Markets and Multiverses

I woke up with a groan, and almost immediately afterwards, felt a perplexing mixture of dizziness and pain across my body. In a flash, I remembered the fight with the tree root, and reached towards my legs.

Just like before, they were cut off into stumps at about the middle of my thighs. There were strips of cloth wound tightly around my stumps, which, oddly enough, seemed to be preventing my body from leaking more light into the atmosphere. Even though our bodies don’t have anything like blood, apparently the light we lost after getting wounded was still close enough to blood that we could treat blood loss and ‘light’ loss as if they were the same thing. 

As I tried to touch the stumps of my leg, I also noticed that my arms were covered in a  mixture of itchy red and white spots on my skin, although they were starting to fade away.

I resisted the urge to scratch at my skin, and looked around.

We were just outside of the store. Anise and Felix were leaned against a nearby wall, while Sallia had opted to set me up a little further away from the front of the store.

“You’re up,” said Sallia, before giving me a hug. “I think the sweet-smelling powder in the store was some sort of knockout poison. It seems to work on skin contact, and it’s also what causes the itchy white and red spots. But it’s healing pretty fast.”

I took a closer look, and saw that Sallia also had some red and white spots on her skin, although they were very faint. 

I sent a little pulse of renewal through my body to see if it tried to heal any poisonous substances, and noticed some of the lingering grogginess in my head quickly disappear, almost as if I had just drunk a shot of coffee. However, I didn’t feel anything else change, and felt a breath of relief.

Whatever the poison had done, it didn’t seem like it was fatal or potentially fatal.

Then, I crawled a little closer to Anise and Felix, to make sure they were okay.

Anise and Felix were both still unconscious, and looked like they had taken a much worse blast of the itchy sleeping powder than Sallia and I had. They also had several nearly fatal-looking puncture holes and cuts  in their body, which had all been patched up in much the same way as Sallia had patched up my legs.

“These look bad,” I said, grimacing.

I took a closer look at my essence reserves, to get an idea how much time passed. I was still mostly empty, so I concluded that I had probably been asleep for an hour or two.

“Anything else happen in the shop?” I asked Sallia.

“No. The main body of the tree root didn’t pay attention to us a single time during or after the fight, and nothing else came up to the shop after the three of you fell unconscious. I just moved us away from the sleeping powder to let it dissipate a bit.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Did you find my legs anywhere?”

“They got disintegrated,” said Sallia. “There was basically just a few gibbets of meat left. I know your regeneration is great, but honestly, I think you’ll need to regrow them from scratch.”

I winced. Regrowing them from scratch would take way longer.

However, that could wait a while. My wounds didn’t seem to be getting any worse, and Anise and Felix’s wounds were much more horrific than mine. Some of the tears in their face and body looked like they would have cut open their hearts and lungs. I didn’t have much alteration essence, since I had used almost all of my reserves during the fight and only regenerated for an hour or two, but I could at least help deal with their worst injuries a little bit. “Can you soak them in water?” I asked.

Sallia immediately scooped out a few cups of water from my dress, much to my amusement, and then splashed it on Felix and Anise. I dumped what little alteration essence I had into my two prone friends. 

The deepest parts of the puncture wounds closed a little bit, leaving them less horrific and deadly-looking. However, once I ran out of alteration essence, I couldn’t keep using renewal. I was thankful that the spell worked perfectly even after leaving our previous world behind, but since I only had an intermediate grade attunement right now, there was a huge decrease in the quality and efficiency of the healing spell. Luckily, it didn’t seem like the two were really on the verge of dying, because if they were moments away from death, there would have been absolutely nothing I could have done about it right now.

I sighed, and Sallia looked a bit depressed as well.

“This fight could have gone better,” I said, after a few moments. “It wasn’t a complete disaster, since I think Anise and Felix will pull through their injuries just fine. But the fact that nobody died was more luck than skill. I don’t like that fact.”

Sallia nodded. “At least the Achievement reward was pretty good,” she said.

I blinked, and realized I had actually forgotten to look at my System notifications.

Slaughter: Kill a Root of Worlds for the First Time, Assist in killing a Butterfly of the Dreaming Void for the first time, Assist in killing a Butterfly of the Dreaming Void for the third time, Assist in killing a vine of sorrow

Influence: Contributed to the defense of the Market by an [extremely negligible] amount.

