Markets and Multiverses

Our brief respite didn’t last for long. My broken wrist throbbed with pain, and Claus’s missing leg was still dripping blood into the bandage wrapped around it. My father, along with Olav and Edel, struggled to their feet, before my father dug a fish core out and handed it to me. 

“See if you can help Claus, sweetie. Olav and I will get a healer to look over your wrist and report what happened to the village chief.”

I nodded, gritting my teeth as I pushed through the pain in my wrist. With my good arm, I grabbed the fish core my father had handed me, and quickly replenished my mana. Healing was much more expensive than illusions, and now wasn’t the time to save my resources. Now that I didn’t need to put all of my attention on the Glowing Fish, I could tend to Claus.

After draining half of the fish core, I waddled over to Claus and started closing his wound. I also replenished some of his lost blood, but I mostly focused on sewing his flesh back together. Meanwhile, my father and Olav disappeared into the distance.

Minutes passed. Claus’s most grievous injuries were dealt with, so I removed the makeshift bandage my father had thrown on Claus’s stump leg and was relieved to see no more blood come out. Eventually, Olav and my father returned with a few of the village hunters and healers. One of the blood-related healers looked over my attempts to heal Claus’s injury, before nodding.

“Flesh is sealed up well enough. Don’t think there’s anything we can do about the missing leg, but he should live,” said the man, before pausing and looking at me.

“Good job. You did as well as you could have little Miria." Then, he got to work regenerating Claus’s blood and dealing with Claus’s other, more minor bruises and injuries. 

Meanwhile, another healer moved towards me and placed her hands on my injured arm for a moment, before she frowned.

“Hold still for a sec and brace yourself,” she said. Then, she sped up as she dumped some mana into her arms, and then jerked my wrist bones back into the right places.

I gasped in pain, feeling my eyes water. Before I had time to react, the healer started pouring more mana into my arm, and I resisted the urge to shudder as I felt my bones start wriggling inside of my body. Bone fragments started to roll back into place, and my arm felt painful and itchy. Once I realized what the healer was doing, I resisted the urge to jerk my arm away and put up with it. After a few minutes, I felt my bones slide back into place, before they started to weld themselves back together. The process wasn’t perfect, but the healer had removed the biggest problems in my body and kick-started the healing process.

“You can heal flesh, right?” She asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good. In that case, you can probably stitch up most of the damaged muscles and tissues in your arm on your own. Your wrist and arm will probably be fragile for a few days to a week after this, but you shouldn’t have any permanent injuries, I think. Maybe you’ll lose a bit of gripping strength in your arm? It shouldn’t be too big of a deal though. But make sure to take it easy for a bit. I don’t want to be forced to treat you again,” said the healer. I nodded, and she smiled at me. 

“I’m glad nobody on your boat died.” Then, with her work finished, she nodded at my father and Olav before she started walking back to the village.

“Where’s the village chief?” I asked Olav. Now that I wasn’t in mind-numbing pain, I found it much easier to focus on my surroundings and converse again. My wrist still hurt, but it had gone from nausea-inducing pain to extreme soreness, which was much more manageable.

“He’s apparently on one of the other islands right now - the other village chieftains were meeting to discuss how to deal with the glowing fish already, so he’s not around right now” said Olav, sighing. “One of the hunters and a boat of fishermen left to inform the village chiefs what happened to your boat. We’ll still want more detailed recounts later, but we’ll pass along what we know as soon as possible.”

I nodded, before turning to the hunters of  the village. They were mostly conversing with Edel and my father, getting as much information as they could about the attack. Perhaps because I was injured, or because I wasn’t an adult yet, they didn’t seem as interested in questioning me.

I took that as an opportunity to finally look over the System messages I had received during the fight with the glowing fish.

 

Influence: Keep a boat of villagers alive under the attack of the Glowing Fish

Achievement +250

 

After using a water/illusion-based Rune ability to fight against a fairly powerful creature of this world, you have created the Ability ‘Illusory Sunlight Glittering on the Waves.’ It may be purchased after your death for 2,500 Achievement. 

This is currently a [Basic] Grade Ability, but like all keyword abilities, after being purchased it may be evolved depending on your actions in the future.

This Ability has the following effects:

Keywords: Illusion, Water, Absorption (3 Keywords.)

While you are partially or fully submerged in water and exposed to sunlight, your body will generate absorption essence, regardless of whether the local dimensional laws support the existence of absorption essence. This ability allows you to spend the stored absorption essence in two ways.

