Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

Even though our first fight against the invaders from the universal tree had been successful, we didn’t let our guard down as we continued moving forward. The village beasts of our massive village alliance continued to hurry through the territory of the rats, while everyone with relevant scouting abilities kept an eye out for the retaliation of the universal tree. Naturally, this included me. I had no idea how the Universal Tree would respond to having the front line of one of its invasions breached, but I suspected the answer would involve adding new forces to the invasion, adding a high level combatant, or both.

In my mind, it wasn’t a question of whether the universal tree would respond. They would respond. It was only a question of when they noticed us, and how they reacted.

I spent the rest of the day in a state of tension as we moved back towards the rift where the enemy had first touched our world. Every single time more than five or six souls moved across my field of view at once, I had a small panic attack, as I waited for the other shoe to drop. Part of this was also due to the sheer scarcity of souls in this area. The moment we had moved behind enemy lines, I had noticed a massive difference in our surroundings. The rich, vibrant wildlife of the frozen jungle had rapidly disappeared under the invasion of the universal tree. Now, there were only dead trees, the occasional starving monster that had survived the destruction of its tribe, and insects that hadn’t quite finished dying out yet. Everything else was basically gone.

While our surroundings were depressingly light on life, it did make it easier to monitor our environment for threats. Fortunately, throughout the rest of the day, we didn’t encounter a single major threat. All we encountered was layer upon layer of dead trees, disturbed earth, and barren jungle, stripped of its resources and monsters until it resembled a lifeless, barren wasteland. We didn’t even find any other layers of rat nests, which I found somewhat odd - I had gotten the impression that we would hit two or three clusters of nests a day, and I had been expecting a follow-up battle well before evening arrived. However, even as night fell, I didn’t notice a single enemy in our vicinity.

As we continued to move through the barren wasteland left behind by the rat invasion, I started to wonder if this endless emptiness was the universal tree’s actual goal. I had long wondered why the universal tree would use monsters as the vanguard of an invasion force, since the monsters would create a problem that the universal tree would still need to deal with later on if they wanted to rule this world later. However, as we passed through the barren areas, I started to realize that the resources from this world weren’t entirely gone. All of the natural plants, monsters, and people were gone - but the soil itself was still here, and if anything, seemed to be far more rich in nutrients and essence than regular soil, since most plants and monsters had been eaten by the rats, digested, and then added back to the soil in a different form. The universal tree, as far as we knew, was literally a civilization built on some sort of multi-dimensional, magical tree. Perhaps the universal tree didn’t want any of the resources in this world. Perhaps they just wanted the soil and essence of this world, without anything else at all.

If that was the case, the only thing they needed from this dimension was the raw land and soil. Everything else needed to go. The monsters weren’t just here to wipe out the local inhabitants and stamp out any last shreds of resistance - their act of ripping apart every single plant, monsters, and resource in the area was also an act of terraforming.

The only solace the silent, dead world was that we didn’t encounter any enemies. I didn’t know whether they had died out, or whether they had gone off to attack something else.

During our journey, I also took some time to check my levels and attribute points from the previous fight. While I had mostly played a scouting and healing role in the battle, that didn’t mean I hadn’t gained any levels at all from killing a few rats here and there during the battle. Since the rats seemed to give me an unusually high amount of progress towards the next level with every kill, I was making steady progress towards my fourth spark. With any luck, I might reach my fourth spark - and its associated benefits - before we reached the source of the universal tree’s invasion.

As usual, I dumped all of my stat points into mana. The more we fought, the more I was beginning to realize that in this world, my mana pool was usually my biggest limitation on combat ability. The rats, in particular, relied on swarm tactics, where they used more bodies to fill in for any other combat weaknesses their species possessed. The best way to handle the massive swarm of rats was just to have a big enough mana pool to deal with all of them.

Things remained normal until that night, when most of our alliance had fallen asleep. As the gentle rumble of our village beast travelling continued to echo through the air, I heard the faint sound of leather scraping against leather in the distance. For a brief moment, I didn’t think much of it - until I realized that I hadn’t seen much leather in this world.

