Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

Chapter 144: Shopping and Multiverses

The three of us left the area, heading roughly in the direction we had seen Anise’s lasso. I was somewhat hopeful that she would simply find a way to connect to our friendship bracelets at any moment now, since that would make it much easier to find her - and would also confirm that the giant tentacle hadn’t destroyed her soul or something. I had no idea if that was even possible, but seeing the massive creature attack the Market apart had made me very nervous, especially since we had very recently been killed by another giant creature.

We ignored the nearby houses as we walked towards the commercial district. Normally, I would have been happy to relax with Felix and Sallia and spend a day or two drinking and letting off some stress before starting to mess with the Market again, because we could really use a break after getting horrifically murdered. But we didn’t have time to waste right now.

Once we reached the commercial district, it didn’t take us long to locate a few shops that sold soul fragments. They were guarded by skeletons, of course - but at this point, Skeletons weren’t much of a concern for us anymore. I also quickly realized that skeletons had almost no magical defenses, unlike other living creatures.

This made clearing them out even easier than expected. I simply forced part of their neck to fracture by altering the state of their bones, and then Sallia or Felix delivered a quick punch to finish them off. Messing with the skeletal structure of enemy creatures might not have been a particularly useful technique against anything other than skeletons, but it made our current fights incredibly easy and wasn’t that expensive to use.

You have slain an invading low-level troop. As defined in article two of the emergency city defense fund act, Eluxia distributes your rightful rewards.

(Error – Entity ‘Eluxia’ cannot be found.)

Achievement distribution failed. For further information, please contact the administrator of  your current city.

Slaughter: Kill a skeletal foot soldier for the first time, Kill a skeletal foot soldier for the fifth time, Assist in killing a skeletal foot soldier for the first time.

Influence: Contributed to the defense of the Market by an [extremely negligible] amount.

Achievement +20, Achievement +60, Achievement +2, Achievement +0.00

As usual, I got rewards for killing a skeleton for the first few times since my last death, pushing my Achievement from 15,348 Achievement to 15,430. The boost was rather negligible, but every bit of Achievement helped, at least.

We cleared out three or four shops before we found a shop that had Tier 2 Soul Fragment machines available. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, since the shop ONLY sold soul fragments, the skeletons hadn’t been replaced with any stronger enemies, making it easy to clear out. 

It took less than a minute after entering to shop to make it safe for us. Then, I looked over my total Achievement gains as Sallia and Felix started checking the shop for extra useful items laying around.

During the course of our shop raids, we still made sure to raid the cash register of shop,which had netted us a total of about 750 Achievement, most of which came from the Tier 2 soul fragment store. This was then split three ways, getting me to 15,428 to 15,678 Achievement.

Frankly, the more we raided shops, the more I was starting to starting to notice that shops were rather low on liquid cash. Even if stores only charged some sort of minor percentage fee for using things like soul fragment cubes, or prioritized making their money by tacking on extra fees for using skill cubes… I still didn’t understand why the cash reserves for so many buildings was so devoid of currency. If they were completely empty, I would have just assumed that another group cleaned them out, but there was no reason for a group to leave a small amount of easily accessed Achievement if they were cleaning out a shop. I had no idea what was going on - but I was beginning to suspect that we weren’t just getting unlucky when it came to

After that, I started working on forming my first rune, on the off-hand chance that I actually got it online before we reached Anise’s location. Teleportation might prove incredibly useful if Anise found herself in a dangerous situation and we needed to run away. 

The run itself was boring. We tried to stick to residential areas while running, where the skeletons were the only monster and there was nothing particularly important to catch our attention. When it was unavoidable, we ran through commercial districts instead. 

Once, and only once, we caught sight of a different kind of district in the distance. I couldn’t see any visible monsters, but something about it made my skin crawl, letting me know that we weren’t ready to explore it yet. 

We avoided that area. Luckily, we didn’t see many areas that were totally off-limits for us, meaning we didn’t have to re-route our mad sprint very often.

Finally, after six days of running, I felt something tug at my friendship bracelet.

Transmigrator Anise would like to add you as a friend to her friendshipcorp list.

Would you like to add Anise to your friend’s list?

Yes/No

The moment I got the notification, I sagged with relief. 

I didn’t know exactly what had stalled Anise so long. I didn't know exactly what her situation was, and she still wasn’t in front of me. I couldn’t see if she was all right yet, or give her a hug. 

But regardless of how or why it had happened, Anise had gotten her bearings in the Market, acquired a friendship bracelet, and figured out how to remotely add friends.

She was safe.

And now, the tracking function of my friendship bracelet was also working.

I grinned.