Markets and Multiverses

With location tracking turned on, we finally had an idea where we were supposed to be going.

As it turned out, we had gotten slightly off-track while trying to head towards Anise. Luckily, we hadn’t overshot her, so correcting our direction was quite easy.

As I started steering us to the left, I turned to look at Sallia and Felix, and grinned.

“Did you guys also get messages from Anise?” I asked.

“Yup,” said Sallia. “Let’s go find her!”

The three of us kept running.

Another two days passed, as we followed our location tracking to a building that looked entirely abandoned.

I felt confused.

The front door of the building was open, and we couldn’t see anyone inside of the building.

“Hello?” I asked, pulling out my weapon as I slowed down and started moving towards the door. If a skeleton had cornered Anise, it was best to draw it towards me and keep it away from Anise. I was confident that the three of us could deal with the threats present in residential areas, at least.

Just as I was preparing for a fight, I heard someone call out.

“Up here!” came a voice from above us.

I looked up.

“Anise?” I asked, hope and a small nervous pit of energy in my stomach warring with each other. I was still afraid that this was some cruel prank of the multiverse. That maybe, somehow, Anise had died five times before we had arrived, thus meaning that she wouldn’t return to the Market once we reincarnated again. Or maybe Anise herself hadn’t made it to the Market, and some totally random person who shared a name with her had somehow joined the Market and added us as friends by accident.

Those fears were completely absurd, of course. The odds of someone who just happened to be named Anise also somehow adding the three of us as friends by accident was astronomically low. But I was so afraid of Anise dying that my brain kept coming up with reasons why I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

“Miria?” came the voice of a girl from the rooftop. She poked her head over the side of the building.

There, just like in our last world, was a girl with pink hair and four eyes. Two eyes were positioned normally, and the other two were situated on her temples. She looked to be about eighteen or nineteen, and was a bit on the shorter side. 

She looked just like she had in our previous life.

Given the fact that the Market took our image of ourself and found a matching body, I supposed that made sense. Sallia, Felix and I all had self-images that were partially shaped by our previous world, but also had some traits that were different from our bodies in our last life. Sallia seemed very attached to her monochromatic eyes, for example.

Meanwhile, Anise only remembered our last world, so her self-image was entirely the same as when she had died.

When she saw the three of us, she laughed, and quickly climbed down the roof and landed on the street in front of us.

I felt my shoulders sag in relief. I felt my eyes prickle and blur, and realized that I was crying

It was Anise. It was really Anise.

I pushed my body to its limits as I moved towards her and then enfolded her in a hug. A moment later, Felix and Sallia joined us.

“I’m so glad I got to see you again!” said Anise, her voice giddy with excitement. “It took me forever to figure out how to make the Market pull me in, and finding a friendship bracelet also took a long time. I was afraid to move out of the residential area, since you guys said that they were the safest areas in the Market. And almost none of the houses had any items stashed away. Then, when I finally got a bracelet and tried to add you guys remotely, my friendship bracelet made me jump through a bunch of hoops to make a ‘remote-registration account.’ I had a really hard time figuring out what that meant,” she said, her words tumbling out of her mouth in a nervous babble. Then, she stepped back, and looked at Sallia and Felix.

“Oh! You two look a little different than you did before.”

Sallia grinned. “We have the {Identity} Abilities that make our bodies closely resemble what we think we should look like, but it doesn’t seem to be exact. It just tweaks our genetics and works within the parameters of what’s actually possible. Or at least that’s my understanding, based on the ability description. Last life, my red hair was apparently fine, but my eyes needed to have things like pupils and whites. Very weird,” she said, chuckling. “I much prefer the monochromatic violet look for my eyes.”

Felix nodded. “I’m still experimenting a bit with how I want my body to look in the future. In my very first life, before I came to the Market, I had really large muscles and a massive frame. I’ve been shrinking a bit every life since then. It just… doesn’t feel right to have my body be so much larger than it needs to be. I think I prefer having a bit more of a bookish, slender body,” he said. “Easier to manipulate tools and such. And it doesn’t seem to actually change my strength, since that’s handled entirely by my [Strength] stat. I think I’m going to keep a little bit of muscle on my arms though - not because it’s useful, but because I like having a little bit of visible muscle on me.” Felix shrugged. “I just think it looks nice.”

Anise nodded sagely, before turning towards me and grinning. “You look almost exactly the same. Just a few tweaks.”

I nodded. “I’ve never really felt comfortable with my body or name changing much. I like my current identity, and I don’t want to lose it.”

“Fair enough,” said Anise, before giving me another hug. “I’m just so glad to see you again!”

The four of us decided that we didn’t need to be in the street anymore, so we decided to head back to the rooftop that Anise had commandeered. There, we saw a pile of snacks and some fruit juices stockpiled in the corner, which gave me pause.

“You guys can have some if you want,” said Anise, shyly. “The snacks taste kind of stale, and it took me a lot of effort to figure out they were food containers, but… it’ll keep you alive.”

Alive? I blinked.

“Anise, why would you need to eat food in the Market? Wait, do you need to eat or drink to stay alive?” I asked, now thoroughly confused. I had thought that not needing food, sleep, water, or oxygen was a pretty universal trait for the Market’s bodies. Was I wrong?

“Why wouldn’t you?” asked Anise, also seemingly confused.

“Erm… well, at least for the three of us, we’ve determined that our bodies never get tired, or hungry, or thirsty while in the Market. Breathing is also entirely optional - although you do need some air if you want to talk.”

Anise blinked in surprise, and then held her breath.

