I floated in a sea of darkness, dragged through the endless void by a golden lasso of energy. Just like the first time I had died, I hurtled through dimension after dimension, feeling the shape of reality waver and remold itself over and over again with each dimension I passed through.

However, unlike the first time I had died, I wasn’t alone. Alongside me, two silver-colored blobs flew towards the Market with me. Sallia, Felix and I were returning to the Market as a group.

Time passed. I couldn’t figure out which blob was Sallia and which blob was Felix, since they had no distinct features in this form, and I didn’t have any control over myself since I had no muscles. I couldn’t help but think that this was quite frustrating. None of us could communicate with each other, or even move around, so we were stuck watching the scenery as time passed by.

After an unknown period of time spent flying through the void, I saw the Market again. I breathed a sigh of relief at the thought that we could finally talk again soon. Spending what felt like forever staring into the endless void was starting to wear at my nerves. Soon, we arrived above a familiar city. Just like the first time we had arrived, the city was a giant pile of rubble, ruined buildings, and collapsed architecture.

I wondered how long these ruins had stood here before we had arrived at the Market, before I saw a brief flash of golden light cover the other two silver blobs. Moments later, the blob on the left turned into Sallia, and the blob on the right turned into Felix. With a start, I realized that I also had a physical body again.

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.

Four 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.

Shockingly, an advertisement didn’t follow the previous message. I felt vaguely uncomfortable with this. Why wasn’t the Market trying to sell me random garbage? That just felt wrong.

I spent a few moments just wobbling around, before I finally readjusted myself to my new body. Being able to move again was strange after the huge amount of time spent drifting through the void. However, after a little bit of readjustment, I was able to walk again.

I took a look at my body, feeling myself move, and realized that my body felt… familiar.

My hair was blonde now. I didn’t remember what color my hair had been when I first came to the Market, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t originally been blonde. My body was larger and taller than it had been when I was Miria, but the way my body moved, looked, and felt…

It was as if I was still Miria. I couldn’t see my own face, but when I touched my face it felt exactly the same as when I had been Miria. Just older.

Mentally, even when I had been living in the Islands, I had never really considered myself to be a child. After all, I had lived over twenty years in my first life, and while my body did influence my mind some, I had always still thought of myself as being an adult pretending to be a child.

The physical body the Market had given me reflected that. I was unmistakably somewhere in my early twenties again. However, almost every single aspect of my body looked like it had when I was Miria, just aged five or six years. The one and only thing I had carried over from my first life was my mental age.

I took a moment to look at my Status Screen, now that we had returned to the market.

Current Vessel: Basic Physical Body (Default Market Model – Mass Produced Model 6,257-I), Mana Brain (Default Market Model – Mass Produced Model 62-B)

Basic Physical body: + 5 grades (100 points) to all stats while you are inhabiting this physical vessel. Body will begin to deteriorate in a few months. Body has some leaks and cannot perfectly house a Transmigrator’s soul. It is advised you find a replacement or reincarnate before problems occur.

Mana Brain: Allows you to think. As this is comprised entirely of mana, it is possible to house this mana-brain inside of a soul, rather than being reliant upon a physical body to function.

Warning: It is strongly advised that you keep your brain safe, and always have at least one brain or brain-equivalent functioning at all times. If your brain is damaged or destroyed, possible ramifications include losing the ability to think until a new brain is acquired and linked to your soul. Please keep this in mind at all times.

Physical

Mental

Essence

Strength: 0 (+100)

Intelligence: 0 (+100)

Absorption: 0 (+100)

Agility: 2 (+100)

Willpower: 0 (+100)

Manifestation: 0 (+100)

Fortitude: 0 (+100)

Perception: 0 (+100)

Binding: 0 (+100)

Alteration: 0 (+100)

Lives Remaining: 4

0/10 Keyword Slots used

Glut: 0

Abilities:

Birth related Abilities: Gender Control

Achievement: 15,504.05

Items: 1/5

1. Friendship Bracelet

2.

3.

4.

5.

