enhanced perception, and she said that it almost seemed as if our flesh and the fog from the fog creature had mixed together somehow.

Second, I knew that the doctors in the city couldn’t figure out what was causing our injuries to remain. They had taken a look at our injuries, but seemed completely baffled by them. Sallia claimed that what was happening inside of our wounds was hard to spot, even with her rune-enhanced eyesight. She had to really look closely to spot anything wrong. So whatever was happening, it was very small in scale. The muscle expert claimed that our limbs didn’t appear to be present at all, even when he was physically touching my injured legs, which made our injuries even more strange.

After putting these two things together, I had two theories. One, the fog had somehow turned parts of our body into parts of its body in some way, shape, or form. Perhaps the reason that our bodies weren’t responding to treatment was because the way our bodies ‘thought’ of themselves was being fundamentally twisted by the fog creature. Ella had already said that the spells of this world had trouble dealing with creatures from outside this dimension, because their biology was fundamentally different from ours. Perhaps the reason the muscle expert’s attunement claimed that our legs weren’t present at all was because our bodies weren’t ‘normal’ enough for him to detect our bodies anymore.

My second idea was that the fog monster  had planted some kind of egg in our body, similar to a parasite. Anytime I healed an injury, perhaps the eggs in our wounds simply consumed all of the healed flesh and blood, immediately injuring us again. If that was the case, perhaps the eggs had some sort of way to resist shaping.

However, when I tried using my soul-sight to get a better idea of what was happening inside of our injuries, I couldn’t find a soul in our wounds. Even if our injuries were filled with shaping-resistant parasites, I felt that it would be weird for them to perfectly evade my soul-sight. it wasn’t impossible, of course, but it at least seemed unlikely to me. Thus, I decided that the best way to ‘fix’ our bodies was to reverse whatever process the fog creature had started. If our bodies were being warped into some alien, incomprehensible kind of biology, I needed a way to halt that process with my fifth rune ability.

Of course, just in case, I still tried boiling and disinfecting my wounds. I didn’t really think it would work, but just in case there were parasites in our legs that could be cooked out of our flesh, it seemed dumb not to at least try it. Sadly, it yielded no results, meaning I was back to trying to figure out how to stop our biology from being changed against our will.

It was on the fourth day after we arrived at the city that Sallia had a good idea.

“I think you might be thinking about it the wrong way,” she said. 

I stopped staring at my legs, and turned towards her. “What do you mean?” I asked, rubbing at my eyes. Ever since I had started trying to figure out what rune ability I needed to form to heal everyone, I hadn’t been sleeping very well. Anise spent every other night sleeping in my room. During the night, she sometimes spent several minutes moaning in pain, and every time I saw her hurting, I would get up and start trying to think about how to heal everyone.

“I mean, so far, we’ve been treating the creature as some sort of weird illusion-based creature that has a few weird abilities, right?” said Sallia. “Like, it had the ability to stop us from seeing it and the chasm, and it had the ability to make us somehow end up walking right back to the chasm whenever we tried to leave, and it also had the ability to hurt us by looking at us and then keep hurting us, even though we already left it back on the surface. However, I’ve recently started wondering if we’re thinking about it entirely the wrong way. What if all of these abilities are somehow derived from one core ability?”

I frowned. “What would the core ability be?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, and I think the fog’s ability might be related to space, or perhaps how we conceptualize space,” said Sallia.

Felix frowned. “How does that work?”

“Well, keep in mind, the first outside creature we saw was ‘thought’ worms, right?” said Sallia.

My frown deepened. “All right, yeah. And?”

“Well, I noticed this after Miria described what happened during that fight. The thought worms weren’t inside of our brains. As far as I know, our brains are where our thoughts happen. But the thought worms weren’t inside of our brains, they were inside of our THOUGHTS. That is to say, they seem to follow a rule kind of similar to Miria’s extinguish - they utilize a conceptualization of magic that is pretty different from how this dimension works, and then, by using a mixture of their biology and their magic system, they force us to work off of their rules for a bit. The outside dimension that this world is connected to seems to rely a lot more on concepts than concrete physics and biology. So I was wondering if maybe the creature had some sort of way of playing with how space works when we interact with it.”

“Hmm…” Felix’s good eye seemed to light up. “Actually, that might make sense. If so, I can see why our injured body parts don’t seem to be ‘here’ when the muscle expert was trying to heal us. Perhaps, in some way, part of our limbs was left behind in the chasm? Or something like that?” Felix frowned. “Or perhaps parts of its body are currently teleported inside of our bodies, and it’s digesting us slowly while we can’t fight back against it? Or eating us from a distance, snatching parts of our body away and eating them bit by bit?”

I felt a shiver of excitement.

“No, I think that the fog might be doing something similar to a ‘voodoo doll,’ or something similar, except related to the concept of space.”

“Voodoo doll?” asked Felix, giving me a blank look.

“It’s…” I ran into another patch of missing memories from my first life, but I pushed on. even if my memories were a little hazy, I still remembered enough to use the idea for my purposes. “A voodoo doll is kind of like when you take something conceptually ‘linked’ to someone else, and then make a doll that looks kind of like them. And then, if you stab it with a pin or needle, the person the voodoo doll is attached to gets injured! Or something like that.” I winced. “My memories are pretty fuzzy, honestly. But I think the general idea is still correct. Maybe the creature has created some sort of ‘duplicate’ of our bodies that somehow affects our bodies from a distance, and that’s how it’s hurting us.”

