The three of us left the area, heading roughly in the direction we had seen Anise’s lasso. I was somewhat hopeful that she would simply find a way to connect to our friendship bracelets at any moment now, since that would make it much easier to find her - and would also confirm that the giant tentacle hadn’t destroyed her soul or something. I had no idea if that was even possible, but seeing the massive creature attack the Market apart had made me very nervous, especially since we had very recently been killed by another giant creature.

We ignored the nearby houses as we walked towards the commercial district. Normally, I would have been happy to relax with Felix and Sallia and spend a day or two drinking and letting off some stress before starting to mess with the Market again, because we could really use a break after getting horrifically murdered. But we didn’t have time to waste right now.

Once we reached the commercial district, it didn’t take us long to locate a few shops that sold soul fragments. They were guarded by skeletons, of course - but at this point, Skeletons weren’t much of a concern for us anymore. I also quickly realized that skeletons had almost no magical defenses, unlike other living creatures.

This made clearing them out even easier than expected. I simply forced part of their neck to fracture by altering the state of their bones, and then Sallia or Felix delivered a quick punch to finish them off. Messing with the skeletal structure of enemy creatures might not have been a particularly useful technique against anything other than skeletons, but it made our current fights incredibly easy and wasn’t that expensive to use.

You have slain an invading low-level troop. As defined in article two of the emergency city defense fund act, Eluxia distributes your rightful rewards.

(Error – Entity ‘Eluxia’ cannot be found.)

Achievement distribution failed. For further information, please contact the administrator of your current city.

Slaughter: Kill a skeletal foot soldier for the first time, Kill a skeletal foot soldier for the fifth time, Assist in killing a skeletal foot soldier for the first time.

Influence: Contributed to the defense of the Market by an [extremely negligible] amount.

Achievement +20, Achievement +60, Achievement +2, Achievement +0.00

As usual, I got rewards for killing a skeleton for the first few times since my last death, pushing my Achievement from 15,348 Achievement to 15,430. The boost was rather negligible, but every bit of Achievement helped, at least.

We cleared out three or four shops before we found a shop that had Tier 2 Soul Fragment machines available. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, since the shop ONLY sold soul fragments, the skeletons hadn’t been replaced with any stronger enemies, making it easy to clear out.

It took less than a minute after entering to shop to make it safe for us. Then, I looked over my total Achievement gains as Sallia and Felix started checking the shop for extra useful items laying around.

During the course of our shop raids, we still made sure to raid the cash register of shop,which had netted us a total of about 750 Achievement, most of which came from the Tier 2 soul fragment store. This was then split three ways, getting me to 15,428 to 15,678 Achievement.

Frankly, the more we raided shops, the more I was starting to starting to notice that shops were rather low on liquid cash. Even if stores only charged some sort of minor percentage fee for using things like soul fragment cubes, or prioritized making their money by tacking on extra fees for using skill cubes… I still didn’t understand why the cash reserves for so many buildings was so devoid of currency. If they were completely empty, I would have just assumed that another group cleaned them out, but there was no reason for a group to leave a small amount of easily accessed Achievement if they were cleaning out a shop. I had no idea what was going on - but I was beginning to suspect that we weren’t just getting unlucky when it came to searching for extras in the Market.

But for now, we had other things to focus on. Like buying things and then saving Anise.

Once we found the shop that sold Tier 2 Soul Fragments, Felix quickly used a cash register to deposited a huge amount of Achievement into it. I grabbed 4,000 and Sallia grabbed 2,500, leaving everyone with enough Achievement to buy what they needed.

Afterward, I bought several soul fragments, pushing several of my stats and giving me the glut penalty I needed to buy the upgrade for my absorption ability. Then, I took a deep breath, and upgraded my Absorption Essence ability.

Immediately after upgrading my ability, I could feel it. Something deep inside of my soul wriggled and pulsed, churning like a blender as parts of my Ability were rearranged and improved.

