Markets and Multiverses

I stared at the other two Transmigrators, barely able to suppress my grin. The two of them looked absolutely nothing like they had back in the Market. 

Little Six now looked positively skinny, nowhere near the towering mass of muscle he had been back in the Market. His entire frame had shrunk tremendously in this life. Before, he had looked like a bear in human skin, but now he looked like a pampered rich kid, with slender arms and legs. Although that would probably change as we grew older, I found the massive contrast hilarious.

Sallia, who had previously been a more average looking girl with gemlike eyes, now showed signs that she would grow up to become gorgeous when she grew older. At least, if it weren’t for the fact that she looked a little sickly. Her arms and legs had previously contained a kind of dextrous, wiry grace due to her years of training in weapons and magic. Even if our stats had been the same, in the Market she had much more familiarity with how to use her body, and it had shown in every movement she made. Now, her limbs were thin and frail. The certainty in her steps had disappeared. Instead of a relatively strong eighteen or nineteen year old, now she looked like a cute but sickly child. The wiry strength in her body was still present, but much weaker.

My mother patted me on the back, gently pushing me into the room where the children were playing. While she kept an eye on me, a few of the other men and women of the village quickly approached her and began speaking with her. I could see that most of the adults were still keeping a firm eye on the kids, but weren’t actively interfering with the children playing.

Sallia also glanced at the grownups, before she looked at me. Clear decisiveness shone in her eyes. She took a step towards me, opened her mouth, and took a deep breath – before she looked at my hair and got distracted.

“Ooh! That hairpin is really pretty! I love how easy it is to find pearls in this world! How did you – no, god-king’s scales, what is wrong with-” She stared at the wall, frustration creeping into her features as she went totally off topic.

Little Six burst out laughing. “You didn’t even manage to get through three sentences! Aria, you’re really struggling to-“

Sallia turned to him.

“Felix!” She hissed, giving him a death glare. Unfortunately, she was too young and un-intimidating to make the scene anything other than comical. Unable to help it, I also burst out laughing. Sallia began glaring at both of us instead of just Little Six.

Little Six cleared his throat, before giving both of us an amused expression. Then, he took a step forward. “Hi. Nice to meet you. My name is Felix. And I think you’ve also met Aria,” he said, flicking his eyes towards Sallia. “I’ve only met her a few hours ago, but I think the three of us can be friends,” he said, his eyes twinkling a bit. I frowned, thinking over the names of my ‘new’ acquaintances.

Felix? Aria? Why were their names…

Ah.

Suddenly, I felt a little sad. This was the first time I had noticed a very distinct problem with the idea of reincarnating over and over again.

We didn’t keep the same names from world to world.

Our parents, naturally, would name their children something they felt ‘made sense,’ usually while the child had yet to be born.

And there was absolutely no reason at all for them to pick the same name we previously had. For me, that hadn’t been a problem so far. After all, my current name was wonderful, and I couldn’t remember my name from my first life. Being given a new name didn’t feel very strange to me.

However, Sallia had a perfect memory of who she had been in her past life. She hadn’t suffered the same memory loss issues Little Six and I suffered from. Naturally, her attachment to her first life and her previous identity was also much greater. For her to suddenly lose her name and have it replaced with ‘Aria…’ 

It must feel awful. And in the future, Felix and I would suffer from the same problem. I loved the name Miria. I didn’t want to lose it. But staring me in the face was solid proof that I might have to just deal with it.

I frowned, before pulling up my Status Screen. 

I still had the Body Control’ ability etched firmly into my soul. I had no idea how the ability actually worked, but I felt a sense of hope as I looked at it.

Maybe there was a way to retain more of my identity from world to world? If the Market could keep my body’s sex the same, maybe there was some way to keep my name as well. I wanted to get stronger from world to world, but I valued other things as well.

Things like friendship, and who I was. I didn’t want to lose those things in the endless cycle of reincarnation.

I couldn’t have been the only transmigrator that felt that way. And based on the number of weird and ridiculous advertisements I had seen from the Market, where there was demand, there was supply. Somewhere in the Market, there might be a solution to the problem of names.

I felt a bit better when I started thinking that way. I didn’t want to be forced to give up my identity every reincarnation. My name and my memories made up part of who I was. I didn’t want to start changing them the way I changed clothes. If I started doing that, I felt like I would lose something I didn’t want to lose. 

I quietly bumped this up in my priorities list. The moment we got back to the Market, I was going to invest a lot of time into figuring out how to keep my name. I wanted to survive, first and foremost, and as long as Sallia, Felix and I were still friends I wanted to keep them safe and happy as my second priority. However, my third priority was to learn how to preserve my name and my identity. Of course, this could only be fixed when we got back to the Market.

“Do you have any idea how to keep our names the same from life to life?” I said, after making sure the adults and other children weren’t paying attention to us.

