Before we left, I pulled up my Status Screen and took another look at it. It had been a while since I had taken a look at the version of the screen I had access to in the market, and there was a purchase I needed to make.

  I didn’t bother looking at the tab of my Status Screen that noted my current body and brain. They hadn’t really changed much from the first two times I had been at the Market - only the serial number for my body was different.

  Apart from looking at my Status Screen, however, I also pulled up the list of Abilities I had that I could purchase.

  There were only two purchases that interested me: my ability evolution for my first keyword ability, and the keyword ability that gave me access to the shaping magic system.

  I sighed. I hadn’t quite gotten the Achievement I needed to afford both. And between evolving my absorption essence abilities and getting access to my primary magic system, which I had an extreme talent for and had done a whole lot of planning for, the choice was obvious. I needed access to a good alteration magic system, and the one from our previous world did almost everything I needed my primary magic system to do.

  I pulled up the detailed information about the shaping magic system Ability.

  I spent a few more moments looking over the ability, making sure I hadn’t missed anything critical about what the Ability did or how it worked. Then, I purchased it.

  My Glut penalty immediately shot up to 48/50, leaving me with a measly two glut penalty left to work with.

  And much more importantly, I felt something integrate itself with my soul. A few seconds later, I felt my ability to use alteration essence return to me. It felt like coming home after a long day: comforting and soothing.

  That wasn’t all. I felt a strange sense of… duality settle over my mind and body after buying the skill. It felt as if I was connected to both life and death at the same time, but the two were competing for dominance in my mind. It wasn’t harmful to me, just… distracting. I needed to choose which one to use if I wanted my ‘embodiment’ of life or death to do anything useful.

  I weighed my options for a moment.

  The Market didn’t have much sunlight, so the sunlight-related bonuses of embodying life were useless here. Some of the other bonuses would make me far more resilient against harm than I would normally be, but… I didn’t think that they were that important right now. The only threats in the area were skeletons, and at this point I doubted they could pose a serious threat to us.

  Death seemed slightly more useful if we ran into an emergency situation, since it would let me activate ‘extinguish’ by touching something, even though I hadn’t rebuilt my affinity yet. So I chose to embody death, and felt a strange, cold weight settle onto my thoughts. I felt slightly colder now. It didn’t quite interfere with my emotions, or my thoughts, but I could feel a certain weight to my actions that hadn’t existed before. As if every step I took mattered more than it had moments ago. Especially if those footsteps brought me - or anything else - closer to death.

  The feeling was very new, and also incredibly strange. I tried poking at the strange new feeling for a few moments, to figure out what the strange new weight on my mind went, but couldn’t figure anything out. I decided to mess with it more later.

  I started working on building my basic attunement back up, instead. Part of what made extinguish so useful was the fact that it was a nearly instantaneous ranged attack, after all. Luckily, over half of ‘attunement’ stemmed from my understanding of the subject. There was still some legwork I needed to go through before I rebuilt my basic grade attunement, and since basic attunements struggled to convert essence effectively, I would be wasting a lot of essence with every extinguish until I upgraded my attunement a bit. However, it should be good enough for dropping weaker creatures of the Market.

  Besides, in my first life, it had only taken me the better part of a couple hours to form a basic attunement. It would be even faster this time.

  I found myself smiling, before I shook my head.

  “All right, I bought my Ability,” I said. “Now let’s go find Anise!”

  “Hold it Miria,” said Felix. “Anise is pretty far away from us. It’ll probably take a week or more of travel to reach her, even if we book it. I’m pretty sure she landed somewhere in this nursery, based on the last glimpse of her energy lasso. But she’s still pretty far away from us, and we might have a hard time tracking her down.”

  “So? All the more reason to get started now, right?” I said. “Anise is waiting for us!”

  “Miria, I know you’re excited, but we need to buy some soul fragments first,” said Sallia. “I don’t actually have the glut penalty to buy my ability evolution yet. And I’m sure you don’t have the glut penalty for your ability evolution either.”

