Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)
Chapter 343: Children of the Leaves

The first thing I saw when we set foot outside of home was the tree. It was so massive that it dominated everything. The sky was nearly covered in leaves. The branches of the tree blotted out the rest of the sky, making it nearly impossible to tell what lay beyond its leaves. Water constantly fell from its lowermost leaves, single-handedly creating rivers and lakes where the water fell. The tree was everything.

My father, who was still gently holding the basket, smiled as he noticed my interest.

“Do you see that, Miria? That’s @#*$&, the *%(&#$ of our world. All water and warmth comes from %*&$ and the #*$%&$#.” Then, my father rubbed the top of my head, before he turned towards Anise. Anise, unlike me, wasn’t awake yet, so he laughed, and gently tapped her nose. “Are you also *#(&%#$, little Anise?” Anise gurgled, and my father laughed.

I blinked again, this time in awe. I had no idea whether this tree was naturally a part of this world, or whether the Market had added it in later. Regardless, this tree was like nothing I had ever seen before. I giggled happily. We had come to this world to grow stronger, but I was also glad we had come to this world for a different reason, now. Seeing amazing and wondrous sights like this was one of the things that made each life exciting.

My father started walking again, finally tearing my view away from the massive, towering spire of wood and leaves. I took that as an opportunity to look around the city. This was my first time being fully conscious while I was awake, and I was determined to gather as much information as I could.

I quickly noticed that the city had several species living in it. My father was an elf, and my mother was some sort of fox-woman. However, there were a lot of other species living here as well. I saw a well-dressed orange and grey insect man chatting with a short, childish-looking woman that I almost mistook for a child at first. There were a few other people who had four eyes, or one eye, and even a few people with green skin and tall, muscular physiques.

However, while there were plenty of species in the city, two species were especially prominent. One species, like my mother, had fox tails and ears. The men and women looked especially attractive, with model-like good looks and varied quantities of tails. The highest number of tails I saw was three, but I suspected there might be fox-people with more.

The other prominent species was a group of people were those like my father - people with pointed ears and earthy, deep hair colors. Unlike my father, most of them had more slender, willowy physiques - but there was plenty of variation from person to person.

Together, elves and fox people probably made up 80% of the population, at least in this district of the city. I wasn’t sure if that was representative of the rest of the city we lived in, but I suspected that Elves and fox people might be the two biggest species in this population.

The other thing I noticed about people’s bodies was that everyone, without exception, was stunningly attractive. The people with green skin and muscular physiques had bodies like one might find in a statue of a mythological hero. They had handsome, sharp faces and admirable bodies. The elven men were handsome and slender, and the elven women were slender and curvy. No matter where I looked, the only people I saw that didn’t look attractive were the few ‘bug-people’ - and even then, I suspected that was more a matter of preference. From a certain angle, even they didn’t look too bad - they just didn’t match my aesthetic preferences very well.

I could already feel some of the artificial nature of this world, just through that. How in the world could everyone be attractive in a normal world? Obviously, the people who managed this ‘Garden’ world must have done something to make people more attractive in this world.

I also realized that my mother was not exceptionally attractive, at least by this world’s standards. She was basically average. If anything, the rest of my friends and I might end up being a bit below average by this world’s standards, since we had invested far less energy into making ourselves look ‘perfect’ than the designers of this world.

The other thing I noticed was the tools. People walked around with a variety of stone tools - however, these stones weren’t ones that I was used to. Some of the stones were pure black or green in color, and many of them were shaped almost as exquisitely as proper metal tools. I wondered if this world had advanced down some sort of stone-technology path. Rather than learning to make different kinds of metal tools, perhaps the people of this world focused on different kinds of stone?

Not everyone carried around tools, though. Plenty of people were instead carrying around weapons - mostly bows. I had kind of expected that from the elves - after all, elves were associated with archery in most stereotypes. However, out of every three weapons I saw on the street, two of them were bows, regardless of the species. I frowned.

This many people being armed didn’t seem normal. Perhaps this world was more dangerous than I had thought. I swapped to soul sight for a moment, and gave our surroundings another scan, just to see if I could detect any lurking threats. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything dangerous - the only unusual thing I noticed was that each leaf of the giant tree seemed to have a soul. I found that interesting, but not particularly relevant right now.

I gurgled at my father, and then frowned. I had actually been trying to do some basic baby-talk, but my throat was less developed than I thought. I had a hard time making proper word sounds.

“Do you #*$&$#, Miria? I don’t think it’s a good time yet. Wait until you’re a little older,” said my father. I wondered what he thought I had been trying to say, before I mentally sighed.