Achievement +500, Achievement +5, Achievement +8, Achievement +80, Achievement +0.57

 

Endless Hunger of the Ocean has devoured Vine of Sorrow for the first time. New Skill created.

Embrace of slumber:

Your body begins to slowly build up a kind of toxin that has a sweet smell. You may release this as a large cloud of dust at any time. This toxin will seep into the skin and cause mild poisoning, irritation, drowsiness, and possibly render enemies unconscious if their body or mind is weak enough.

This poison is partially magical in nature.

I equipped the new skill, since I had two empty skill slots. I was a bit sad to see that I hadn’t gotten a skill for helping to kill the root of worlds, but I didn’t have time to figure out how or why I had only gotten one skill instead of two.

I instead tried to figure out whether 500 Achievement was actually a good reward or not. It actually felt a bit lackluster compared to how hard that fight had been - the swarm of butterflies and the damn root had nearly killed us. Even though Sallia and I had explicitly built ourselves to counter the enemies of this fight, we had still nearly died. 

Luckily, there were other rewards for the fight. All of the contents of the shop were ours, which was the biggest reason we had set out to kill the vine.

Also, Sallia’s wire-blade made of wood had been incredibly impressive during the fight, and had ended up being most of the reason we had won. I hadn’t seen her use it before. Perhaps she had just figured out how to do it during the fight?

Either way, it would definitely be a helpful new ability for the future.

I took one last look at Anise and Felix, and realized there wasn’t much I could do for them right now.

“Let’s go take a look at the shop,” I said, trying to force myself to grin. Even though the fight had felt terrifying and nearly disastrous, being positive was important. And we had goodies to look forward to. “Can you carry me?”

Sallia nodded, and picked me up before making her way back into the shop. I noticed that the sweet smell was gone.

Most of the items in the shop had survived the fight completely intact, which showed just how excellent the durability of items produced in the Market truly were.

“While we wait for Anise and Felix to wake up, do you want to look at items?” I asked, grinning at Sallia. “And look for the books that are supposed to be here?”

She grinned as well, and nodded. 

Even though the fight had been nightmarishly hard, we had finally gotten access to a place where books were stored. It had taken three trips to the Market and two worlds, but we could finally read up on parts of how the Market actually worked, and then replace a bunch of items.

I really hoped that the books in this store would be useful. I didn’t think that we had it in us to raid another tree root during this visit to the Market. The enemies we had encountered here were a bit stronger than we were prepared to take on right now. It would be much better to come back with another Ability evolution, and preferably some more stats, too. Even though I had the ability to teleport away, if I couldn’t see an attack in time, I had no way to react to it. And our offensive abilities had barely managed to work their way through the tree root. I also didn’t know how the tree had messed with my attempt at teleportation at the end of our last fight, but it was clear that finding more ways to counter enemy abilities was something I needed to focus on in the future.

I found myself thinking about ways to use spatial manipulation to deal more damage and counter enemy abilities as Sallia picked me up and carried me around the room, before we spotted a small crate of books in a corner of the shop.

The crate of books had a rather odd title. One that made me feel very, very excited about what we might have discovered. Something that even took my attention away from the other potential rewards in the shop, even blowing the thought of the cash register we hadn’t raided yet out of my mind.

“Living Grimoire - The Talking Database you need to reach Heroic grade and understand the four essences! Only 300 Achievement each!”

We ignored the price completely as we grabbed one of the books, and I temporarily unequipped my adventurer’s boots before equipping one of the grimoires into an item slot. I didn’t bother looking at its maintenance cost - I was going to ditch it before I reincarnated again anyway.

A few moments later, the book I had equipped floated above my hand, before it shook itself off.

“Welcome to the Market, new Transmigrator! How may I assist you in improving your Abilities? ” asked the book, completely ignoring our surroundings.

“Umm… hello?” I asked. “How do I… operate you?”

“Hello, new Transmigrator! To ‘operate’ me, you merely need to input questions, either spoken vocally, or sent to me via mental connection if you have any abilities or items that grant you some form of mental communication. Either way works!” chirped the book happily.

“Are you… alive?” asked Sallia, looking at the odd book with curiosity.

The book did not respond to Sallia’s question in any way, shape, or form. It simply kept floating in midair right in front of my face.

“Did it break?” I asked Sallia, confused. These things were pretty old. Maybe it had stopped working at some point?

“Battery life for this grimoire is at nearly full energy capacity, and no internal damage is detected! This grimoire is in perfect condition!” chirped the book.

