Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

I felt a strange jerking sensation as I sank into the inky darkness. I gaped like a fish as I tried to touch my arm, which had already stopped hurting, even though the limb was destroyed beyond repair. Then, I realized it wasn’t just my ruined arm - all of my limbs were growing colder and harder to move. I felt familiar with the sensation of being dunked in this water. I tried to look at Sallia and Little Six, but I couldn’t feel them anymore, and they were gone from my sight.

The pool of black water had become all I could see. I could no longer see anyone or anything else. I began to feel my physical body collapse. In seconds, it was shredded into oblivion, releasing my soul from its physical container. However, my mana-brain given to me by the Market remained intact. I could still see and think.

Moments later, I saw a band of light stretch out from the cheap-looking friendship bracelet now visible on my wrist. The light band broke into two threads, which both extended in different directions before connecting to something. Suddenly, I could feel Sallia and Little Six attached to me, although I still couldn’t see or hear them.

We were jerked upwards. As the three of us continued to rise, we rapidly flew above the surface of the ocean, confirming my suspicion. We were back in the ocean of souls that I had started my journey in. I could see two bands of light connecting me to two other souls. Both of them were far enough away that I had a hard time seeing them clearly, but I could intuitively tell that they were Sallia and Little Six from the sensation my friendship bracelet gave me.

Then, I felt another strange, jolting sensation. It felt like I was being pulled apart, but it didn’t hurt – instead, it was more like I was a loose thread, and someone was untangling me before they gently tied me back together. The three of us were tugged sideways, being dragged farther and farther away from the river, before there was a sudden crashing sound and a flash of light.

Finally, I felt myself sink into something. Instead of jolting and pulling sensations, I felt like I was sinking into a warm, fuzzy cocoon. The golden threads connecting me to Sallia and Little Six also settled down, before they gradually disappeared into nothing. Meanwhile, I suddenly felt very, very sleepy.

I felt my thoughts beginning to slow down. I realized that my mana-brain was rapidly collapsing, its use over. Drunkenly, I tried to recall the warning I had seen earlier. Something about how without a brain, my ability to think would disa-

I blacked out.

The next thing I was aware of was a woman screaming in pain, and I felt something pushing me. A flash of light seared my eyes. I tried to look around, I couldn’t rotate my neck properly and I couldn’t see very far. I felt someone grab ahold of me, before a massive man’s face suddenly appeared right next to me. He was blonde, with blue eyes, and had a massive grin on his lips as he looked at me. He said something I couldn’t understand, before he turned me towards a woman laying on a bed. She also had blonde hair and blue eyes, and she looked exhausted. However, I could see her give me an exhausted grin, and she smiled gently as she looked at me. I felt an instinctive flash of warmth and comfort as I looked at her, and she gently reached out and touched my head.

Mother. Even though I had only seen her for a few seconds, I knew that she was my mother.

Multiple System popups then blocked my vision, completely obscuring my view of my mother and father.

I felt more than a little irritated by the popup ads, and I quickly dismissed them. I was starting to get a horrible headache as I tried to observe my surroundings, which certainly wasn’t helping my mood. Thinking felt oddly difficult, as though I was thinking through syrup, and I was rapidly developing a migraine.

I took a deep breath, before I pushed through the growing pain behind my eyelids and focused on what had happened before I reincarnated.

First, the skeleton that shot green beams at me had almost certainly been using magic. This finally answered the question of what had done all of the structural damage to the Market. The Skeletons we had seen before then had no way of liquifying stone or shattering buildings, but the fire and acid magic the two spellcasters had used definitely had the ability to devastated parts of the Market.

Second, the spellcasting skeleton had laughed at us and mocked us before attacking. It was intelligent, unlike its less intelligent brethren. It might be waiting for us to return to the Market, and seemed able to plan and think. If we wanted to survive, we needed a way to fight that thing. I had no idea what would let us fight against magic - however, more Stats seemed like a decent place to start. If we could find a place to buy abilities, that would also help. For Stats we needed Achievement, and the same was probably true for Abilities. Was it possible to earn Achievement in this world?

I heard the smiling man saying something in a language I didn’t recognize, before the woman sighed and stroked my head again. This took me out of my thoughts, and I observed my mother and father more closely while trying to ignore the piercing headache that was growing worse every second.

My headache grew worse as my father handed me back to my mother, who held me and patted my back a few times. My father gazed at both me and my mother, before he smiled gently at me and lightly ran his fingers over my head. I managed to wriggle a little bit in my mother’s arms, and realized with a start that I had both arms again. Whatever damage the skeleton had done to my body before Sallia pulled me into the pond of reincarnation, it hadn’t touched me, the soul wearing my previous container like a pair of clothes. I was more than a little relieved to know that I had my arm back.

As I tried to think, my headache got worse and worse. Why did my head hurt so much? Before I could focus more on my thoughts, I lost consciousness again.

The next period of time was a jumble of disjointed images. Every time I woke up, it would be incredibly hard for me to think straight. I would feel hungry, or tired, but every single time I was awake, my head would start to hurt and thinking straight would become difficult. I couldn’t stay awake for more than a few minutes before I fell back asleep. Sometimes, I would be staring at my mother’s face when I was awake, and sometimes I would be staring at my father. Other times I was just staring at pieces of furniture, or the ceiling, or random objects. I never had more than five or six minutes to look around before I fell back asleep, as my headache grew worse every second I was awake. Thinking was hard, and I kept feeling like something was terribly wrong.