The four of us waited for several minutes, until Anise finally let out her breath. “You’re right. I don’t need to breathe. I thought that maybe adrenaline was just keeping me up, or something, and that’s why I wasn’t sleeping, but…”

I resisted the urge to laugh, and hugged Anise again. 

Maybe our instructions on how to handle the Market was less all-encompassing than I had hoped. Or maybe she had forgotten a few things during her transit to the Market - I had lost almost all of my memories of my first life, and it was hard to say if Anise had lost a few bits and pieces of her past life. But that wasn’t what I focused on.

We were together again.

And that was what mattered to me.

* * *

Anise felt very silly.

She hadn’t tried holding her breath until just now, and had eaten food and drank juice that had probably started tasting weird thousands of years ago. It was only once Miria pointed out that one didn’t need to breathe in the Market that Anise realized she had maybe been wasting her time by scavenging supplies in the Market.

Luckily, even if they had forgotten that particular piece of advice, the rest of their information had been incredibly useful. Knowing exactly how easy it was to trick the skeletons, for example, had saved her life a few times. She had entered the Market right next to a small group of skeletons, and only the fact that she had known it might happen had kept her alive as she ran for her life.

“How much Achievement do you have?” asked Sallia, her eyes alight with curiosity.

Anise paused for a moment, to check her Status Screen.

Current Vessel: Basic Physical Body (Default Market Model – Mass Produced Model 9188-T12), Mana Brain (Default Market Model – Mass Produced Model 62-B)

Basic Physical body: + 5 grades (100 points) to all stats while you are inhabiting this physical vessel. Body will begin to deteriorate in a few months. Body has some leaks and cannot perfectly house a Transmigrator’s soul. It is advised you find a replacement or reincarnate before problems occur.

Mana Brain: Allows you to think. As this is comprised entirely of mana, it is possible to house this mana-brain inside of a soul, rather than being reliant upon a physical body to function.

Warning: It is strongly advised that you keep your brain safe, and always have at least one brain or brain-equivalent functioning at all times. If your brain is damaged or destroyed, possible ramifications include losing the ability to think until a new brain is acquired and linked to your soul. Please keep this in mind at all times.

 

Physical

Mental

Essence

Strength: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

Intelligence: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

Absorption: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

Agility: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

Willpower: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

Manifestation: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

Fortitude: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

Perception: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

Binding: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

 

 

Alteration: 0 (+100)

Grade 5

 

Lives Remaining: 5

0/10 Keyword Slots used

Glut Penalty: 0

Abilities:

Birth Abilities: Body Control

Achievement Abilities: Taxes

Remaining Achievement: 11,102.79

 

Items: 1/5

1: Simple Friendship Bracelet

“I have a little over 11,000,” said Anise.

“Over 11,000?” asked Miria, letting Anise go as she looked at her in surprise. “So much? The first time we got to the Market, none of us had even 1,000 Achievement to scrape together.”

Sallia and Felix nodded. “I don’t think we even had 1,000 Achievement combined,” said Felix, wincing.

Anise shrugged. “I don’t know why.”

The others thought about it for a moment, before Miria frowned. “Maybe she got picked up by the Market sooner than we did? We’ve never figured out how exactly the Market adds people to its System, but I imagine it takes some amount of time. If the ocean of souls naturally strips away Achievement anytime a soul is inside of it… maybe Anise just got affected by this less?”

Sallia and Felix shrugged.

“I don’t have a better idea why, at least,” said Felix. Then, he turned back towards Anise. “Did you have any Abilities you could purchase when you came to the Market?”

Anise shook her head. “I didn’t.”

“What about your message when you just joined the Market? What did it say?” asked Sallia.

“It said I had an extreme affinity for one of the four essences, and that I had been given some lives as a provision for new Transmigrators. And then it gave me a lot of strange blue boxes that seemed to be trying to sell me things,” said Anise.

Miria’s eye twitched. “That’s the Market all right,” she said, before snorting. “Never a moment without a stupid advertisement. Well, at the very least, you starting out with more Achievement means you can get some better baseline stats, even if you can’t just buy the Manifestation magic system. That’s really a huge shame, since I think you would have been amazing with the manifestation magic system. Maybe you can’t get Abilities at all before you join the Market,” she said with a sigh. Then, Miria shook her head. Anise felt a trickle of warmth in her heart. Even after she died, Miria was still looking out for her. 

As Anise thought to herself, Miria continued speaking. “But we can always find another way for you to be a super-witch later. For now, I think we should take a day to relax, and mourn those we left behind. Then, we can get Anise kitted out with items and stats, and after that, I’m thinking maybe we can try raiding a higher-level store? They probably have more Achievement laying around, and we could all use a cash infusion. Maybe we can try an item store, to upgrade our equipment. If we could find a library, or someplace they stored information, that would be even better…” Miria trailed off as she got lost in thought.

Meanwhile, Sallia and Felix smirked at her when Miria mentioned super-witch.

Anise felt a flush of embarrassment, and a small sense of horror start to gnaw at the warmth she had felt just moments ago.

It finally dawned on her that her slightly delusional dream of being the greatest witch in the world would haunt her for all eternity now that she was stuck with her new group of friends. 

 

 

acaswell

My hands still hurt today. Hitting the spacebar, especially, is painful. Which sucks, because that is, the most common key I hit while writing. 

I mean, probably. I’ve never actually done math on that statement. But it seems correct?

Either way. Blech.

Sallia and Miria haven’t finished their conversation yet, but it was long enough that it needed to get split into two parts. Trying to find a good stopping point mid-conversation was… interesting. Not sure if this was really it. I’ll think about it for future situations.

All right, no more author’s note. Thumb. Hand. Pain. T_T.

Shameless plug - you can read up to 21 chapters ahead on Patreon!

Join my Discord!