Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

After the strongest members of our tribe left, our clan felt strangely empty. It wasn't just the lack of a few people here and there that made things feel so odd - it was the way people talked. The people were quieter and moved through the village faster when they were outdoors. In the days after our strongest tribe members left the tribe, people seemed far more nervous than ever before.

The events of the next few months proved that people were right to be nervous. Normally, we didn’t encounter very many dangers while our village-bearing beasts were on the move. Our speed, as well as the combat power of our wandering village, ensured that monsters didn’t actually show up very often, because they didn’t sense us quickly enough or couldn’t catch up to us. However, without the added safeguard of our strongest tribe members, the two times monsters did catch up to us, they launched dangerous raids on our clan.

The first attack was a pack of nearly four hundred wolves, each of which was abnormally fast and had ice magic available to them. They managed to deal some serious cuts to one of the legs of a village-bearing beast before we even noticed their silent attack and respond, which was when I realized just how much our scouting abilities had deteriorated without our strongest fighters.

Luckily, once we noticed the wolf pack, our mages and archers had an easy enough time clearing the wolves out. Our offensive power was more than sufficient to deal with the monsters following and harassing our village-bearing beasts. However, the fight was not without a price. During the combat, one of our warriors took an unlucky icicle to the eyeball, killing him on the spot before I could even try to heal him.

The second incident was less dangerous, though quite a bit more tricky. Our village-bearing-beast wandered into a patch of thick, unusually vibrant vegetation as it followed the ember, and the vegetation tried to ensnare our entire village bearing beast. Luckily, this time the threat was easier to deal with. [Fire Mages] had an exceptionally easy time burning down the plant monster, while I and a few [Ice Mages] used our own abilities to protect the town and the village-bearing-beasts.

While only one death from a few months of travel was far from catastrophic, it was still a stern reminder of how different life was now. The monsters in our area were far more dangerous when we didn’t hold a major advantage in the number of upper-level combatants, especially since we had never been near the top of the food chain to begin with.

Despite the heightened danger of the world, time continued to march on. The presence of the heroes in the hero training program started to become more and more noticeable as the years passed by, and we were called into the battlefield more and more often as we continued to fight off monsters and enemies.

The year that I turned nine years old, I finally hit level 40.

You have leveled up! Ice Mage has advanced from level 33 to level 40!

+5 Free Stat Points (X7) +2 Sense (X7) +2 Mind (X7) +2 Vitality (X7) +4 Mana (X7)

As per usual, I put all of my stats into Mana.

Power: You have leveled up your Secondary Spark (X7)

Achievement + 1400

Slaughter: You have killed a Frost Wolf, Veridian Horror, Jungle Strider, Mud Maw, Flickerhound, Sun Tiger, Flamewalker, WorldSpine, DarkRoot, Brightmaw, Veldian Verryn, Callidian Eye Eater, and Veldrian for the first time. Influence: You have helped defend the ember against a monster attack (X13)

Slaughter Achievement Total: +14,200 Influence Achievement Total: + 8,000

In total, I got 22,200 Achievement from our various fights during the three years between my sixth and ninth birthdays. The huge variety of monsters in this world meant that I truly had an easy time getting a surplus of Slaughter Achievement whenever we got into a battle. Almost every fight was against a new monster.

Of course, this also meant that I had a very hard time farming fifth kills and assists for monsters in this world - after all, the moment a fight ended, the odds of finding the same monster were extremely low in this world, and I could usually kill a few monsters on my own. With the lives of other townsfolk and warriors depending on me, and with the lack of room for error we had after our top-level combatants left, I usually didn’t have the room to mess around with assists - if I had the option I just went for kills, in order to save as much mana and essence as possible for healing after the battle. That meant that I ended up with surprisingly few assists.

I also got a few skills from slaughtering various kinds of monsters. Some of the skills were quite useless, so I didn’t end up taking them - such as the {Frozen Bite} skill, which I acquired from extinguishing one of the frost wolves. Even so, I got two new Skills that I ended up adding to my repertoire, along with a third Skill that enhanced my learning speed.

Endless Hunger of the Ocean has devoured Flickerhound for the first time. New Skill created.

