Markets and Multiverses

“Well, Anise, I should probably start with the afterlife,” I said, as I sat down and motioned for her to do the same. “What do you think happens after people die?”

Anise paused, as if taken aback by my statement. “Is this relevant?”

“It’s very relevant. I know it sounds random, but I promise I’m going somewhere with this,” I said.

“Well… the church of the white dragon said that after death, the white dragon will swallow our souls and then spit them out in its sleep, allowing us to be reborn. If we do good deeds, we’ll be reincarnated as an Orthanoid again, and if we do bad deeds, we might get reincarnated as something like an Orukthyri or monster instead,” said Anise, thoughtfully. “The church of the silver dragon says almost the same thing. Since you’re asking me abou this, I imagine you have a different answer?”

I nodded. “As far as I have observed, the normal process of a person dying is that their soul gets sucked into a giant ocean, which the three of us call the ocean of souls. From there, if nothing interferes, they will reincarnate somewhere in the multiverse… as long as their soul survives the journey. Which dimension they’ll be reborn in is random, and the laws of physics and reality can differ greatly from one dimension to the next. In one life, you might be born as the daughter of a noble, and in the next, you might be a beggar in the streets. Of course, that’s only if you reach your next destination, which doesn’t seem to be a given. In order to survive the journey, your soul needs to be protected by something called Achievement, which people earn by interacting with the world around them, growing their skills and power, and killing things,” I said. “Well, as far as we’ve observed so far, at least.”

Anise blinked. “I’ve heard you guys mention Achievement a few times. What is it?”

I paused.

What was Achievement?

I suddenly realized that, while I had a pretty good understanding of how to earn Achievement, I had no idea what it was. 

“I personally suspect that Achievement is some kind of crafting material that people naturally harvest from dimensions they live inside of when certain conditions are met,” said Felix, taking over when he noticed I was struggling to come up with an answer. “Achievement’s primary purpose seems to be some sort of ‘shield’ that protects the soul from the ocean of souls in between lives. Of course, we also use it as a currency, and it’s also useful for a lot of other things, like crafting. As for why Achievement is useful as a crafting material, or what it actually is…” Felix shrugged. “Right now, we don’t know. But either way, it’s good to have more of it.”

“Anyway, that’s not the main point,” said Sallia. “Honestly, we’re still figuring things out ourselves. Anyway, when you die you go to the ocean of souls and get reborn. If you don’t have enough Achievement to keep your soul intact you permanently die. But what’s important is that after we died… we didn’t just get reborn.”

Our conversation was winding back towards topics I was more familiar with, so I nodded.

“When I first died, it was around…. fifty years ago? It’s hard to say, since day length and calendars aren’t quite the same from one world to the next, but it should have been around fifty years ago,” I said.

Anise blinked. “Wait, only fifty years ago? But we’re all thirty-five right now. Doesn’t that mean you aren’t much older than you appear? Some really late bloomers don’t even finish their apprenticeship at the age of fifty, although it’s pretty rare…”

I felt a bit embarrassed, and scratched my head. “We didn’t make it to adulthood last time. Some things happened, and we died.”

“It was because we got caught up in a war,” said Sallia. “And there were a lot of ocean monsters involved in our death as well.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” said Anise, nodding. “Were your deaths painful? You mentioned dimensions earlier, so I imagine that… wait, Ocean monsters? Murom the great!” Anise suddenly said, shifting backwards a little bit so that she could observe all three of us at once. “Are you one of you Murom the great? Miria told me a lot of bedtime stories about the great explorer Murom the great, and I always just thought they were just stories she made up. Were those stories actually real?”

“Kind of?” I said. “The first few stories I told you about Murom the Great were almost word for word things I personally experienced in our previous world. We lived on a giant group of islands, and underneath  the water, there were indeed a bunch of sea monsters. So you can basically regard the first five or six stories I told you about Murom the great as almost completely factual, although I did adjust a few things. The magic system was different there, and there were no attunements. There also weren’t any dragons on the islands, so we actually worshiped the ocean mother. There was no dragon festival there… But you regard everything was mostly true.”  I paused. “Later on, I ran out of ideas, but you seemed really into the bedtime stories of Murom the Great. So I just started making stuff up afterwards. Those stories are completely fictional.”

Anise froze, and her eyes widened. “So you’re the real Murom the great?” Her eyes seemed to sparkle as she looked at me. I chuckled.

“Close enough.” I said.

Before Anise could go any further into the bedtime stories I had been telling her for yeras, I decided to push on with the important points.

“Anyway, the reason we can reincarnate with our memories intact from one life to the next is because, after dying, we ran into something called The Market. Instead of leaving us to reincarnate like usual, we ended up getting dragged inside of a strange, incredibly large series of cities, all situated atop a giant wooden ship. There, we got chased around by skeletons, before I ended up meeting with Sallia and Felix…” I started to narrate our original experiences in the Market, leaving nothing out. A lot of my memories were a little fuzzy, considering how much time had passed, but I was still able to remember most of the major details. Sallia and Felix helped me fill in any big pieces of information I missed. 

