Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

After the mist cyclone collapsed, the fog banks started to wither at a speed visible to the naked eye. They didn’t die, exactly, but I could feel the conceptual nature of their existence dimming. It wasn’t quite the same as their life force decreasing - although that also happened - but the very existence of the fog banks was starting to become weaker. Mere moments after Felix finished tearing apart the cyclone, the eerie organization underlying all of their actions dropped several notches. Instead of being capable of organizing intelligent patrols and assigning duties to specific fog banks, they stopped operating off of any chain of command at all. They just chased after whatever was nearest to them and looked like ‘food.’ Their movements grew slightly more sluggish, and a few of the fog banks seemed to outright forget what they were doing mid-chase, before they spun in circles a few times. It was as if they were robots in the midst of malfunctioning - which made me wonder if the strange ‘intelligence’ demonstrated by these creatures was actually somehow organized by the cyclone we had just destroyed. I didn’t have a good other explanation for why the fog banks seemed to get noticeably dumber every time we messed with the cyclone.

The fog banks that were chasing me still continued to fly after me, but their movements also started to become a lot more twitchy. Their overall actions were a lot less coordinated than before, and they were doing a much worse job trying to surround me and box me in - which made it much easier to remain ahead of them and avoid getting trapped and killed.

A few moments later, just like the first time Felix had ripped into the cyclone, the fog pillar’s domain started to expand. It took several seconds for it to spread - but in less than a minute, It started to approach even the valley itself. For a few moments, I thought that it might literally absorb the valley, and instantly pull us out of the battle as the fog pillar intervened - but the fog domain stopped well short of the valley’s edge, even if it was far closer than before. Even if the fog pillar couldn’t directly intervene, it was still a relief to see that it was so close to us now. We didn’t have a very long journey to get back into friendly territory, and the fog pillar would be expecting us.

One of the fog banks chasing me made a momentary mistake, creating a large gap in their encirclement. I leapt through it, and a moment later, Sallia leapt to my side and gave both of them several stabs with her wooden sword. The fog banks recoiled in pain as her blade ripped into their bodies, and even though she didn’t have enough charge left in the enchantment to go for a killing blow, it bought me a few more seconds of time to finish pulling away. To my surprise, the fog banks didn’t chase after me at all anymore. Instead, they leapt after the nearest of Felix’s bells.

I took one final look at the fog banks in the valley. The valley had completely collapsed into a disorganized mess. The fog banks were just chasing anything that caught their attention. Now that their organization had completely collapsed, that meant that most of them were chasing after Felix’s bells - apparently, the organization of the group had been the only thing that stopped them from swarming the bells en-mass. The bells must have been far more disrupting and annoying than we had thought they were.

Of course, fog banks swarming the bells also meant that the bells were starting to break at a much faster rate, as the fog banks surrounded them and ripped them to pieces - but they would buy us enough time to get out of here.

I saw the fog sprites start to pull out of the situation a few moments later. Just like us, they seemed to have realized that the fog banks no longer had any meaningful form of organization or intelligence. I counted them, and confirmed that while a few of them had lost a bit of life force, none of them had died.

I smiled.

Then, I started fleeing back towards the fog pillar’s domain. The rest of the group followed suit, as we ran for our lives, and the fog sprites followed behind us moments later.

None of the fog banks pursued us into the mist, since they were still too busy chasing after Felix’s bells.

Within a few minutes of running, we returned to the mists, and I felt the weight of stress and fear melt off my shoulders. We were safe again.

Now that we weren’t in danger of getting attacked by the fog banks anymore, I finally had a moment to look over my System notifications.

This time, I hadn’t gotten any levels at all for killing the fog banks, which was a huge shame. I knew that every time someone got a new Spark, the cost of further levels got exponentially higher - but the cost of the next round of levels was truly hefty, if the fog banks I had killed at the start of the fighting hadn’t even gotten me one extra level. Earlier, one fog bank had been worth a few levels, and now a few fog banks weren’t even worth one level.

Fortunately, I had at least gotten one satisfying System notification.

Slaughter: you have Killed the tenth Hungry Fog Influence: You have contributed to the future of (unnamed Settlement) by a major amount

Achievement + 5,000, Achievement +25,000

These two rewards brought my total from 332,174 to 362,174 Achievement. It was a tidy sum, and I was more than happy to see my Achievement number grow. However, I was hoping for something more than just boosting my Achievement total.

I checked for any more notifications. What I really wanted was a new ability evolution, or perhaps some kind of new keyword ability. That could provide me with another dramatic amplifier as I worked to enhance my power. After all, I had plenty of glut penalty to use up before the fight for more lives, and while my keyword abilities would eventually use up all of my glut penalty, right now we were short on time to grow and prepare. Any short term boosts I could pick up had to be prioritized - even if they would cost me more essence to remove later.

Sadly, the Market didn’t offer me a new evolution option or new keyword ability, even though we had finally secured the future of the settlement - at least, assuming the fog pillar followed through on its side of the deal. I still only had one option for evolving my abilities, and it was the one I had unlocked earlier.

I sighed, and then shook my head. At the very least, my Achievement total had gone up. While ability evolutions were one way to fill up my glut penalty, they weren’t the only way. When we returned to the Market, I could always buy some generic non-keyword abilities from the shops in the area in order to give myself a boost. There was also a good chance that we would find new and useful ways to spend our Achievement in the higher-end regions of the Market. We had barely gotten a glimpse at all of the services offered there the last time we were in the area, due to all of the chaos that had occurred both times we explored the inner districts of the Market. We knew that lives and ways to add new transmigrators to the Market were offered in the inner districts, but had yet to actually see either service. Who knew what else we were missing?

We would obviously need to search several buildings when we returned to the market’s inner districts. The odds of us finding a building selling lives right off the bat seemed rather slim. We would run into all sorts of weird and useful ways to spend our Achievement - or at least, so I hoped.

I ruminated over potential wonders and miracles that we might run into when we returned to the Market as we jogged through the foggy forest. When we finally reached the village, we took a few hours to rest, while the villagers celebrated our return. After that, our team got ready for what was hopefully the finale to this whole mess - the final meeting with the fog pillar. It was time to see if it would keep its word.