When I came to, I was floating in a sea of darkness again. As usual, a golden lasso of energy was dragging me along, pulling me towards a distant destination. It took me a few seconds to reorient myself and process the fact that I had truly died again, before I mentally sighed.

Frankly, given the creature we had been fighting against, dying wasn’t particularly surprising. I couldn’t think of anything I could have done to win that fight - it had seemed so massive and overpowering that the moment it made a move, my body had collapsed like a house of cards caught in a hurricane. I couldn’t think of anything I had done differently, except for having way more Stats and better Abilities before reincarnating.

I put aside my thoughts about the end of my last life, and started focusing on something else.

The last time I had died, while we all floated in the ocean of souls, I had been able to confirm the existence of Sallia and Felix. Even though there really wasn’t much to distinguish our souls apart from each other after we died, I had at least been able to watch as the Market pulled us back towards it. Now, I wanted to confirm how many souls were traveling with me this time.

I looked around, and quickly found two silver-colored blobs of light - and then promptly ignored them. As much as I cared about my friends, right now I needed to confirm the fate of a different friend. The first two silver blobs of light were probably Sallia and Felix.

I searched around, but couldn’t see a fourth silver blob of light.

Icy chills started to claw their way down my nonexistent stomach.

There were only three of us. Where was Anise? Had the Market not pulled her in? Had I been wrong? What if Anise simply hadn’t reached whatever benchmark the Market had for recruiting new people? Or worse, what if Anise hadn’t actually upgraded her affinity for manifestation essence at all? It was entirely possible that I had witnessed something totally different, the time I had thought I saw Anise’s soul improve. I didn’t know very much about souls, after all.

I started to sink deeper and deeper in a pit of icy despair. Was Anise… really gone?

I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her yet. I didn’t want her to disappear.

Just as I felt despair start to crush my thoughts, I saw a fourth lasso of light rip its way out of the ocean of souls, quite a distance behind us.

Despair turned to joy. If I had feet, I would have jumped up and started dancing from sheer joy.

Anise wasn’t gone. There was a fourth soul coming back with us! And I was very much hopeful that it was Anise. But why had it taken so long for her golden lasso of energy to appear?

I spent several moments working my way through my memories, until finally, I remembered that during my first visit to the Market, I had spent several minutes floating in the ocean of souls. I had needed to manually activate a sort of ‘compass’ in my soul before the Market pulled me towards it. Maybe Anise had taken a few extra minutes to figure out how to use the energy lasso. Or maybe the Market had spent a few minutes evaluating her before deciding to take her in.

Either way, it wasn’t that important to me. My mind was filled with only thought, repeating itself over and over again.

Anise was coming back with us!

* * *

My excitement grew somewhat weaker as hours turned to days and we continued flying through the inky void. As much as I was excited about the fact that Anise was probably coming with us, I had plenty of time to wonder how she would adapt to the Market, and whether any of our planning and suggestions for Anise would work. Felix had told Anise to get a friendship bracelet as soon as possible, so that we would be able to meet up with her once we reincarnated. Given how massive the nursery was, it seemed unlikely that we would reincarnate next to each other. But what if Anise got hurt by a skeleton or ran into a more dangerous creature? Or what if she reincarnated into a different nursery, and the creatures there were more dangerous than the skeletons in our nursery?

Or what if we couldn’t add each other as friends using our Friendship bracelets? If that was the case, we might never see each other again. Even if I would be happier knowing that Anise at least had a chance to see us again, I wasn’t ready to spend lifetime after lifetime searching for her in the nursery yet. I would probably go mad with worry if that happened.

Excitement and worry warred within my nonexistent brain for days as we zipped through space.

Until finally, I could see the Market again. Now that I was worried about Anise again, I kept whatever I was using to see firmly trained on the distant fourth band of energy, hoping to engrave wherever Anise landed into my mind and make it that much easier to meet up with her later. If she landed close enough to us, I wanted to stage a rescue operation with Felix and Sallia. Even if Anise would probably be fine, I wouldn’t feel assured until I saw her with my own eyes.

Soon, we arrived at the Market.

I was dragged below the flying islands that hovered over our nursery, but I didn’t take my eyes off of Anise’s lass of energy for even a second.

Until finally, I was pulled below the skyscrapers of the city, and my view of Anise’s energy lasso was blocked.

A few moments later, I landed on a street. There was a momentary feeling of pressure and discomfort, as mana swarmed around me and built a new body.

Then, the message I had seen twice already came up again.

Welcome newly Deceased!

You have been detected to be (dead), and your soul was no longer housed inside of a physical vessel. You have been returned to the Market, and one life has been deducted to grant you a (basic) physical vessel.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Three lives remain.

Warning: Upon returning to the Market from another dimension, some of the ‘dimensional laws’ of your former world will remain attached to your soul. If you attempt to reincarnate before these dimensional laws are purified, you may experience severe injuries or death immediately after being born. The Market will automatically fix this problem, so long as you remain for at least 30 days. You may also pay a fee at a decontamination center to speed this process up. Or, if you have a Heroic Grade or above Ability, this time may be reduced, or removed entirely! Please consult an expert at a decontamination center for more details.

Warning: Basic Physical vessels will begin to deteriorate within a few months. If you want a more permanent vessel, please buy or rent one. Otherwise, please enter a pool or river of reincarnation before deterioration occurs.

I inspected my new body for a moment, before frowning.

