After integrating my new ability into my soul, I also gained an instinctive understanding of it. I didn't have a complete understanding of the ability - but I had some 'hints.' This was the first time it had ever happened, and it left me scratching my head.

Why was it so different from the first two times I had bought a keyword ability?

I wasn't sure why there was such a stark difference. My best guess, after several minutes of thought, was that I had no pre-existing knowledge this time. The first two keyword abilities I bought gave me access to magic systems I had used before. I didn’t need an introduction to them, because I had used them before.

As for whether my guess was correct... I had no way to verify. In any case, after a few minutes of confusion, I put it aside. It didn't matter too much to me. Instead, I focused on exploring my new ability.

The first thing I realized was that my ability worked a bit differently than I thought. The System notification for my ability had only said I would need a few months to recover after each use. That was true... but also false. It depended on how big of a piece of my soul I split off into a clone.

If my soul was like a boulder, I could take anywhere from a fist-sized clump of rock to a few tiny grains of stone. Naturally, this influenced the strength and longevity of the clone - but it also influenced recovery time. If I removed a large piece of my soul, I would need a few months to recover. If I used a few grains of my soul, I could recover in less than a day. There was nuance to my ability that the System hadn't told me about.

I grinned. I had thought that I would need to ration out my use of this ability very carefully in the Market. I had even worried about how often I would be able to use the ability in new lives. That was still a concern... but if I could control my recovery time, the problem became much smaller. I still needed to be careful, but I could use the ability when I needed it. I could also be a bit more free with my experiments than I had first planned.

After I finished assessing my new 'instincts,' I got to the testing phase. I split off the smallest quantity of my soul that I could, and attached it to a drop of water. The result was… odd.

Based on the System notification, I had assumed that I would make some sort of… water-based clone. One that would work for me as an extra combatant or scout. I had assumed that each clone would have a mind of its own, sort of like an autonomous AI.

After splitting, I realized this was wrong. The moment I separated my new soul strand from me, I was two. It was more like my brain expanded. I was looking at myself… and I was also looking at myself again, from a different perspective. I hadn’t created an autonomous scout or an artificial intelligence. Both fragments of my soul were me. Both bodies sent me the same sensory feedback, and both felt like me. I wasn't cloning myself - I was creating a second body and inhabiting both at the same time.

But not completely. I realized that I could still give my 'second body' orders, and it would carry them out autonomously. The clone was me, but at the same time, it could become partially independent. This feeling... was very peculiar. It was like I had grown a new pair of arms, and then they had fallen asleep. Then, after falling asleep, they had popped off of my torso and started wandering around on their own.

Although the feeling was quite disturbing, I tried to keep an open mind. Having an autonomous helper during battles could be incredibly useful.

After several seconds of observing my clone, I realized something else. My clone had a separate essence pool. The moment I had split off a part of my soul, I had expected that I would need to spend essence to keep it alive. However, the clone wasn't pulling off of my essence pool to exist. I had the clone toss a few tiny extinguishes at random slabs of concrete, before I realized what was happening.

The clone ability was converting water itself into essence. There was a limit to it... but when I created a clone, part of my soul was used to create the clone, and then another part was used to convert water into essence. My clone had started off with a decent reservoir of essence. If I created the largest possible clone, I would be doubling my essence pool. It was an incredible backup plan when something went wrong, and one that I hadn't expected to get. I grinned. {Eldritch Soul} had a lot of hidden useful features.

“How is your new ability?” asked Sallia, catching me by surprise. I blinked, and realized that I had gotten caught up in my testing. I hadn't noticed Sallia when she exited the store.

“It’s not bad,” I said, as I rubbed my forehead. “I’m still trying to get used to it, but it's very useful. Though several aspects of the ability work differently than I thought they would.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sallia, as she sat down next to me.

“Well… I was expecting to create some sort of autonomous clone, which I could command. Instead, my ability somehow split me in two. My clone is still intrinsically linked to me. I also need to finish adjusting to having two fields of vision at once.” I rubbed my forehead and laughed. “It'll be useful in future worlds, though. My clone has a separate pool of essence. In a bad situation, I can nearly double my essence pool."