“I see. Conceptually linked together…” Felix trailed off. “In that case, perhaps the creature looking at us as we crossed the bridge was critical for it forming a ‘link’ between parts of our bodies and whatever it’s using in place of a voodoo doll? In that case, your high Fortitude probably isn’t actually stopping the process at all. Perhaps, instead, it’s helping your body resist injuries.” Felix gave me a weak smile. “Either way, if it messes with space on some strange, conceptual level, creating things like voodoo dolls, the best way to cut it off is to use a rune ability to cut off spatial manipulation. But that wouldn’t really be a great ability, since it’s so specific, and…”

I shook my head, stopping Felix before he could finish his words.

“I don’t care. Unless you have a better idea for an ability that could heal everyone and fix the problem right now, I’m going to make disconnecting spatial manipulation my fifth rune ability. I don’t want to see Anise crying herself to sleep every night anymore, and I doubt having a blind eye makes you happy, either. And I still need to rebuild my healing ability after I figure out how to mess with space, meaning I have a lot of work to do. I want to get started as soon as possible.”

Sallia thought about it for a moment, before she sighed. “There might be a better way to prevent the creature from attacking us over and over again without even needing to see us, but I don’t have a better idea right now, at least. And Anise is taking the damage to her face and the constant pain… pretty poorly.” said Sallia. “Honestly, Ella seems a bit down as well. Having one arm instead of two isn’t doing wonders for her sense of pride and self-esteem. And Felix’s growth as a craftsman would be much slower if his eye remains ruined like this.”

“That’s true, but I don’t want Miria to form a rune that she might regret for the rest of this life because she couldn’t spend another day or two thinking about a better ability that can still solve our problems, and might have more utility in the future,” said Felix.

“I don’t mind,” I said. “I really don’t have any better ideas, at least at the moment. And if I wait a few days, my legs might become permanently crippled in that time, or Felix’s eye might get too damaged to be healed… I don’t take risks when it comes to the people I care about.”

Felix sighed, but after a few moments of thought, he finally nodded.

Thus, I got to work forming my fifth rune ability.

{Endless Hunger of the Ocean} normally only generated absorption essence when I was in contact with water, and the more keywords that were active, the more absorption essence it would generate.

So I had someone build me a little wooden tub and some ropes that would just barely keep me above water if I were sitting in the middle of a river. I had Sallia help keep me afloat, so that I could wholeheartedly concentrate on my rune formation. I found a spot near the only insane asylum in the city, and then dunked myself in the river while wearing my dress, in order to activate the Ocean and Madness keywords as much as possible.

Meanwhile, I focused on my fifth rune.

In my previous life, I had focused on a concept of the ocean of that world, with my fourth rune focusing on the healing aspects of the surface of the ocean, and my fifth rune focusing on the mysteries and strangeness of the ocean underneath.

This time, I focused on the spatial aspects of the ocean.

I envisioned the way several creatures from the deeps of our previous life had manipulated space. The glowing fish had frequently teleported around the battlefield as we fought it. The giant fish that we hunted had always seemed just a bit off, geometrically speaking. And the ‘fragment of the Ocean’s heart’ that I had absorbed in that world had also given me the ability to see and interact with space, giving me a limited but incredibly useful teleportation ability.

Even if I didn’t have any fragments of the ocean’s heart this time, I actually understood how space worked, at least a little bit. And I wasn’t trying to do anything as complicated as see space and then bend it to my will, allowing me to teleport around.

I just wanted to break off any manipulation of space around me, protecting me and my friends from the fog creature’s long-range attacks.

With these conditions, I was able to form my fifth rune in only two weeks.

Power: Construct your fifth Absorption-Essence rune

(note: this world does not have any support for runes or absorption essence in existence. Thus, rewards for rune-related magic systems and Absorption Essence-related Magic Systems are lowered)

Achievement +200

My Achievement increased from 10,318 Achievement to 10,518 Achievement. However, I was far more interested in the results of my rune ability.

After all, it was impossible to perfectly control the result of a rune ability. On the islands, rune abilities had usually be themed after whatever the user was trying to create: however, there was usually a bunch of minor changes between the intended power and the power that was actually formed.

And then, I let out a breath of relief.

My luck had been rotten for the past month, so I had half-expected to fail again. However, I was lucky.

My rune ability let me taste spatial manipulation in the air around me, and remove it. It was a very weird way to sense things. However, using my new rune ability, I was able to clearly tell that there was some amount of spatial distortion happening near my wounded legs. Even if I wasn’t quite sure how the ‘link’ between my legs and the fog creature worked, I didn’t need to perfectly understand what was happening. 

All I needed to do was cut it off.

So I used the other half of my fifth rune ability, and brought my mouth as close as I could to the spatial distortion. Then, I ‘bit’ on strange, half-spatial and half-conceptual tether that stretched across the surface of this planet, linking my body to the fog creature.

Immediately, the icy pain that had plagued my body for almost a month disappeared. I quickly used my attunement to throw some healing essence at my body, and I was relieved to see that, at the very least, the gray color in my skin was gone. I could tell that some amount of permanent damage had probably happened: after all, a strange monster had ‘digested’ my legs for nearly half a month. However, at least the constant, mind-numbing pain and gray discoloration were gone, and without the interference of the fog creature, other healing abilities would at least have a chance to fully restore our limbs.

I had succeeded. My fifth rune did everything I needed it to do. After weeks of nightmarish pain and fear that my friends might live the rest of their lives crippled and in agony, I had formed half of the solution. I still needed to rebuild my attunement healing ability, but I had at least stopped the creature from continuing to hurt us.

I signaled to Sallia to start pulling me out of the river, before I saw an unusual System notification appear. One I had never seen before, although I knew that it existed.

You have accomplished something exceptional with {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}, and have acquired a significant amount of Achievement using the ability’s aid.

Endless Hunger of the Ocean is able to be evolved.

For the first time, I had unlocked an Ability evolution.

 

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