“I feel quite woozy,” said Felix, as he clawed his way back to a standing position. He winced as he stood up, and nearly collapsed for a moment, before he managed to support himself against the wall. Then, he paused for a moment, and looked at the air in front of him, before he nodded. “I don’t have a notification that I died, so at least we didn’t lose a life.” Then, he frowned, and a flicker of fear passed through his face as he turned towards Sallia and I. “Neither of you died, right?”
“Nope,” I said. “Just missing my legs. I’ll have to grow them back later. But no deaths.”
“That’s good to hear,” said Felix, heaving a sigh of relief. A few moments later, Anise groaned, before she also started to open her eyes.
“My face and chest hurt,” she said as she grimaced. She looked at Felix, and then glanced at Sallia and I. “Is everyone ok?”
“We’re fine,” I said. Then, I glanced at my two missing legs. “Well, at the very least, we can recover pretty easily.”
Anise nodded as she wobbled to her feet. “Good enough. What happened? I feel very woozy.”
“Sleeping poison of some sort. It’ll wear off soon enough,” Sallia said.
Anise nodded again, as Felix actually chuckled.
“Well… at least we won. And the Achievement rewards aren’t bad at all,” said Felix. “What about the shop itself? Anything good inside?”
“We were just getting through that,” said Sallia. “We found a book that details what’s required to get stuff into Heroic grade. It also has a fair amount of other miscellaneous information.”
“Oh? We finally have a good idea what heroic grade looks like?” said Felix.
“Well… not yet. We haven’t gotten to that question. But we now know exactly what extreme affinities do, and how to raise them,” I said, before Sallia and I quickly outlined what we had learned so far from the book.
After that, Felix looked at the floating book in my hand, and then looked at the rest of the shop with stars in his eyes.
“I’ll go look for good items. I’m really interested in seeing what better Market items look like. How about you two question the book some more, and we exchange information after I pull together a pile of items we might want to equip?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Sounds good to me. I’m not particularly mobile right now, so I’d appreciate it if you bring the items to me,” I said, gesturing towards my missing legs. Then, I turned towards Anise. “Do you want to question the book with us, or search with Felix?”
Anise thought about it for a moment, before she shrugged. “I want to look for new items too. Right now I don’t have any particularly special items, and I admit, I’m kind of excited to see what proper Market items do. And I also just don’t have as much background information as you guys do, yet, so I would have a hard time knowing what questions to ask.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
Anise and Felix quickly made their way over to the cash register first, where they divided out the Achievement inside. Apparently, this shop had about 1,000 Achievement in the cash register - meaning that, after I dumped my Achievement from the battle into it as well, I had 3,000 Achievement left to pay off, if I included the little extra I wanted to leave for Felix.
Then, Felix and Anise went from one shelf to another to start finding items that looked useful, while Sallia and I returned to the book to keep questioning it.
“So, how does one cross the ‘Great Barrier’ between Master grade and Heroic grade?” I asked the book.
“The biggest difference between Master Grade and Heroic Grade is comprehension of the laws of reality. You see, before reaching Master grade, one doesn’t have to have any intimate understanding of the laws of reality itself. To push into Master grade, one needs a glimpse of the laws of reality. Then, to push forward to Heroic Grade, one needs to imprint that law of reality directly into their body. This allows the user to internalize a few local laws of reality. For example, pushing into Heroic Grade with a swordsmanship ability will also ‘solidify’ the way gravity and your body interact with each other, as well as the way your muscles work and the way your bones and muscles are attached to each other. Your body and soul will thus gain some resistance to being acted upon by other, more problematic laws of reality.”
I blinked.
Resisting the laws of reality with just my body?
I had never thought about that before. However, I thought about how the set of laws of reality we had encountered in the world of the black sun had basically caused my body to implode, as well as the way my body seemed to simply fall apart when exposed to the laws of reality Sekundyrr had lived within. I immediately realized that having some way to survive conflicting laws of reality was basically a necessity for anyone who wanted to explore new dimensions without dying or wearing very special equipment.
If Heroic Grade could allow one to properly resist these forces, that was certainly food for thought. It also provided greater insight into my last life. I had gotten stuck when trying to improve from Expert Grade to Master Grade, and had no idea why I couldn’t improve further. Apparently, the issue was that I needed some sort of special insight into the way my attunement interacted with the laws of reality.
That was certainly valuable information.
“Is there any other way to resist problematic laws of reality?” I asked.
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“There are plenty. Some items, such as special suits, can hold together your biology from one dimension to another, and sometimes laws of reality from other dimensions simply won’t be destructive enough to kill you. Your Fortitude Stat also helps keep your body together, even when the laws of physics say that it shouldn’t. You can also use some magic systems to keep your body together. However, Heroic Grade is the most stable way of interacting with conflicting laws of reality, since you won’t be stuck either trying to maintain a spell every moment of the day or praying that your dimension suit doesn’t break down.”
“I see,” I said, trailing off into thought again.
I thought about it a bit more, and realized something interesting. Pushing through the great barrier between master and heroic grade granted pretty significant benefits to people trying to explore other dimensions. And I imagined that pushing through a ‘great barrier’ would also cause the power of an Ability to skyrocket. If that was the case, did the other two ‘great barriers’ also give major boosts to the ability when passing through them?