Sallia laughed.

“That’s a pretty good emergency response. Combined with Extinguish... you could do some pretty scary things on a battlefield."

Sallia sat down next to me, before she leaned closer to me and gave me a hug. I smiled and hugged her back, before spending a few seconds relaxing. My little water clone kept marching in circles, as I experimented with what it could do on its own.

“What did you end up buying with your Achievement,” I asked, as I kept observing my new ability.

“I didn’t get much this time,” she said, before she shared her Status Screen with me.

Physical

Mental

Essence

Strength: (20+100)

Grade 6

Intelligence: (20+100)

Grade 6

Absorption: (40+100)

Grade 7

Agility: (20+100)

Grade 6

Willpower: (40+100)

Grade 7

Manifestation: (40+100)

Grade 7

Fortitude: (40+100)

Grade 7

Perception: (20+100)

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Grade 6

Binding: (20+100)

Grade 6

Alteration: (20+100)

Grade 6

I looked over Sallia’s status screen, before I tried to remember what it looked like last life. I didn’t think it had changed much…

Sallia sighed as she looked at me. “Yeah, it didn’t change much,” she said, answering my doubts. “I died pretty early last life. Not much Achievement to spend. Still, I got a few upgrades. I spent half of my Achievement on raising Fortitude and Willpower to Grade 7. Both of them were at +30 before, so I only bought 20 stat points in total. I still have quite a few attributes to go before I finish getting everything up to Grade 7, but…” Sallia shrugged. “Progress is progress. I will need to rely on whatever we loot from the Market to build up my abilities further. I only have about two thousand Achievement left.” Sallia grimaced. I also winced. Two thousand Achievement wasn't a lot to work with. Would that even be enough to get something useful from the inner district of the Market?

I hesitated, before I sighed. The inner districts should also have some reserves of Achievement. With any luck, we could loot more from there.

I looked back at my clone, before I realized that I had forgotten to ask about Sallia's new rune ability. During the fight, we had focused on winning. Her ability had worked... but I wanted to know how she felt about it.

"How is your new rune ability?" I asked.

Sallia snorted. “It kind of works, but it has a major issue. Resistance. Every time I tried to use the rune ability to mess with the Fungal Menace's essence, it felt like I was trying to cut through wood. I managed to punch through, but I suspect the problem will get worse the stronger the enemy is. I'm hoping I'm wrong, but I doubt it.”

I winced. The ability still had some use, but it would be way more limited than expected if it had such a huge limitation.

“Enough about my abilities," said Sallia, as she grimaced. It sounded like the topic annoyed her. "How about your ability? How does it look through your soul vision? If both bodies are 'you,' that might give you an interesting hint about how souls and space work."

I blinked. I hadn't checked that yet. I turned back towards my little miniature clone and activated my soul sight.

For a moment, I had a strange feeling of double vision. On one hand, I could see what I now deemed my ‘regular’ soul vision. There, a vast, empty world appeared, with bright, colorful lights and shapes denoting souls. At the same time, I saw a vast, twisted world of broken geometry and misleading ripples in space. It was... chaotic. It gave me a headache when I looked at it... but at the same time, I could understand it.

Through that layer of broken geometries, I could see a connection between myself and my clone. I had believed that I had 'cut off' part of my soul, but that wasn't what I had done. The soul strand in my clone was still attached to me... even though I could barely understand how. It was like I had cut off my hand, and then started making my hand crawl around like a hand spider. The mechanics of how or why it worked were baffling.

At the same time, the image of the twisted geometry reminded me of something. It took me a few seconds to remember it, before I burst out laughing.

“Hey, I think those giant fish from our first world together were eldritch. The twisted geometry connecting my soul together reminds me of it." I shared my vision with Sallia over the communication bracelet.

Sallia didn't laugh. Instead, she groaned, and started massaging her temples.

