Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)
Chapter 342: Foxes and Elves

After seeing Anise roll back over, I smiled. I moved a little bit closer to her, and with some difficulty, managed to give her a nice hug. I checked Anise’s ears, and confirmed my suspicion. Anise had pointy ears, just like some of the other people I had glimpsed in my brief moments of consciousness. My limbs were still clumsy and awkward, so I had a hard time feeling my own ears, but I suspected I had the same ears as Anise.

Then, I wrapped my arms around my twin and settled back down. Anise clearly wasn’t awake yet, so I had probably rolled a higher Intelligence stat than her. I checked with the others, but nobody else seemed awake yet. Maybe I had woken up first this time?

I spent the rest of the day rebuilding my [Basic] grade attunement, so that I could use extinguish or healing spells at a moment’s notice. 

Seeing 500 Achievement for forming a basic grade attunement was a huge shock to me. I had never gotten so much Achievement just for taking the first step before. In our second world, where I had first gained my Alteration Ability, I recalled getting around 250 Achievement for reaching Basic-Grade attunement.

Was this the impact of reincarnating in a Garden world? If so, I could understand why people valued them so highly. This was double the Achievement I usually got, for the exact same amount of effort. And the biggest impact of a Garden world was making it easier to form certain types of Ability, a benefit I hadn’t even seen yet.

I felt myself start to smile as I realized just how beneficial this world could be for us. My first step alone had already brought me from 11,701 Achievement to 12,201. 

The next few days passed quietly. Even though I was pretty sure I was going to make portals my first ability rune, I still decided to give myself a few weeks to get a better feel for this world. I couldn’t undo an ability rune after I formed it, so I wanted to make absolutely sure I knew what I wanted before I jumped into rune formation. 

I also confirmed that none of the others were awake yet. If I tried to call out to Sallia, Anise, or Felix, I would get sleepy mumbling and murmuring from them - but nothing very coherent. It resembled sleep-talk more than real speech. Felix’s sentences sounded almost awake, so he was probably going to wake up soon.

I remembered that last world, we had confirmed that the [Intelligence] stat had some sort of role in how quickly we ‘woke up’ after reincarnating. The higher the Intelligence stat, the faster our brain grew and adapted to our existence as reincarnation, allowing us to start functioning again. Based on that, I imagined that Felix might even have the same Grade of Intelligence as me, with just a few less points. However, Sallia and Anise were still barely conscious. It would probably be several months before they truly woke up. They were probably one or two grades of Intelligence lower this time.

Apart from confirming the condition of my friends, I started to explore the house we lived in more and get to know more about my parents this time.

Just like I had first assumed, my family was at least reasonably well off. We weren’t living in the lap of luxury - we didn’t have servants, or anything else that screamed wealth. But we weren’t hurting for money, either. Anise and I were wearing new, clean clothes. My parents also had clean, tailored clothes that looked new. We had plenty of food to eat. My mother and father both looked well-groomed and well-fed. 

I also noticed a much more glaring inhuman feature, now that I had more mental acuity. My mother had two fuzzy ears on top of her head, and a large, fuzzy tail. She was a Kitsune, or at least strongly resembled them. She had thick, reddish hair and generous curves. She was gorgeous.

I had slightly tailored my physique to match my idea of ‘beauty’ over the past few lives - not to make myself outrageously beautiful, but certainly enough to look pretty. I enjoyed looking nice, as long as I still kept certain limits to it and avoided attracting too much attention. My mother easily surpassed every modification I had ever made to my face and body over the past few lives. I wasn’t sure if my mom was unusually attractive, or if that was the norm for this world, but my mom was definitely a looker.

My father was also rather handsome. He had pointy ears, like many other residents of the city, a trait that Anise and I had seemingly inherited. He had dark green hair, with a color that bordered on black but didn’t quite reach it. Despite having the ears of an ‘elf,’ his body was larger and sturdier than the stereotypical elf. He looked more like a male lead in a romance novel - he had thick but not grotesque muscles that were visible through his shirt, and a large, vibrant face.

He smiled a lot, and his laughter boomed through the house several times a day. Despite having the ears of an elf, he resembled a friendly giant more than anything else.

I also noticed that our house always smelled like bread. I hadn’t finished learning the language yet, but I was pretty sure my parents owned some kind of bakery. I had no idea how that was even possible, since I thought I remembered the advertisement in the Market claiming this world didn’t have fire. That confused me, but for now, I decided to wait until I had a better understanding of this world. However, the fact that we were probably living in a bakery made me smile sadly once I noticed it.

If Old Mo had been here, he would have loved seeing a bakery in an entirely different dimension. Unfortunately, he had returned to the ocean of souls decades ago, and unlike the four of us, he wasn’t part of the Market. In all likelihood, I would never see him again.

