Markets and Multiverses

After leaving ‘The Drunken Worldwalker,’ it took us a few hours to find an item shop that suited our needs. Just like when we had found a shop to purchase Stats from, we ignored shops that looked like they were too wealthy, for fear of encountering defenders we couldn’t defeat yet. However, any of the shops that looked like they had been rundown even before getting melted during the collapse of the Market were fair game. Our goal was to find a shop or two that looked like they had a decent stock of items left, but one that wouldn’t be too high class or have strong defenders.

Eventually, we found a shop that fit our needs. This one was named ‘Basic Items for New Transmigrators.’

The three of us strode inside, and quickly dealt with the nine skeletons inside. They weren’t anything special, so the three of us carefully controlled how many each of us killed so that everyone got the next skeleton kill reward, and snuck in an assist each as well.

Slaughter: Kill a skeletal foot soldier for the fifth time

Slaughter: Assist in killing a skeletal foot soldier for the first time

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

Achievement +60, +2 Achievement +0.01

62 Achievement wasn’t much, but it was something. It brought my Achievement total back to 210. I couldn’t help but wonder how much Achievement each Tier 2 Soul Fragment would cost. I knew the cost increased every single tier, but thus far, we didn’t know how much the cost increased by. Which made planning for the aftermath of our next life difficult.

The shop we had taken over still had physical items lying around, which made me happy. I had been half-convinced the shop would be looted of items, the way many of the other weaker shops had been. However, we found a good item stash during our first try.Several of the shelves were filled with strange looking items, and one entire wall was filled with Friendship bracelets. Finally, near the front of the store, 3 ‘high quality’ Items were stored, which looked significantly nicer than the rest of the things sold in the store.

I almost dismissed the friendship bracelets as unimportant, since the three of us already had one and I wanted to get to other items. However, I noticed something rather interesting about these friendship bracelets before I stopped examining them.

Some of the friendship bracelets had decorations on them. This was a rather different design from the friendship bracelets the three of us were currently wearing. The bracelets we currently had were rather simple loops of wooden twine. However, the bracelets I was currently looking at were made of metal, and had small decorations engraved on them.

Perhaps they were upgraded Friendship bracelets? We were currently wearing {Simple Friendship Bracelets}. Since they had the term ‘simple’ in their names, there must be other versions available somewhere in the Market.

I picked one up and inspected it.

Item: Simple Friendship Bracelet With Location Tracking

Effects: Allows you to designate other people who have a FriendshipCorp bracelet as your ‘friend.’ Upon reincarnation, you will always be born in the same dimension as your friends, in fairly close geographical proximity to each other.

You will be able to sense the rough direction your friends are relative to you.

This item is ‘regenerating,’ and will be reconstructed every time you return to the Market. Note that this process activates automatically whenever a life is spent, and only works if this item is equipped to an item slot.

Maintenance cost - 1.8 Achievement per reconstruction.

I didn’t hesitate at all before I swapped out my first friendship bracelet for the new one. Being able to tell where the others were would be helpful. It hadn’t been a problem on the islands, where our parents had introduced us to each other as a way to help us make friends when we were young, but if we ended up reincarnating in a big city it might be hard to track down where Sallia and Felix had been born. In the worst case scenario, we might end up not even seeing each other for years as we wandered around the city, trying to figure out where the others were. I shivered at the thought.

This wasn’t a problem I had considered before, but now that I saw the location tracking bracelet, the potential problem seemed blindingly obvious. I quickly inspected the rest of the friendship bracelets, and found that they were either location-tracking or simple bracelets. The location tracking bracelets were, supposed to be sold for 100 Achievement each, and the simple bracelets were to be sold for 40 Achievement each.

I couldn’t help but wonder why the simple version of the friendship bracelet was sold at all. Without location tracking, wasn’t it a huge risk to use the simple version? One might get stuck for an entire lifetime without their friends. Which sounded unbearable. Without my friends I would go nuts within a few lifetimes, since every other connection I could make with others would disappear every time I died. I would have no permanent bonds, no family to travel the nigh-infinite multiverse with. I shuddered in horror as the sheer awfulness of the idea wormed its way into my mind.

What was the idea here? Sell the simple version to new transmigrators and just have them cross their fingers and hope for the best, and then dangle the prospect of no longer being alone in front of their faces and make them work for it? I actually felt ill at the idea. A life where I couldn’t find Sallia and Felix would have been awful.

I shivered, before turning my attention back to the rest of the low-quality items in the shop. I needed something to take my mind off of the idea of wandering alone in a foreign world without my closest friends for decades, before dying alone wondering where my friends were…

My enthusiasm for checking out the new and weird items in the shop had dimmed a lot. I felt depressed now, even though the three of us had gotten lucky and been reincarnated in a fairly small village last life. Thankfully, we were safe from the awful fate of being alone now. 

