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Chapter 415: Another Round of Upgrades - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2025-07-16 06:43:27 +0000 UTCIt took two hours for the strange gas to dissipate from within the mall. During that time, I spent a few hours dedicated to improving my att
It took two hours for the strange gas to dissipate from within the mall. During that time, I spent a few hours dedicated to improving my attunement, while my friends searched a few nearby shops. I didn’t manage to push my attunement to the next step, but I could feel how impactful even a few hours of dedicated concentration were. It really made me wonder if I could push my attunement all the way to master before we departed from the Market. A bigger part of me knew that the ease of pushing my skill further would drop as I closed in on the limits of my new Ability, but the sheer speed of my advancement, even with no dedicated training time, was intoxicating.
My friends didn’t find anything useful in the nearby shops while I trained. All they found was some Achievement. I didn’t ask for a share of the Achievement, since I hadn’t done anything to contribute to earning it. After they returned, the gas in the mall was cleared out, so it was time to finally explore the mall.
We paid careful attention to every single step we took, because killing the haunted dolls hadn’t made their traps disappear. I led the way, since I had {Trap Sense} to help me spot the remaining traps - but I was far from the only person qualified to spot traps. Due to his focus on crafting and items, Felix was also uniquely well suited to finding and disarming the traps that relied more on pure machinery than mixes of essence and metal.
The time it took just to navigate through the first few hallways was mind-boggling. Even more frustrating was the fact that, unlike when we fought monsters, we didn’t get a single point of Achievement for dealing with all of the traps we encountered. They existed purely to hinder us, and potentially kill us for a moment of carelessness. It took us an hour to pave a small, narrow path of safety through the mall, because both Felix and I were terrified of making a mistake and getting someone killed. Every time we finished disarming the traps in a certain area, we would go over it again, to see if there were any other traps that we had missed.
The haunted dolls had really gone all out in turning the mall into a nest of traps. There wasn’t a single meter of space that didn’t have some kind of nasty surprise attached to it, and most areas had two or three dangers inside of it. Every single step could result in the loss of a life, and a very dangerous situation, if we weren’t careful. Still, after over an hour of careful trap disarming, we reached the front of the shop selling soul fragments. Inside of the store, while there were still dozens of traps, it was far less packed than the hallways - perhaps because the larger and more open spaces of the store gave the haunted dolls less hidden areas to work with.
After Felix and I checked the entire route one more time, to make sure we hadn’t missed anything, Sallia and Anise finally made their way to the first shop, and I finally had a moment to check the interior of the shop.
Fortunately, the painstaking effort Felix and I had poured into reaching this shop was worth it. We beelined towards the shop selling soul fragments first, and when I saw what was inside, I nearly cackled in delight.
This shop wasn’t just selling fourth tier soul fragments.
It was selling fifth tier soul fragments as well!
I checked the prices… and winced.
A fourth tier soul fragment cost 200 Achievement each. A Fifth tier soul fragment cost 300 Achievement each. This was information we hadn’t had access to until now, and while the prices weren’t totally unexpected, they were certainly hefty. In total, there were 10 stats, and each stat would need 20 soul fragments to reach the next grade. In other words, it would take 40,000 Achievement to push all of my stats from Grade 3 to Grade 4, and another 60,000 to push all of my stats from Grade 4 to Grade 5. That was a massive chunk of Achievement, even though last world had gone very well.
Luckily, we were rich. If this had been any of the previous times we had returned to the Market, there was absolutely no way we could have afforded this. Even Felix would have struggled to afford a serious round of stat boosts, despite doing really well in our third world. Fortunately, last world had gone exceptionally well. As a result of the dimensional laws being intentionally built to favor transmigrators, coupled with the unique opportunities of our previous dimension, we had plenty of Achievement to burn. 100,000 Achievement was still expensive, but I could afford it.
My Achievement dropped from 241,828.75 to 141,828.75. My stats all increased by 40 each. In total, my lowest stats were now at 200. I had 100 stats from my body, 100 stats from my soul fragments, and my alteration and mental stats were also boosted by my new Attunement ability. My runes also gave me a boost to my physical and mental stats. The biggest improvement, however, was Glut.
My glut had originally been 155 after I boosted everything to grade three - but with another 40 soul fragments into each stat, I had gained 165 more glut penalty. In other words, I now had an incredibly hefty 320 total glut penalty - more than enough to go absolutely nuts buying new Abilities if I found suitable ones in the Market. I would also have plenty of room to spare for any other purchases we found worthwhile in the inner districts of the Market - and, more importantly, two grades of stats meant we would have a much easier time making our way into the area. My extinguishes, in particular, were almost entirely built off of the strength of my attunement and the size of my alteration essence pool - and both of those were in better shape than ever before.
My friends also went crazy with the new soul fragments, and boosted themselves to +100 in all of their stats. For Sallia and Anise, this dropped a big chunk of their remaining Achievement. Along with the small amount of Achievement my friends got from raiding nearby shops, Anise had about 70,000 remaining Achievement. Sallia had dropped to about 120,000. Both of them still had way more Achievement than we were used to having, but it was still a massive dent in their reserves.
Felix, of course, felt the least sting to his wallet - since he had already had +60 in all of his stats before returning to the Market, and he had earned the most last world, the dent in his wallet was far less significant than it was for me, Anise, and Sallia. In total, he dropped to about 360,000 Achievement - which was still a massive amount.
I also couldn’t help but notice just how expensive soul fragments were getting. The first round of soul fragments had cost 50 Achievement. The second round cost 80. Then 130, then 200, then 300. The next round of soul fragments would probably jump up by more than 100 Achievement per soul fragment. I could easily imagine the price jumping to 450, or perhaps even 500. If that was the case, Anise wouldn’t even be able to afford the next round of upgrades without borrowing some Achievement from Felix. I sighed.
If we still had some room left over after going for whatever upgrades existed in the inner district of the Market, it might be worth looking for the next tier of soul fragments. However, I suspected this was where our stats would stop for now - apart from maybe Felix, who would probably have Achievement to spare no matter what happened after this. I shrugged. We would see what made sense after we got our next round of purchases dealt with.
We spent a bit of time checking cash registers in the shop, and got a nice haul of about 10,000 Achievement. Divided four ways, that was 2,500 each, which pushed me from 141,828.75 to 144,328.75. After that, we turned to the next shop in the mall we wanted to hit. We had much higher raw stats than before, but there were still other ways to grow stronger.
It was time to hit up the item shops.
Author’s Note:
For those of you that don’t read my other story - I feel much better. Not really much to add to that? I feel fine now.
Join my Discord! (I’m at least sometimes active there, while I admit that I don’t generally check the comments section. I’m not very active anywhere, though - writers are antisocial people, okay!)