“What do the other two great barriers give you?” I asked.
“The great barrier between Primordial grade and Law-0 grade gives you the ability to influence your surroundings and warp the laws of reality to suit your needs. Some transmigrators call this a ‘domain,’ although that’s not an official name. The barrier between Law-6 and Law-7 Grade gives you the ability to handle mana nearly directly.”
“Handle mana directly?” I asked. Hadn’t we already been handling mana? I had assumed that mana and essences were nearly interchangeable with each other.
“Normally, there are five supernatural energies in the multiverse: mana, and the four essences. Mana itself is something of a universal energy - it exists no matter what in every dimension. In fact, it’s what the laws of reality in any given dimension are made from. However, without the help of one of the four essences, it’s both imperceivable and nearly impossible to handle directly. It’s sort of like invisible molten lava - you can’t see it, and even if you could, touching it would just melt your hand off. Normally, people instead use a magic system fueled by an essence to interact with mana. In this analogy, they work kind of like containers and molds that let you manipulate mana without touching it directly.
“Law-7 grade gives you the ability to somewhat push past this limitation, letting you handle mana with the equivalent of very thin gloves.”
“So essences are basically switches that let us mess with mana,” said Sallia, thoughtfully.
“What the heck?” yelled Felix, a moment later, distracting me from my interactions with the book.
Sallia stood up, and I tried and failed to stand up with my two missing legs, before Sallia hoisted me up and started carrying me. I put away the book for now -we could keep questioning it later. If Felix had found something interesting or dangerous, we needed to be there.
We found Felix and Anise looking at something on one of the shelves of the store.
It was a pair of human eyes.
“Uhhh…” I stared at the pair of human eyes, lost for words.
“Are those human?” Asked Sallia, looking distinctly grossed out.
“They’re items. Take a look at them,” said Felix, wincing.
I took a closer look, and an item description appeared in front of my eyes.
Item: Shadow Dryad’s Eyes (Biology-independent edition).
Effects:
To install this item, you must rip out your eyes and replace them with these eyes instead. (They will heal the injuries around your eyes upon being installed, so do not worry about damage incurred during the eye removal process).
Once installed, these eyes will grant you two distinct abilities.
First, you will gain the ability to use shadows in your surroundings as extra pairs of eyes, allowing you to gaze into and gaze from all dark places within a certain range of you. (This will also make learning magic related to shadows and darkness significantly easier). You will gain some measure of control over these shadows. (especially useful for stealth - do note that this item does not give you the ability to turn shadows into any kind of energy or make them tangible). (This requires essence to activate).
Second, this will grant you a certain measure of control over plants in your area, allowing you to spend essences to manipulate them, improve their growth rate, or cause them to wither and weaken. (This requires essence input to work. Any essence is fine).
This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.
Maintenance cost - 51.3 Achievement per life
“Hmm…” I looked at the item, and then looked at Anise.
Currently, Anise was the weakest member of our group. Unlike the rest of us, she didn’t have access to a single magic system at all.
This pair of eyes wasn’t a particularly powerful ‘magic System,’ but it would at least somewhat correct the imbalance in the group. It wouldn’t make Anise as strong as the rest of us, but it was something that would be helpful to her.
Of course, the biggest worry was whether or not Anise would be able to get them to work in the first place. The three of us had ways to generate Essence on our own, making essence-generation a non-issue. Meanwhile, if we ended up in a world that didn’t have a magic system of its own, Ansie wouldn’t have any essence to make the plant ability of the eyes work at all.
I sighed, and then shrugged. “Anise, do you want it?” I asked.
Anise looked at the eyes, and then shuddered. “I… I’d prefer if I didn’t need to tear out my eyes to make it work, but I can see why it would help me,” she said, wincing. “I can take it.”
“If you take them, next life, I’ll figure out a way to make the eyes switching process easier on you,” I said, thinking about ways to knock Anise unconscious. I could probably come up with something using Alteration essence if I really put my mind to it. I already had the ability to blast creatures with madness due to my ability evolution. And I already had some experience altering mental effects to turn them into knockout abilities. Removing your own eyeball sounded quite gruesome, but if I knocked Anise out and then did everything for her, it would be much less hard on Anise.
Ansie winced again, but nodded. She turned towards Sallia and Felix. “Do either of you want them?”
“I’m actually kind of interested in the ‘seeing through shadows’ bit, since it would make me really good at scouting if Miria isn’t around. but it’s not that important to me,” said Sallia. “And you kind of need something to help you stand out and earn Achievement in our next world. This isn’t an amazing ability, but it’s better than nothing.”
“I can’t think of why I would want it,” said Felix, after a few moments. “Doesn’t really do anything for me.”
“All right,” said Anise, taking a deep breath as she looked at the pair of eyes. “I’ll take it. Miria, I know I should work through being squeamish in the future, but… I hope you help me swap my eyes out, at least until I get the hang of it myself,” she said, setting her jaw with determination as she grabbed the pair of eyes. A moment later, they disappeared as Anise equipped them into one of her item slots.
“All right, what else do you guys want?” asked Felix, redirecting our attention towards a pile of swords, along with a few weird items.
It was time to swap out our gear.