Then, after a few minutes of uncomfortable stomach-churning, I felt the changes happening in my soul settle down. I cautiously searched my mind for anything similar to the extra ‘weight’ I had felt once I started embodying death, but I couldn’t feel anything similar.

I still wasn’t quite sure what the peculiar feeling of weight was, so I decided to think about it later.

Instead, I took a look at my new Status Screen.

Physical

Mental

Essence

Strength: (40+100)

Grade 7

Intelligence: (20+100)

Grade 6

Absorption: (40+100)

Grade 7

Agility: (40+100)

Grade 7

Willpower: (40+100)

Grade 7

Manifestation: (20+100)

Grade 6

Fortitude: (40+100)

Grade 7

Perception: (20+100)

Grade 6

Stolen novel; please report.

Binding: (20+100)

Grade 6

Alteration: (40+100)

Grade 7

Lives Remaining: 3

6/10 Keyword Slots used

Glut: 68/68

Abilities:

Keyword Abilities:

Endless Hunger of the Ocean (Ocean, Madness) (2 Keywords) (40 Glut Penalty) (Intermediate Grade)

Echoes of the Deep (Ocean, Death, Duality, Alteration) (Basic Grade) (25 Glut Penalty)

Held Abilities:

1.

2.

3.

Weapon Abilities:

Basic one-Handed Swordsmanship (No Keywords) (2 Glut Penalty) (Basic Grade)

Birth related Abilities:

Body Control (0 Glut Penalty)

Identity (1 Glut Penalty)

Achievement: 78.64

Items: 5/5

1. Simple Friendship Bracelet with Location Tracking

2. Sturdy Boots

3. Lake-Gazer's Dress

4. Two-Purpose Training Sword

5. Storage Pack

Total Maintenance cost (per life): 35.2

The last time we had been in the Market, we had mostly prioritized magical stats over mental stats, and prioritized mental stats over physical stats. Especially Sallia and I - we had simply felt that mental stats made it easier to train earlier and more efficiently in each new life, which helped us strengthen ourselves and improve our safety more quickly. Meanwhile, magic stats determined our upper limit when using a certain magic system, and thus far, magic seemed to be the greatest factor in the upper limit of our potential in a new world.

Sallia had stuck with that line of thought while purchasing her Stats, probably because the evolution of her keyword ability hadn’t changed what she wanted from her stat distribution yet. Her absorption essence was obviously still the most useful stat for her to raise, and I doubted that would change in the near future.

However, I had decided to change my previous priorities, given the evolution of {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}. Previously, the rune magic system had given me +20 Physical stats for my first 3 runes, then new abilities for runes 4-6, and then +20 to my mental stats for runes 7-9.

Now, I instead got +20 to my mental stats from Runes 1-3, along with an ‘extra’ mental ability and new space-related abilities. Then I got +10 MORE Perception for runes 4-6, along with more modifications to my sensory organs. Finally, at runes 7-9 I would get +10 to each physical stat and some boosts to my body.

While I wasn’t sure what the improvements to my sensory organs and body would look like, my Ability definitely changed things. I would no longer have easy access to massive physical attribute boosts immediately after I started training. Instead, I would now have massive mental boosts, and my body would only be slightly stronger than a regular person’s if I rolled poorly or we got born in a higher tier dimension. For that reason, I decided to focus on my physical stats for now - while having massive physical stats without the mental attributes to back it up had proven a major disadvantage last life, I assumed having massive mental stats without the physical body to back it up would prove just as unbalanced..

Then, after finishing my own shopping spree, I asked Sallia and Felix what their stats looked like now. Sallia had purchased all of her relevant stat upgrades, pushing her to +1 grade in every stat, except for Absorption, which she pushed to +2 grades, or +40 points.

Felix, who only had 3,800 or so Achievement remaining after he had given some to Sallia and I, then killed skeletons with us and looting shops with us, decided to finish boosting all of his essence stats to +20 and boost his strength stat to +20, giving him an all around +1 grade to every attribute. Last time we had been in the Market, he had purchased +10 for each magic stat, ensuring that he would never end up with Grade 3 stats in any magic category - but he hadn’t had quite enough Achievement to finish upgrading his magic stats to +20. Now, Felix had everything boosted - which would prove a small, but useful, boon in our next life.

