As usual, we drifted towards a city on the railing. Our souls drifted closer to the ground, until finally, we were just above the street. Then, mana swarmed my soul. Seconds later, I was in the middle of a fresh physical body. A few System notifications appeared.
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.
Two 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.
Right afterwards, a deluge of advertisements bombarded me.
Tired of hopping from world to world alone? Do you want a group of friends to journey with? Do you have a hard time interacting with others, or a hard time meeting people? Are other people not good enough to keep up with you?
Build a new friend at Build-A-Soul today!
Instead of trying to make a friend by conversing with them, why not create a new friend from scratch? Build-A-Soul will help you create a new friend with a personality you control! With hundreds of customization options and the help of our team, you can build a friend that's perfect for you!
*Disclaimer - Build-A-Soul is creating a friend, NOT mind-controlling them. If you treat your pal poorly, they may abandon you or betray you. Please remember to keep this in mind when interacting with your new friend.
After I finished reading the advertisement, I felt dumbfounded.
This advertisement was even more bizarre than the usual Market ads. Building a friend from scratch... made sense, once I thought about it. Last world, I had noticed that water from the ocean of souls worked as a material for making new souls. This seemed to happen if a baby couldn’t pull in a ‘proper’ soul, but still had enough suction force to drag water out of the ocean of souls. Doing the same thing with magic or technology made perfect sense. Especially since the Market clearly had an excellent understanding of souls.
However, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. It felt kind of wrong to me… but when I tried to figure out why, I wasn’t quite sure whether it was actually a problem. In a sense, it was kind of like creating an artificial intelligence via magic. The ad itself mentioned that there was no mind control involved, so I didn't hate the idea as much as I otherwise might have. But at the same time, it felt very weird to design a new ‘friend’ from the ground up. On the other hand, I didn't think that designing an AI to be someone's friend was 'wrong.' The whole thing made me feel like it was wrong, and then made me wonder if it was perfectly fine and I was just being oversensitive about it.
After a few moments I decided to ignore the question of morality. In the first place, the Market wasn't exactly a bastion of morality. If it didn't do immoral, shady things, that would be the real surprise. Instead, I focused on how complicated it was to create a soul. I had no idea how to create a soul from scratch, but for the Market, it was easy. It was so commonplace that I got spam advertisements about it.
At the very least, this did verify some of our speculation from earlier. If we searched the right parts of the Market, I would find the right direction for my ability upgrades. If I wanted to focus on soul manipulation, there was a path. I just needed to find it.
The next ad was less interesting.
Charm inc - the secret to a better you!
A lot of ordinary natives in lesser worlds rely upon things like makeup and fashion to look better. You don't have to rely on such inferior methods to look great!
The secret to a perfect body and face is easy if you use our products! Charm inc sells Abilities that sculpt your body to look your very best! Best of all, our abilities come with a FREE analysis of the local beauty standards each transmigration!
For more Achievement, you can even buy access to one of our pools of reincarnation, and make sure that you end up in a world with the beauty standards you want!
Become the best you that you can be right now!
After reading the second ad, I snorted. I didn’t care of the rest of the planet agreed with my beauty standards. I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted to look like, but I didn't care what other people thought of me as long as I didn't stand out too much. If our circumstances changed I might rethink that, but for now, it was fine as long as I liked how I looked.
After clicking away the Market’s advertisements, I finally had a chance to inspect my new body. Before dying, I had felt old. My joints had creaked when I moved. My body had felt as weak and fragile as melting ice.
The body given by the Market returned me to a young woman in her early twenties. I felt fit. Strong. Like I could run a marathon without any problems. I had always appreciated how vibrant my body felt in the Market, but after getting old, I appreciated it far more. It was hard to describe how frustrating it was to be trapped in a body that didn't work when I needed it to. Now, I was free again.
I looked at the street around me, and saw everyone else experimenting with their bodies as well. I grinned, and then pulled everyone into a group hug.
“I'd almost forgotten what it was like to be young and healthy," I said. Then, I did a double take as I noticed that a few things were different about our group. Sallia’s hair had become blue, almost the same color as my eyes. “Sallia?” I asked. “Why did your hair color change?”
“I’m trying out a new look. I’m not sure if I’ll like blue hair, but…” Sallia shrugged. “This body is only going to last a few months anyway. If I don’t like it, I’ll change it next life. It seemed fun to experiment a little. I want my body to keep becoming more balanced towards swordsmanship and fitness... but that doesn't mean I want my looks to stay totally the same. I thought your eyes are pretty, so I'd try out your eye color for my hair color." Sallia paused, as she examined my eyes. She frowned, and then shrugged. "I think my hair color is a bit off from your eyes, but it's close. What do you think of my eyes?"
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
I squinted at Sallia’s eyes, and realized that they had also changed. The first time I had met Sallia in the Market, she’d had eyes that looked almost like they were chunks of amethyst. They didn't have whites or pupils - they were solid purple orbs. Now, Sallia had pupils that were star-shaped, while the whites of her eyes were tinted a faint purple color. It looked rather unique, but it suited her face well.
"I like it," I told her. "I'm not sure how well it goes with your new hair color, though."