I was… a bit shorter than I remembered being.

The change in height wasn’t very substantial, but I could definitely tell that my height had dropped a bit compared to last time I had returned to the Market.

Why had that happened?

As far as I knew, every time I died, the Market would simply take my mental image of myself, find whatever mass-produced body was ‘closest’ to my image of myself, and then stick my soul inside of the new container.

This implied that my mental image of myself was now shorter than before. By a few centimeters, if I wasn’t mistaken.

How odd.

I examined the rest of my body, just to make sure nothing else was weird. However, as far as I could tell, everything else was normal. My hair was still golden-blonde, my arms and legs all felt like they were about the right length, there weren’t any new scars or blemishes on my skin, and nothing else felt unusual. The only real oddity was the fact that I didn’t feel tired or hungry, and didn’t need to breathe - but that was quite normal for bodies constructed by the Market.

Then, I noticed that I was physically a bit younger than last time, as well. Last time I had been in the Market, I was somewhere in my early twenties. Now, I looked to be around nineteen or twenty, instead of around 23. My physical body when I had died had been about equivalent to an eighteen or nineteen year old’s body if I had been human, and in our first life, I had died at around sixteen years old.

It seemed that dying before reaching adulthood over and over again was mentally influencing my perception of my own age in unexpected ways.

Before I could sink further into my musings, Sallia and Felix were plopped onto the ground next to me.

I opened my mouth to speak to them again, to see if either of them had a better idea where Anise had landed. I knew that she had been heading somewhere south of us, but I had no idea how close or far away she was. Sallia and Felix might be able to at least confirm whether or not she had landed in the same nursery as us. If she hadn’t, there was no point at all in trying to stage a rescue.

But before I could speak, I saw something strange appear far above the city.

Why now? I thought, mentally cursing to myself. At any other time, I would have been ecstatic to get more hints about the fall of the Market. But not while it might put us or Anise in danger.

Unfortunately, the multiverse didn’t care about my hopes or plans.

Far above the Market, so far away that I could barely see what was happening, the sky broke and bled. Golden-white tethers of energy fell out of the sky like raindrops, condensing in midair before dissolving and falling towards the wooden planks of the Market.

A moment later, I saw a hulking shadow appear above those golden-white tethers of energy. It was massive, incomprehensible… and yet also, somehow compact. It wasn’t humanoid - its appendages looked almost completely alien to me. It looked almost like the giant tentacle of a long-forgotten leviathan of the deep, but also seemed to be far more tree-shaped than any vine-like than a normal creature’s tentacles. Strange, fungal growths covered the tentacle, both blooming and decaying at the same time.

When I looked at it, I felt a full-blown migraine rapidly develop inside of my mind. Whatever I was looking at, my soul wasn’t strong enough to understand. And trying to look at it hurt.

The massive tentacle reached closer and closer to the Market, and as it did so, more golden light fell like drops of splintered realities, colliding and dividing every second as their infinite potential collapsed into nothingness.

Was the Market about to be destroyed?

I felt a sudden burst of panic. We needed the Market right now. We had no idea how to keep reincarnating without it. If the Market collapsed now, I would lose all three of my friends, and maybe even myself. I would be changed, just like I had after I died. Even if my soul would keep going from one life to the next, I didn’t want to lose all of my memories about who I was.

As I despaired again, from somewhere on the Market, a beam of orange light flew directly into the tentacle I could barely glimpse with my all-too-fragile mind. The massive tentacle reeled back after it was impacted by the orange beam of light, and then seemed to disappear from sight, making me wonder if I had imagined the whole thing.

What was that? What had just happened?

The golden lassos of light that had taken us to the Market suddenly seemed tiny, in comparison to the golden raindrops I had seen falling from the sky in the distance. I had previously thought they were quite impressive, but for a fight to be visible even on the other side of a pirate-themed ship the size of the Milky Way…

How large was the tentacle? How big were the chunks of golden light that had fallen from the sky?

And who had been fighting on the other end of the Market? And why? Had the invaders come to finish off the Market, and were being opposed by other Survivors of the Market like us? Were there multiple factions that had invaded the Market, and were now fighting over the spoils of war? Was a new faction entirely trying to salvage the wreckage of the Market, and had been knocked away by some sort of automated defenses left over from the Market?

I had no way to know. I simply didn’t know much about the Multiverse as a whole, outside of the Market.

I spent a few moments thinking over questions I had no way at all to answer, before I realized that in all of the chaos, I had almost forgotten Anise! She was way more important than the long-lost secrets of the Market, or whatever was happening in the distance.

I searched the sky, desperate to find any traces of her golden energy lasso. I had lost sight of it, but maybe I could find it again? It might not be blocked by skyscrapers and buildings if I searched carefully enough.

After a few hushed moments of frantic searching, I saw the golden lasso of light in the distance. I immediately did my best to memorize exactly where it was going, and focused every single one of my senses on it, trying to figure out exactly where Anise was going to be deposited.

I looked at Sallia and Felix, who were also looking at the lasso of golden energy that had just barely been visible in the distance. They turned towards me, giving me a thoughtful look, but I stared directly at the last evidence of Ansie’s survival I had seen. It looked like she had probably landed in the same nursery as us. Otherwise, her lasso of light shouldn’t have dipped low enough for me to see it again through all of the clutter in the sky.

And that meant we had a friend to meet up with.