Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)
Chapter 347: Heroes

My father and I returned to the bakery, where we found my mother sitting in one of the upper windows. She had a half-emptied quiver of arrows next to her, as well as a bow that laid near the side of the wall. I looked at her, to make sure she was safe - but I didn’t see any wounds on her. I breathed a sigh of relief. If my mother was injured, I would have needed to heal her - but it definitely would have resulted in some awkward questions afterwards. Fortunately, my family was largely unscathed by the attack.

As my mother saw my father and the two of us through the door, she ran up to him, and then gave him a kiss. Then, she gave Anise and I a kiss as well, before she wrapped her arms around all three of us.

“You’re back! Are the girls safe? Are you safe? Is anyone hurt?”

“No injuries on any of us,” said my father. “We saw a #%*&#$. She kept us out of the fighting.”

“A #*$#&$?” asked my mother. “What’s one doing here?”

“Singing some materials into #*&#$. It looks like there are still some damaged streets from the six bell incursion last month. She was working on repairing some of the worst of the damage when the attack started.”

My mother sighed in relief. “Thank the #*%&# for that. If any of you got hurt, I don’t know what I’d do.” My mother relaxed. “You say that a #%*&#$ kept you out of the fighting?”

My father nodded. “She said that I had to stay out of it, since I was carrying kids.”

My mother smiled. “Do you know her name? We should send her a thank-you gift later.”

My father laughed. “I know what she looks like. It shouldn’t be too hard to track her down and express our thanks later. As for a gift…I know it’s a bit expensive, but we could use essence-wheat for a special loaf of bread. That would actually give her a bit of essence back. She used a bit during the fight, so I think it’s a good way of showing our #*&$#.”

My mother winced. “Well… it’s expensive, but we’re doing well. We can afford a loaf of essence bread. I like the idea. Tomorrow, I’ll order the ingredients we’ll need. I’ll make it, though. I love you, dear, but if we’re using essence-wheat, I’d like to make sure the bread is perfect.”

My father laughed agreeably, and my mother seemed to sigh in relief.

My ears perked up, as Felix and I listened to the conversation. I understood most of the words in my mother and father’s conversation - except for one, which I decided to label ‘essence-wheat’ since I had no better context for what it was. However, based on the conversation, Felix and I could confirm a few things.

1: People here didn’t recover their essence naturally.

2: The way people recovered their essence was by eating food that contained essence. It seemed that in this world, some part of people’s digestive tract could seize essence and convert it into someone’s personal storage of essence instead.

3: This food was available to the wider citizen population, but at a very high price. My mother and father seemed reasonably well off, but they were still worried about the price of enough mana-wheat for one loaf of bread. I wasn’t sure how well-off my family was, so I had no clue how hard it was for the average family in this world to get access to essence. I was lacking some context. Either way, I could assume that having access to essence was either rare, or very rare in this world. However, the fact that it was accessible at all was good.

If I started busting out powers in an emergency, it wouldn’t be totally unbelievable for me to have gotten some essence-wheat without stealing it. I still wanted more context, and to grow up a bit more before I started using any type of magic here. However, I could make excuses for my abilities if I wanted to keep them under wraps for a while. 

Of course, that didn’t change the fact that magic was rare here. Worse, mages here were probably not very good at using magic. After all, if access to essence here was expensive, every single practice session with magic would be like lighting money on fire. Depending on how expensive it was, it might be ludicrously hard for mages here to practice using their essence at all. If my family struggled to afford one loaf of essence-bread, it would be odd if I could naturally use complex spells like Extinguish. I would reassess my situation once I knew more - but at least for a while, I would pretend to be an ordinary kid.

<So essence is this hard to get here?> asked Felix, startling me out of my thoughts. <Interesting. I can feel someone manipulating Essence in my house right now, although they seem far away from me.>

<Oh?> I asked.

