After that, we spent several more minutes questioning the book. However, we couldn’t find any more useful information, no matter how many other questions we asked. We did get several rather useless advertisements, but there wasn’t anything of particular note within those advertisements.
Finally, Felix sighed.
“I guess that’s all we’re going to get out of the book,” he said. “I really thought that we could learn a lot more, but I suppose that’s just how things go sometimes.”
“It’s not the end of the world,” I said, after a few moments of thought. “I mean, I was hoping for more information too, but at least we properly nailed down what I was doing wrong last world while trying to reach Master Grade. I’ve been trying to puzzle that one out for a while. This will make it much easier to grab some more Skill and Power Achievement in future lives, and advance our abilities further.”
Sallia nodded. “I don’t think it’s a loss. We still got a lot from the book.”
Anise looked over the book for a few more moments, before she shrugged and grinned. “From what you guys told me about the Market, I think it’s a good thing that we finally learned some more about the way the Market works and the way Skills and Abilities work. It sounded like you were struggling to nail down a lot of details before now, after all.”
I nodded. Then, I decisively ditched the talking book and re-equipped my {Sturdy Boots}. The fact that I had no feet made equipping the boots rather… interesting. They could currently provide me with absolutely zero benefit whatsoever, but if I didn’t find something to replace them with before we reincarnated again, they would be useful.
“I believe that we accomplished most of our major goals now, right? What now?” asked Felix
“Hmm…” I looked at my missing legs. “I don’t think we should attack another high-level item store like this one until the next time we come to the Market.”
“Well obviously,” said Felix, rolling his eyes. “We were barely able to make it through this fight with no injuries. If anything, we probably should have waited another life before tackling this store. Even if we got rewarded for taking a risk by getting excellent items, it’s definitely not time to push forward again yet. But do we want to hit up smaller shops?”
I looked back at my missing legs, and then thought about the weak skeletons that guarded most lower level shops.
Missing my legs would make it a little bit more difficult for me to survive future fights, but if we were only fighting the regular skeletons… did it matter?
They were basically just cannon fodder at this point. I could probably down dozens of normal skeletons by myself, even if I had no legs. And Sallia and Felix could basically do the same. We should probably avoid getting into massive battles with them, because something could go wrong, but we could certainly take care of small groups of skeletons pretty easily.
And we only had around five weeks left in the Market before our bodies started to deteriorate. We needed to make the best use of our time that we could. Healing my legs would probably take quite a while, and I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to simply waste all of that time.
“I think we should hit up a few more really weak item stores,” I said. “The skeletons that will be defending those stores don’t really pose a threat to us anymore, and we could still use a few more new items. I’m happy with my dress, umbrella, and friendship bracelet, but I’d be happy to replace the rest. Looting more cash registers would also be helpful.”
Sallia thought about it for a few moments, before she also nodded. “I can trash normal skeletons in melee combat at this point, and Felix can do the bone manipulation trick super easily. Though, Miria, I think that you should stay out of the fighting unless necessary though. Just focus on regrowing your legs. How long do you think it’ll take to restore those, anyway?”
I paused, looking at my missing legs. I hadn’t actually tried regrowing lost limbs before. I knew that I could do it, but I had no idea what kind of time frame I was looking at - especially considering that I was only working with an intermediate grade attunement. This would make my healing far less efficient than it had been during our time in the world of the black sun.
“Maybe a few weeks?” I said, doubtfully. “I’m not actually sure.”
“How about we start raiding weaker stores, and if Miria heals up her legs faster, we start hitting slightly stronger stores again?”
“Sounds good to me,” said Felix. “Let’s wait for our essences to replenish, and then get to raiding.”
And with that, we started to slowly and carefully pick off weaker stores in our area for supplies.
