After we confirmed that we were ready, we started sprinting. Our bodies didn't get tired or sore, so there was no reason to walk. Meanwhile, I sent my clone in a different direction. I didn't think that it would find an inner district, since it was less mobile than us and had to avoid skeletons. Our group could just blast through them as if they were minor obstacles, while my clone needed to be careful. Still, it didn't hurt to try.
As we sprinted, we ignored the shops we passed by. It felt bad to pass by all of the Achievement the shops had... but we needed to keep moving. The essence we spent taking over a shop would delay us, and we only had a few months to work with before we needed to reincarnate again.
To my surprise, as my clone explored, I realized that the skill I had picked up with {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} was useful. {Fungal Resilience} made pieces of my body survive for longer after being separated from my main body. This also applied to my water clone, making it consume less essence per second to stay alive. It was a small but useful skill.
Of course, even with {Fungal Resilience}, my clone didn't last long. About twenty minutes after we started moving, the water clone's soul ran out of energy. Once its soul fragment ran out of energy, the conversion of water into essence stopped. The water clone held on for a few more minutes, before it died. Accompanying its death was a profound sense of separation and loss. I felt as if a friend I cherished had died in front of my eyes. It was like a part of me had disappeared forever.
After it died, I gasped, and nearly collapsed in shock. It was a miserable feeling.
“Miria?” asked Anise. She sounded alarmed as she dashed to my side, before she knelt next to me.
“Sorry,” I said, gasping in pain.
I saw Anise’s tense shoulders relax, although she didn’t look entirely relieved. “Is that normal for the skill?” She shuffled, and then leaned closer to me, before putting a comforting arm around my shoulders.
I said, after a moment of hesitation. Part of what made me feel such a profound sense of loss was the intimate feeling of death I had experienced. I had died before... but my connection to the Market made those deaths feel rather fake. After all, I would be fine after I died. On the other hand, my clone's death had felt much more like a 'real' death.
I wasn't 100% sure that I would feel less bad the second time I experienced 'death,' but I hoped it would get better. I wasn't going to tell my friends that, though. I didn't want them to worry, and we needed this scouting ability. Unless something got worse, I could push through this much to keep everyone safe.
“Is your soul all right?” asked Felix, after I had a few minutes to calm down.
I... hadn't thought of checking that. I activated my soul sight to take a look. What I saw was rather surprising.
My soul looked diminished. I had only taken a tiny, strand of my soul out to turn into a clone. However, that tiny strand had made the entire color of my soul change. My soul was usually a bright silver color, just like other human souls. Now, it looked as if it had been bleached. The usual silver color looked faded and dim. I hadn't realized it would cause such a large impact.
On the bright side, the damage wasn't permanent. After using soul sight for a few seconds, I could already see my soul starting to repair itself. In a while, it would be back to normal.
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"It looks a little less colorful than usual, but it's healing," I said. "I doubt it'll be a big issue." I sent them an image of what I had seen over the communication bracelets.
Felix also looked uncomfortable at that. "Just... keep an eye on it," he said, finally. "And you should probably take care when splitting off larger pieces of your soul. If the color dimmed that much from losing a little hair-sized strand of soul, splitting off a larger portion might do permanent damage."
I hesitated for a few moments, before I nodded. I didn't think an Ability would permanently damage my soul, but there was no harm in taking things slowly. I should test my limits in a safe environment to make sure there were no major issues with {Eldritch Soul} before pushing the ability to its limit.
The others gave me a few more minutes to recover, before we started running again. After all, we only had a few months in the Market unless we found a way to stay longer. We had to keep moving.
For hours, we kept running. Every time my soul recovered enough, I sent another little clone off to the side. To my relief, the 'death' of each clone hurt me less. Each time I did it, my soul seemed to recover faster, and the impact of each death was weakened. It was still very painful... but I started to consider it a form of training instead of torture. I even started to suspect that this would stick around between reincarnations, although I wasn't sure yet.
Along the way, we also ran into a few skeletons on the road. Over the next day and a half of our mad sprint forward, we collected a few more tidbits of Achievement.
Slaughter: Killed a skeletal foot soldier for the fifth time. Assist in Killing a Skeletal Foot Soldier for the fifth time.
Influence: Contributed to the defense of the Market by an [extremely negligible] amount.
Achievement +60, Achievement +5, Achievement +0.00
65 Achievement didn’t make much of a dent in my current Achievement count, but it still boosted me from 12,629.01 to 12,694.01. Every bit helped, so I wasn’t going to complain.
Finally, we found what we were looking for. Near the end of the second day, the clone I had sent to the left of us ran past a store. Then, instead of turning onto another street, it looked like reality... broke. I blinked in surprise, as my clone looked around. It looked like my clone had teleported, since its surroundings had shifted drastically after a single step forward. However, when my clone looked behind itself, I could still see the store it had just walked past. It was located hundreds of meters behind my clone, even though it had only taken one step forward. My clone scanned its surroundings, although it took several seconds before I noticed a large sign hanging in the sky.
“Welcome to the Spatial fair! Those who have space-related Keywords, come and see the latest wares from Dimension corp, Spatial corp, and Void corp! An amazing collaboration between the giants of spatial magic and technology! Come witness and buy the abilities and items of the future!”
Space magic? Suddenly, things made much more sense. My clone scanned its surroundings, and I quickly realized that things were bent in this area. I was pretty sure that the creators of this area had some understanding of the 'eldritch' or at least something similar. The way that geometry worked here didn't line up with the way it worked outside of this street.
The buildings inside had far more distorted geometry than the ones outside. There were several city blocks that stretched into the distance, even though I was sure they hadn't been there before. Even more bizarre, many of those buildings were skyscrapers. However, when I sent my clone a few steps backwards, the skyscrapers vanished from sight again. It was almost as if the street was a compressed city of its own, squeezed onto a single street. Outside of the street, it was impossible to even see the skyscrapers. They were somehow shorter than even the first story of nearby shops if my clone was standing outside of the street.
It was a terrifying display of spatial manipulation… but it was also a promise. It told me that if we explored the area, we could find something amazing.
“I found something,” I said, as my main body halted mid-step. “It looks a bit different than the first inner district we saw, but it should have some useful things in it.” I sent my friends a barrage of images that I had just collected from my clone.
Felix, Sallia, and Anise grinned. We had been sprinting nonstop for almost two days now. We had lost two days that we could have otherwise spent looting Achievement and finding new items. But at long last, we had found what we were looking for. Even though I was nervous about what we would find inside of the inner district, I was also excited. It was time to see what one of the inner districts of the Market was like.