“I don’t know,” said Sallia, looking lost and frustrated. “I really want to find out a way to do so, though. I mean, Aria isn’t a bad name, but it’s not mine.”

“I’m also interested in this problem,” said Felix. “I think that Felix is a fine name, since I can’t remember my original one. But now that I have a name, I don’t want to lose it, you know?”

“Well, I was thinking that the Market seems to have a lot of different weird objects stuffed in every corner. If possible…” I told them of my plans to find a way to preserve our names when we got back to the Market, and the two of them seemed interested as well. With a common goal, it felt like we had a more solid focus in front of us. Something besides just ‘surviving’ when we got back to the Market. We would return, find a way to keep our names, and survive the skeletons that had taken over the city.

“What else do you know about this planet?” asked Sallia, after the three of us finished discussing the Market. “I’m trying to figure out what sort of world we’re in, but I’m still kind of lost in the details of what I’ve seen so far.” Sallia seemed to be trying her best to look mature, which was more than a little comical given the fact she looked four. “My parents won’t usually let me out of the house. Today, when we were coming here, my mother made me put on a band of cloth that covered my entire face for some reason. I don’t know if it’s some sort of social custom or what, but I couldn’t see out of it. So I have no clue what the outside world looks like. What does this area look like? And do either of you know why I was forced to put on a blindfold the entire time?”

“The ocean has some sort of weird… mind-manipulation effect if you look at it,” I said. “That’s probably why you needed to cover your eyes. Try to work on building your first rune - that’s when my parents decided I was ‘mature’ enough to look at the ocean without losing my mind. Though I have grade six Willpower, so that might also be why it doesn’t bother me very much. Also, the ocean is apparently terrifying. Don’t touch it.”

“You got grade Six Willpower! I only got grade three! That’s so frustrating! Also, what’s a rune? I have heard my parents talking about them before on a few occasions, but they won’t tell me anything in detail. They just kept saying they would discuss it when I was older and more mature,” said Sallia, stamping her feet. For a moment, she looked like a real four year old.

“Your parents haven’t gotten you started on them?” asked Felix. “Mine got me started on my first rune a few months ago, I think. My mother said I should be ready to start building my second rune after a few more months, and that she already has the supplies ready.”

“I only got to start a month ago,” I said, pouting a little. “I just finished building the rune yesterday, actually. I thought I was finally being allowed out of the house as a reward.”

“What are you two talking about?” asked Sallia, sounding more frustrated than ever.

“Ah… here. It’s easier if I just show you,” I said, rolling up my sleeves and showing my arm. I burned a little bit of my mana, forcing the rune on my arm to start glowing. It immediately started emitting a white glow. My body got stronger, faster, and sturdier, and my energy reserves rapidly began dwindling away. However, it made my rune flash with a very pretty silver light for a few moments before I stopped.

“This is a rune,” I said.

“Oooh, pretty!” Said Sallia, seeming excited as she stared at it. “What does it do?”

“This one boosts my physical stats by 1 grade. I don’t know if this world has any other kinds of magic, but apparently as you build more runes they do more varied things. The fourth through sixth give specific supernatural powers, the seventh through ninth give mental enhancements, and so on.”

“Hmm…” Sallia tapped her chin with a single, pudgy finger. “That’s pretty different from my home world’s magic system. Enhancing the physical body? What kind of mage does that?”

I shrugged. “These ones, apparently. Although, the fact that this world’s magic is different from yours is pretty interesting. What do you think, Aria? Any further insight on this world’s magic system? You’re the only one of the three of us who has ever used Magic before, so I’m curious to know if you have any insight on changes from one world to another. It could be really useful information for our next world, after all.”

“Hmm… on my home world, magic was the process of studying one particular idea or element, and then learning to manifest it in reality by spending mana. I specialized in fireballs, so I would have been considered a battlemage, but there were plenty of other kinds of mage as well. Our physical bodies were pretty much the same as ordinary people, though. I mean, a big part of the reason nobles were expected to learn weapons was to compensate for this weakness, since without training we might not be able to properly wear or move in armor if it came to a war or something.”

So, Sallia’s world had more closely followed the mage class stereotypes from my previous world’s works of fiction. Interesting. 

“Does that mean the magic system will totally change from world to world?”

“Maybe? I mean, I also feel like the essence of magic is really different here. Like, previously, I was manipulating something deep inside of me. I don’t feel that something in this world at all, but I feel a different something inside of me instead. It’s hard to really make a comparison though, since I haven’t been allowed to try magic yet,” said Sallia, who seemed lost in thought. 

“Hey Sallia, you seem… different,” I said. I meant it in more of a teasing way, because in the Market she had spoken like a perfect noblewoman, formal and serious all the time. The four years she had spent in this world seemed to have mellowed out her habit of speaking formally, and she showed her emotions much more readily on her face.