During our narration, Anise didn’t say anything, simply continuing to listen.

When we were done introducing the Market and our guesses and information about how the Market, the System, and reincarnation worked, Anise nodded slowly.

“I see. So that’s the biggest reason you three want to go into the wastes so much?”

I nodded. “It’s getting pretty hard to hit new breakpoints for earning Achievement in the city, and I seriously doubt that we’ll end up with enough Achievement to survive long-term if we keep sitting around in Silver City. We’ve already done almost everything we can to farm Achievement in Silver city, so we need to move on and find new things to focus on.” I shrugged. “The wastes are a good opportunity to earn more, even if they’re also dangerous.”

“What about some new weapon skills? Or crafting skills?” said Anise. “You mentioned that they give some Achievement when you reach certain breakpoints.”

“I mean, there are still a few weapon Skills I could probably pick up, and some crafting knowledge and such, but… I would be spending months, or even years, to earn a few hundred Achievement at most. Compared to that, if this expedition to the wastes is successful, we can probably come back with a huge amount of money and influence. If we manage to reverse the terraforming of the black sun, we could probably get tens of thousands of Achievement, although I suspect that’s a pipe dream for us. But if we can figure out how to make magic items, which is our more realistic goal, we can still get a huge amount of Achievement. I imagine we’d be earning upwards of a thousand Achievement a year, and that might be a massive underestimation. If we return to the Market with a huge amount of Achievement, we’ll hopefully be safe enough to truly survive in the future.” Then, I hesitated, and decided to see if Anise still wanted to come with us. After all, Sallia, Felix and I all had very good reasons to be on the surface, but Anise was mostly tagging along. “That doesn’t mean that you have to come along with us. We’re working to get more Achievement, but that doesn’t have anything to do with you, so if you want to go back…”

Anise stubbornly shook her head. “I don’t care why you three are so desperate to come to the wastes. I know that you want Achievement, but… I still don’t want you guys to be here without me. It sounds like in a few lifetimes, you’ll need every drop of Achievement you can get if you don’t want to permanently die. And you’re my best friends. I don’t want you to get hurt, now, or three lifetimes from now. What I want to ask is something else… is there a way I could join the Market?” She looked at us, with a mixture of hope and resignation on her face.

I sighed, and then hugged Anise.

“I wish there was. I would have done anything to bring you with us,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “We don’t know how to add people to the Market yet, though. We were added because we had extreme talents in an affinity.”

“So I just need to get really good at manifestation essence or alteration essene?” asked Anise.

I blinked. “Maybe?” Truthfully, the three of us had no idea how ‘extreme talent in an affinity’ came to be. It was possible that it was something a soul had or didn’t have the moment it was created. But it was also plausible that an ‘extreme talent’ could be earned. We had no idea.

Anise grinned. “Then I’ll do my best to earn Achievement and get good at manifestation essence with the three of you. I don’t know if I’ll succeed, but… if I do manage to get into the Market, we won’t ever have to say goodbye, right?”

I felt a hint of hope swell up in my chest.

I had been thinking about how we would need to leave Anise behind sooner or later for years. I had decided to get closer to her, knowing full well that it would hurt to say goodbye, because something in me just couldn’t bear to be mean to the cheerful little girl who once proudly proclaimed that she was going to be a super-witch. 

But if Anise could come with us, I would do almost anything to make that happen.

I hugged Anise more tightly, and she patted me on the back a few times.

“I’ll do my best, and if I fail, I’ll just have to accept the outcome. But I want to try everything I can, so that we don’t have to say goodbye,” said Anise.

I felt myself start to smile so widely I worried that my cheeks would cramp as I nodded like a bobblehead.

I didn’t know if Anise could succeed, but… if she could…

If Anise could come with us, I would be happy to see our group of three become a group of four.

“The three of you are stuck with me until you return to Silver City. Got it?”

I smiled and nodded. 

Then, right as I released Anise from our hug, she looked me in the eyes.

“I’m glad you finally told me. I’ve spent a lot of my life wondering if maybe I’m just immature for my age, or why you three were so mature for kids…” she chuckled. “I guess it’s because you were only sort of kids, and you were sort of adults as well. But no matter what, the three of you have looked after me since we first met. You’re my family, and I care about you. I won’t tell anyone else about your past, and I’ll do my best to keep up with you. Let’s do our best to make it to the Market together, and live very, very long lives.”

I felt a warm feeling in my chest. I gently patted Anise’s head, and then gave her another crushing hug.

It was a slim hope, but it was a hope I was more than willing to cling onto. I didn’t want to say goodbye to Anise at all. Anise was already very good at spellcasting. If there was a way to earn ‘extreme affinities,’ and Anise managed it, I would do everything I could to make that happen.

 

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