Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

The next two weeks were spent in constant retreat. Every day, we fled further from the territories of the universal tree. The universal tree hadn’t sent any pursuers after us, or at least not any powerful ones - however, the density of rats started to pick back up to previous levels. After a few days of observation, I realized that none of the plague-bearing rats had appeared in our area for quite a while, but I had no idea what to make of this.

I did know one thing - the rats were nowhere near enough to finish us off. The universal tree probably knew that too, which only made me more nervous. Had they given up on finishing us off? Had they never intended to finish us off in the first place? Or had we successfully escaped their notice? Nobody in our alliance knew what to expect, and that only made us feel even less at ease after our defeat. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder how dangerous the universal tree would become in a few more weeks, once they finished developing and establishing a connection with their home dimension. Once the universal tree had free access to this world, if my suspicion was correct, it would be like a modern military with millions of troops, nuclear bombs, and tanks fighting against a tribe of a few dozen people from the stone age. We had zero way to resist a true multiversal army, besides relying on the geography separating dimensions. The giant tree root we had seen seemed like an explicit attempt to remove this protective barrier - and our own impending doom.

On a more personal level, at least, things were going better. The day after the battle, I finally took the time to look over my battle-related System notifications. I started with the local System notifications.

You have leveled up! Ice Mage has advanced from level 53 to level 60!

+9 Free Stat Points (X7) +3 Sense (X7) +3 Mind (X7) +3 Vitality (X7) +5 Mana (X7)

This provided one of the few pieces of good news after our defeat. I had hit the level cap for my third Spark. At first, this surprised me - after all, I hadn’t actually killed very many enemies during the battle. The one and only major enemy I had dealt with was the Mage that my friends and I had attacked together - and I hadn’t even struck the final blow. Sallia had finished that guy off using {Timewinder’s Slice}. In this world’s local System, my understanding was that the final hit was usually took all of the XP, as long as the person who struck the final blow had contributed a certain minimum amount of contribution to the fight. I wouldn’t have found it at all strange if the Market’s System rewarded me for my participation in the fight - but the local System giving me a reward was quite surprising.

However, Sallia reported that she had also maxed out her third spark, and so had Anise. This led the three of us to speculate about why we had all gotten a bunch of levels, despite the fact that this contradicted the usual behavior of the local System.

Our best guess was that the enemy’s death had been worth so many levels that Sallia couldn’t digest it all alone, so after she maxed out her level, the rest of the rewards for killing the powerful invader had been distributed to the three of us.

In any case, while our understanding of the local System was a bit scattered and speculative, I wasn’t going to look sideways at a boon when we were in dire straits. With my third spark maxed out, I could choose another feat. This time, I took a simple, no nonsense upgrade that would help me in larger fights like this. Especially since we had lost control of the front lines, I had a feeling that several much more dangerous fights would be coming in the future, and I wanted the biggest upgrade to my combat strength I could get.

Level 60 Feat Choice (Pick 1)

Enhanced Mana Pool You have constantly used your skills and abilities as a Mage to carve out opportunities on the battlefield, and have slain both powerful foes and swarms of weaker foes with your magic. Effect: The size of your mana pool is enhanced by 50% of whatever its size would normally be due to your magic stat (mana regeneration is not enhanced by this Feat).

While this didn’t change my regeneration speed, meaning my training speed wasn’t much better than before, having a bigger mana pool could make a huge difference during fights, especially since we kept running into enemies that had too much life force for me to meaningfully harm. If my entire mana pool barely made a dent in the enemy before I ran out of mana, there wasn’t really a whole lot I could do to contribute to a battle - no amount of clever portal manipulation, extinguishes, and healing could overcome an overwhelming stat disparity. Having a bigger mana pool would solve at least part of this problem - although I would also need ways to use that mana more efficiently to finish making use of my new Feat.

The other thing I did, naturally, was to get a new compound magic seed. Far earlier in this life, all the way back at level 20, I had taken a Feat that gave me a ‘special’ option for a compound seed.

Level 20 Feat:

Shadow of Oblivion: You have forcibly teleported several creatures around, then slain them. You create a new compound spark that is only available to those with this spark combination and this Feat. Spark combination: 3 [Ice Mage] Sparks, all maxed out. Combined into ‘Frost Void Mage’.

Now that I met all of the prerequisites, it was finally time to combine all of them into the new Spark my level 10 Feat gave me access to. Naturally, I went to the [Priest] and got a new Spark - my compound spark.

You have leveled up! Frost Void Mage has advanced from level 60 to level 61!

+12 Free Attribute Points +9 Sense +9 Mind +9 Vitality +20 Mana

This class represented a massive upgrade for me - far more of an upgrade than I had been expecting, honestly. Rather than the previous 23 stats per level, I got 59 stats per level, which was more than double my previous total.

When I asked the [Priest] about this, I was told that Compound sparks could vary wildly in how many stats they gave per level. 59 was actually considerably outside of the usual range of stats for a compound spark - which was natural, since compound sparks granted by Feats were always better than compound sparks gained ‘naturally’ without the aid of a Feat.This was the upside of spending a Feat on something that took 40 more levels to pay off - much better rewards when that moment finally came. Most compound sparks that people took for their fourth spark would give around 35-40 stats per level, while I was getting about 1.5 times that amount.

The other pleasant surprise came from my Skills. Every time I had taken a new Spark, I got a new skill to go with it, even if I had yet to level some of those skills up - such as {Glacial Frost}, which had yet to grow to Tier 1. While I suspected that this was due to the fact that I had been relying heavily on my market abilities during our attempt to infiltrate the Universal Tree’s territory and cut off their connection to this dimension, I suspected this would be much less of an issue for my new skills.

I had gotten three skills from my compound spark. {Void Mastery}, {Void Magic}, and {Void Freeze}. I imagined the first one helped me control spatial magic, and the second one probably enabled me to use more kinds of spatial magic, but I had no idea what the third one might be for. I would have to experiment and see. Either way, I was looking forward to figuring out what my new skills did - and I had a strong suspicion that they would help in the days to come.

Finally, I got some Market notifications too.

Power: You have leveled up your Tertiary Spark (X7), you have leveled up a (3-facet) Compound Spark Influence: Play a moderate role in a (failed) counterattack against the universal tree Slaughter: You have assisted in killing an Initiate of the roots for the first time

Achievement + 2100, Achievement + 1200, Achievement +4,000 Achievement +10,000

In total, these Achievements gave me 17,300 Achievement, bringing me up from 211,524 to 228,824. Since I had helped kill the man using extinguish, I also got a Skill out of it.

Unfortunately, that skill deepened my connection to the Universal Tree, which sounded great for a member of the Universal Tree, and terrible for me. I immediately dumped the skill.

Two weeks of retreat later, I finally got an idea what the consequences of our failure might be. Because on that day, a massive, trembling shaking began to permeate the entire region we were in. A few checks with my spatial sight and my exceptional perception let me know that it wasn’t just our area, either - no matter what direction I looked in, no matter how far I checked with my magic, the entire world seemed to be trembling. It was like a crushing earthquake was resounding throughout the entire plane, as this dimension itself shrieked in pain. Then, it looked like all of the lights in the sky started to vanish. The sun, the stars, everything started to wink out and dim, like the world itself was dying.

It was at this moment that I realized we might have been thinking a bit too small in terms of consequences for failing to drive out the universal tree’s root.