Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

“What are those?” I hissed, as I stared at the forest of gleaming red eyes. “Some kind of monster native to this area?” Even with my ridiculously high [Perception], I had a hard time making out the body shape of whatever was watching us from the darkness. It was almost as if the mist clung to the creatures themselves, breaking up the recognizable parts of their shape and making them harder to focus on. Some kind of mist-wielding monster?

A moment later, I saw something start bounding out of the mist and moving towards us. It had a gait that looked downright wrong - because none of its limbs conformed to shapes or positions I was used to. Rather than walking on two legs, or four legs, or dozens of legs, the way a human, animal, or insect might, it seemed almost like this creature flowed, in misshapen spirals and lines. Every single motion it made took it closer to us, but it looked almost as if the top half of its body was sailing towards us like a kite, while its legs and misshapen limbs twitched and flickered as they drifted along behind it. The mist monster’s appendages seemed more decorative than functional.

As the creature drew closer, I realized that it wasn’t an illusion. Its legs weren’t even stable, much less useful for propelling the creature forward. The lower half of the creature’s body was like a giant blob of fuzzy mist, constantly reshaping itself, reforming itself, and rebuilding itself every few seconds. That was part of the reason why the creature looked so distorted - it was literally shapeshifting every single second.

Of course, the upper half of its body was a bit more stable - but only a bit. Its upper body looked like a mixture of a nightmare squirrel and a rabbit. It had the tiny, triangle-shaped head of a squirrel, with the massive, overly large ears of a rabbit, and then a messy body that simply looked wrong, geometrically speaking. It was like someone had taken a cylinder, and then taken several large leather hoops, wrapped it around the cylinder, and then tightened the hoops until the cylinder was completely deformed. Parts of the mist mammal’s body bulged unnaturally, while other parts of the mist monster’s body were far too thin, making its entire body look completely wrong.

To make it even more headache-inducing, the mist squirrel-rabbit’s body kept shifting. Its head and ears grew and shrank from moment to moment, and the other misty limbs and growths on its body kept shrinking and growing at completely random intervals.

Since the creature was moving towards us, a few of the adults started ushering the kids backwards, while a few other adults eyed the potential threat warily. Once again, I wished that I could use my soul sight to get a read on this abomination - I wanted to know how strong it was, and whether it had any sort of abnormal aspects or abilities I could see with my soul-sight. While it was rare, occasionally I learned something useful just by looking at a monster - such as learning that a monster was actually a colony of smaller monsters.

“What is this thing? It’s moving towards us, but it doesn’t look aggressive yet, and none of its friends joined it,” said one of the [Spatial Mages].

“They look like small mammals,” said another adult. “But I can’t see them very well with my regular eyesight. Even the one that’s heading towards us is pretty hard to see in detail. I think they’re… creatures partially made out of mist? Or fog or something? Their actual physical bodies keep changing in shape as I observe them. It’s not very fast, but it’s definitely noticeable.”

“Maybe they’re aspects of the fog cloud itself,” said Felix. “The fog cloud could actually be a giant colony of these things, or something. Or perhaps the fog cloud creates these little things for some purpose. For now, we should treat these things as an organized group of potentially hostile monsters, with unknown numbers waiting just out of sight. If the mist cloud can manufacture more, we need to be extra careful - we’re surrounded by fog, and if it creates another small legion behind us, we could be in big trouble.”

“Do we charge? Retreat? Throw magic at it?” asked one of the other [Spatial Mages]. I frowned. If these little monsters looked like little mammals, and they were formed out of mist, perhaps removing the mist from our area would keep us safe? That is, if these creatures were threats to us.

Perhaps using fire magic to drive away the mist in our surroundings was the way to go? It would be quite mana-intensive, but it would keep new legions of little mist nightmares from constantly appearing in our back line, if it did turn out to be hostile.

I gripped my sword more tightly. The creature’s approach was making me nervous. If this thing decided to attack us, I had no idea what weak points, if any, existed for me to exploit. Since I was cut off from magic, that made it even harder for me to be confident. I wasn’t sure what we were facing, or how strong it was, or what characteristics it had. A few of the adults near the very front stepped right in front of the mist rabbit, and prepared their weapons. Their bodies tensed, like coiled springs, and they glared at the little rabbit.

A moment later, the mist creature stopped right in the center of the five adults who had walked up to surround it. It lurched a bit closer to the [Spatial Mage] at the front of the group and then sniffled at his foot, almost as if it were curious, or as if it were a pet. The mage seemed almost as much at a loss as I was as the mist rabbit-squirrel simply poked its nose at his feet.

Perhaps we were overthinking it? The mist squirrel-rabbit looked scary, but if it were friendly, I wouldn’t have to worry about how to respond to a horde of them. If it were edible, perhaps we could even incorporate it into our food sources.

