Markets and Multiverses

“What did you invest in?” I called out to Felix and Sallia as we looked through the shop. I had a reasonable idea what they had been planning on investing in, but it was good to double check, in case it factored into our planning in the next world somehow. I knew Felix had around 7,000 Achievement, and he hadn’t bought any abilities this time, and Sallia had around 1,500 Achievement after buying her Keyword Ability. After forming her runes she should have been up to around 1,700, by my estimation.

Felix shrugged. “I ignored Strength, since it seemed like the least useful Stat for me right now. Strength is useful, don’t get me wrong, but…” Felix shrugged. “I wanted other things more. Instead, I got every mental attribute and the other two physical Attributes up to Grade 1. After that, I put 10 points into every Essence category. I figure that it changes my stat range on birth. Specifically, instead of having 70 to 130 in a Stat, I have 80 to 140. Which means I can’t roll into Grade 3, no matter how unlucky I am. Based on how much Sallia struggled last world, having Grade 3 in an Attribute is… crippling. So I wanted to avoid that. And no matter which magic System is present in the next world, I’d like to have at least semi-decent Stats for interacting with it until I figure out which one I have extreme affinity for.” Felix paused. “And I bought the Identity Ability too. I like my name. I do wonder how it’s going to deal with my body shape, since I’m not very attached to my current looks, but I guess I’ll see next world,” said Felix.

I nodded. Felix’s words made sense. 10 points in an Attribute was actually an important break point, since it meant one would ALWAYS have at least Grade 4 in future worlds. While Sallia’s feat of getting every Important Stat in Grade 3 was incredibly unlikely, 10 points in an Attribute negated the influence of bad luck by a considerable amount. And since Felix didn’t know which Essence he had super compatibility with yet, investing evenly in all of them was reasonable.

Sallia shrugged. “I got 1 Grade into Absorption, since it’s my extreme affinity, and half a grade into Willpower, since it’s basically required if I don’t want to struggle with training. I was able to compensate for my low Willpower on the islands, because watching storms bumped me up to Grade 4 Willpower, but… at grade 3, trying to train is a nightmare. It’s just too hard to concentrate. Apart from that, I invested a little bit of the Achievement I got from training in the Market, and I got Fortitude up to +3.” Sallis sighed. “I put 1 point into every physical attribute the first time we were in the Market. I wish I had just gotten 3 points in Fortitude instead. I can’t do anything with higher Agility or Strength if I get sick and die before turning 4. Hopefully I don’t get unlucky this time,” Sallia said as she sighed. “I also bought Identity. Getting called ‘Aria’ all the time when we were living on the islands was… really frustrating. I really appreciated you two using my name, but I want my parents to use ‘Sallia’ and not ‘Aria’ as well next time.” I nodded. If I hadn’t had enough Achievement to get everything to Grade 1, I would have prioritized buying the Identity Ability as well. It might not be a particularly smart action, since we were facing an  unknown threat and needed to grow as fast as possible if we wanted to live. But I also wanted to keep being… me. And a name was the foundation of my identity. I had felt incredibly uncomfortable during my first visit to the Market, when I hadn’t been able to remember my name. So even if it might not be ‘optimal,’ I didn’t fault Sallia for buying Identity.

As I got lost in my thoughts, I suddenly heard Felix cackle. “I found something!” I was closer to Felix than Sallia, so I reached him first. I saw Felix standing over a little basin of liquid, which had previously been hidden under the counter. I touched it, and grinned.

Achievement Detected. Currently (unowned). Would you like to absorb some of it? There is currently 130 Achievement in this storage unit.

I took one look at it, preparing to absorb a third of the Achievement… and then I hesitated.

Did I really need 43.33 Achievement? I already had 350 right now, and I had already bought all of the Stats I could in this store. The only thing we had left to do before reincarnating was getting some items, but those didn’t cost Achievement. The store owners weren’t exactly around to collect payments, after all. 

In other words, I had no immediate use for more Achievement. 

I looked at where Sallia had been rummaging through stuff in the shop. She was one of my two best friends. Right now, she had just gotten her most important Keyword Ability online, and she could definitely use another 7 Points in Fortitude to bring her up to 10. 

I looked at the cash register, and thought for a moment.

I pressed my hand to the cash register.

 

Would you like to pay for your Items?

There is currently no price calculation added to the Cash register. Please have whoever is manning the register enter the price for any physical items you are purchasing before trying to pay.

Error - no number entered

I turned to Felix, and winked at him.