After our shopping Spree, Felix had 1 keyword slot occupied, 34 unused glut penalty, and +20 in all of his stats, as well as access to the shaping magic system. Sallia now had 2 unused glut penalty and 6 keyword slots occupied, as well as access to the absorption and manifestation magic systems. I had access to shaping and absorption, 6 keyword slots used, and no glut penalty at all free.

With that, I was satisfied. We had purchased everything we needed, and while we were pretty darn low on Achievement, I felt that we would almost certainly have a much easier time finding and saving Anise now.

The three of us finished checking over the shop, but ignored most of the records of the old Market that we would have normally paid attention to - we could do that, and loot more shops, after we rescued Anise.

“Let’s start moving,” said Felix.

The three of us set off. Since we didn’t need to sleep, eat, drink, or breathe, we simply started sprinting towards the last location we had seen Anise’s tether at, with no intention of stopping for anything.

* * *

As we ran through the streets of the Market, I started trying to reform my attunement. The skeletons of the Market were no longer able to keep up with our group, now that all of us had grade 6 Agility.

Thus, while I had to stay somewhat focused on the world around me, I had a surprising amount of leeway to focus on rebuilding my Attunement.

I told Sallia and Felix what I wanted to do, and the two of them agreed to keep an eye on our surroundings for me while we sprinted forward. Sallia occasionally physically picked me up and dragged me away, if I got too close to a shop we were trying to avoid because Sallia thought it had dangerous guardians. However, by and large, I was able to keep up with everyone else’s mad dash towards Anise and rebuild my basic attunement at the same time.

It took me about an hour to reform my attunement. If I hadn’t been sprinting nonstop, I could have reformed it in even less time.

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to rebuild my attunement. It would still take a fair amount of time to strengthen it all of the way back up to [Expert] Grade. However, it was obviously pretty easy to form a basic version of it - and I was willing to bet that getting it to intermediate grade could be done in a few weeks. Getting it to [Advanced] and beyond would be slower, but I was pretty sure I could get my entire attunement back online in less than five years in any new world we came across.

Power: Form a [Basic] Grade attunement

Achievement +100

It was very nice that it was so easy to use my new magic System. Even at [Basic] grade, my attunement was quite potent.

After that, Sallia started reforming her first rune, and then her magic circles from her manifestation essence system, since she felt that they had a good chance of being immediately useful and were much faster to rebuild than runes. Then, Felix worked to reform his attunement as we ran.

After that, I started working on forming my first rune, on the off-hand chance that I actually got it online before we reached Anise’s location. Teleportation might prove incredibly useful if Anise found herself in a dangerous situation and we needed to run away.

The run itself was boring. We tried to stick to residential areas while running, where the skeletons were the only monster and there was nothing particularly important to catch our attention. When it was unavoidable, we ran through commercial districts instead.

Once, and only once, we caught sight of a different kind of district in the distance. I couldn’t see any visible monsters, but something about it made my skin crawl, letting me know that we weren’t ready to explore it yet.

We avoided that area. Luckily, we didn’t see many areas that were totally off-limits for us, meaning we didn’t have to re-route our mad sprint very often.

Finally, after six days of running, I felt something tug at my friendship bracelet.

Transmigrator Anise would like to add you as a friend to her friendshipcorp list.

Would you like to add Anise to your friend’s list?

Yes/No

The moment I got the notification, I sagged with relief.

I didn’t know exactly what had stalled Anise so long. I didn't know exactly what her situation was, and she still wasn’t in front of me. I couldn’t see if she was all right yet, or give her a hug.

But regardless of how or why it had happened, Anise had gotten her bearings in the Market, acquired a friendship bracelet, and figured out how to remotely add friends.

She was safe.

And now, the tracking function of my friendship bracelet was also working.

I grinned.