Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)
Chapter 346: Islands in the Void

<Oh, so I’m not the first one awake,> Felix said. <My Intelligence is almost exactly average given my modifiers. You must have gotten a pretty good Intelligence score to beat me?>

<I got 165 total,> I said.

<Ah, that explains it. I’m sitting at 162 total,> he said. <102 from my roll, and 60 from my soul fragments. Want to see the rest of my status screen? We can compare rolls.>

Felix and I quickly shared Status Screens with each other, to get a feel for how our bodies looked and what adjustments might need to be made to our group combat style..

Felix’s Status Screen was jealousy inducing.

<Your stats are amazing this time,> I said. The only roll that was even sort of bad was Alteration. Manifestation was awful, but Felix hardly ever used the stat. Almost every other roll was excellent. His primary magic stat was Grade 9! While Sallia had gone above Grade 9 in her stats plenty of times before, that was only after boosting herself with spells and equipment. Felix had exceptional base stats.

<Yours are decent too, although your Willpower could have been a bit higher,> said Felix. <Luckily your runes fix that problem pretty neatly. You seem distracted, though. Are you doing something important?>

<No, just finished a battle. Or, well, spectating a battle. Right now I’m in the middle of some guy’s house. It looks like this world is a bit more troubled than I thought it would be,> I said, before I described the past week I had experienced. I spent a lot of extra time outlining the attack on the city, as well as my speculation about what the rest of this world looked like.

<Interesting,> said Felix. <So we’re basically in a world where aerial attacks should be expected frequently? That’s… not great, but I suppose it’s better to know now. One of us needs to make sure we tell Sallia the moment she wakes up, though. That way she can make one of her rune abilities something that lets her deal with aerial combat. If she doesn’t have a way to compensate for it with her other abilities and items, at least.>

<How about you? What does your situation look like?> I asked.

<Well, I’m not too sure yet. Just woke up a few minutes ago. Oh, here’s my mom. She looks… Oh.> Felix sent the mental impression of awe at me. <She looks very rich. She’s wearing a necklace out of some sort of… glowing rock? I don’t know what it is, but it looks fancy. And her dress is very nice too. The materials look kind of like silk. I can also feel someone using essence in another part of the house, although it’s hard to tell which type. She has a bit of a cold expression, though. I’m not sure how she feels about me. Maybe she’s a maid or something?> He said. <That might explain why she seems to have little affection for me.> I frowned. The woman who was potentially Felix’s mother didn’t like him very much, that would be bad. However, Felix being born into a wealthy family meant that he would be well-taken care of, at least.

<The woman is picking me up, so I might get a better look at our surroundings. Let me see what the tour of the house looks like.> Felix started to show me what he saw in his surroundings, and I started to relax. It seemed like Felix really was in a wealthy family. There were nearly half a dozen servants scuttling around, doing various chores, and an older man who had a somewhat stern expression moving around the house. The man had a gentle expression when he looked at Felix, and mentioned something about the lady of the house being sick again. That caused both Felix and I to breathe a sigh of relief. Apparently, the cold-faced woman was a maid, not Felix’s mother.

Finally, the man took Felix from the maid’s arms, and walked Felix outside - where Felix’s mental images and narration abruptly cut off. For a moment, I was afraid that something had happened to him, before his mental voice returned, although he sounded somewhat shaky.

<Miria? What in the world is this dimension?>

He sent me a mental image, and I also blinked in shock. 

Felix wasn’t in the city. Instead, I could see the city walls, a fair distance below him. It looked as if he were standing on a massive leaf, with a clear stream of water ripping its way out of the plant before dripping onto the city below. I glanced up, and realized that Felix’s family was probably living in the canopy of the giant tree.

But that wasn’t the strange part.

Since Felix was so far above us, he had a much better view of our surroundings than I did.

I had assumed the faint light trickling into the city was from the sun, half-covered by the leaf foliage. I had noticed that the ‘sun’ seemed to hang around for a lot longer than I was used to, but I hadn’t thought much of it. Different dimensions could have different day and night cycles, after all. However, my assumption was dead wrong.

Though the half-glimpsed sky above the tree, there was a vast, yawning abyss. It was as if we were in the middle of space. The only sources of light were giant, human eyeballs that glowed faintly in the distance - so far away that they were almost impossible to make out. Each eyeball emitted light like a small sun, beaming light towards us and several other trees in the distance.

I also quickly realized that we weren’t standing on land. We weren’t on a continent, or an island, or even a planet.

Instead, from Felix’s position, I could see the edge… of the floating island we were standing on. Far, far below us, I could see writhing, twisting black mist, almost like the faint echoes of a drowned god. There were little holes in the layer of mist, barely visible in the distance. They looked like passageways into the abyss itself. I could also see that the layer of mist below us wasn’t entirely made of water vapor. Instead, it looked almost like it was some sort of half-ethereal flesh. Even though I wasn’t looking directly at it, I felt… malice from that layer of fog. As if it knew we were there, and it wanted us dead.

