Markets and Multiverses

After Sallia, Felix and I found the crate of alcohol, we decided to only take a few bottles back with us. Since we had no magic storage available, we would need to manually carry everything ourselves, and there was no need to only bring alcohol back. We put the remaining alcohol back on the shelves of the store, freeing up some room in the crate. Then, we filled it up with some delicious-looking junk food. Luckily, the food all looked pretty intact, as long as the containers weren’t broken. At first, I found this strange, but after a few moments, I realized that many Transmigrators would continuously head to new worlds before returning to the Market, and time probably kept passing in the Market when time passed in other dimensions. Since that was the case, people might buy food that they wanted to save for hundreds of years, so that they had something to munch on when they returned home. Given that fact, the Market’s food preservation abilities being excellent wasn’t particularly surprising. 

I had no clue what most of the snacks we found were, since many of them were made of unidentified ingredients, but I recognized a few as some sort of chocolate bar and some sort of cake. Sallia claimed one of the other foods we found resembled a certain kind of pastry from her first life that she was quite fond of, and Felix didn’t recognize anything, but seemed eager to try the food we had found.

Since Felix had the weakest combat ability right now, he volunteered to carry the crate while we headed towards the residential zone. Luckily, we didn’t encounter any enemies along the way, making everyone’s job easy.

It took us several more minutes to return to the residential zone. It took us less than a minute to find a reasonably solid-looking modern house, which we then took over. There was a lone skeleton inside of the house, accompanied by eight copies of the corpse of a brown-haired woman. Sallia killed the Skeleton, before we confirmed there was nothing else useful in the house. We then closed the doors and windows, before stacking up some furniture behind the doors to make sure nothing could easily break in. None of us wanted to get ambushed halfway through our de-stressing party.

Then, we sat together around the table in the dining room. We arranged the snacks around the table, before finding a couple glasses in one of the cupboards and pouring ourselves some drinks.

I hesitated for a moment, looking at the amber-colored liquid in my glass. It smelled vaguely like plums and paint thinner. I suddenly had a better idea why Fortitude Soul Fragments were sold in the shop. Anyone drinking this stuff would want some Fortitude if they intended to drink a lot of this stuff. I glanced at Sallia, who shrugged and gave me a grin.

“Bottoms up,” she said.

After taking a drink, I resisted the urge to gag.

The alcohol burned my throat, and it felt like I had taken a drink of acid instead of alcohol for a moment. The fizzy, tingling sensation accompanying the alcohol wasn’t something I had ever expected to feel from an alcoholic beverage. It was… very odd.

Sallia, having the lowest Fortitude, coughed a few times, while Felix and I frowned at each other.

A few moments later, the incredibly powerful tingly sensation started to die down a little bit, and I could actually taste the drink as it faded. I grinned.

The drink tasted kind of like roasted hazelnuts mixed with strawberries. The flavor was different than I was used to, but it was also rather tasty. As the bite of the initial drink withered away, I was more and more free to enjoy the pleasant aftertaste. Even though the Market’s alcohol was strange, I couldn’t say that it tasted bad.

Sallia, meanwhile, started gagging, and as I watched her try to work her way through carbonated texture of the drink, I tried not to laugh.

“What the heck was that?” said Sallia, coughing out a few drops of liquid. “The liquid was moving inside of my mouth! It was… I don’t know!” she said, trying not to yell.

I lost my battle against my stomach, and started laughing.

“Hey!” Sallia glared at me, and Felix also started chuckling. He seemed startled by the carbonated texture of the drink, but due to his high Fortitude, he hadn’t coughed it out the way Sallia had. 

“How odd,” said Felix, controlling his chuckles as he looked at Sallia. “The fizzy texture is very strange. I quite like it.”

“Try taking smaller sips, Sallia,” I said, controlling my urge to keep laughing. “It’s like a carbonated drink from my first world. I don’t remember them that well, but I think you’ll get used to them after a few tries. They’re pretty tasty.”

Sallia grumbled a few times, but she tried taking a much smaller sip of the beverage. She frowned again when she took a sip, before her expression slowly morphed into a grin after a few moments. “You’re right. It really does have a nice flavor, if you can get past the weird bubbly sensation.”