  “Oh,” I said, deflating a bit. Then, I frowned. “I don’t have the Achievement left to buy my Ability evolution. I needed like… 5,000 more, I think?” I said, before I pulled up the Ability Evolution I had wanted.

  In total, I was 18 Glut penalty short of buying the ability upgrade I wanted. Each Stat I brought to the peak of Tier II would give me 3 glut cap each, meaning I needed to boost six categories.

  Each category cost 1,600 Achievement to max out, meaning I needed 9,600 Achievement to max out six categories and make room for the glut penalty I needed, and then needed 10,000 Achievement to actually buy the Ability evolution. I needed 19,600 Achievement.

  And after paying for my new Ability {Echoes of the Deep}, I only had 15,348.

  Could I get 4,300 Achievement in the Market in the 72 hours I had before I lost access to the Abilities I had gained in the world?

  I thought about it for a moment, sighed, and then shook my head.

  I seriously doubted it.

  “I’m 4,300 Achievement short of buying the upgrade I wanted, which isn’t quite 5,000 Achievement,” I said. “But I doubt I can get there in time. I’ll just evolve it after our next life. It’s a bit of a shame, but not that big of a deal.”

  “I’ll give you some Achievement,” said Felix, cutting me off before I could finish talking.

  I blinked at him.

  “What?” he said, giving me a mischievous grin. “You gave Sallia 200 Achievement last time we were in the Market using the cash register trick. You’re not the only one that cares about your friends, you know?”

  “Don’t you need it for yourself?” I asked.

  Felix snorted.

  “We’re a team, Miria. And this time, I only have one ability to purchase. It cost 15 Glut penalty and 3000 Achievement - and I have a glut cap of 30 right now. I exited last world with around 13,000 Achievement. It might not be quite as impressive as your 19,000, but I can give you 4,000 and still push all of my Stats to +20.”

  I hesitated for a moment, and then nodded.

  “Thank you very much,” I said. “I’ll make it up to you next time.”

  Felix grinned. “Don’t worry too much about it. If you have the Achievement in the future, great. Feel free to pay me back. If you don’t, just make sure that you’re strong enough for when we need to buy more lives. We’re a team. More than that, we’re friends. We work together.”

  Then, he hesitated again, and turned towards Sallia. “What about you? What’s your Glut penalty and Achievement situation looking like?”

  Sallia frowned.

  “I have about 19,000 Achievement. My Ability Evolution seems a bit more optimized than Miria’s, so I only need 30 glut penalty total for the upgrade. But I also walked out of last life with only 22 Glut penalty cap, and I’m using 1 glut penalty for Identity. So I’m 9 glut short of what I need. My Manifestation Keyword Ability is also way out of range, if I wanted to buy that as well - it wants 20 Glut. If I want to buy both abilities, I need 51 total glut penalty, plus 12,000 Achievement to actually buy the new Abilities. Let me do some math…” Sallia paused. “I need 7,900 Achievement to get all of my Stats up to +20, then I need an extra 1,600 to bump one stat up to the next grade. That’ll push my glut cap to where it needs to be. So in total, I need 21,500 Achievement, and I’m 2,500 short.”

  “I’ll give you 2,500 Achievement then,” said Felix.

  Sallia shuffled, looking torn between accepting and turning Felix down. Then, she sighed, and then gave Felix a hug. “Thank you.” She gave him a radiant smile, and Felix grinned back at both of us.

  “As Miria always says, we’re a team, right? And not only are we a team, we’re a family. Besides, I’ll still have around 4,500 Achievement to upgrade my Stats after buying my Ability. And I had +10 in all of my magic stats before we started this life. I’ll just bump strength and my four magic stats to +20 and then figure out what I’m doing with the rest.”

  I hesitated for a moment, and then, once Sallia stopped hugging Felix, I gave Felix the most bone-crushing hug I could manage with my vastly diminished post-death strength.

  “Thank you,” I said again.

  Felix just rolled his eyes and smiled at me. “Let’s go find a shop and buy the stats we need. Then, let’s go find Anise.”

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