In the distance, I could see a few other ‘flying islands’ just like ours. Each one had a glowing tree somewhere on the island, followed by a few cities nestled near the trunk of the tree, and a surrounding layer of dirt and roots. Most islands had dozens of smaller trees nestled atop the roots of the massive tree, like fungal growths on a giant. Felix could see four of them, although it was entirely possible that there were more in the distance that we just weren’t noticing.

I also froze in shock.

<That… is a very good question,> I said.

I felt a faint movement from the real world, jostling me out of my conversation with Felix.

I realized that my father was talking with some of the other people in the group. It didn’t sound like they were afraid - more like they were exchanging contacts and preparing for a friendly outing. I relaxed… right up until I heard something strange.

“I thought I felt someone using essence during the fight too,” said the singing mage. She frowned.

“That’s impossible,” said one of the other members. “I don’t think anyone in this area can afford essence food, right? That stuff’s %#(*$#.”

The singing mage frowned. “Maybe I was mistaken? Or maybe one of the #%*&#$ were passing through and gave us a hand.” She glanced around the room again, and then sighed. “Well, I suppose there really isn’t very much chance that a #%*&#$ is here. Regular mana food is also far too pricy for even the simplest of spells or magical abilities.” She laughed, and scratched the back of her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. I’m glad that everyone is all right, but I think it’s time I returned home.” She smiled at everyone, before she left the house. After a few minutes of awkward chattering, the rest of the group started to disperse. Meanwhile, I frowned.

Essence food?

Even the simplest spells were expensive?

How odd.

All of this time, I had assumed that the actual, biological ability to cast spells was limited. That was the way it had worked in our second world - people who could interact with an essence were rare, and thus valued. This world seemed similar at first glance, because there were only a few spellcasters. But based on the bits of the conversation I had overheard, it didn’t sound like biology was the only limitation on spellcasting here.

I frowned, and realized something I hadn’t noticed earlier.

I didn’t have binding or manifestation essence.

In our second world, even without any sort of magic system to back it up, I had constantly regenerated a bit of alteration and manifestation essence. Every second, small wisps of it gathered inside of my body, refilling whatever I had spent. Here, I knew for a fact that all four essences existed. Based on our understanding of how the Market’s system interacted with biology, that SHOULD have meant I would have four essence pools, two of which would be basically unusable without training. Instead, I had two essence pools, and two empty ones.

I frowned more deeply. My alteration essence was regenerating just fine. That was probably because it was fueled by an ability, so it was no longer subject to the biological limitations of the people here. On the other hand…

A suspicion started to form in my mind.

<Felix, can you tell me what essences you have available?> I asked.

<Hmm… how odd. I only have alteration essence available. My other three essence pools seem to exist, but they’re completely empty.>

<Can you try pulling out a small chunk of metal from your dimensional factory and tell me what happens?>

There was a momentary pause. Then, Felix’s mental voice sounded in my mind again.

<I am now regenerating a small amount of binding essence. I only regenerate binding essence from my ability when I’m near metal, but… aren’t all four essences present in this dimension? Why am I not regenerating anything?>

My suspicion was confirmed. I didn’t know whether everyone in this dimension had access to all four essences, but I now knew something for sure.

<This dimension might be a bit more resource reliant than I thought,> I said. <It seems like people here don’t naturally regenerate any of the four essences at all. I suspect that they only get essence by eating special types of food - or perhaps some other method. But either way, essence regeneration seems to be a huge logistical problem for people in this world, if we’re several years old and don’t have any essences that we don’t ‘naturally’ generate from our Abilities.>

<So that’s how they make people from the Market ‘special’ in this world,> said Felix. <That’s… brilliant. In a twisted way. Most people from the Market seem to have Abilities that give them essence regeneration - after all, plenty of people expect that some worlds won’t have an essence. Since essence is like the fuel a train needs to move, nobody sane grabs a new Ability without some way to power it. Then, in this world, people from the Market show up with these ways to generate essence. People know they’re special the moment they can spend essence without needing local expensive food supplies. This makes it way easier for people from the Market to handle logistics for everything, ranging from fighting monsters, to fighting other people.>

I felt a sense of understanding settle in my mind.

So that was how the Market kept this world under control. They cut off natural essence regeneration for the local populace, then propped up incoming Market people as ‘heroes’ by simple virtue of logistics.

I frowned, before I shook my head. How long ago had people from the Market stopped coming to this world?

If my suspicions were correct, and people here couldn’t regenerate essence naturally, we would need to think very carefully about how we managed things. If we revealed our magical abilities, we might be accused of stealing precious materials, rather than applauded as new mages. I hoped my suspicions were wrong, but I had a sinking feeling that things in this world were a lot more complicated than they normally would have been. We would need to tread carefully before we got the full story. Either way, our new direction was clear.

Before making any moves, we needed more information.

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