However, the statement seemed to set her off.

“My Willpower is 74! The average person has a Willpower of 100! I’m two grades below average! I can barely focus for more than a minute! It’s like I’ve got a gerbil living in my brain, running in circles while another gerbil tries to beat it to death with a spoon! I can’t focus on anything!” Sallia hissed. “I have an Intelligence of 129 and I can barely use it! It’s so frustrating, being able to think more quickly and clearly than I’ve ever been able to before today, and having none of the focus I need to use it,” said Sallia, her rage finally giving way to a sigh of pure exhaustion. “I just… ughh.” I started to feel a little bad about laughing earlier. Even if the sight of Sallia tripping over herself was kind of ridiculous, she was obviously a lot more upset about the situation than I thought she would be.

Was there a good way to distract her or make her feel better?

“Sounds like you also got a crap roll in one of the mental stats,” I said, giving her a grin. “I have crap intelligence now. I feel like I’m drunk all of the time.”

“Ugh. You got a bad mental stat as well? Having the way you think suddenly change is so jarring. At least I’m not the only one suffering here,” said Sallia, giving me a small snort. “You know, I’ve never been… well, smart before. I was just average in my previous life. As much as the low Willpower is driving me nuts, having my Intelligence be a full grade above average is… amazing,” she said, smiling again. “I can think more clearly than ever before, and I can solve problems I didn’t understand before. There isn’t any overly complex problem to solve here, but whenever I think about things from my previous life, problems and ideas are just so much easier to remember and understand. It’s amazing. But having my Willpower suddenly tank two grades makes me feel like I made a bad trade. What does having low intelligence feel like? What grade is yours at?”

“It feels like I’m drunk half the time. It’s the most frustrating thing I think I’ve ever experienced,” I said, feeling a strange sense of shame. “I have a pretty hard time thinking straight these days. I can put together coherent thoughts, but I can’t process what they mean very quickly. I even realized something was weird about the ocean when I started wanting to take a swim earlier, but I didn’t put everything together. I just thought that maybe I was in the mood for a swim or something.” I sighed, shaking my head. “I guess I should have realized it already. My physical attributes felt so different when I got an extra grade tacked onto them from my rune. It’s obvious that having Intelligence be a grade below average would also be huge. But it’s really annoying to deal with. It feels… weird to me. I often feel like I can still think straight, but I notice little holes in my thoughts and ideas that wouldn’t have been there if I were thinking clearly.” I sighed. “When we get back to the Market, I guess I need to throw some more points into Intelligence. I don’t know exactly what has changed about us since we became Transmigrators, and I think that our Stats work a bit… differently than we might expect. But I know for sure that having low Intelligence is a massive pain.”

“Better put some points into Willpower too,” said Sallia. “Trying to live like this just feels infuriating. Each grade is what really matters, right? In that case, I don’t care if it costs 500 Achievement to get it up 10 points. As long as I can keep some Achievement around for emergencies, I think I want to ‘fix’ my stats so that it’s impossible to roll below grade 4. I want to prioritize Willpower, Intelligence, and Fortitude first. Even if getting lynched by Skeletons in the Market would suck, trying to live like this is almost as bad.” Sallia said, shaking her head as she started fiddling with a few pearls one of her hands. She didn’t even seem to notice the fact that she was fidgeting, and simply kept going as she talked.

“Good point,” said Felix. “Let’s think about this some more when we know how much Achievement we’ll be getting in this life, though. I got a hundred for forming my first rune. So I figure forming runes are good ways to get Achievement. Do we have any other ideas for ways to farm Achievement?”

“Killing stuff, maybe?” I shrugged. “It worked in the Market, at least.”

“By the way, what are the rest of your stats looking like?” asked Sallia.

“Hmm. Is there a way to share Status Screens? It might be faster for us to just share them,” I said.

After a few minutes of fiddling, we figured out that the Friendship Bracelets did, in fact, have the option to ‘share’ Status screens. They didn’t display quite the same in-depth breakdown of my Stats that I could see on my own Status Screen, but I could still see their totals and the Stats added from their runes.

Name: Sallia (Aria)

 

Strength: 107

Grade 5

Intelligence: 129

Grade 6

Absorption: 72

Grade 3

Agility: 121

Grade 6

Willpower: 74

Grade 3

Manifestation: 114

Grade 5

Fortitude: 74

Grade 3

Perception: 126

Grade 6

Binding: 112

Grade 5

 

 

Alteration: 92

Grade 4

Sallia’s stats were skewed in incredibly bizarre ways. Her Intelligence, Agility, and Perception were all one grade higher than usual, and she was obviously very talented in those areas. However, Fortitude, Willpower, and Absorption essence were all dangerously low, especially because this world’s magic system seemed totally reliant upon Absorption Essence, Willpower was needed to avoid taking a swim and never returning, and Fortitude was necessary to avoid getting sick. Sallia’s stats were incredibly powerful in some very specific scenarios, but they seemed very dangerous overall.