Snap-Step: You may store a moderate amount of any form of essence into this skill, then spend it in order to ‘snap’ out of reality for a brief period of time. When you do this, you will temporarily gain the ability to phase through physical attacks, so long as they do not contain a certain minimum threshold of mana or other forms of essence. Attacks based on essence and magic will also inflict less damage upon you than they normally would while in this state, though the effect weak. This skill consumes a moderate amount of essence for each second it is activated.

I could only activate this skill for about ten seconds, and it took a full six hours to recharge the skill afterwards, but it was surprisingly useful on the battlefield. The fact that this skill could store essence independently from my ‘normal’ essence pool meant that it was basically a way of expanding my total essence count - which was quite useful. I also appreciated the defensive utility of this skill, even if it probably wouldn’t keep me alive against the stronger monsters of this world.

Endless Hunger of the Ocean has devoured Dark Root for the first time. New Skill created.

Born in the Shadows: While you are isolated from sunlight, your essence regeneration is mildly improved, and your senses are enhanced by a moderate amount (about equivalent to half a grade).

This Skill wasn’t anything overpowered, but a mild boost to essence regeneration and slightly improved senses was far from bad. It wasn’t very hard to isolate myself from sunlight on a day to day basis in order to take advantage of the enhanced essence regeneration, and I appreciated being able to heal people more often and spend more mana and essence per day training. The slightly enhanced senses also proved valuable as I grew older and the clan started to request my services as a scout more and more often, even if I was still restricted to scouting the areas immediately surrounding our clan each time we stopped.

Endless Hunger of the Ocean has devoured Caldian Eye Eater for the first time. New Skill created.

Devour the Flesh of the Fallen: When feasting upon the corpse of a fallen enemy, you have an easier time learning any Skills that the fallen enemy possessed for six hours after the meal.

There were plenty of monsters in this world who had similar magic types to the ice magic that I practiced in this world, and it was also extremely easy to request monster meat - after all, I was a warrior who fought on the front lines along with the adults. All I had to tell them was that I could eat monster meat to enhance my learning speed, and everyone was more than happy to save me a few cuts of meat after every fight. I claimed that it was due to the growth of a new rune ability, which was a lie - but nobody seemed that interested in pushing me for even basic details, especially since during the three years of travel and warfare, I firmly entrenched myself as the best healer in the clan.

I also farmed quite a bit of Achievement for healing the townsfolk over the years, in addition to the indirect benefits brought by being a competent healing mage.

Influence: You have healed twenty debilitating injuries, you have healed one hundred debilitating injuries, you have healed five hundred debilitating injuries.

Achievement + 800, Achievement + 1,500, Achievement + 2,300

In total, I got 4,600 Achievement from healing the town over the years and working as the medic.

Finally, I advanced both of my Skills another Tier.

Skill: You have increased your {Basic Ice Manipulation} Skill to Advanced Grade

Achievement + 5,000

You have raised basic Ice Manipulation to Tier 3

Mana Stat +35

Skill: You have increased your {Born of Winter’s Hold} Skill to Intermediate Grade

Achievement + 4,000

You have raised basic Born of Winter’s Hold to Tier 2

Mana Stat +15, Vitality +15, Resistance +15

In total, advancing both skills another step gave me 9,000 more Achievement in total - which was a sizeable boost to my overall Achievement total. Combined with all of the other gains I had made over the years, I had gone from 136,524 to 174,024 Achievement. I was beginning to really notice how much we could earn from this world, just by constantly moving, fighting, and growing. I remembered that a long time ago, when we were in the Market, one of the advertisements we had seen had claimed that worlds with a System were the best place for new transmigrators to start out. With earnings like these, I could certainly see why - even if my abilities from the Market gave me a huge advantage in collecting Achievement and growing stronger, a normal transmigrator would probably find it easy to succeed in an environment like this as long as they didn’t get killed by something way stronger than they were.

The moment I hit level 40, my friends congratulated me for my growth, and I started to make preparations for the next step forward. Now that I had pushed all the way to level 40, it was time to select a new feat, and then get my third Spark - and with that, I would only be one spark away from the compound spark I had been looking forward to receiving.