I quickly made Sallia and Felix swap out their own bracelets and register each other with the new bracelets before we continued searching the shop. A few more minutes passed as we rifled through the shop counters. I was the only one that seemed horrified by the discovery of the location-tracking bracelets, though I wondered if Sallia and Felix simply hadn’t pondered the implications of their existence.

“Miria, take a look at these!” said Sallia, as I wandered through my thoughts and mindlessly rummaged through rubble in search of items.

I quickly made my way to Sallia’s side, where I saw a large row of wooden swords. They had each cost 200 Achievement when the shop still sold items.

Item: Two-Purpose Training Sword

Effects: 

This item has two modes.

If this sword is SHEATHED, it will be much harder to swing, applying a significant penalty to your physical Stats. 

In exchange, it will be much easier to train the Swordsmanship Skill, improving your growth rate by a moderate amount.

While unsheathed, the sword will instead increase your Perception by 5 and function like a regular blade.

Note: Training Effect will diminish greatly for Swordsmanship Skills at or above Expert Grade.

This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.

Maintenance cost - 7.2 Achievement per life

I felt a little more distracted now. This item was perfect for Sallia, and it would be pretty useful for me as well. Items that made it easier to train were quite useful, and this one was apparently useful up to Expert Grade. And having a sword that we could materialize and dematerialize at will would make acquiring and transporting weapons much easier in our next life, if we didn’t have better weapons.

I eagerly equipped the item into one of my four remaining item slots, and Felix eventually grabbed one of the other training weapons that lay nearby - a training bow with very similar functions. Unlike the swords, this one had two kinds of arrow; training arrows and ‘actual’ arrows. It also came with a self-replenishing quiver, although one would need to wait 24 hours for the used arrows to replenish. 

When I gave Felix a curious look, he shrugged.

“Archery doesn’t seem that great in the Market, since we run into skeletons, and trying to shoot them with a bow doesn’t seem that productive. But in each life, odds are that we’ll instead run into more fleshy enemies. I don’t like fighting much, but Archery is more tolerable to me. If I get the drop on an enemy, I can attack it without it being able to attack me back. And you two are starting to specialize more in close combat, so I figure I should make sure we have some diversity, especially if we’re planning on working harder to stick together during dangerous stunts in our next life,” he said.

I grinned as we returned to our ‘shopping.’

Another section of the cramped store was devoted to various clothes and armor, and also contained two of the three display items. 

One of the three display items was a simple-seeming monocle. I took a look at the price tag, since I was curious to know what it would have been worth if the Market was still intact. It cost 1000 Achievement. 

It enhanced the Perception of the user by 1 Grade, and also gave the user access to a rather specialized Ability that helped them analyze how to copy items that they were looking at. It was basically the perfect item for getting started as a craftsmen, since it helped one emulate the work of others and also helped them see problems in their own work as they got started.

Naturall, Sallia and I immediately gave it to Felix after we read the item description. It was perfect for him. 

I got the other display item.

Item: Lake-Gazer’s Dress

Effects: Contained within this Dress is a small lake. It is both a dress and a lake at the same time, and can freely change between the two. However, at the root of its nature, it is both and neither.

Self-cleaning.

This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.

Maintenance cost - 22.8 Achievement per life

The dress was… interesting. Once I had equipped the dress, I realized it had two ‘states’ it could exist in. One was that of completely ordinary cloth, and the other was that of a small lake, wrapped around my body. However, it was fundamentally a ‘lake’ even when it was in ‘cloth’ form. It was sort of like someone had taken a literal lake, compressed it into a dress shape using dimensional magic, and then given the ‘edges’ of the lake the ability to change into cloth.

This had two uses.

First, the dress was incredibly resilient against damage, and was more effective than most armor at protecting its user. As a test, Sallia tried stabbing it with her actual sword, and the sword simply ended up stabbing into whatever dimension the ‘lake’ part of the dress was stored in. Even if she buried her sword elbow-deep in the dress, the tip of her sword didn’t poke through the fabric, making it look like Sallia had gotten stuck halfway inside of a portal or something. I suspected that the dress would defend against most melee attacks, and would do a good job of stopping weaker ranged attacks as well.

Sadly, after we realized how ‘dimensional’ the dress was, we tried storing other stuff inside of it, but apparently it could only store water.

The second use of the dress was the fact that it partially triggered my Ocean keyword for my {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} Ability. The keyword wasn’t fully activated, probably since the dress was a lake and not an ocean, but it did still work at partial efficiency. In other words, while wearing it I was continuously touching water and partially triggering my Ocean Ability, which would make it much easier to form runes in future worlds.

This sold me on the dress, more than anything else.