He took a look at the container, and after thinking for a moment, winked back at me. I knew we were on the same page. I grinned. “Don’t sell me out,” I whispered.

Felix grinned and typed in ‘200’ into the cash register.

Then, I ‘paid for my items,’ tossing 200 Achievement into the pool of Achievement. Instead of 130 Achievement, there was now 330 Achievement waiting for Sallia to use. And my Achievement dropped from 348 to 148. Since Sallia probably had a bit of Achievement left over, that should be just enough to push her to +10 Fortitude.

“Hey Sallia! We found a bit of Achievement! We already took our share,” I said. “The rest is yours! This store was surprisingly well off.” Sallia turned around, looking up from the pile of stuff she had been digging through, before grinning. “Good! I found a couple of old records that are interesting. It has some pretty useful information on the Multiverse, and a few tidbits on stuff like Skill Grades. I’m starting to realize the greater multiverse is a lot more… interesting than I first thought. You guys can look through it while I get my share of Achievement,” she said cheerfully as she started walking towards us.

After that, Sallia quickly ran over to the cash register and took a look at the small basin of Achievement. She looked at it for a moment, before she turned towards me and frowned.

“There’s no way there was 330 Achievement when we got here. How much did you put in?”

I felt my cheeks flush. “It was… all there when we got here?’

“Miria, this store may have been a little more prosperous than The One Stop Shop for the Enterprising Transmigrator from our first market visit, but I seriously doubt they had 330 Achievement squirreled away. Most people in the Market seem to spend whatever they earn pretty quickly. How much did you put in?”

“She put in 200 Achievement,” said Felix. I glared at him. He betrayed me!

Sallia sighed, before taking a step towards me and giving me a slightly crushing hug. “I appreciate the gesture, and I’ll take the extra 200 Achievement you’re loaning me, Miria. I need whatever I can get right now.” Then, she released me from the hug, and rapped me on the head. “But if you’re going to give me something, tell me, okay? I may have struggled a lot during our first world, and life definitely sucked sometimes on the islands. But I’m not made of glass either. If you do something for me, I want to know so that I can give you something equally amazing in the future.” She grinned at me. “And after I got my Rune Ability, and especially now that I have Grade 1 Absorption Essence attached to my soul, I’m not just a dead weight anymore. In the future, I’ll be the one supporting you instead of you supporting me. Okay?”

Then, with a relaxed grin, she absorbed the 330 Achievement, while I ruefully grinned. Maybe I hadn’t been giving Sallia enough credit after we returned to the Market. Part of me still thought of her as the girl from the islands who struggled with her insecurities because she was too weak to do what she loved. And while I doubted Sallia had overcome that mindset as completely as she was pretending she had, perhaps I needed to give her a little more credit, and a little more space to grow on her own. It was a small reminder, but I realized I would need to treat her differently now that she was gaining a little confidence and a few Abilities to back up her actions. 

And I was excited to see where she would go in the future.

After that, Felix and I went to look at the records Sallia had found. The paper was a bit different from the message log we had found during our first trip to the Market, but it was very interesting in a different way. Instead of a chat between two friends, it seemed to be a message log from a mentor and his apprentice talking about the nature of the Market and the Multiverse.

Sel’thub: Edwin, I’ve noticed recently that your income for the past few lives has dropped. I try not to intrude too much into your life, because it’s best if you find your own way forward. However, may I ask if something is wrong? Are you confused about something? I know the Market can be overwhelming at first, and you’ve only had 4 lives to settle in so far, but if you need anything, please keep me informed. I brought you into the Market because I think you can succeed here.

Edwin: I struggled a lot in the last two worlds, honestly. They were… way harder than the first two worlds I was born on. The people and monsters were both much stronger. How do you deal with higher tier worlds?

Sel’thub: Ah, they were higher tier worlds? What Tier were they?

Edwin: The Market notification I got for the first one said it was a Tier 7 world, and the next was a Tier 8. What exactly does that even mean?

Sel’thub: I had forgotten to explain world tiers to you. 

Selthub: All right, so you know how there are twenty total Tiers for Skills and Abilities, right? You start with Basic as the weakest Skill or Ability, then go to Intermediate, then Advanced, Expert, Master, Heroic, and so on and so forth, all the way up to Law-9 Grade?

Edwin: Yeah. Why?

Sel’thub: Just like Abilities, Worlds have 20 Tiers, according to the standard Market Evaluation. Well, technically there are 21 Tiers: Tier 0 worlds, while rare, technically exist. Those worlds are usually just filled with cavemen on the brink of extinction from some random disease or an impending ice age or something, but they’re quite rare.

