Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

The next month passed by in a blur of training. I spent every day working with the fog pillar to enhance my understanding of and my relationship with my conceptual side, and worked on improving my own ability to control it.

The first week was mostly spent enhancing my understanding of conceptual-sight, as I came to call it. It was a much more bizarre - and much more useful - type of vision than I had expected it to be. Unlike my soul sight and my spatial sight, conceptual sight seemed to directly contradict the laws of physics, magic, and biology all the time. For example, a cup of water wasn’t that different from a lake of water, according to the regular laws of physics. Both of them were obviously made of water, and if I got a cup of water from a lake, then dumped that cup of water back into the lake, not much would change in the process. After all, the water didn’t inherently lose or gain any properties just because I removed it from a lake - it was the exact same substance from start to finish.

However, through the eyes of my conceptual side, a cup of water was almost completely different from a lake of water. They were so dissimilar that they shared almost no properties at all. Through the conceptual side of things, a lake of water might have more in common with a forest than a cup of water. After all, lakes were often quite large, at least by human standards - and forest were similar large. Thus, both had elements of ‘vastness’ to them, as well as the concept of nature and life within them. Thus, while they were still very different concepts, they had a surprising amount of related aspects within them.

By contrast, a glass of water and a lake both symbolized water, but that was where their commonalities ended. Thus, by taking a regular cup, scooping up a cup of water from a lake, and then examining it, through the conceptual lens I would end up with an almost completely different object, even though both were made of the exact same water. Even more strange, taking a cup of water from a lake didn’t actually decrease the symbolic nature of the lake at all, as far as I could tell. I suspected that there was probably a breaking point at which a lake stopped symbolizing ‘lake’, and then lost all conceptual properties, but until that threshold was passed, it remained the same no matter how much water I removed from the lake.

By the end of the first week of training, I had a very different view on reality itself. The conceptual side of things seemed so chaotic, different, and alien to my senses that I a hard time even wrapping my head around what changed from one moment to the next - and yet, it also felt alive. It was like the beating heart of a chaotic, eldritch city, changing by the second as the conceptual side of the world morphed from the recognizable to the alien and back dozens of times per hour. In a strange way, it reminded me of the Market itself - an alien, incomprehensible jumble of ideas and architectural designs that I didn’t quite understand, but had a core, underlying logic that was beyond my reach. It was far from intuitive, but I was learning.

Once I had at least a rough grasp on what I was looking at, the fog pillar started showing me how change actually worked on the conceptual side. It showed me how an action on one side of reality would often be mirrored on the other side of reality.

After that, the fog bank started helping me do something completely different. It started teaching me how to find the concept of ‘hope’ in my surroundings, and then stuff it into my already-existing runes. Rather than laboring over building my next rune, which wouldn’t substantially improve my combat power, I was more than happy to focus on finding a new, innovative way to use my runes… and I felt that this was the right direction. I wasn’t quite sure what changes to my runes would happen if I kept pushing this further - but if I didn’t like the change, I could always just not save it into the {Brand of Miria}, and then copy the old version of my runes back onto my body after this life. This seemed like it was worth a shot.

After three weeks of this process, of constantly gathering hope, siphoning it out of my surroundings and my own conceptual half, and pouring it into my runes, I felt the runes change. However, far more importantly than that, I got a new System notification.

You have accomplished something exceptional with {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}. Endless Hunger of the Ocean is able to be evolved.

Endless Hunger of the Ocean is able to be evolved. You have (1) option for upgrades. If you would like to unlock other options, it is recommended that you use this ability in new and interesting ways before you die. Note: Ability evolutions must be purchased within 72 hours of returning to the Market after death. If you fail to purchase any available ability evolution within this time period, you will forfeit this chance for evolution, and will need to earn an Ability evolution in another life. The current text of {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} is written below.