You have abilities available for purchase! Please click this notification to examine them! They will expire in 71 hours and 30 minutes.

I ignored the ability purchase list for now - I would look at them later.

I turned to look at Sallia and Felix, curious to discuss this phenomenon with them, only to suppress a scream.

Sallia’s eyes were pure purple, with no whites or pupils. They looked like someone had jammed chunks of amethyst into her skull. I had grown so used to seeing her eyes look like mine that I had forgotten what her first body had looked like. Now, her face looked like a mixture of her first body and her body when she had lived as Aria on the islands. After a few deep breaths (which my Market-issued body had zero use for), I calmed down. Sallia still looked a lot like she had on the islands, and she was even quite attractive. However, she looked different from Sallia, the friend I had spent over a decade with on the islands, and the strange blend of familiar and unfamiliar facial features caught me off guard. But I knew that Sallia was still the same person, it was just that she looked different now. If anything, her now-red hair granted her a certain fiery look that hadn’t been there when her hair was blonde, which matched her personality oddly well.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Felix’s change was similar to Sallia’s. I vaguely remembered that, when Sallia and I had met him in the Market, he had originally been incredibly bulky. He had resembled a humanoid bear, and had possessed a body that would make bodybuilders jealous. During our time together on the islands, his frame had been much smaller, since most of his strength had come from his runes instead of his body.

After fifteen years, I had started to forget what he had originally looked like.

His slim frame from our time in the islands remained the same, but his hair was black again. His eyes, however, remained blue, exactly the same color as the islanders. He was also reasonably attractive; his current body blended together all of the best features from his time on the islands and his first life. Since I had already gotten used to Sallia’s sudden physical changes, Felix’s body morphing caught me much less off-guard.

My friends finished examining their own bodies at the same time I finished figuring out what was different about mine.

Sallia chuckled. “I have to say, Miria, you look exactly the same. Felix and I ended up with bodies that mix our first and second lives together, but if you walked back onto the islands right this second, I bet everyone in the village would recognize you.”

Felix nodded, but he looked a fair bit more thoughtful than Sallia. “I wonder what exactly determines the way our body looks when we return to the Market.”

I frowned as well. “I think it’s based on our mental image of ourself. It takes our idea of what we should look like, and then grabs the closest mass-produced model available in the Market and sticks us inside of it? That’s what makes the most sense to me, anyway.” Sallia simply nodded.

“That explains why my body doesn’t move quite right, but it’s still pretty close. But that’s not important right now. The bigger question is…” Sallia frowned. “What now? We’ve returned to the Market, earlier than expected. What’s on our to do list before our next life? We apparently need to wait 30 days before our next reincarnation, so we have some time.”

“First thing’s first - did you get a Keyword ability to take the rune magic system with you?” I asked, turning to Sallia. This was one of my biggest concerns, since I desperately wanted Sallia to take a Keyword Ability with her. It would be far too much of a waste if she had found her essence that she was ‘extremely talented’ in and then failed to bring the magic System with her.

She suddenly started grinning madly. “I did! I got a really good one for throwing the black pearl at the outsiders during the final battle. It has 3 keywords, and one of them is absorption. I can bring the rune system to the next world, and I can create Absorption essence by practicing my swordsmanship. Thank you so much!” She leapt towards me and hugged me, and I felt a mad smile tug at my lips as well. Despite how insane some of our actions had been near the end of our time in the islands, they had paid off. Sallia had gotten a keyword ability that fit her.

Though, I did wonder why Sallia’s keyword ability fit her so incredibly well, despite the fact that she had thrown a black pearl to get the Ability. All of the Abilities I had gotten so far had been mostly based on what actions I took to generate the Ability. However, Sallia’s Ability perfectly matched her interests and passions. I frowned.

