We retreated to the front room of the body creation shop, before we found some seats and started talking. We had to do a bit of planning. After some discussion, we had a good idea what we needed to do next.
Our first priority simple. We needed to gather more power. That probably meant tearing through the other buildings of this inner district, killing off any monsters we found, and buying whatever we could find that improved our combat strength.
We also needed to gather information, if possible - specifically, whether the enemy had somehow destroyed the facilities for creating more lives. Even if it seemed unlikely, that was the outcome we most needed to be wary of - because if so, we needed to prepare a lot more time for Felix to research the construction methods for those facilities. If the way to create more lives was destroyed, Felix would become our one and only hope for preserving our existence. But Felix wasn’t a miracle worker, and he would need time.
Besides that, there was a little more information to sort through. We had learned about yet another powerful multiverse-level faction known as The Isles. I had no idea whether they were hostile towards us, or friendly towards us. They might have been one of the factions that attacked the Market - or they might have been neutral bystanders. We had no way of knowing yet.
Of course, that only mattered if we actually became survivors from the Market. Until we successfully acquired more lives, any plans for the future were moot. Multiverse level factions probably wouldn’t even care that we existed, because it didn’t seem like other souls that had been inducted into the Market after its collapse had survived. All of them seemed to have met their end - or at the very least, we had seen no evidence of powerful new reincarnation walking around.
After that, Anise brought up a potential relevant new threat while we were discussing and brainstorming.
“If the containers for more lives are intact, perhaps we should be cautious of them being tampered with somehow,” said Sallia. “If I were the enemy, and I had no good way to destroy the production facilities for more lives, I would instead try to find some way to tamper with it. Some hidden way to screw over any transmigrator that actually pushes past the guardian. A recording device placed somewhere else in the room and alerts someone whenever the guardian is defeated, or some other deadly trap that springs when someone tries to buy more lives.”
I paused, and felt a twinge of discomfort. Sallia’s words were actually quite plausible. There had to be a reason why either zero transmigrators or very few transmigrators seemed to survive past five worlds. The guardian probably made up a large part of that reason - but there was every chance that there were other traps lying in our future. I sighed.
“Either way, we don’t have much of a choice now, or much information to go off of,” said Kexley. “We’ll just have to speed up our actions and plans, and hope that we survive.”
“Unfortunately, I think you’re correct,” said Felix. “Still, I’d like to spend some time examining the tickets that allow us to attach other people to the Market, when we get some time. I think it would be a good way to study how the Market’s underlying mechanisms work. Who knows? Perhaps it will help me notice any traps tied to the machine itself.”
“That sounds like a good idea. Let’s build up some more strength first, though,” said Valeksi. “I’d like it if fights were a bit easier, before we worry about a trap that may or may not exist and will be sprung two years into the future.”
The six of us spent a few more minutes discussing future plans, before finally, we agreed with Valeksi. Building up strength came first, by finding new abilities and new types of shop in the inner district. Then we would get some tickets, and we would make more plans after that.
After we finalized our plans, we added Valeksi and Kexley to our communication bracelets, since we realized we hadn’t done so yet. Then, we left the shop and started moving towards other parts of the inner district. I wasn’t quite sure what other opportunities even existed in the inner districts of the Market, because so many of our trips into the inner districts had been cut short by other threats. So right now, the most useful thing we could do was move around and take in the sights around us as we searched for something useful for our growth.
The next two shops we found were, unfortunately, useless.
The first one, at first glance, appeared to be a shop dedicated to selling unique and powerful items - which got our hopes up.
Those hopes lasted about five seconds after entering, before we realized there was nothing at all inside. Every single shelf was completely empty. The wells that usually held achievement in other shops were bone dry. Transmigrators hadn’t just looted this place - they had swarmed it like locusts and taken every single scrap away. There was nothing left to see here.
The second shop, also an item shop, was much the same. There was nothing at all inside. There weren’t even any monsters to defend the facility, because whatever sense the monsters used to detect important, unprotected areas had deemed this store utterly useless.