As I was starting to relax, the rabbit’s body began to swell. The mist inside of its head and upper torso rippled and twisted, as if it were the container for some kind of demonic horror that was hatching from its body. Its claws and fangs began to grow sharper and longer. It bared its teeth at the [Spatial Mage] standing at the front of the group, and the crimson glow in its eyes deepened.

It was turning hostile.

It leapt at the [Spatial Mage]’s face. Sallia leapt forward and stabbed the mist monster’s body. Her sword sliced the creature apart as if it were made of butter. I felt a surge of essence from the creature's body, as if it were trying to repair itself - but nothing happened. The two halves of the mist-rabbit’s body dissipated into floating strands of water and fog, as if the monster itself had never appeared.

<Sallia, did you get any Achievement for killing it?> asked Felix.

<No, I didn’t,> said Sallia. <It must either still be alive, or it might not have ever been ‘alive’ in the first place.>

<Got it,> said Felix.

Before I could analyze what that meant, I saw dozens of mist rabbits in the woods start to ripple and transform, and I cursed. It had been easy enough to dispel a single mist rabbit, but now we were facing the scenario I had actually been afraid of. Dozens of them were rushing us. Not a big enough horde to overwhelm us, but enough for a few to slip past the adults and hit the kids. I readied my sword and stared down the horde.

In seconds, the horde of mist monsters rushed towards us, and I charged to the front of the group. No way was I going to sit out a fight. However, when my first cut whistled into the bodies of one of the rabbits, I realized this might be a bit harder than I thought.

When I cut into the body of the mist rabbit, it didn’t die. Instead, it leaked a little bit of mist, as if I had punctured a tire and let a little bit of air out. Then, the massive gash I had cut into its body repaired itself, as the rabbit drew in more mist from its surroundings and used it like a fuel source for repairs.

Why had Sallia killed a creature with one blow, while I had failed to do the same? I was so surprised that I almost failed to duck when the little monster leapt at my head. I twisted beneath its flowing claws and teeth, only for the creature to flow right into my dodge and claw me anyway. I felt a burst of bright pain blossom from my right cheek, before I kicked the creature away. My foot tore through the creature’s body as if it weren’t even there, and then its body once again reformed right before my eyes.

What the heck was this thing?

Before I could find another solution, a fireball ripped through the mist and hit the rabbit I had been fighting. The mist rabbit dissolved into thin air, and this time, it didn’t reform.

<Thanks, Anise,> I said.

<No problem.>

Anise, Sallia, and Felix began to tear into the horde, while I puzzled over the vastly different reactions my sword and Sallia’s sword had inflicted upon the mist rabbit. I had managed to do a bit of damage and slow the monster down, but Sallia had killed her enemy with a single sword swing. What was the difference here?

A moment later, I realized the problem. Sallia’s sword was created by her ability. It was literally an outgrowth of the way her rune magic had changed after our ability evolutions from last life. Naturally, that meant her blade was special. On the other hand, I was just holding a regular hunk of forged iron.

I resisted the urge to curse. These creatures were abnormally resistant to nonmagical attacks. Fortunately, most of the combat-ready adults that had escaped through the portal were spellcasters or the family members of spellcasters, so this threat was manageable - but it was still a huge pain in the neck.

I saw an [Archer] shoot a rabbit, only for the arrow to achieve almost no results. A group of other [Archers’ joined in, and while the monster they were targeting couldn’t move and reform at the same time, they still weren’t making much progress. I squinted at the creature, and then relaxed slightly. It didn’t seem like the monster was totally shrugging off our attacks. Instead, it absorbed nearby mist to repair itself. Therefore, cuts and arrows weren’t completely ineffective. They could still slow down and weaken the monsters, and eventually kill them once all of the nearby mist was gone.

Whether that was practical was another question entirely. But even the nonmagical combatants weren’t completely helpless here.

Still, I backed away from the group as the Mages started to get to work ripping apart the enemy using fireballs, blasts of lightning, and spatial rips and tears. The rabbits managed to sneak by the spellcasters a few times, but every single time, I and the other nonmagical combatants started to tear into them until one of the Mages had some spare attention to finish off the enemy. After only a single wave of monsters attacked us and fell, I noticed that the rabbits were no longer coming at us. Instead, the ones that were further away were retreating back into the forest. Worse, it seemed like new rabbits were forming out of the fog.

Even though the enemy was retreating, I felt the urge to groan in frustration. We had made almost zero actual progress in thinning out the monsters in the area, at least if my eyes weren’t deceiving me. However, I had a sneaking feeling that we would be seeing a whole lot more of these little mist mammals as we continued exploring the fog. And since the entire island was covered in fog, there were a whole lot of potential places where these little monsters could appear.