Selthub: Anyway, a world’s ‘Tier’ is an evaluation of how much mana and essence the world generates per second, usually tied to how large the dimension was at the time of its creation. This directly influences how powerful magic, and to some extent, the powerful creatures, of a world are, although sometimes world might favor one specific ‘overlord’ quite a bit more than you would expect if you only looked at raw mana quantity. But it’s still a good way to generally evaluate how strong a world is, at least when it comes to individual fighting ability, since it directly influences the Stats and Ability Grades of non-Transmigrators. A Tier 3 world, for example, might have soldiers with around Grade five and a half average Stats, and an Advanced Grade Skill or two as a normal member of an army, and the elite soldiers of a stronger nation might even have an Expert Grade Swordsmanship skill or something. While a Tier 1 world might not even have enough essence to support an ordinary spellcasting System, meaning whatever humanoids live there will be fairly weak. It’s worth keeping in mind that Tier can be deceptive sometimes, since people in Tier 1 worlds might still have gunpowder or something to make themselves quite a bit stronger, but you can be sure there won’t be much spellcasting happening there, at least.

Edwin: So the Tier 7 and Tier 8 World I landed in were pretty strong?

Selthub: Well, relative to your age, yes. Tier 7 and Tier 8 Worlds usually have a fair number of people with Heroic Grade skills running around, even if they aren’t exactly everywhere. And they’ll usually have a couple Epic Grade Skill-users too. Considering your current strength, that would be basically impossible for you to defeat unless you somehow got a spaceship and stuck it into one of your item slots while I wasn’t paying attention. Which would probably even the odds quite a bit, but spaceships with proper weapons systems that work in all dimensions are a nightmare to manufacture, and I doubt you have the money for one. No offence.

Edwin: If even a Tier 7 world was so difficult for me to succeed in, what does a Tier 20 world even look like?

Sel’thub: I’ve reincarnated in a Tier 20 world exactly once out of my one hundred and eighteen lives. By my best estimation, the mid-sized powerhouses of that dimension might have something like Law-2 or Law-3 Grade Abilities and Grade 80 or Grade 90. At least, their Essence-related Stats might be Grade 80 or 90. Physical and Mental Stats have a lot less variance, although some magic Systems can boost Stats. 

Sel’thub: Anyway, they were way beyond me. I have no clue what the bigshots of that world were like, because I was too much of a small fry to even see them. In those worlds, I strongly recommend you don’t try to get any Influence Achievement. It’s a lost cause unless you’re ridiculously strong. And I’ve been stuck on advancing my Legendary-Grade Abilities to Mythical for a long time now. I’ve given up, which is why I have enough Achievement to sponsor new members of the Market like you. I managed to eke out an okay existence in that lifetime, but it was… humbling.

Sel’thub: Anyway. The strength of a totally normal citizen usually doesn’t change too much from dimension to dimension, but how much people can achieve at their best can change drastically, especially based on how many types of Essence are available and the quantity of each essence the world generates. A world where Absorption essence is so thick it literally forms rainclouds and falls out of the sky is very different from a world where absorption essence is only formed in small quantities inside people’s bodies, for example.

Selthub: So don’t feel too bad that you got kicked around in a Tier 7 world. It’s normal to struggle a bit with higher tier worlds when you’re young, or if you can’t find a way to keep advancing your Abilities. Even I still occasionally get stomped by whatever world I land in. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the way of the universe.

Edwin: You also mentioned something about mana quantity. How does that tie into world Tier?

Sel’thub: Well, that goes into how dimensions are created. 

Sel’thub: You see, at the heart of the multiverse, as far as anyone can tell, there’s an absolutely massive glob of mana. It’s probably the size of several million dimensions stitched together. Most people call it the Heart of the Multiverse, since it seems to have infinite mana and keeps creating more and more dimensions every second. It has been doing so since the dawn of time, and while nobody is quite sure how the Heart of the Universe actually works, everyone who’s old enough and strong enough seems to agree that it’s there, even if getting close enough to directly observe it is impossible.