* * *
About three weeks passed. During that time, we hit up about three stores a day - which was a comfortable pace for us, especially once we took into account the essence needed to clear out the streets we passed through before finding a good target. Not all of the streets of the Market were empty, and while we stuck to lower level areas, we still occasionally ran into a few skeletal archers and swordsmen wandering around from time to time.
True to our earlier plans, I didn’t end up killing any monsters during that time. I kept my essence ready for an emergency, but we didn’t run into any emergency situations that required my intervention. Therefore, every day, I simply spent all of the essence I regenerated in order to heal up my legs as much as possible.
Each store that we raided had a cash register. However, a few of them were empty, making me think that perhaps we weren’t the only group of transmigrators traveling to and from the Market these days. However, at least so far, we hadn’t run into any other groups, although we did decide to remain wary of potentially hostile transmigrator groups wandering around the area. Making more friends would be ideal, but even if I hoped we would get along with anyone new that we met, I knew that friendship wasn’t always possible.
Most cash registers seemed to have somewhere between 80 and 120 Achievement inside of them, and seemed to average about 90. In total, we found around 4500 Achievement during the three weeks of raiding. My share of 1,150 Achievement, naturally, went straight into Felix’s Status Screen, leaving me with a debt of about 1,900 Achievement left.
Meanwhile, since Sallia had gotten the actual kill for the giant tree root instead of just the assist, and because she had borrowed significantly less from Felix, she completely finished paying off her debt, and even gave Felix a little bonus just like I was planning to do. And, to my surprise, she also gave Felix 300 Achievement to pay part of MY debt. Even though I had completely forgotten the 200 Achievement I had given to her last time we were in the Market, she had not. Just like with her own debt, she seemed to consider it important that she give me a bonus as thanks for lending her some Achievement.
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After that, Sallia still had a fair bit of leftover Achievement, which she ended up spending to boost her Manifestation to +30 and leaving her with around 200 Achievement left.
Meaning that I ended up with a total debt of 1,100, plus a bonus of 500 to thank Felix for lending me some Achievement in the first place.
Felix, using the 5,000 Achievement or so he had gotten from his own shares of each cash register, Sallia’s payments, my payments, and some miscellaneous rewards for clearing out skeletons, decided to boost his Willpower, Intelligence, and Fortitude to +40, leaving him with 5/10 stats pushed to Grade 7. He spent a long time debating whether Intelligence or Perception was more useful, since perception would let him observe and copy item-making techniques that were hard to observe, while intelligence would make it easier for him to learn things from a master and make connections with other things he had already learned. He ultimately decided to push for Intelligence for now.
Anise also picked up the {Identity} Ability, and ended up pushing her Manifestation Stat to +40 in hopes that she would immediately find a use for it. It was a bit of a hopeful investment, since she was currently behind in everything and it was hard to say what essences our next world would contain, but the girl was dedicated to becoming a super witch. Even though she got embarrassed whenever I teased her about all of the things she had said when she was ten.
Even though she got embarrassed, she never actually stopped pursuing her dream of being an amazing spellcaster - and while all three of us occasionally poked fun at her more silly statements in the past, we were careful never to actually discourage her from pursuing her dream, and even encouraged her to find the path that worked best for her. It was important to find a balance between teasing one’s friends and encouraging them, after all.
Finally, while raiding item shops, we found a few more useful items. Many of the item shops that we raided weren’t particularly outstanding, and didn’t have anything noteworthy. However, there were at least a few good items scattered amongst the less useful items, which let us make a few final item swaps before our next reincarnation.
First, and perhaps most surprising, Anise actually found a pair of gauntlets that she liked.
Item: Gauntlets of Manifestation
Effects:
While worn, the user can generate a very small amount of manifestation essence (equal to about 5% of their maximum reserve per day) so long as they are exposed to sunlight for at least six hours a day. If the user's body is not biologically compatible with manifestation essence, the gauntlets will slowly remodel the arms until compatibility is created. (May take several years).
This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.