First, absorption essence may be spent to slowly remodel your body and brain, allowing you to biologically support absorption-essence type spellcasting.

Second, Absorption essence may be spent to form ‘runes,’ a unique magical structure created partially within the brain and partially within the body. 

These runes have varied effects, mostly relating to strengthening the body and mind and allowing limited control over specific abilities. (This rune system is copied directly from the world you are currently living in.) You will also recreate the relevant dimensional laws within your body.

You gain the ability to partially ‘materialize’ illusions at the cost of some absorption essence. This will cost constant absorption essence AND mana to maintain, but may allow you to temporarily turn your illusions into reality. The greater the illusion, the greater the cost. This ability may only be used on Illusions which are exposed to sunlight and are close to water. 

Glut Penalty: 15

Note: In order to use a magic system from another dimension, one must have three things:

First, they must have access to the essence in question. It’s impossible to use manifestation essence for spellcasting without manifestation essence, or use absorption essence type spellcasting without absorption essence.

Second, one must have the biological ability to process said essence. Attempting to use unique magic systems without the right brain structure and body structure may result in injury or death to your current body.

Third, one must have an ability that mimics the proper dimensional laws one wishes to use in order to cast spells. Trying to use a fire-related spell normally wouldn’t work in a dimension where fire physically cannot exist, for example, and using binding essence to cast spells would normally fail if a dimension doesn’t have any binding essence inside of it. With an Ability, one can make spells that cannot naturally exist in a given dimension.

Some abilities do not grant all three of these things. Please read your ability descriptions carefully!

 

You have gained access to a keyword Ability for the first time! Would you like to purchase ‘The Market’s Quick Guide to Abilities?’ 

Would you like a more detailed understanding of Abilities and how they work? Do you want to plan out your future Abilities and Stats with full knowledge of what each number means? Do you want advice on what Abilities and items to prioritize, and how to plan your future builds?

Don’t hesitate! Buy the Market’s Quick Guide to Abilities for only 20 Achievement! Delivered directly to your Status Screen!

*Market’s Quick Guide to Abilities is delivered directly to your Status Screen, and is not subject to any shipping fees or miscellaneous fees.

I raised my eyebrows upon seeing the System notifications. Getting some Achievement for escaping the fish wasn’t that surprising. 250 Achievement was a higher reward than I was expecting, but the reward notification wasn’t that important.

However, the other two System notifications caught me completely off guard. First of all, I had finally found my first Keyword Ability. None of the abilities the three of us had seen so far had any keywords, and the ability I had unlocked by surviving the fish attack had given me access to a keyword ability for the first time. 

Second, I had seen a useful looking advertisement from the Market. Many of the ads the Market had shown me felt random and only tangentially useful. Or seemed unlikely to actually give me a product I bought, due to the current state of the Market. But, for once, the ad I had been shown was extremely relevant to my current situation. 

I hesitated for a moment, before purchasing it. 20 Achievement was a small price to pay for finally understanding what Abilities were and how they worked. 

An illusory book appeared in front of my eyes. It took me a moment to realize the book wasn’t real - my hands passed through it when I tried to touch it, and I could only ‘flip pages’ in the book using my mind. The book was attached to my status screen, and I could close it and open it again at a moment’s notice.

Eagerly, I opened the first page of the informational booklet.

Abilities are divided into several trillion different subtypes and categories, many of which have strange and unusual effects. For the sake of simplicity, this book will only address the most common ones, as well as the basics of how keywords and glut penalty works. Please bear in mind that there are exceptions to the general guidelines discussed in this book.

Now, when assessing an ability, there are a few things to keep in mind.

The first, and most important aspect of an ability, is whether it is a keyword ability or not. A Keyword ability is much stronger than a non-keyword ability, and has a much wider variety of things it can do. However, you may only have ten keywords in total. This is ten keyword slots - not ten keyword Ability slots. If you have two abilities with three keywords each, and one ability with four keywords, you will have zero remaining keyword slots. You must be careful when purchasing keyword abilities, since removing a keyword ability is much more costly and painful than removing a non-keyword ability from your soul.