Keywords: Ocean, Madness (2 Keywords.) Glut Penalty: 35 Ocean: While you are submerged in water, your body will generate absorption essence, regardless of whether the local dimensional laws support the existence of absorption essence. Furthermore, contact with water will naturally remodel your body and brain to support absorption-essence spellcasting. Absorption (Fragmented Keyword, supplemented with glut): Absorption essence may be spent to create runes, which have the following effects: The first three runes will grant you +20 to your mental stats AND an ability. This ability MUST be related to space, and use the ocean or water as a medium. You will have significantly enhanced control over what ability is formed here. he fourth through sixth runes will now fundamentally alter one sensory organ, providing +10 Perception per level, and also giving you improved vision when trying to see space. Additionally, each rune will provide you with a significantly increased ability to resist external spatial manipulation targeting you or the area directly around you. The seventh through ninth runes will now grant +10 to each physical Stat and begin attuning your body to the power of space, allowing your body to innately interact with the idea of space, regardless of which dimension you are in. This will replace the standard fusion and condensing boosts that runes 10 through 12 would give you, and give benefits such as decreased wind resistance, the ability to teleport without reliance upon rune abilities at all, and increased ability to sense space using your skin. Killing an enemy with extinguish for the first time in each body will allow you to form a skill related to that creature. You may absorb this skill into your current body in order to permanently enhance yourself. Note: Only Achievement-granting creatures can form abilities. Only five abilities from this effect may be ‘held’ at once. You may delete a copied Skill from this ability at any time to replace it with a new one. Runes will no longer cost any essence at all to maintain, but only so long as your actions are ‘heroic.’ The standards for acting ‘heroic’ are based on how much hope you inspire in the hearts of other people. In other words, if people believe that you will make the world better, or you have helped people in their darkest times, you will be considered ‘heroic’ for the judgement of this Ability. Furthermore, the more hope you have inspired, the faster and easier it will be for you to develop more runes.

I directly ignored the ‘Held Abilities’ I had acquired in this world, since frankly, they weren’t a very noticeable or important part of my strength anymore. In fact, I started to wonder whether it was worth cutting the ability to ‘steal’ skills from enemies, because these days it just wasn’t a significant enough boost to my own combat strength to be worth the amount of glut penalty it was taking up. A lot of the skills I stole were uniquely suited to biology I didn’t have, or had other issues that made them hard for me to use. But for now, I pushed the notion aside.

Instead, I focused on my new evolution path.

Available evolution paths: 1 (Note: All currently available evolution paths will change your ability from [Advanced] Grade to [Expert] Grade unless they state otherwise.

Direction 1: The Concept of Hope and Space Cost: 100,000 Achievement Glut penalty: 35 -> 55 You have used your rune magic to create hope in people, and saved nearly a thousand people from an interdimensional war when they should have had no hope of survival. Then, you took the very nature of this ability and began to twist it towards the ‘concept’ of hope, making this ability at least partially eldritch in nature. Your ability to create hope in hopeless situations has fed this ability like water and soil feed a plant, and it has changed and grown as a result. Effects: Your ability to manipulate space will be inherently an extension of your ability to manipulate hope. Instead of producing divergent effects based on what rune you have, this ability will now simply provide you with the three abilities you have currently assigned to your runes. Each rune will now give you +10 to every physical and mental stat, and will enhance your senses so that your awareness of space is improved and enhance your body so that your familiarity with and mastery over space will improve.

I grinned. +10 to every physical and mental stat per rune was a ridiculously useful upgrade. If I had it right now, my stats would all skyrocket to unreasonable levels.

With just this upgrade alone, my physical strength would at least be in a somewhat comparable range to Sallia’s - and unlike Sallia, I would also have an all-around set of upgrades to everything except my essence attributes. Furthermore, my runes would now enhance my senses and my compatibility with space - which, hopefully, meant that all of my spatial abilities would get better every time I made a new rune.

Maybe I would finally be able to create portals large enough to move people around, even without using my eldritch half to boost my portal creation ability.

This was exactly the kind of upgrade I had been hoping for.

I had finally found the next piece of the puzzle to keep myself and my friends alive.