“Why didn’t - ah, do you only respond to my questions?” I said.

“Grimoire will only respond to the questions of whoever currently has the book equipped!” chirped the book. “This grimoire is only aware of the user, and has no awareness of any other individuals in the area, any environmental hazards, or anything else that exists in the world around it!”

“Huh,” I said. “Interesting. So you can’t see anything around us at all?”I asked, gesturing towards the dead giant tree root, and shredded wooden confetti, and the ruined giant vine things. 

“This book has no eyes, ears, or other senses that detect the outside world!” chirped the book.

“Can you ask it if it’s alive?” asked Sallia. “I’m suddenly curious.”

“Are you alive?” I asked the book.

“Not in the slightest! I am a repository of information, with a relatively clever artificial intelligence to allow me to draw from my database and answer any question within my means. I can also interpret questions that you ask me. That being said, my language interpretation is not always perfect, so if I do not respond to a question, please rephrase it so that I can understand it!” said the book.

I nodded thoughtfully. Basically, the book was an advanced chatbot hooked up to a specific database. I could work with that.

“In that case… can you tell me why the Market collapsed?” I asked. I knew it was a longshot, especially since the book was called the ‘Living Grimoire - The Talking Database you need to reach Heroic grade and understand the four essences.’ It definitely didn’t seem like it was related to recording history. But it was worth trying, even if it was unlikely to succeed.

Sadly, the book said nothing.

“Why did the Market fall?” I asked.

The book still said nothing.

I tried several variations of the question, but the book remained completely silent. Eventually, I confirmed that the knowledge of the Market’s collapse simply wasn’t present in the book’s knowledge base, meaning it couldn’t answer questions. Which made me more than a little bit disappointed.

However, that didn’t mean that the book didn’t know anything useful.

“How do we upgrade our affinities for essences?” was one of the first questions Sallia had me ask the book after we failed to learn how or why the Market collapsed. It also didn’t seem directly related to the book’s knowledge base, but it was at least tangentially related. And it was something I was very interested in knowing.

“Anytime any living being manages to push a skill to heroic grade or higher, their affinity for any related essences will naturally increase. Sometimes one can also get a smaller boost to their affinity by doing something impressive with a certain essence, although that less common and tends to be much inferior. Every single improvement of the related skills past Heroic Grade will make their affinity for a certain essence improve substantially. This is permanent, and even if a soul is not part of the Market, they will retain their improved affinity for an essence from one life to the next,” said the book. 

“How high of an affinity for an essence does one need for the Market to automatically recruit them?”

“One needs to have an affinity for an essence equivalent to what one normally gets by pushing their affinity to Law-0 Grade. Or, alternatively, by pushing their affinity to Heroic grade in one life after another until they eventually grind their way up to the same point. This, however, takes much longer and has a higher chance of permanently dying in between lives. After all, sometimes people just don’t earn much Achievement before dying, and without the Market to keep them alive, if their Achievement is too low they get shredded to pieces by the ocean of souls before they can reincarnate.”

I turned towards Sallia, and she turned towards me, and we grinned.

I finally had a better idea what an ‘extreme affinity’ was, at least. That was one question finally answered. 

“What benefits does affinity with a specific essence grant you?” I asked, after some more thinking.

“An affinity for an essence does several things. First, it makes it easier to gain and upgrade keyword abilities related to that essence. For example, if normally one might need to kill a creature with heroic-grade skills to get an amazing keyword ability for using alteration essence, someone with an extreme affinity might only need to kill a creature with master grade skills. The barrier of entry is much lower. Furthermore, one needs to pay less glut penalty and Achievement for the same keyword ability, although this gets much more pronounced at higher grades of abilities. Finally, they will have excellent instincts for how to use said essence, meaning that they’ll tend to push up to the great barrier between master and heroic grade abilities much more easily, and have an easier time pushing further and further.”

“I see,” I said, nodding and frowning. “What do you mean by ‘great barrier?’”

“There are three major barriers in Ability growth, each of which makes every single ability upgrade afterwards much, much harder to achieve. The first great barrier is the barrier between Master grade abilities and Heroic grade abilities, and it is also the great barrier this grimoire is focused on.”

I see, I said, nodding. 

Just as Sallia and I were about to launch into another stream of questions about how to actually advance to heroic grade in our abilities, I heard Felix groan, and then saw him start to struggle to his feet out of the corner of my eye.

One of the two injured was awake again.

 

 

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