The final thing I noticed was our physical development. I was pretty sure I had woken up sometime between the ages of three and four. Despite our age, Anise and I looked very small and childlike - we strongly resembled human toddlers. Normally, I might have been worried - after all, there were all sorts of problems that could cause a child to grow more slowly. However, since both of my parents were clearly not human, and I also vaguely remembered people having lifespans of around 200 in our second world, I reserved judgement for now. It was possible we were entirely normal-sized for our age, at least when the parents were a fox-girl and an elf.

Apart from that, Anise and I were mostly left in our crib. Our mother came to check up on us every hour or two, and then paid more attention to us each night after they finished working - but we didn’t leave the building. Most of the time, we didn’t leave the room.

This made me more than a little curious about what the outside world looked like. I had vague memories of being outside before, but now that I was fully awake again, I was practically bursting with curiosity. 

Finally, a few days after I ‘awakened,’ my father picked me and Anise up, before nuzzling his head against both of us.

“It’s been a few days since you two had any $@#$ air, hasn’t it? How about we take a @#$@ ^$%? Your mom always ^%$% to keep you in the $^$% with the (* ^& ^&***, but it’s not good to spend so much *%& indoors.” The man smiled, and then carefully strapped both of us into some sort of… basket. It felt like a carrier for children, but it was woven entirely out of leaves and wood. I noticed that the leaves were far larger than I was used to - each leaf was nearly the size of a regular adult male’s torso, and they looked incredibly sturdy. My father planted a sloppy kiss on my head, then another on Anise’s head, and then fasted us to the little basket using a few strings of plant fiber. Then, my father led us down the stairs and into another, much larger room.

At the bottom of the stairs, just as I had suspected, there was a bakery - but an incredibly odd one.

The smell of bread, spices, and other add-ons for bread permeated every single corner of the kitchen. Sacks of flour, salt, and to my surprise, sugar were laid out everywhere. I had thought sugar would be rare in this world, but clearly, I had been thinking too much. Sugar was as plentiful as salt, and both were available by the sack, even though this world was supposed to be stuck in some weird mixture of the bronze age and the stone age. However, not a single oven was present in the kitchen. Or at least, nothing that I recognized as an oven.

Instead, in the corner of the room, there were several giant crystal boxes that were filled with light. Somehow, the light was just… sitting in the box. It wasn’t moving around, the way light was supposed to, and it wasn’t… doing anything. Even more bizarre, somehow, I could see a faint, residual glow seeping into the rest of the room from the beams of light. I realized that I had seen something similar in our room before - the room Anise and I shared had little jars of light and heat that were attached to the corners of the room. However, it was only now that I realized a fundamental truth - these jars weren’t some sort of magic device, or anything of the sort. They were literally vessels to contain light - which seemed somehow tied to heat in this dimension.

I had no idea what I was looking at, but I was aware of one thing. My brain hurt.

The physics of this world were already wildly different from what I was used to. Even the ring-shaped world had been downright normal compared to this one.

Heedless of my confusion, I saw my mother, humming a song as she quietly took a stone tray, tossed five loaves of bread on top of it, and then crammed it into one of the light containing-cubes. A few seconds later, the smell of baking bread started to emanate from the oven.

“Be careful, dear! Don’t burn your *@*(!” said my father.

My mother turned towards him, before she rolled her eyes and nodded. “Yeah yeah, I’m being *#&$#. They have so many safety #*(&#$ added to them that #*%&#*$ myself is nearly #(%*#$ anyway.” A dinging sound rang through the kitchen, dragging my mother’s attention towards one of the other cubes of light. “Looks like that one is done. Could you deliver *@#(% to @#$* %$%$*? Her loaf of bread is ready,” she said.

“Of course. Love you dear!” my father said. He moved over to my mother and gave her a quick peck on the forehead. My mother giggled, and gave my father a quick return peck before my father moved away. He smiled, and moved to the dinging cube of light.

My father grabbed a glove that looked like it was made of literally darkness, slid it over his hands, and then reached into the bowl of light. A moment later, he pulled out a tray with five more loaves of bread. These ones looked like they had chocolate inside of them, which made me rather happy. This world looked like it had chocolate in it! The loaves of bread also smelled heavenly.

My father carefully set the tray down, before he pulled away one of the loaves of bread - and I realized the loaf of bread was literally glowing. My father, who saw nothing wrong with this, wrapped it in a bag, before he picked up the basket-carrier with Anise and I in it, and walked out of the kitchen. Just outside, I saw an older lady with a pair of elven ears, waiting patiently as she sat in a chair near the entrance. I quickly scanned the rest of the room, and realized this was some sort of mixed dining room and waiting area. My father smiled at the customer, and handed over the loaf of bread. The lady smiled, handed my father a few tokens, and then left.

My father looked around, then raised his voice to a yell.

“Taking Miria and Anise out for some #%*& #*$! We’ll be back in a bit!”

“Okay!” yelled my mother.

My father hefted the basket again, and then strode towards the doorway.

I grinned. It was finally time to get my first proper look at the city or village we lived in.