"Yeah, I'm also not sure if I like this hair color," said Sallia. "I'm probably going to settle on red. I think it fits me the best. I wanted to try other colors out first, though."
I nodded, and checked my other friends to see if they had made any changes to their body. Anise looked much the same as she had last time we returned to the Market. She also appeared to be in her early twenties. She was on the shorter side, and had bright pink hair and four eyes. However, there were still a few small changes to her body. The two eyes on her temples had shrunk. Maybe Anise still wanted the extra vision, but didn’t want the extra eyes to be as noticeable? We had spent decades in a world where two eyes was the norm. It wouldn’t be strange for Anise to feel unused to having four eyes again.
Either way, Anise was still Anise. Her smile was bright and happy, like always.
As for Felix, he looked much like he had last life. After we had helped Felix escape from the military facility he was born in last time, he had asked me to change his body shape around. Clearly, he had liked his new look, since he had kept it. He looked like a scholar who occasionally worked out, but had a distinct bookish look to him. I couldn't help but think that he looked totally different from the first time I had met him. When Sallia and I had first run into him, he had looked like a humanoid bear. Now, he looked more like an elegant scholar. His current look fit him better.
Since the other two hadn't made any major changes to their bodies, I didn't comment on them. Instead, I took a moment to glance at my Status Screen, to refresh my memory on how it looked in the Market.
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: (30+100)
Grade 6
Binding: (20+100)
Grade 6
Alteration: (40+100)
Grade 7
Lives Remaining: 2
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: 22,349.98
Items: 5/5
1. Simple Friendship Bracelet with Distance Chatting (7 Maintenance)
2. Cursed Tarot Deck (9.2 Maintenance)
3. Lake-Gazer's Dress (22.8 Maintenance)
4. Breath of the Storm (47.8 Maintenance)
5. Storage Pack (2.3 Maintenance)
Total Maintenance cost (per life): 89.1
You have abilities available for purchase! Please click this notification to examine them! They will expire in 71 hours and 30 minutes.
It had been a while since I had seen my ‘Market’ status screen. After checking my stats and abilities, I nodded to myself.
I had three abilities I had the option to purchase, and nowhere near enough Glut to do so. We needed to move.
Sallia grinned.
“Let’s find a house and take it over for a few hours, so we can all get acquainted with our bodies again.”
The four of us nodded, and started walking towards the residential district. Since it had been sixty years since we were last here, my memory of the city layout out was disjointed. I remembered bits and pieces of how everything worked - but my memories were still a bit fuzzy. Still, with some struggling, we managed to navigate to the right area.
As we entered the residential district, we ran into our first skeleton. It was stumbling down the road, completely oblivious to our presence. I almost attacked it on the spot… before I glanced at Sallia.
“Do you want a sparring partner?” I asked her.
Sallia looked at the skeleton, and then pulled out {Mirror’s Edge}. It was a sword that hadn’t seen use in almost six decades. She grinned. “I’d love a sparring partner.”
She stepped forward, and the skeleton took notice of her. It charged towards her, and Sallia immediately stepped into its range, before she took an experimental swing at the creature.
To my shock, Sallia missed. It was only by a few centimeters - but Sallia didn't instakill the skeleton.
The skeleton swung its own hammer at her head, and Sallia ducked under the creature’s swing. Her movements looked clumsy, almost as if she had never fought before.
I immediately tried to prepare an extinguish, only to realize I hadn’t rebuilt my attunement yet. I panicked, and pulled out {Breath of the Storm} to blast the skeleton into ashes with a lightning bolt - but before I could, I heard Sallia’s mental voice.
Sallia’s movements looked clumsy, but she hadn't gotten hurt yet. Sallia moved into a more defensive posture. The skeleton took another swing at her, but Sallia dodged out of the way. This time, her movements seemed much smoother. I relaxed. Sallia might be rusty, but she had always been our best close-quarters fighter.
Sallia spent five minutes exchanging blows with the skeleton. With each minute that passed, her movements looked smoother and more coordinated. Finally, she beheaded it with her sword, before she grimaced. "I am very rusty," she said. I resisted the urge to wince.
Sallia was indeed very rusty. After five minutes of combat, she no longer seemed like a novice, but she was a far cry from the terrifying swordsman I remembered.
“Sorry for the poor showing. Being out of practice hit me harder than I thought,” she said.
I gave her a reassuring hug. “Don’t worry. Your fighting style is the most physical one. The rest of us have an easier time coping with changes to our physical body, since we rely more on spells. You were getting the hang of it after only a couple minutes. With a few more days of practice, you'll be back to your previous skill level.”
Sallia sighed. “We might need to stay away from stronger enemies for a while. I didn't expect it to be this hard to fight after sixty years of taking it easy." She pouted. "Let’s just go. I need to get some real practice in."
I nodded, and we continued to the residential area. It only took us a few minutes to find an uninhabited house that was large enough for our needs, which we promptly took over. There was nothing interesting in the building besides what appeared to be a dysfunctional computer. It was either long-broken, or I had no idea how to turn it. After spending a few minutes messing with it, we ignored it as we set up inside of the house.
It was time to start training. Based on what I’d seen from Sallia’s performance, we would definitely need it if we wanted to face the horrors of the Market again.