These disjointed fragments of time gradually started to become clearer and clearer as the months passed by. Instead of a brain-melting headache, I started to be able to think somewhat clearly every time I woke up, and I became able to stay awake for longer and longer periods of time. Never enough time to figure out what was going on, but at the very least, the feeling of wrongness was getting weaker and my thinking was getting clearer. I started to realize that I was still sort of conscious during my blackout periods of mind-numbing headaches, however. I would still move, eat, and occasionally squirm - however, my body was on autopilot.

Finally, as months and years passed, the headaches disappeared completely. I opened my eyes, taking some time to straighten out my thoughts now that I could remain conscious for more than a few minutes at a time.

However, even though my headache was gone, it was like I was thinking through syrup. I could tell, instinctively, that the… shape of my thinking was still wrong. It was close to before, but there was still something off. I took longer to form each thought, and it was harder and slower to form coherent ideas than I was used to.

Am I drunk? I wondered, before realizing that was ridiculous. I was a baby, and my parents wouldn’t have given me alcohol before I could even walk. Still, the sensation was similar. I tried to focus on the world around me instead, pushing my thoughts to the side for now.

The next thing I noticed was my mother, smiling as she held me in one of her arms while doing something I couldn’t make out with some pieces of wood and a wooden bucket filled with blue liquid. Now that my years-long headache had finally dialed down a bit, and my eyes seemed to be working again, I could get a better idea of what was going on.

In addition to her blonde hair and blue eyes, my mother was on the taller side. She was drop-dead gorgeous, in a way that probably would have made me a little jealous in my previous life. She hummed softly as she messed with the bucket, before she glanced at me. Her eyes lit up, and she smiled brightly.

“Oh? ……..Silas, ……  Miria is …… ….. and awake!” she said, smiling as she rubbed my head. I didn’t understand some of the words, but I was surprised by the fact I could understand a few words of the language now. Even though most of it still sounded like nonsense to me, I could make out some of the word fragments and piece together parts of sentences. Even though I had spent most of my time either unconscious or with a thought-devouring headache, I had apparently still picked up a fair bit of the local language.

After a few delayed moments, I realized something else. I was ‘Miria.’ After being reborn, that was my name. 

I had a moment of mixed feelings towards the name, but I felt oddly positive about it. It took me another few minutes of thinking to realize why.

Previously I had been named Isa-something.

And I also knew that I cared a lot about someone named Mar-something. Even if I couldn’t quite remember who Mar was, or what the rest of her name had been, I knew that they had been someone very close to me.

I liked my new name, because even though it was certainly coincidental, it reminded me of my first life. I had been named ‘Isa’ something in my first life. Someone I cared about had been named ‘Mar’ something. Miria sound like a combination of these two names, and because my name reminded me so much of my previous life, I was surprisingly happy with my new name.

Miria was a perfect name for me.

A moment later, I saw my father walk next to my mother, before he sat down and pulled out another piece of wood. He grabbed a crudely-made brush from nearby, and started helping out. It looked like they were painting pieces of wood blue.

Since I didn’t understand yet, I decided to take a good look at my father instead. He was a well-muscled and tall man, something I hadn’t noticed during my first inspection of him. He was much less gorgeous than my mother, though he still definitely looked handsome enough. He had a bit of a tan, unlike my mother, and a smile was never far away from his lips.

“... ……. Miria ……? …….‘papa’ ……..me?” He asked, as he gave me a kiss on the top of my head.

I couldn’t translate enough of his words to figure out what he was saying. Still, I smiled at him.

Then, having given him a smile, I looked down at myself again. Why had I lost so much time to that horrible headache? Was there something wrong with my body?

I took a moment to pop open my Status Screen. If there was something wrong with my body, it seemed reasonable to assume it would show up on my Status Screen. Starting there seemed logical.

Ah. So the reason I had headaches and lost consciousness over and over again was because my brain was too young to keep up with me. That was… unfortunate, but I was relieved to know it was a problem that would solve itself with enough time. With that settled, I moved on to figuring out what else had changed.

I quickly realized that I didn’t seem to be losing Achievement anymore. In the Market, I had lost Achievement constantly, as my soul ‘ate’ Achievement every second to keep me alive. However, I was pretty sure I was around two years old now. Despite that fact, I still had about the same amount of Achievement I had when the three of us had looted the LuxCorp reincarnation point. When we had left the Market, I should have had around 135 Achievement, after buying my two points of Agility and looting the Luxcorp pool of reincarnation booth. If I was still losing roughly 1 Achievement per day, I would be dead now. Instead, I had lost zero Achievement, even though I was at a few years old now.

With my immediate concerns addressed, I felt much more at ease. I was no longer facing the ticking time bombs of physical deterioration and starvation by lack of Achievement. I was now facing the much longer ticking time bomb of being hunted down and killed by a skeletal mage when we returned to the Market, but I at least had time to think and prepare now before I died in this world and returned.

My head started to hurt again, so I snuggled a little closer to my mother, who had picked me up and started gently stroking my head. My parents were healthy and so was I.  I was probably safe, at least for now.

Before I drifted off to sleep, I wondered how Sallia and Little Six were doing.

acaswell

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