I had been wondering for a while why the Market made such a big fuss about people with extreme talents for one essence. Sallia was better than Felix and I at controlling Absorption essence, but it didn’t seem like a huge deal. However, after hearing about Sallia’s Keyword ability, I had a different guess. Perhaps it made it keyword abilities related to a certain essence fit the user better? It might even make it easier to upgrade, as well. I wasn’t sure how hard upgrading an Ability was, but I was willing to bet it got harder the higher Grade the ability in question was. If people naturally had an easy time upgrading their Ability, so long as it was related to their talent, it would make much more sense for the Market to care about people with extreme Essence talents. I decided to keep this guess in mind, and mention it to Sallia and Felix later.

Felix frowned thoughtfully. “I think we should talk before we do anything. I have a few things I want to say, about our future, and I think we should do a bit of planning. First thing’s first; how much Achievement do all of you have? I’m sitting on around 7,000 right now. I have a bit less, but it’s close enough.”

“I’m at a little over 15,000” I said.

“I have almost exactly 5,000” said Sallia, frowning. “Why do you have so much more?”

Felix shook his head. “All right, that confirms one of the things I’ve been thinking about. During the time we were drifting over the ocean of souls, I had a few ideas I wanted to share about how we should handle ability purchases and future lives. Miria’s Achievement total just confirms some of my thoughts. Let’s take over one of these houses first. There shouldn’t be anything too dangerous inside of them, hopefully.”

I nodded, and scanned the street we had appeared near. Sallia quickly spotted a small house with no windows, which would prevent any undead in the area from spotting us as long as we closed the door.

The three of us quickly headed towards a middle-ages peasant hut, before popping open the door and preparing to run if something dangerous was inside. Right now, we had no possessions besides our friendship bracelets and the clothes on our back. Fighting a sword-wielding skeleton with my bare hands seemed like a bad idea.

Luckily, nothing was inside. Despite the middle-ages peasant exterior, the inside of the house was neatly decorated with modern-age tv and computer monitors (all of which were broken), modern-era appliances (none of which had electricity, and probably hadn’t for centuries), and an kitchen with cooking instruments and stoves I had never seen before and had no clue how to operate. There were only four rooms in the house, but all of them were far larger than the exterior of the house had led me to believe was possible, and were probably the result of some sort of spatial magic. For a brief moment, I missed my former eyes. The ability to see weaknesses and cracks in space would have probably made the Market even more interesting to observe, but sadly, my Spatial manipulation abilities were lost when I died.

After the three of us searched the house and found nothing interesting besides a pile of corpses, we took over the dining room and sat down.

“All right, I wanted to do was go over what happened in the last world. What worked, what didn’t work, and most importantly, how we should plan for the future,” said Felix. “First of all, why did Miria end up with so much Achievement at the end of the first world?”

He looked at me, and I frowned. “Well, a lot of it was influencing the course of history on the islands, right? I mean, the assists from the outsiders we killed during the final battle got us around 2,000 Achievement, give or take a bit, but I also got almost 4,000 for influencing the final battle itself. And around a thousand for planning and pulling off the great pearl heist. And I also got a LOT from the glowing fish fight, and the storm orbs…”

Felix nodded. “Exactly. As I’m sure both of you remember, my Stats were the best out of ours at the start of the world. In most of the categories that ended up mattering, I surpassed Miria because I was luckier. Despite that fact, I ended up in second place as far as Achievement goes. Why is the case?”

Sallia frowned, looking at Felix and then looking at me again. Now that she had lost a grade of Intelligence, she seemed to be having a hard time keeping up with high level thinking. I also frowned. I suddenly had an easier time thinking, now that my intelligence had increased from Grade 4 to Grade 5 after returning to the Market, but I had grown very used to feeling drunk all the time. Thinking was still surprisingly difficult, and I would need a few days to readjust. I had no idea where Felix was going with this.

“The answer, as far as I can tell, is that Miria started out with a GOAL while we were in the islands. An incredibly dangerous, insane goal that she spent a decade turning into a reality. And in the process of achieving that goal, she made a lot of other things change on the islands, which gave her a bunch of Influence Achievement. Some of this was luck, since the Glowing Fish being too stupid to ignore illusions was just a coincidence. However, a lot of this Achievement was inevitable, as long as Miria didn’t die.”

“How so?” Asked Sallia.