With the three of us more acquainted with the drink, we began slowly drinking the alcohol away. Despite smelling kind of like paint thinner, the alcohol content felt surprisingly mild. I wondered if that was some sort of influence of our current bodies, or my Grade 6 Fortitude, or something else.

That question was answered three minutes later, as Sallia’s cheeks started flushing, and she gave us a grin.

“Just takes a bit to kick in,” she said, with the careful, measured sentences of someone trying not to slur their words. “And we can definitely get drunk.”

It took another two minutes before the drink started to kick in for Felix and I. I grinned.

We could, indeed, get drunk in these bodies, even though we had no need for food, sleep, or breathing here. At least the previous society of the Market had done something right.

* * *

The next hour was a kind of pleasant haze as we slowly drank our alcohol. We were careful not to overdo it, since we needed to maintain some level of battle ability in case of an emergency. Despite that fact, the three of us ended up fairly tipsy as we slowly drank and chatted.

About an hour, the three of us decided we shouldn’t drink any more, just in case an emergency happened, so we sat down on the couch together to work our way through the pile of snacks we had found. Sallia gave the snacks a suspicious glance, as if she were wary of another surprise food like the fizzy alcohol. After a few moments of hesitation, I decided to pick first, so I grabbed a bar of what looked like chocolate and unwrapped it, before biting into the food.

I grinned again. “It’s really chocolate!” It had looked like chocolate, but I hadn’t been sure if it was just a lookalike until I ate some. I broke off half of the chocolate bar, before offering the other half to Sallia. “Try it! It’s really tasty!”

Sallia hesitated for a moment, giving the chocolate a wary glance, before accepting the other half of the chocolate bar. Based on the way her expression lit up after taking a bite, she also liked it.

Felix grabbed another of the chocolate bars, and gave me an approving nod after chowing down. After that the three of us began testing other strange Market snacks. Many of them had odd, distinct flavors, but all of them tasted excellent once I got used to them.

After we ran out of snacks to eat, we simply rested on the couch together and took comfort in each other’s presence. Even though we usually didn’t need to sleep in these bodies, it seemed that once we had some alcohol in our bodies, we would still feel tired. Which struck me as a very strange reaction, but given how strange the mass produced bodies of the Market were, I decided not to think about it too much.

Then, unbidden, I thought of the world we had been in before we had returned, and I felt my eyes start to sting.

“Are you all right?” Asked Sallia, suddenly looking far more awake as she stared at me.

“I’m fine,” I said, but I heard my voice crack a little bit. “Just miss the islands.”

Sallia nodded in understanding, before she shuffled a little closer to me and leaned against me. It wasn’t quite a hug, but I appreciated it all the same.

“I miss everyone too,” said Felix, as a hint of bitterness crept into his voice. “The people that died with us during the final fight… I hope their next lives are happy.” He frowned. “I hope they make it to the next life. It’s uncommon, but I occasionally see souls collapse in the ocean of souls. Probably happens if they run out of Achievement before reincarnating, I think. Some of the System messages we’ve seen hint that all souls get Achievement, even if it’s not quite the same as in the Market. And I figure since the ocean drains Achievement every second, it’s probably the end once you run out as the ocean stops eating your memories and starts eating you.”

I thought of my father, and Olav, and Claus, before I nodded. My father had done his best to take care of me and make me happy during the time I had spent on the islands. Olav had been something like a grandfather to me. While Claus had likely done it out of a sense of obligation, due to the fact that he felt himself indebted to my father, he had also looked after me during many of the years we spent on the islands.

All three of them, along with Edel and the hunter, had died with us during the fight with the outsiders. A few of them had landed in the ocean, rather than getting pulled onto the boat of the outsiders by the commander’s ability, but I doubted their ending was any better than ours.

“I wish they had lived,” I said. “But I’m sure they’ll make it to their next lives. All of us got a lot of Achievement near the end, during the fight with the outsiders. I’m sure that’s true for them as well.” I tried to shrug off the uncertainty I felt. I had no clue how much Achievement a ‘normal’ soul got per life, and while I hoped the other fishermen had made it to their next lives, I had no clue what reincarnating without the Market’s assistance looked like.”