Why are keyword abilities so much stronger than non-keyword abilities? There are a variety of reasons, but the most relevant to a new Transmigrator is the fact that they provide much greater benefits for the same amount of glut penalty. As glut penalty tends to be the greatest early barrier Transmigrators run into when trying to become more powerful, it is especially important to find ways to get the most power you can out of every single point of glut penalty. Increasing the amount of glut penalty you can handle is an expensive process, and especially as a newcomer to the Market you will have very limited amounts of glut penalty to work with. But this will be discussed in more detail later.

Keyword Abilities have two major benefits that set them apart from non-keyword abilities. First, they have Keywords. A Keyword allows a specific Ability to improve its strength while you or the ability interacts with one of its keywords. For example, if you have a ‘Fire’ Keyword ability, the ability will get stronger when you are near a fire. These multipliers from keywords also boost each other, allowing for explosive increases in strength when you activate all of the Keywords in an ability.

Second, Keyword abilities can evolve. Once certain conditions are met, you will be given the chance to improve a keyword ability at the end of a life. This will increase its glut penalty, and will cost a large amount of Achievement to improve, but will also drastically improve its effects and push it in a specific, unique direction. This direction will fit you and your combat style better and better as you keep reincarnating and evolving the ability. After a few evolutions, your Keyword Abilities will usually become the most important part of what you carry with you from life to life. 

Now, Glut Penalty is one of the other things you will need to keep an eye on when purchasing Abilities.

Glut penalty is the ‘burden’ on your soul your abilities exert. The more abilities you have, and the more powerful those abilities are, the heavier your glut penalty will become. This leaves you more and more vulnerable to the natural corrosion the ocean of souls exerts on all souls, making it easier for you to lose memories and abilities. Souls naturally try to use Achievement to defend your soul against the loss of memories between lives, but it is very rare for a normal soul to succeed in keeping track of who it was from one life to the next.

Glut penalty exacerbates this problem, but luckily, as a member of the Market, you are exposed to far less corrosion from the river of souls due to the protection the Market gives you. However, you will still be exposed to the ocean of souls for a small period of time. If your glut penalty is too high, you might permanently die upon contact with the ocean of souls, regardless of how many lives you have left, because your abilities are too ‘heavy’ compared to the amount of weight your soul can carry with you.

In order to avoid this problem, you should always keep your ‘maximum glut penalty’ in mind when buying abilities.

All souls start out with a maximum glut penalty of 20. ALWAYS stay at or below your maximum penalty level.

Now, you may have already noticed that most abilities have rather high glut penalties. With only 20 glut penalty, it would be very hard to keep purchasing new Abilities as you travel through the Multiverse. So how does one increase their maximum glut penalty?

The answer to this question is to purchase and consume soul fragments. The reason so many souls that don’t belong to the Market collapse and permanently die in between lives is because they have no way to strengthen their souls. Each person slowly gains memories and skills over the course of their life, and upon death, a non-Transmigrator is thrown back into the ocean of souls, which corrodes their memories and identity. Once a soul between lives runs out of Achievement to defend itself against the Ocean, a soul permanently dies and becomes one with the ocean of souls. However, purchasing Abilities also puts a strain on the soul, making Transmigrators inherently more vulnerable to this corrosion. The solution to this problem, and the reason the Market is the strongest power in the multiverse, is due to Soul Fragments. 

Every single time you consume enough Soul Fragments to raise the grade of one of your Stats in the Market by 1, you will increase your maximum glut penalty, and strengthen your soul against corrosion from the ocean of souls. Raising a Stat from grade 0 to grade 1 will increase your maximum glut penalty by 2. If all 10 Stats reach grade 1 or higher, you will get another increase of 10 to your maximum glut penalty, on top of the twenty extra points you will get from raising ten stats from grade 0 to 1. 

The bonus amount of ‘glut penalty’ you can handle will continue to increase as you absorb more Soul Fragments.

Raising a Stat from Grade 1 to Grade 2 will increase your Maximum glut penalty by 3. Raising it from grade 2 to grade 3 will increase your maximum glut penalty by 4. And the total bonus to glut penalty also increases from 10 to 15 to 20 as long as you evenly raise your Stats. By using the tools only members of the Market have available to them, you can slowly strengthen your soul and permanently increase the amount of abilities you can carry with you from life to life.

It is HIGHLY recommended that you don’t focus too much on one stat. It’s much better to spread your Achievement around, since the cost of higher tier soul fragments gets expensive very quickly. It is recommended to focus on getting the bonus for raising all Stats up to grade 1 first, then fill out your maximum glut penalty, before getting everything to grade 2 and filling out your glut penalty again. By repeating this process, you can eventually become a very powerful Transmigrator, so long as you keep improving. 