<Yeah. I am having a hard time pinpointing where they are, but they’re close. I wish we knew how much essence a single loaf of essence-bread can restore, and what your family’s financial situation looks like. But either way, a spellcaster in my immediate family is a good sign.> Felix chuckled. <It seems like my family might be a bit more well-off than I thought. I can even extract some information on the different magic systems here, once I’m a bit older.>

Things started to click in place inside of my thoughts. Felix’s family had definitely seemed wealthy - after all, they had several servants doing things around the house. However, in this world, wealth was even more important than usual - because it directly implied how much access one had to the magic systems. Felix would be a great opportunity for the rest of the group to learn more about this world’s magic systems.

As Felix and I chatted, my mother and father spent a few minutes just relaxing in a corner. Finally, the two of them brought Anise and I to bed, before they went to sleep themselves.

Time passed.

Little happened for the next couple days, so I worked on building up my intermediate-Grade attunement. Apart from that, I also rebuilt my first rune. I went for small portals again - after building this rune twice, I was growing very fond of it. I wasn’t sure if it would be quite as useful in this world… but I still saw a lot of possibilities, with the commonality of arrows in this world and my spatial tripwires.

300 Achievement was a nice reward, bringing me from 15,231 to 15,531. It was a good reward.

Apart from that, Felix and I started listening in on all of the conversations near us, in order to extract more information.

One of the basic things that Felix managed to overhear the next day was about the average lifespan of people here. People in this world lived very long lives, at least by the standards of our previous worlds. Every single ‘species’ of humanoid in this world had a lifespan of about 500 years - regardless of what they looked like. A muscular man with green skin had about the same average lifespan as an elf. That struck me as a bit odd, but it was probably related to the artificial nature of this world - perhaps the corporation was afraid of Market-souls being annoyed if they got unlucky and were born into a species with a short lifespan. 

Either way, it explained why my body felt so underdeveloped. In this world, people didn’t reach ‘adulthood’ until they turned about fifty years old. Then, their physical age seemed to basically freeze, until they turned around 450 and started aging again. There was practically no visible difference between someone who was 100 and someone who was 400 in this world - both would look like healthy adults who were around 20 years old.

At slightly less than four years old, my body was about the equivalent of a human child who was between one and one and a half. It was also no wonder my parents still treated me like a baby in almost every sense of the word. As far as my parents were concerned, I was probably right at the stage where I was getting ready to take my first steps and say my first words.

I didn’t need to think for long before I decided to speed up this timeline a bit. Old Mo had taught me how to blend in and look like a normal kid - but that didn’t mean I wanted to be stuck doing a frustrating act for years, nor was it realistic to never make a single mistake. Old Mo had taught me how to look normal - but he had also told me that I had a lot more leeway than I thought. When most people saw a kid acting a few years older than their age, they usually thought ‘my kid’s a genius’ before they thought ‘my kid’s a dimension-hopping soul.’

Based on that information, I started calling my mom and dad ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ a week after the attack. After this, I planned to start ‘learning’ more words at a faster and faster pace, so that my parents got used to me being a bit precocious.

Two weeks after that, I managed to take my first steps. Combined with my growing vocabulary, my parents seemed exceptionally pleased with my development. I decided that my parents were used to me being a bit precocious. It was time to start pushing for information I actually wanted. Felix and I were still baffled by many aspects of the history of this world, and we needed more information. My father also seemed to enjoy telling Anise and I bedtime stories - which made it a perfect time to ask for more information. That night, I used a few words to start conveying basic requests.

“Story! Papa! Magic story!” I said.

My father gave me a surprised look, before he laughed. “You’re so smart, Miria! You can even ask for things you want!” He gently patted my head, before he and my mother exchanged knowing looks.

“Well… if you want a story about magic… hmm… I don’t know much about modern magic, honestly. Too expensive for me to study.”

“You could tell a story about heroes instead, dear,” said my mother, who was resting in a chair at the side of the room. “It’s probably much more interesting than talking about prices anyway. Ever since people fled to the sanctuaries, we haven’t had many ‘exciting’ stories either - at least, not the type that would interest kids. A story about the hold days is probably more interesting.”

My father’s eyes brightened.

“Oh, that’s a good idea.” My father turned towards me, and then grinned. “Would you like to hear about the heroes of old?”

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