The dress could also shapeshift, at least to a limited degree. If I wanted it to become longer or shorter, it would do so, and it could even change color as long as it was some shade of blue or black. I could add in decorations and frills, or remove them if I concentrated on what shape I wanted the dress to become for a few minutes while touching the dress. However, it had certain limitations on how much its shape could change. The dress’s original form was a sort of one-piece dress that covered my shoulders, but not my arms, and cut off at about my knees. I could get the dress to extend a little bit, but it wouldn’t be enough to cover my entire body at once, meaning I would always have a few vulnerable bits of my body sticking out, especially my arms, legs, neck, and head. However, the dress did look quite nice, so I could probably wear it to most noble courts as long as one-piece dresses weren’t totally different from the local fashion. If it was only a little bit different, I could just get the dress to shapeshift a little. I did wonder if the dress would at least resize itself based on my age; it would be rather awkward if I was four years old and the dress was still sized for a 20-year old.

Sallia and Felix got more normal sets of armor instead. They were made of metal, covered their entire body, and also increased Fortitude by 20 while worn. In addition, Sallia got a set of weighted training clothes with a similar effect to the Training sword we had seen earlier, except it also counted as a ‘special resource’ that help one train their strength and dexterity by up to 1 Grade before it stopped being useful.

The final ‘highest quality in the shop’ item was given to Sallia. It had a rather… interesting effect.

Item: Bowl of Ramen

Effects: 

Every day, this bowl will refill itself with a reasonably nutritious bowl of soup, noodles, and some other ingredients.

Eating all of the food in this bowl will give you some amount of improved Stats, spread across physical and mental Stats. (Note; it takes multiple meals to gain one Stat. This item has diminishing returns the more it is used within a given lifetime, and cannot improve your Stats more than one Grade.

Soup’s flavor can be changed at will, and is fairly high in calories and nutrients. Cannot entirely meet food needs for one day if one intends to be very physically active, but meets most of that need.

Bowl is also incredibly sturdy. Can be used as a shield in a pinch!

This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.

Maintenance cost - 14.1 Achievement per life

I had to wonder who in the world was bored enough to create this item. And why in the world they had done it. But apparently, Sallia was now going to be carting around a magic ramen bowl that could permanently increase her stats, give her emergency provisions, and could function as a shield in an emergency. Apparently.

The Market’s items were sometimes quite… unusual. But at least the item seemed useful, even if it was incredibly weird.

Finally, we found a set of backpacks. These were nothing too exciting, but would definitely be useful if we needed to carry stuff around in the future.

Item: Storage Pack

Effects: 

Significantly larger on the inside than the outside. Has 5 cubic meters of dimensional storage inside.

This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.

Maintenance cost - 2.3 Achievement per life

This just seemed useful to have in general, I took one. While we hadn’t had to travel around too much during our time in the islands, in future lives, we were planning to do things that seemed risky, but had high rewards. The risky but rewarding opportunities might be located right next to our home, the way the ocean had been right next to the islands, but that was unlikely. So having a dimensional backpack to carry stuff around would make keeping our supplies set up. I was the only one that took one because we figured one dimensional storage was probably enough for shorter trips.

For Felix and I’s final item, we ended up grabbing two pairs of nice, sturdy boots.

Item: Sturdy Boots

Effects: 

Keeps your feet protected. While feeling comfortable, they are as resistant to damage as decent-quality iron, and also offer some insulation against magical and weather-related effects.

Note: Should be effectively able to let you stand in a pool of weak acid forever without harming your feet. However, stronger acids, as well as other environmental factors such as lava, will likely melt the boots within a few seconds. Be cautious.

This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.

Maintenance cost - 1.1 Achievement per life

The protection against things like acid and lava probably wouldn’t be incredibly relevant to us, but it was nice to have if it did come up. It was the only other useful-seeming item we could find in the shop, and so Felix and I decided to equip it to our final item slot. There was no use in leaving it empty, after all. And if we were planning on potentially traveling a lot next life, having a pair of nice boots definitely wouldn’t hurt.

With that, all five of us had items picked out for the next world. I figured it was a good enough set of items to see us through our next life with much less difficulty and much greater convenience than our first lives. Except for the three high-quality items, I couldn’t say that the rest of the items were terribly exciting, but they were at least useful. I decided to consider the higher-quality items in the shop examples of what the Market could do when it really tried to make nice items, while the rest was mostly junk for weaker Transmigrators.

Finally, we looted 22 Achievement each from the cash register of the shop, bringing my total from 210 to 232. 

After that, we headed back into the Market to look for a place to reincarnate. We had a little less than a month before our bodies started to deteriorate, but there was a decent chance the next reincarnation spot would be defended, and we wanted to have as much time as possible to deal with the guards there. 

After dealing with whatever blocked the next reincarnation spot, it was time to start a new journey.

 

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