Sel’thub: Every second, several smaller globs of mana flake off from the center of the multiverse. These dimensions are initially too unstable to sustain life, and will usually destroy anything they touch. Even for someone like Eluxia who has multiple Abilities at Grade Law-9, she would die on contact with a freshly created dimension. However, as time passes, these dimensions start to stabilize, becoming proper dimensions, instead of just embryos. Of course, for every one dimension that successfully stabilizes, another thousand or so simply melt down into globs of volatile mana and unstable laws of reality. Powerhouses of the Multiverse sometimes use those as crafting materials, although that’s not the pointright now. As I was saying, the dimensional embryos that don’t explode eventually become proper, life supporting dimensions. But not all of them have the same amount of mana, just like no two dimensions have exactly the same laws of physics or systems of magic available. The ones with more mana tend to have stronger magic systems. In addition, the inhabitants of dimensions with more mana have higher maximum potential, since their bodies are built to handle more essence, and thus, by extension, more mana. 

Sel’thub: Luckily, dimensional embryos with more mana are also more volatile and prone to self-destructing before they stabilize. This makes higher Tier dimensions much more rare than low tier dimensions. Which is why most Transmigrator’s don’t see Tier 20 worlds very often. In higher tier worlds, most transmigrators get kicked around like they’re random nobodies from small villages. Being part of the Market is an incredible blessing, since it frees us from the fears and losses others experience upon death. But we also lose a fair bit of our natural potential within a single lifetime as a cost. It’s why we can never be born with more than 130 Stats in a single body without adding in Stats from our souls, and also why our Abilities can only be upgraded after our deaths, while non-Transmigrators sort of… accidentally upgrade their Abilities in the process of existing. Though, they use Skills, not Abilities, which is why they lose them from life to life. And also why they don’t need to deal with Glut Penalty. Being part of the Market is definitely worth it, since we don’t lose everything after death, but it does mean we take a lot longer to get strong.

Sel’thub: Of course, we also get to keep our potential and strength even in much lower tier worlds, as a benefit to being part of the Market. There’s nothing more fun than strolling around with Grade 30 Stats and Legendary-Grade Abilities in a Tier 1 world where even finding someone with Expert-Grade Skills is incredibly hard. Definitely a good way to relieve stress if you get a particularly bad reincarnation. At that point, you can pretty easily pass yourself off as a god and have some fun with the locals.

Edwin: I see. Why do higher Tier worlds give more Achievement for doing the same thing?

Sel’thub: Well, Achievement is, more or less, the ‘stuff’ all souls collect whenever they interact with the mana of their dimension. Of course, the Market helps us process this Achievement into a slightly more usable form, and the ‘Achievement’ refined by the Market can be traded without harming the soul, but all souls collect a slightly different form of Achievement in much the same way we do. And since Achievement is essentially dimensional gloop earned by interacting with the local dimensional laws and mana, worlds that had more mana at the time of their creation will naturally have more mana cycling in and out of existence for Transmigrators to snatch up. This means higher Tier worlds are more dangerous, but have better rewards as well.

Sel’thub: Anyway, I think that’s enough of a tangent for now. The point is, I wanted to know why your income had dropped recently. Getting unlucky and running into worlds that were too high Tier for you is a decent reason to have low income. Don’t worry about it. If you check your bank account, I’ve deposited an extra 500 Achievement for you to use as you see fit. Maybe throw a party and cheer yourself up. Find a nice girl or guy that fits your taste and take a few days off to relax, maybe. Or buy a few Stats or something. It’s important to keep up morale after getting a bad run. I’ll keep in touch with you if anything goes wrong, but I know you can succeed in the Market. You have the potential, you just need to keep pushing forward. I look forward to the day you advance your Keyword Abilities to Heroic Grade.

That was the end of the messages.

After reading the message log, I had a single thought.

We had a long road ahead of us. I tried to remember the System messages I had seen when we first reincarnated on the islands. It had been a long time ago, but… I seemed to recall a System message letting me know that we had reincarnated on a Tier 2 World? I had to wonder if our world was… typical of a Tier 2 world. I did get the feeling that the ocean our island had been in was… rather unique, so it might have been a bit higher Tier than the rest of the world. But even so, I couldn’t help but think about what I had learned.

There were, apparently, Tier 20 Worlds somewhere out there. I hoped that we didn’t end up on one of them for a long while, if Sel’thub’s messages about their power level were to be believed. But ultimately, I didn’t have any control over where we reincarnated, so I decided not to think about it. There wasn’t much I could do either way right now except hope for the best. And hope that our next world was weak enough that we could still succeed there.

As Felix and I read through the chat log, Sallia finished getting her Fortitude up to 10, meaning she would never have Grade 3 Fortitude again. Which meant we were done with this shop.

It was time for our final stop before reincarnating.

We had some items to find.

acaswell

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