“So if we were interested in taking you up on your offer, how would Anise actually go about changing her body?” I asked the hologram.
The hologram looked down at the table, before glancing at Anise thoughtfully.
“To undergo the body-reshaping process, you need to lay down on the table with your head resting next to the orb. If you do that for a few minutes, the table will start the operation. It takes about an hour to finish, and afterwards, your body will naturally generate manifestation essence. You’ll still need the orb to do spellcasting, and after the operation, you’ll essentially be bound to the orb.
“The Zelyrian orbs were originally a kind of spellcasting focus, but the table here is designed to turn it into something more like a Market ability, where it’ll let you cast spells using the Zelyrian magic system as long as you’re holding the orb.”
“I see,” I said, eyeing the table distrustfully. I wasn’t 100% sure it was safe, even though I couldn’t immediately think of a reason for the hologram to lie to us. However… even if the hologram tricked us, Anise would die and then return to the Market. I didn’t want to see one of my friends die - but I didn’t think the hologram was lying to us, and I could probably forcibly heal Anise even if the hologram was tricking us.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked Anise. I still wasn’t entirely sure that trusting the hologram completely was a good idea, but ultimately, this was Anise’s choice, not mine.
She nodded.
“All right then. I’ll watch over you to make sure nothing funny happens,” I said, eyeing the hologram.
The hologram simply nodded in acceptance of my words, and I sighed.
Anise grinned, gave the three of us a big hug, and then laid down on the table.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. I could see essence activating well beneath the table, but so far, nothing was directly interacting with Anise. Instead, it looked more like the table was scanning Anise. At leat so far, I didn’t see anything suspicious.
“Do you mind if we ask you some questions while we wait?” asked Felix, after watching Anise with me for a few moments.
“Do you have other questions? Go for it,” said the hologram.
“What is Achievement anyway?” asked Felix. “I mean, I know it can be used as a currency, and as a crafting material, but what is it to begin with? Where does it actually come from? Why do we earn it for doing stuff?”
I was a bit surprised by Felix’s question, but I nodded to myself. It was a good question, and something I had wondered often.
“Did you not attend a basic introduction to the multiverse lecture?” Asked the hologram, snorting. “I don’t think they’re that expensive to attend, are they? Usually just a dozen points of Achievement or so.”
I wondered whether we should discuss the collapse of the Market. The hologram seemed… strangely unaware of the collapse of the Market, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. I wasn’t sure whether mentioning the fall of the Market would set the hologram off, though, so I decided not to bring the topic up for now.
“We haven’t attended a lecture like that, no,” said Felix.
“You really are new,” said the hologram, sighing. “All right, very, very abbreviated version of Achievement - it’s mana. Kind of. It’s mana in a very different form from regular mana, much like how ice is water in a strange and interesting shape. Some kinds of mana are attuned to certain ideas, like ‘swordsmanship’ or ‘cooking.’ If you do something related to that idea, mana is drawn towards you, which your soul absorbs and converts into Achievement. And to convert it from mana into Achievement, your soul also resonates a bit with the laws of reality, which helps kick-start the actual conversion process. The reasons for this are very complicated, and I actually don’t know what those reasons are, because neither I nor my creator ever cared enough to figure out the deeper mechanics behind how it all works. At the end of the day, it works. That’s what matters.”
“I see,” said Felix, thoughtfully. “Why do different dimensions seem to award different amounts of Achievement for the same action, then?”
“Well, the easiest way to think of a dimension is that it’s like a cracked snowglobe. Inside of the snowglobe the laws of reality are different, and most of the stuff inside of the snowglobe will remain contained - but since the snowglobe is cracked, the outside world leaks into the snowglobe all the time, and stuff also leaks out. Within the ‘snowglobe,’ the amount of, say, swordsmanship mana might be a bit different from another snowglobe. But you’ll still usually have a bit of swordsmanship mana drifting about in each snowglobe, the concentration is just very different.” The hologram smiled. “Which is also where things get interesting.”
The hologram’s smile was getting considerably more smug each time it saw us still being confused, and I was starting to get a rather strong impression of the personality of the person who created this whole setup. They seemed to be someone who enjoyed showing off their knowledge and prestige, as far as I could tell. I wondered if this was normal for residents of the Market or not.
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However, while Felix’s questions were interesting, I felt we had more pressing concerns that I wanted to learn the answer to.
“How do we buy more lives?” I asked.
“You can’t even figure out how to buy lives on your own?” the soul fragment asked, seeming genuinely baffled by my request. “Just go to a ‘life bank’ and buy more,” said the soul fragment. “It’s not that complicated, is it? You can also buy them remotely once you set up a subscription service with them, although that involves a lot of teleportation fees, and you need to physically go into an office and set the whole thing up. Lives should only cost around 2,500 Achievement at base, plus any miscellaneous fees and taxes unique to you.”
