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Chapter 338: Heroics - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2025-01-15 07:41:45 +0000 UTCWe spent the next few days searching the Market for an appropriate pool of reincarnation. We didn’t stop to raid shops anymore. We avoided monsters, because the rewards from a fight didn’t outweigh the danger of not finding the pool of reincarnation we needed. A unique guardian or two would give us a good chunk of Achievement, but it would also slow us down while we regenerated essence. A few hours spent regenerating essence might be the difference between a ‘perfect’ reincarnation pool and a basic one.
Unfortunately, for the first two days of searching, we couldn’t find anything. The other times we had been to the Market, it hadn’t taken us very long to at least find a basic pool of reincarnation. However, in this area, we couldn’t find anything at all. It was baffling - and also more than a little concerning.
By the third day, all four of us were tense and anxious. If we didn’t find any pool of reincarnation, we would be in a terrible position. We would waste a life dying and reincarnating in the Market, and lose an entire world of growth.
Luckily, halfway through the day, we finally saw something.
<I see a big advertisement that might be relevant to us,> said Felix, as he gazed towards the sky.
I glanced upwards, and felt some of the tension and anxiety drain out of my shoulders.
‘Thelimo’s street of pools! The one-stop shop for your next life!
Normally, finding an appropriate pool of reincarnation takes a lot of effort. You have to use your desired version of a search engine to look up all the reincarnation pools in your area, know what you want before you even set out, and then walk or take a teleporter to your destination. That cuts out half the fun of window shopping!
Here at Thelimo’s friendly corporation, we decided to put some of the fun back in shopping! We made a deal with all of the corporations in zone 11425-B to put all of the reincarnation pools on this street! Now accessible for only one hundred Achievement per entry!’
I had no idea how big zone 11425-B of this Nursery was, but at the very least, I now understood why we hadn’t seen any other pools of reincarnation.
Sitting right in front of the advertisement was a toll gate, with a little cash register for collecting Achievement from visitors. The toll gate itself had fallen apart over centuries of neglect. At this point, it was little more than scrap metal.
<Well, we finally found what we need,> said Sallia. I could hear a hint of relaxation in her mental voice.
We stepped over the rusted gate, and spent a moment checking the cash register to see if there was any Achievement to loot. Sadly, it was picked clean - some other group must have gotten to it first. Since there was nothing we could do about it, we moved on, and found ourselves in a large, enclosed street. In every direction, there were large, metal walls - build to keep visitors out, I assumed. The street itself had a few smaller shops lined up inside of it - they looked kind of like cheap gas-station shops, except that they sold last-minute soul fragments or Abilities that people might want. On the other side of the street, we saw our first pool of reincarnation.
The first pool that we saw strongly resembled the first pool of reincarnation we had ever used. It looked like a giant greek temple, and was guarded by a few dozen skeleton soldiers and mages. The sign floating above the building noted that this pool of reincarnation was a generic one - it wouldn’t change the outcome of where we landed at all. Without a word, the four of us ignored it. It wasn’t useful enough for us to use.
The second pool of reincarnation was only slightly better. It advertised that it would send us to a world where ‘the gender ratio of males to females is 1:100! The best place to vacation for a (male) transmigrator in need of a break! (World is guaranteed to be Tier 1, or your money back!)
Shockingly, the defenders for that building were even lower than the generic pool of reincarnation. Which told me everything I needed to know about how useful that pool of reincarnation was for us.
I saw Sallia roll her eyes at that one, and then give Felix a glare when he looked ever so slightly interested for a few seconds.
“I was just curious to know how that was biologically possible,” he said, shifting uneasily. “A population with such a ridiculous ratio of males to females should die out, right? I can’t think of how enough babies are born each year to compensate for the death rate that simple old age would cause.”
“Uh-huh.” Said Sallia, sounding extremely unimpressed. “I’m sure that’s the only thing you were interested in.”
Felix turned slightly red, and then cleared his throat awkwardly and shook his head. “Let’s keep going. These two clearly aren’t of interest to us, and I don’t think there’s any meaning in fighting off the security for either building.”
I also rolled my eyes, although unlike Sallia, I was trying not to laugh. We ignored the two buildings and kept moving - although we did start to notice that skeletal patrols were coming closer to us. We hadn’t needed to hide from any of them yet - but if the skeletons kept increasing in density, we would need to either start fighting or hiding soon.
The third pool of reincarnation we saw was a bit different. Unlike the first two, which were styled like greek temples, the third building was styled like a glamorous palace made of gold. It looked tacky. However, the guards in the building were far more dangerous than they had been for the first two buildings. I could see a few glowing red eyeballs peeking out of the corners of the building, with flickering bits of light and hunger inside of it. I had no idea what the creatures were, but they made my hair stand up. I didn’t feel like they were overwhelmingly powerful, but I felt like we would be in for a real fight if we went against them.
Sallia grimaced.
“Shame. If the world was focused on something different, I think it would have been useful for us,” she said.
I checked the billboard floating above the building.
‘The golden trade shop! Enter our pool of reincarnation, and we guarantee that you’ll be born as a noble in a world with technology approximately equivalent to the ‘iron age’ (see user manual for more details on exact tech parameters and limitations. Please keep in mind that some variation from one world to another is to be expected, but we can still guarantee a rough technology level. This pool will only consider landed nobles to be proper nobles, so customers don’t need to fear being born into a family of impoverished knights or anything like that!)’