Maintenance cost - 7.3 Achievement per life
This didn’t really seem like a particularly amazing item on its own, but paired with another item we found, it allowed Anise to create a very weak version of a proper manifestation magic System.
Item: Finger of Magic Missiles
Effects:
To use this item, you must replace your original finger with it.
You may spend manifestation essence to cast the spell ‘minor magic missile’ while this item is your finger (creates the dimensional laws required to make the spell work).
This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.
Maintenance cost - 11.1 Achievement per life
In total, this meant that Anise’s items were: Shadow Dryad’s Eyes, Friendship Bracelet, Phoenix Sword, her new gauntlets, and her finger of magic missiles. The last two items weren’t particularly outstanding, and Anise was a bit squeamish at the idea of replacing both her eyes and one of her fingers with Market items - but the lure of accessing spellcasting, even in a very limited way, proved far too much of a temptation for Anise to ignore. Not to mention, Anise hoped that if she did something impressive with her magic missiles in the next life, she might get a keyword ability for it even if we didn’t end up in a world with manifestation essence in it. I hoped it ended up working out for her, and quietly promised myself that I would keep an eye out for opportunities for Anise.
I myself found a rather interesting set of tarot cards, which I decided to replace my boots with because I didn’t really like my boots. They were nothing special, and I doubted I would keep them for long, but they seemed neat to try using for a world or two and see how I felt about them.
Item: Cursed Tarot Cards
Effects:
May only target one entity at a time. After a target dies or you decide to lift the curse, this deck of tarot cards will enter a five year cooldown period.
Draw three tarot cards while focusing on intended target. At inconvenient times, these curses will erupt and attempt to inconvenience or harm the target.
Example curses include: The fool (makes target less intelligent at a crucial moment), The Hanged Man (makes target feel notable pain, especially around their neck, for several minutes), and many other similar curses.
Considerably less effective against users who can resist or interact with curses. This item uses binding essence to work, and may be noticeable to other binding essence spellcasters if their spellcasting system is similar enough.
This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.
Maintenance cost - 13.8 Achievement per life
The deck of tarot cards wasn’t really very strong, and it had at lot of drawbacks, but the deck seemed at least somewhat useful. I doubted they would do much to a major threat, but depending on how the tarot deck worked, I was hoping that maybe I could just toss a few curses at a problematic enemy before we fought them in the future. If I didn’t end up liking the item, I could just ditch it next time we came to the Market, and it still seemed more useful to me than my boots, at least.
Sallia didn’t end up finding anything she liked, which made sense. She was already pretty close to kitted out, with her new robe, her sword, her friendship bracelet, and her noodle bowl. The only item she had that wasn’t outstanding was her pair of boots.
Felix ended up finding one more item he was fond of as well.
Item: Endless Origami Kit
Effects:
Provides an endless amount of lightly magically infused paper that the user can use for other spellcasting purposes. (Paper will naturally restock itself without any resource input, at a rate of about ¼ of the kit’s full capacity per day).
This item will be repaired each time you return to the Market, so long as it isn’t completely destroyed.
Maintenance cost - 9.2 Achievement per life
Origami wasn’t exactly the first thing I thought of when I thought of Felix, but a kit of neverending crafting supplies seemed pretty reasonable for him to take, even if it wasn’t really that amazing of an item.
In total, this mean that Felix’s items were his friendship bracelet, the origami kit, his craftsmen’s monocle, his new sword, and the training armor that Anise had ended up discarding for her new items.
With all five of us kitted out and only two weeks left at most before our bodies started to deteriorate, and with my legs finally restored, we decided it was time to start working on finding a place to reincarnate. Even though we could farm about 1,500 Achievement each week in the Market while waiting, if our bodies collapsed and we were forced to waste a life reviving, it would be a terrible trade. And every single pool of reincarnation had also proven that it would be defended by powerful enemies, meaning we wanted some time to devise a battle plan and prepare for the encounter.
It was nearly time for a new journey again.