After two disappointments in a row, we had much lower expectations for the inner districts of the Market. Anything that wasn’t a production-based facility was probably long gone by now. Fortunately, after a few more minutes of travel, we found another shop that seemed promising.
“Calistia’s Celestia Star Shop?” asked Anise, as she read the signboard above the building. “Selling Stellar Abilities for Astral Mages?”
“Are one of you an astral mage?” asked Valeksi.
“I might be?” said Anise. “My spellcasting system has some relationship with stars, and I think astral magic is related to stars as well. But my ability has also evolved multiple times, and I also have no idea what this store considers ‘astral’ magic.”
“It might be worth checking out,” said Sallia. “At the very least, it might have some useful non-keyword abilities we can buy and use. Much better than the last two shops, at least.”
“True,” said Valeksi. “At this point, I almost find myself wondering whether we’d be better off hitting up some more stores in the outer district first. I would love to be proven wrong, though.”
Kexley nodded sagely. “I personally think we should check single shop we come across, as long as the guardian inside isn’t too dangerous. We might come across something our predecessors have already taken away, even if the odds seem low.”
“All right,” said Valeksi, after a few moments of thought. “I guess that makes enough sense. In that case, we should -”
His words cut off as I felt a gargantuan shudder beneath our feet. It felt almost like a miniature earthquake - which was absurd, because we had never experienced an earthquake in the market. Something trembled in my conceptual vision.
A near mindless, creeping dread tore through my mind, and I spun towards the moving concept. It was faint, but I got the feeling that something was stirring. It was watching us - and now, it was angry. It was aware of us. And it was massive.
I yelled, before I transmitted an image of what I was seeing with my conceptual vision to everyone.
Everyone fell silent at once, as the nameless, twitching tremors beneath our feet started to expand - almost as if something was about to break free. Then, the tremors quieted down - but I felt the sense of something locking onto us. Like a chain, or a curse snapping into place. I felt a twinge of danger, and through my conceptual vision, I saw something tear out of reality and spring towards us. It looked like a giant rope.
I reached into my eldritch half, and did my best to bat it away. Fortunately, the conceptual rope wasn’t very powerful - it was surprisingly easy to fend off, once I recognized it for what it was. At least, as far as the action of fighting it off. However, the strain on my alteration essence pool was immense. In a fraction of a second, nearly a tenth of my essence pool had evaporated.
I took a closer look at the conceptual rope. It was some kind of mixture of the concept of tracking and hunting. I couldn’t infer exactly what it did - but I strongly suspected that anything touched by the rope would be hunted by something deeper in the Market.
The rope twitched, and the concept of hunting and tracking seemed to coil towards us again, like a serpent preparing for another strike.
I yelled into the communication bracelet. I didn’t even understand what the concept was doing - how it was locking on to us, or exactly what would happen if it touched us. But I knew it was bad news.
A moment later, I heard something large and loud break something from inside of Celestia’s Celestial Star Shop. It roared at us from inside, like a fervent fanatic howling to a nameless god. I glanced at the rope again. It hadn’t touched us, but I could still feel it emanating something. And that something, apparently, alerted the other monsters near us that something interesting was here.
Our group took one look at each other, and started to run for our lives.
Author’s Note:
On July 6th, I will be getting surgery (again). It’s the exact same surgery as last time, just for a different area of my gums (they can only do a certain area at a time, basically, so this process is broken into three parts. This is part two.) I expect that this will probably interrupt 1-2 chapter releases for the week, meaning I will (probably?) release 1-2 chapters for the week. In general, I try to schedule things like this for Fridays, because on Fridays I mostly do stuff that doesn’t immediately impact readers (editing for ebook releases, for example), and so it doesn’t really mess with my weekly schedule much. Mondays are… a lot tougher, because I also do rough drafts for Markets chapters, so missing a day of that really hurts. I also may be semiconscious for most of the next day, depending on pain levels. Normally, I have a weekend to recover before I need to start getting chapters ready for release if I have a big, disruptive event like this happening. Blech.
Anyway, expect 1-2 chapters next week instead of the usual 3.
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