“Well, take, for example, the storm orbs. The moment Miria decided she was going to explore the oceans, it was highly likely that she would stumble across some sort of weird magic resource there. With how bizarre and dangerous the ocean was, it was practically inevitable that something weird and dangerous was in the ocean, right? While she had a high chance of killing herself in the process, it was inevitable that she would either die or get a huge lump sum of Achievement from exploring the ocean and learning about it. Does that make sense?” Said Felix. Sallia and I both nodded.

“Then, when it came to the battle with the Outsiders, Miria’s actions basically single-handedly gave EACH of us 2,000 Achievement. All because she explored an incredibly dangerous area and lived to tell the tale, bringing back precious information and resources.”

“So, what you’re saying is that we should… do really dangerous stunts every life, in hopes of being like Miria?” Asked Sallia.

“What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t be held back so much by societal expectations. Sallia, you didn’t end up pursuing the life you wanted to, right? You would have much preferred to be one of the hunters. While it might have been inevitable that the village didn’t think much of your fighting abilities, given your terrible Stats last life, there MIGHT have still been a way you could turn your dream into reality if we looked far enough. Meanwhile, I spent my entire life wishing I had become a craftsman, but since I was ‘more suited’ to being a hunter, I spent my life training to fight. I thought I was doing the right thing, and being intelligent about my future, since we would eventually return to the Market, and this is the easiest place to die several times in a row and become permanently dead. But at the end of the day, both of us ended up with far less Achievement than we could have, and ended up far less happy with our lives than Miria.”

“Huh,” I said. I was starting to see where Felix was going with this.

“I think that Miria’s idea was the correct one. Rather than listening to what people tell us to do, and living unsatisfying and ordinary lives in future worlds, it’s more important to set goals for ourselves. Even if those goals are insane, dangerous, and likely to get us killed. Because we’re transmigrators; even if we die, we’ll just reincarnate again. Since that’s the case, doesn’t it make sense to get as much as we can out of each life? We don’t need to fear death the same way other people do. We should take full advantage of that fact.”

Sallia nodded thoughtfully. “Actually, you make a really good point. We don’t need to be worried about the permanent consequences of death, as long as we have more lives. The question is how much Achievement we can farm per life. How much could we have even earned, if we didn’t take part in Miria’s plan? I had already exhausted most of the easy sources of Achievement I had access to on the Islands. Unless it was Influence Achievement, I probably could have only gotten another one or two thousand during the course of my entire lifetime from crafting, passing my second adulthood ceremony, and a few other miscellaneous sources of Achievement. Maybe I could have gotten more if I got to [Advanced] Swordsmanship, but it wouldn’t have made a huge difference. Meanwhile, taking part in Miria’s insane plan got me about three thousand Achievement and a keyword ability in a day. Even if it was the fruit of several years of planning on Miria’s part, it matched my assumptions for how much I would have earned over the rest of my life.”

I felt a strange thought start to bubble up. “Does that mean we’re never living to adulthood? I’m going to be one hundred percent honest and say that the idea of exploring the ocean WAS a huge bonus to Achievement, but it’s also what got us killed at the end. And… that was kind of the expected outcome, honestly. Before me, nobody returned from the Ocean. And ocean exploration was close to suicidal, even after all of my preparation. If we go and explore the most dangerous areas of every world in the future, we’re going to die young way more often than we live to old age.”

Felix shrugged. “Who cares if we never live to adulthood? Who cares if we never reach old age? We need strength to protect the people we care about in each life, and when we die we’ll just reincarnate anyway. A short and interesting life is much better than a long life spent regretting not having the courage to live out our dreams, right?”

I felt a strange smile start to form on my lips as I nodded. “I suppose you’re right. If I hadn’t explored the ocean, I always would have wondered what lay beneath the surface. Even though I didn’t get to see everything I was curious about, I at least got to see a lot of things I would have never seen if I didn’t have the courage to step forward.”

The three of us grinned at each other as I realized something.

From now on, I wasn’t going to be the only one pursuing my dreams in each world.