“Wait… miscellaneous taxes unique to us?” I said. I started to have a very odd feeling about this…
“Oh, you know. 20 Achievement for being left handed, 23 Achievement for being right-handed, 40 Achievement for being ambidextrous. 36 Achievement for being pretty, 27 Achievement for being ugly, 30 for being average…” the hologram frowned as it trailed off. “Ridiculous taxes like that. Honestly, I’m pretty sure they’re all bullshit, and someone in the chain of command is using all of the ‘unique fees’ to line their own pockets using the extra money. There’s no freaking way the fact that I’m left-handed changes the value of a life, and I refuse to believe otherwise. After all of the fees, you’ll probably be paying more like 4,000 Achievement for each life. But that’s just what happens, I guess,” said the hologram with a sigh. “There’s only one place to buy lives, so what can you do?”
I blinked.
The fees that the hologram mentioned definitely didn’t inspire confidence in the fairness of the Market and its systems. Lives were the one thing every transmigrator desperately needed to stay alive - so to tack on a bunch of ridiculous extra taxes left a sour taste in my mouth.
Furthermore, the fact that it was possible to buy lives remotely, and it just wasn’t an option until we set a subscription service was infuriating. I was sure that whatever had destroyed the Market had definitely set up something incredibly dangerous to prevent future transmigrators from advancing further, and that fact had been like an axe hanging over our head for decades now.
To realize that it was an easy problem for the Market to solve, and they had simply never bothered, made me feel incredibly frustrated.
“What are lives in the first place?” asked Felix, as he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. I sighed, and nodded gratefully at Felix. I was definitely feeling too annoyed to focus on my next question, so I went back to carefully watching Anise as the table got to work. Anise wasn’t unconscious during this process, so she was avidly listening in as we questioned the hologram, although she seemed to be afraid of moving around too much, in case it messed up the table as it prepared to perform delicate magic surgery on her.
“At its heart, a ‘life’ is actually a sort of soul tether caked in spatial magic that tells the Market where you are, helps you return, and keeps your soul fresh as you’re returned to the Market.”
I saw Sallia nod thoughtfully, before she turned towards the hologram again, and asked quite possibly the most important question of all.
“Did the Market… does the Market have any enemies?” She asked.
The hologram looked thoughtful.
“Plenty. Enough that I don’t know if I could name them all, honestly. Some civilizations that have started exploring the multiverse think that the way we retain memories from one life to another is incredibly unnatural. Some civilizations also fear us, because a reincarnator can always be reborn as the son or daughter of the current leader of a civilization, and then quickly take over the civilization from within. While plenty of powerful civilizations have cured aging, some haven’t, and those civilizations often see us as a dangerous and sinister threat. And, of course, the other big civilizations in the Multiverse are wary of us, simply because we are the most powerful singular faction in the multiverse,” said the hologram.
“There are other civilizations as strong as the Market?” asked Felix.
“Of course. If one civilization can find a way to traverse the ocean of souls, isn’t it obvious plenty of other civilizations will eventually do the same?” asked the hologram.
“What are they?” asked Felix.
“Well… that’s a good question,” said the hologram, scratching its head. “To be honest, my creator left me with enough information to remember that other large civilizations exist in the Multiverse. But since it wasn’t terribly relevant to farming more Achievement, I don’t actually have any data on other major civilizations.”
“Can you contact your creator and ask for that information?” I asked, feeling slightly hesitant. I wasn’t sure if the soul fragment in front of us would try to contact its creator, realize it was dead, and then go haywire on us - but I also desperately wanted information on who or what had destroyed the Market and why. Since they seemed intent on stifling us before we could grow, I wanted to know as much as possible about the enemy.
“I can’t,” said the soul fragment. “All I can do is keep sending Achievement to my creator until I’m eventually destroyed. Since it would cut too much into the income my creator would earn from my existence, I only have access to low-quality long-distance teleportation. Most packages of Achievement I send are simply sent to the Market to be banked in my creator’s account, so that he can retrieve it at his leisure later.”
I sagged in disappointment. I had been hoping for insight into whatever had destroyed the Market, but the soul fragment here seemed completely unaware of the fall of the Market. Still, we had at least gotten useful information about the ‘normal’ cost of lives, as well as the nature of lives and Achievement. Felix could probably do something with that information someday.
Felix opened his mouth to continue questioning the soul fragment in front of us, but I was instead distracted by the table Anise was laying on. It started to light up, and I realized that it had finished scanning Anise.
I tuned out the conversation Sallia and Felix were still maintaining with the hologram, and started carefully watching Anise as manifestation essence started to swirl around her body. So far I hadn’t detected any signs of foul play from the soul fragment, but I wanted to keep my eyes peeled just in case. I didn’t want to be distracted while Anise’s surgery progressed.