Sallia wrapped me in a hug. “They’ll be fine. I’m sure they’re waking up as babies right now and have happy families.”

But they won’t remember a thing, I thought, bitterly. I sighed. Before I could say anything else, or keep thinking about my worries and fears, Sallia’s hug grew tighter.

“I won’t pretend to have the same level of regret you two feel towards the islands,” said Sallia, her voice the least strained of the three of us. “For a lot of the time I spent on the islands, I felt… useless. I had low Absorption Essence, even though it’s my extreme talent. And without enough essence, keeping up with everyone else was just so hard. No matter what I tried to do, it felt like I was stuck at the bottom of a well, searching for a way out, even though none existed. But despite the fact that I was useless in the last world, the village still took care of me and gave me a place to be helpful,” said Sallia. 

“I won’t pretend I was happy on the islands. A lot of the time was just spent struggling with my own feelings, and that’s an emotion I don’t want to remember or experience ever again. But I will say that I still fondly remember the people of the islands, even if I hated a lot of the time there. Your father was a good man, and I wish his ending had been better. Same for Claus and Olav. I didn’t know Edel very well, but she seemed like a brave woman,” said Sallia, before sighing. “My parents are also people I’ll miss, and I wish they didn’t have to learn that I’m dead. I remember they always talked about my older brother, and how he died before I was born. For them to lose another child must be awful for them. But I’m also so happy, because I won’t be useless next world.” I felt Sallia shiver for a moment, as I wrapped my arms around her as well. Her final words were much softer. “I feel guilty for being happy that I get another chance at life. I know that my parents are probably devastated, and I’m still so glad that I can move on and try again.”

I gave Sallia a few comforting pats on the back.

“Sallia, you were never useless. But you don’t have to feel bad for looking forward to being able to do what you love. You spent an entire lifetime denied from doing what you enjoyed, because your abilities didn’t match up with your passions. You’re allowed to feel happy about that.”

Sallia closed her eyes and leaned closer to me. I heard a light sniffling sound, before I felt a few drops of water start to drip onto my shirt. I resisted the urge to laugh bitterly.

My first drink in fifteen years, and I and both of my friends were crying. Felix looked like he felt left out, so I wriggled my other arm and then pulled him in. We could certainly use a group hug right about now.

Felix also sighed softly as the three of us wrapped around each other.

“My mother was an excellent woman,” said Felix. “She was always willing to stand up for the village and do what was right. You know, it wasn’t just half of her face that was paralyzed. A good chunk of her body was stiff as well. Not to the point where it completely hindered her, but she lost a lot of mobility after getting hit by some kind of landbeast poison before I was born. I can’t help but feel guilty for the fact that she’s probably heard the news of my death by now, and I won’t even be there to tell her I’m sorry and that I love her.” He sighed again. “She deserved better than learning about my death. I’m not sorry for my actions that led up to my death, because I was one of the best choices for the pearl heist. But I wish she didn’t have to go through the pain of losing me after losing my father before I was born.”

The three of us took more comfort in each other’s presence for a while, reminding ourselves that even though we had lost people we cared about from the islands, at least we still had each other. Still, the realization that our loved ones had surely learned of our deaths and had to deal with the consequences sucked.

A few minutes later, I felt well enough to reach back towards the bottle of alcohol, and poured us a few very small quantities of the drink. Then, I handed the glasses to Felix and Sallia, and raised the cup.

“A toast to the fallen, and those left behind. May they find happiness in their next lives, and peace within the ocean of souls. And may those we left behind find comfort and move forward.”

Sallia let out a choked half-laugh, before she raised her glass as well.

“A toast to the fallen.” Felix mimicked the action a moment later, and we raised our glasses one final time, clinked them together, and then downed the hazelnut and strawberry flavored fizzy alcohol.

After drinking the rest of my half-full cup of alcohol, I felt drowsy enough to go to sleep.

acaswell

Reminder that I might have jury duty next week. It LOOKS like I’ve been excused from it before even needing to report, if I’m understanding stuff correctly, but I’m going to double check everything next week just to make sure I’m not losing my mind or misunderstanding something. Which, thankfully, I can do online.

Hopefully that means no impact to next week’s chapter schedule, but we’ll see if I’m literate and not losing my mind.

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