Name: Felix

Runes: 1 (+20 to all Physical Attributes)

 

Strength: 87 (+20)

Grade 5

Intelligence: 124 

Grade 6

Absorption: 121

Grade 6

Agility: 112 (+20)

Grade 6

Willpower: 114

Grade 5

Manifestation: 128

Grade 6

Fortitude: 130 (+20)

Grade 7

Perception: 94

Grade 4

Binding: 114

Grade 5

   

Alteration: 99

Grade 4

Felix’s stats were the exact opposite. If Sallia’s stats made me feel incredibly worried about her, Felix’s Stats made me incredibly jealous. Most of the Stats that seemed important were average or above average. His only other lowroll that mattered was Strength, and that was easy enough to compensate for by forming more runes.

“Your Fortitude is really low. Is that why you seem a little frail?” I asked Sallia.

“Yeah. I get sick a lot more often than I did in my last life,” She said sourly. “I get cuts that take forever to heal and bruise really easily. It sucks. You said that Runes boost your physical attributes by a grade each? In that case, even if I’m not going to ever be able to focus in this life, I’m at least looking forward to not needing healer attention every time I get a splinter. My body barely recovers from injuries on its own. If magic healers didn’t exist in this world, I don’t know if I would even survive through childhood.”

Since Sallia sounded like she was working herself up towards another fit of rage, I decided to change the topic.

“Do either of you have a better idea of where we are or what the rest of this place is like? Any powerful nations or news about where we’re actually living? I haven’t figured out if we’re part of a bigger nation or if this is it yet.”

“I don’t think there’s anything,” said Sallia, getting immediately distracted by the change in topic. “We’re part of an island chain. This is the biggest island in the area, by quite a bit. Nobody knows of a mainland in any direction, although exploration hasn’t exactly been frequent either. Also, permanent villages are pretty new, relatively speaking. According to the bedtime stories my father tells me, I think these villages were established around ten generations ago. The villagers fled here from ‘somewhere else’ during a famine. No one seems to remember where we came from before then, or any relevant details about what was before then. The stories aren’t too interesting, either - a lot of them are terribly unspecific, so I can’t figure out much about the real world from them. A lot of them seem to feature weird sea creatures, but since they aren’t very detailed I have no idea how much I can trust them or use them as references. It’s super frustrating, even though the ubiquitous pearls are really neat.”

“So we’re really looking at a society that just exited the Stone Age, technologically speaking?” I asked, doing my best to redirect Sallia’s attention back towards the main topic.

“Stone Age? Ah, that’s a pretty clever term,” said Felix, giving me a grin. “Yes, it seems to be the case.”

The three of us continued discussing our thoughts for a while longer. Sallia’s distractibility didn’t make it easy to keep the conversation on track, but Felix and I did our best to redirect her back to the topic whenever her attention started to wander. Eventually, we moved on to more relaxed discussions of our lives in this world, as well as weird anecdotes and stories about our parents. Felix’s father was apparently dead, and his mother’s face was partially paralyzed for reasons she didn’t talk about. Sallia’s mother didn’t trust Sallia (which was probably fair, given how hard of a time Sallia had focusing, but seemed to sting Sallia’s pride.) Sallia had an older brother who had died before she was born, which seemed to have put Sallia’s parents much more on edge than other parents might be, while Felix was an only child and I was as well.

Eventually, our parents finished chatting and came back to collect us. Even though we hadn’t learned much, it was good to see my fellow transmigrators were alive and well. I had been a little worried in some corner of my mind that they might have been born in one of the other villages, or something might have gone wrong. Now that I had confirmed that we were all here, I felt a weight lift off of my chest.

For now, I wasn’t alone. I had two other transmigrators to spend time with and figure things out with. And with the three of us here, it shouldn't take too long to get a better feel for the village and whatever was up with the giant flora and fauna.

acaswell

I am now convinced that Felix is quietly hacking reality, and he did so in order to take Sallia’s stats. What is with Sallia’s cursed numbers? I had a few rough outlines for how I thought the first world would go based on the character’s personalities and some hidden, behind the scenes stuff. And after I rolled her stats, Sallia’s most important stats turned out to be garbage. I had to redo, like, her entire plotline. Which was fun, but totally took me off guard. When I designed this world, I was basically looking over the worldbuilding and I was like ‘huh. This world really favors Absorption and Willpower as the two biggest stats.’ And then Felix highrolled them, and then Sallia… didn’t. Miria’s rolls were surprisingly average.

At least Sallia’s character arc turned out far more interesting than my original plan, at least in my opinion. Maybe this is for the best for her, weirdly enough.

 

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