Good luck on your future lives, and I hope that all of you will one day become great Transmigrators known throughout the Multiverse!

After the introduction to glut penalty, abilities, and keyword abilities, the booklet began focusing on a couple more specific recommendations for builds. It listed useful non-keyword abilities that paired well with various kinds of keyword abilities, items that one might find useful when trying to create specific builds, and recommendations for how to improve and upgrade one’s Keyword Abilities. The last bit of advice wasn’t useful to me yet, and the rest was downright useless since I didn’t have a defined ‘build’ right now. However, I still filed away the information I could find for future use. I finally knew what Glut Penalty was, and how it tied into the rest of my Status Screen. I took a careful look over my Status Screen, thinking over what I had done and how much I had grown in this world.

Runes: 4 Successfully Condensed

(+60 to all Physical Attributes)

Abilities:

4th rune: Water Conversion - Light (Illusions) and Healing

 

Current Vessel: Teenage Body - born from the parents of your current body, this vessel has no leaks and is truly ‘alive.’ You may check the Stats of this physical vessel in your status screen. Your body is mostly grown up, and you can exert your Stats with very few penalties imposed by your physical body now.

Note - due to the characteristics of a Transmigrator, it is impossible for a physical vessel to ever have Stats BELOW 70 or ABOVE 130 without input from your soul. If you wish to exceed grade 6 at birth you must purchase Stats.

Organic Brain: A partially developed human brain that has yet to finish growing. Made primarily of physical matter, with slight bits of Absorption Essence mixed into a few key parts of the brain to allow for rudimentary absorption-type spellcasting and interaction.

Special Resources:

This brain has been influenced by the user’s training regime of watching the waters of the Althala islands during storm season. Due to the mixture of unique Mana and careful observation of the water during Storm season, the brain is now significantly stronger than before.

Willpower +10

 

 

Physical

Mental

Essence

Strength: 168 (0+108) 

Grade 8

Intelligence: 89 (0+89)

Grade 4

Absorption: 118 (0+118)

Grade 5

Agility: 187 (2+125) 

Grade 9

Willpower: 140 (0+140)

Grade 7

Manifestation: (0+126)

Grade 6

Fortitude: 169 (0+109)

Grade 8

Perception: 115 (0+115)

Grade 5

Binding: (0+74)

Grade 3

 

 

Alteration: (0+76)

Grade 3

 

Lives Remaining: 5

0/10 Keyword Slots used

Glut Penalty: 0

Abilities:

Birth related Abilities: Body Control

Achievement: 4,108.06

Even after paying 20 Achievement for the informational booklet, I had enough points for the new Ability I had unlocked, which I definitely intended to buy unless I got a better option. The Market seemed to strongly encourage people to take magic systems from one world to the next, and having a few magic Systems that were completely foreign to the world I was living on would definitely be advantageous for me in the long run. Then, I sighed, shaking my head and focusing on the present again.

I looked at Claus’s leg, and gritted my teeth as I thought of the glowing fish that had nearly killed me. At that time, Claus had pulled me out of the way, and had lost his leg as a result.

I wanted to kill that bloody fish.

One of the hunters, seeing me staring into space and gritting my teeth, snapped his fingers in front of my eyes.

“You all right, girl?” he asked, looking at me.

Surprised, I snapped out of my stupor and refocused on my surroundings.

“Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.” I said.

The hunter gave me a careful look, before patting my shoulder. “Don’t worry - the fish seems to also be afraid of our island. It won’t get you here. And I’m sure your wrist will heal up good as new soon.” The hunter paused for a moment, before adding to his statement.

“We can’t make decisions for the chief in advance, but he’ll probably call for a meeting tonight once he gets back from the chief meeting. Be ready to attend, unless you don’t feel physically able to.”

I nodded, and began quietly making plans for the rest of the day. I would tell Sallia and Felix what I had learned before tonight, and hopefully the chieftain would arrange a hunting party to deal with the fish soon. 

And after that thing had nearly killed me, and tore Claus’s leg off, I wanted to be part of that hunting party if I was able to. I needed to give my wrist a break, and I wasn’t sure if the chief would hunt the fish immediately or wait, but if it was possible, I wanted to pay it back for hurting one of the men who had watched me grow up. 

acaswell

 

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