“Huh,” I said. “I didn’t realize pools of reincarnation could get that specific.”
Felix nodded. “I have to say, I actually wouldn’t mind using this one at some point. Starting out as nobles in an iron age world would give us a lot of interesting potential. As long as it’s possible to do so, I could start some sort of technological revolution to harvest Achievement. It isn’t what we currently need, but it’s something to think about in the future. Besides, I wouldn’t mind being born as a noble. It would give us plenty of starting resources, and smooth out our childhood quite a bit.”
Sallia snorted. “Noble houses are less pretty than you think. If you end up as the firstborn child, or if your family had unusual inheritance laws that benefit you, you’ll have lots of potential. But you’ll also have a lot of limitations. Nobles are shackled by a lot of things in their surroundings - the standing of their noble house, prestige, income, neighboring nobles…” Sallia sighed, as she drifted into thought for a few moments. “In my first world, before I entered the Market, I often wished I was born as a commoner instead. I would have had less freedom, but I would have at least guaranteed that I could pursue my dreams in peace. Being born as a noble is both a blessing and a curse, and if we don’t have very specific plans and abilities, I wager it would be more of a curse than a boon for us.”
Felix nodded thoughtfully. “I didn’t think about that, I suppose.”
“Neither did I,” admitted Anise. “I always read about nobles in books, but they were usually portrayed as having pretty relaxed and glamorous lives. Then again, in our last world, nobles were a fading relic of a bygone era. I suppose it makes sense for people to make things up about them, since most countries didn’t have nobles anymore.”
Sallia shrugged. “Anyway. Let’s keep moving.”
The next two pools of reincarnation were also housed inside of greek-style temples, and advertised reincarnation conditions that didn’t interest our group. The first one guaranteed that we would reincarnate in a Tier 20 world. I had no idea why the heck someone had decided to open that pool of reincarnation in a nursery of all places. It was baffling. Would most people in this area just die the moment they reincarnated in a Tier 20 world?
I suppose, if it was very easy to buy lives back then, some newer members of the Market might be willing to waste a life just to satisfy their curiosity. At least, that was my best guess for why this pool of reincarnation existed at all. Either way, it was worthless for us.
The other pool of reincarnation advertised a guarantee that all four essences would be present at once. That was interesting, but all four of us had our primary magic systems set up already. Thus, having fewer magic systems in the world was more of a blessing than a curse - after all, any advantage we had over the natives would make it easier to get more influence Achievement.
The sixth temple was where things got interesting. It once again deviated from the Greek temple style of building, and instead had opted for creating a very small artificial island. At first, I thought the building just had a moat around it, but after a few moments of observation, I realized that the building wasn’t surrounded by a moat. The island it stood upon was literally floating on the water.
The reincarnation pool itself was less interesting - it advertised a Garden world that was in the ‘early galactic age.’ I had no idea what that even meant - I had never reincarnated in a world that had developed any real way to colonize other star systems. I certainly found the idea of a galactic civilization interesting - but it wasn’t really anything we needed right now. Perhaps some other time, seeing a real galactic civilization would have filled me with a sense of wonder and excitement, but we had other priorities.
The next pool of reincarnation was more interesting. On the outside, it didn’t look like much. All I could see was a dirty, rundown little cabin, surrounded by a few scraggly, artificial-looking trees. I couldn’t even see any skeletons, or other monsters hovering around the area to defend it. Initially, that made me wonder if the pool of reincarnation was useless - but the ad floating above it piqued my interest again.
‘A Garden world for someone who wants to be a hero!
Many garden worlds are oriented towards growing a specific set of abilities. They allow the user to focus on swordsmanship skills, or spatial magic, or science. However, few garden worlds have a full experience baked into their world!
This garden world sells a proper experience of being a ‘hero.’ (a variety of limitations and oddities may apply, see user manual for more details).
Note - this world is perpetually trapped in an era analogous to the bronze era, with a few differences. Since fire does not exist in this dimension, metalworking is not very prevalent. Some ways to create metal weapons still exist within the magic system, but metal weapons are far more expensive to create than in most worlds. This world is especially focused on a variety of magical skills, and it is built to make it easy to form ‘traditional mage’ skills. (See user manual for more details). Those who are less interested in these skills might wish to turn to other worlds for their next reincarnation.
I glanced at the rest of the street. There was only one other pool of reincarnation present, and it advertised a reincarnation in a world that was between Tier 2 and Tier 6 in strength. That was a useful pool of reincarnation, but it didn’t fit our needs anywhere near as well as this Garden world.
I turned towards my friends, and they shrugged.
This world might not fit our needs… but we could at least see if there was a remaining ‘user manual’ to give us more information. This world certainly seemed more useful than the other pools of reincarnation we had seen on this street, and time was running out.
Thus, the three of us started walking towards the dilapidated cabin.
Author’s Note:
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Comments
Irakli Jishkariani
Damn, it's a shame the can't go to system world. Maybe that's in inner district??
Moon Winchester
I don’t know how I feel about a garden world specialized in the heroes journey which I can already kind of understand what’s gonna be like. I can already see how ever pet Reaveley stuck heroes journey world would have deep insight into souls. I just don’t know how I feel about it. Since to me this seems like a world with a time limit on what they really need is a world with a lot of time.