I had originally wanted to say ‘bow’ and see how my father responded, but I would just have to wait a while longer. Hopefully I could get a better idea why so many people were walking around with weapons before some crazy danger popped out and killed us all.

My father continued walking forward at a steady, measured pace. I continued to look at the city, but I didn’t see anything new that caught my eye. We moved past buildings made of stone and wood. True to the Market’s introduction, I didn’t see any metal in the city. Instead, I just saw more wood and stone.

After a few minutes of walking, I felt something moving in the distance. It felt like someone was moving essence around. I giggled as loudly as I could, to attract my father’s attention, and then, with some difficulty, managed to maneuver my head so that I was looking in the direction of the essence manipulation.

My father stopped, and frowned, before he laughed.

“Do you want to go in that #(*$@# , Miria? That’s fine, we don’t have any real %#(*$,” he said. “We can take a #(%*)#$ if you want.” He frowned. “I hear there’s a #%(*#$ in #*(%&#$ today.”

My father started making his way towards the source of unusual essence manipulation, while I tried to quell my excitement. Was I about to see what magic looked like in this world? I had to admit, I was incredibly curious. This was a Garden world. I would be shocked if the magic system here wasn’t tailored to be appealing to Market users. What did an ‘amazing’ magic System look like?

After turning past a few street signs, my father ended up in the middle of a crowd of other people, many of whom were standing around. The crowd felt charged with energy, as if they were gawkers in the middle of the street.

In the center of the crowd, there was a row of ruined houses. I couldn’t tell what had happened to them - it looked as if they had been hit by giant fireballs, before a dragon had sat on them. Had there been some sort of monster attack here? That would explain why the members of the city were all armed. The idea made me nervous. If the city was constantly under threat of monster attacks, that would put us in far more danger than originally anticipated.

However, the existence of monsters wasn’t entirely a bad thing, either. I didn’t like fighting people very much - last world had taught me that. I constantly felt like I had to make sure I was doing the right thing. I needed to understand why both sides of a war were fighting, who I felt was ‘right,’ and then avoid hurting people I felt weren’t involved in the fighting. I was never going to betray my conscience, the way I almost had when fighting the Worldstriders from last world - but it was still a huge logistical mess to figure out who I could attack.

Monsters were much simpler. They were animals that used magic and wanted to eat people. Unless I saw solid evidence they had more to their morality than ‘hungry, time to eat humans,’ I felt pretty comfortable killing them on sight. I felt way more comfortable fighting monsters over humans.

Before I could sink further into my thoughts, I felt another surge of essence, and realized that in the center of the crowd was a tall woman, sporting the same fuzzy ears and tail many other city residents had. She stood in front of the ruined houses, and sang.

It wasn’t a type of singing I had ever heard before - nor was it like any of the casual singing I had learned in my own time as a hobby. It was more directed than that. Each word and sound in her song seemed to carry a weight to it, as if her song alone would pick up mountains and move canyons.

And the world responded.

As the woman sang, I felt binding essence pour out of her. Every single drop of essence felt like it was bringing something with it - something as light as a feather, and yet dense enough to crush stone under its weight.

With every single lyric, the area around the woman pulsed with light and essence, and I saw pieces of stone pop into existence from thin air.

Binding essence can be used this way? I thought. Thus far, we hadn’t seen very many ‘repeat’ types of essence before, so I hadn’t gotten a very good idea of just how different one magic system could be from another. Last world, I had seen Felix ‘bind’ ideas to items, thus allowing him to create ‘enchanted items.’ I had also seen him make various types of material, by binding and unbinding specific parts of matter to each other.

However, binding essence in this world took on a very different nature. Just by singing and manipulating binding essence, the woman in front of us was literally singing materials into existence.

Soon, the woman finished her song, and gave the crowd a tired smile. The nearby people clapped and applauded, before several of them walked up to the woman and gave her a few gift baskets filled with food. And just behind them was a newly made pile of stone bricks, wooden beams, and rocks that looked almost exactly like nails.

I grinned. Felix was going to love this. I might even hate it less than the previous system of binding magic - after all, even if I didn’t like messing around with math and equations, I did enjoy singing. Maybe my abysmal talent for binding essence wouldn’t hinder me as much this time?

As I was thinking, I heard a distant ringing sound. It started out soft, but quickly grew louder and louder, until I realized that it sounded just like a giant bell being run in the distance. I saw plumes of fire start appearing in the distance, and people around us started muttering and unstringing their weapons. The woman who had been proudly standing in the center of the crowd and singing materials into existence made a sharp sound that resembled a dog’s bark. My father grimaced, and then reached towards the underside of our baby basket, before whipping out a short sword made of a dense-looking black stone.

I swallowed.

It looked like I was about to find out why so many people in this city were armed.