That woke me up quite quickly. My eyes snapped open, and I immediately used my soul sight to scan our surroundings. My heard thudded in my chest as I looked around, and I realized that the universal tree had finally noticed our incursion.

The counterattack had come.

Around our herd of village-bearing beasts were four distinct life forms. Each of them was massive, and the life force contained in their bodies was even more massive. I guessed that they were probably around grade 30 or 35 in [Fortitude], at least according to the Market’s System - and there were four of them, all moving while coordinating with each other.

My head started to spin, as I wondered how the heck we were even supposed to try to deal with these four abominations. Grade 30 was a nightmarishly strong creature, at least for our current level - it was a nearly unbeatable foe that we would barely stand a chance against even with all of the forces of our alliance working together.

Another part of me realized something. This was the true nature of interdimensional warfare. Creatures like this, at least on higher level battlefields, wouldn’t even be able to serve as cannon fodder. For a massive civilization like the universal tree, this overwhelming, terrifying force was probably about as threatening as the village militia in a more normal world - but it was a devastating threat for our alliance of clans.

Worse, the four massive creatures had surrounded our village. One of them was approaching us from each of the four cardinal directions, and each of them was flying, making our strategic attempt to use the river as a defense utterly useless.

I immediately swapped to my spatial sight, and got a good look at the monsters approaching us.

The creatures strongly reminded me of some of the monsters we had encountered in the Market. Back during one of our earlier returns to the Market, I remembered encountering a strange type of wooden butterfly - the type that had looked ornamental, but could fly. In the Market, the wooden butterflies we had encountered had been a swarm-type creature, with hundreds of them working together to try to kill us. These ones clearly weren’t swarm creatures - they were the size of skyscrapers. Their wings were beautifully decorated with strands of paint, essence, and carvings - all hinting at their artificial origin. These were no natural life forms - they were specifically crafted monsters that had come to kill us.

“Enemy attack!” I yelled, as loudly as I could possibly manage. I used portals to amplify my voice, making sure that it spread in every direction and alerted our clan as much as possible. At the same time, I used another portal to screech directly into the ear of the [Sound Mage] who was in charge of contacting other clans - his ears might suffer, but the other clans needed to know that we were under attack now.

My shriek tore through the camp like an alarm bell, and at the same time, I saw a few souls from other, distant village-bearing beasts rush out of their houses and start dashing towards defensive lines. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who had noticed our unwelcome visitors.

Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, I felt something smash into my mind like a titanium hammer, nearly knocking me unconscious instantly. I felt a massive surge of essence tear out of the wings of the butterflies and fall upon our clan, and many of the other nearby clans, like a sticky miasma. I panicked, as I tried to throw healing magic at myself - only for my healing magic to find nothing wrong with me. There was nothing to heal.

A moment later, I saw darkness start to eat away at my vision, and I nearly fell to the ground before I managed to force myself back awake. I realized the nature of this mental attack wasn’t some sort of devastating mental blast that would kill us all in seconds. Instead, it was some kind of sleep spell. As I fought to stay awake, I felt another surge of essence, before a few portals snapped into existence in the distance. When I saw the portals appear, my heart nearly stopped as I witnessed the horde of souls waiting on the other side of each portal.

Instantly, I understood. There was no way an interdimensional empire would lack understanding of spatial manipulation. Given the number of dimensions a multiversal empire had invaded, it was natural that they would keep plundering and borrowing other magic systems to complement their own magic systems.

The next attack against us wasn’t a probing attack anymore - it was meant to utterly eradicate our alliance. They had brought four massive sleep-spells to the battlefield, and they were now teleporting in hundreds of thousands of rats to kill us all while most of us remained in magically induced slumber. The sleep-spell butterflies had so much life force they were nearly impossible to kill without group assistance, and group assistance couldn’t be gathered when most of our spellcasters were asleep.

Before I could even scream a second warning, the horde of rats started to pour out of the portals and onto the battlefield.