“My head hurts. What the heck is that? It’s like… It’s like I’m looking at a still image, but my eyes kept playing tricks on me and made me think it was moving,” said Sallia. “Or something like that. My brain isn't built to understand what I'm looking at.” She ended the connection between our bracelets, and then winced. "That was bizarre."

"Sorry," I said, taken aback.

"Don't worry about it. You had no way of knowing." Sallia's expression eased after a few minutes. "It doesn't look like the headache lasts long." Then, she grinned. "Now that I think about it, the 'Eldritch' keyword is quite interesting, though. Your new ability has a lot of alternate uses, if you're clever enough to figure them out."

I nodded. “I get the same feeling. If you can't understand the 'eldritch,' even when I'm showing it to you, then that keyword might have some useful advantages to it. I already have a lot of effort invested into understanding space. Understanding these... twisted geometries might be an amazing way to keep progressing. I have a research direction I can pursue next life.”

I kept playing around with my soul sight and my vision while the two of us sat in companionable silence. Occasionally, we broke the silence when Sallia tossed out a new suggestion for how to use my ability. Most of her ideas didn't work out, but it was nice spending time together playing with magic.

Several minutes passed, before the door to the store swung open again. This time, I noticed it, and turned towards the door. Anise and Felix had joined us.

“Did you get all of your purchases done?” I asked.

Felix grinned. “I brought everything up to Grade 8.” With that, he shared his Status Screen with me.

Physical

Mental

Essence

Strength: (60+100)

Grade 8

Intelligence: (60+100)

Grade 8

Absorption: (60+100)

Grade 8

Agility: (60+100)

Grade 8

Willpower: (60+100)

Grade 8

Manifestation: (60+100)

Grade 8

Fortitude: (60+100)

Grade 8

Perception: (60+100)

Grade 8

Binding: (60+100)

Grade 8

Alteration: (60+100)

Grade 8

I looked at Felix’s attributes, and felt a bit of excitement. Felix had reached Grade 8 in all of his stats. He had a huge advantage over 'normal' people now. I was jealous, but I was also glad that my friend had gotten such a huge improvement in his strength.

“The store didn’t have the materials to push things further than that, but I feel amazing," said Felix. "I still have about forty thousand Achievement left, too. If any of you need to borrow some, let me know. I can definitely afford it right now.” Felix cackled. “I even have over a hundred Glut free. If we find any cool non-keyword abilities, I can buy them.”

Anise smiled. “I only improved a few stats. I want to keep a healthy amount of Achievement laying around, for whatever we find in the Inner Market. But I still boosted Willpower and Fortitude up.”

She showed us her Status Screen too.

“I’m a little poor after buying my keyword ability, since it ate a big chunk of achievement. But I still have 9,000 kicking around,” she said.

Physical

Mental

Essence

Strength: (20+100)

Grade 6

Intelligence: (20+100)

Grade 6

Absorption: (20+100)

Grade 6

Agility: (20+100)

Grade 6

Willpower: (40+100)

Grade 7

Manifestation: (40+100)

Grade 7

Fortitude: (40+100)

Grade 7

Perception: (20+100)

Grade 6

Binding: (20+100)

Grade 6

Alteration: (20+100)

Grade 6

I looked at my friend’s status screens, and smiled. We were still very weak in the context of the greater multiverse... but we were improving. Even though there was a long way to go, we were getting closer to where we needed to be.

“Are we ready?” asked Sallia, as she glanced at the others.

“There's nothing else of interest in the shop,” said Felix. “I checked, and all of the items and Achievement inside were looted already. Some other group might have hit this store before us. Either way, I'm ready to move on. Do you have your new ability worked out, Miria?” I nodded.

“I have a basic understanding of it. It should be fine to use for scouting. I just need to keep an eye on how much of my soul I split off each use."

"That's not too bad," said Felix. Sallia and I stood up, before I brushed off a few specks of dirt that had gotten stuck inside of my dress. I grinned as I looked at the Market in front of us.

It was time for the next step of our plan. We needed to find one of the inner districts of the nursery.