Chapter 424: Amelia

Chapter 424: Amelia - Markets and Multiverses

A moment after the ball of red mist dissipated into nothing, I got a System notification confirming the end of the battle.

This brought my Achievement total from 126,524.11 to 127,724.11. While the small boost to my dwindling Achievement reserves was welcome, I thought the content of the System notification was more interesting. It confirmed something I had already suspected during the fight - our enemy was not a ‘monster’ in the traditional sense. She was a person, just like us.

That wouldn’t make me sympathize with her, of course. She had pulled weapons on us and tried to kill us unprovoked, and she had seemingly harbored immense hatred towards Transmigrators from the Market. Knowing what the people of the Market had done in the past, I could imagine all sorts of reasons why she might hate transmigrators - but even though I could understand her hatred, that didn’t mean I would let her accomplish her goals. My friends were the most important people in the multiverse, according to me. Everyone who tried to hurt them could go back to the ocean of souls.

Still, her presence here made me curious. The woman harbored great animosity towards Transmigrators, so she probably wasn’t a Transmigrator herself. That meant that it was possible for people who weren’t part of the Market to access the Market.

In hindsight, this should have been obvious to me. The attendance office downstairs had even explicitly mentioned trying to recruit more out-of-Market students so that they could absorb more currency. However, I had assumed that nobody would bother coming to the Market, now that the Market was broken down and effectively dismantled as a power. Clearly, that was incorrect.

Who was this person? How had she arrived at the Market, now that any infrastructure built by the Market was presumably defunct? Why had she come to the Market? Was it intentional on her part, or had she come here in some way that was similar to our transmigrations - random and outside of her control?

The presence of an intelligent humanoid that had likely originated from outside of the Market raised all sorts of questions - none of which I had a good answer to. I spent a few moments trying to turn over everything the woman had said and done before she died. Then, I shook my head in frustration.

We just didn’t have enough information.

For now, I pushed my thoughts to the back of my mind. In the future, we would have an answer to my questions - but not yet.

<Do you guys think this woman is from some sort of… coalition force that levelled and destroyed the Market?> Anise asked, disrupting my thoughts.

I frowned in thought. That idea might make sense. The Market had acted quite poorly, even according to their own records. However, something felt off about Anise’s line of thought.

<I don’t think so,> said Felix. <If the Market was, indeed, destroyed by invaders, and they wanted to leave behind a force to stop new Transmigrators from growing, the monsters lurking around already seem to fulfill that purpose. It is already nearly impossible for new Transmigrators to grow in this environment. I don’t see why they would need to add humanoids into the mix - unlike monsters, humanoids can get bored, distracted, or fail to notice something. The only way I could see that making sense was if the humanoids had some kind of ability to command the monsters - but the woman we fought demonstrated no evidence of such an ability,> said Felix. <It’s a question of both practicality and demonstrated competence.>

<Fair point,> I said. <So she probably wasn’t part of some anti-Market coalition of people..>

<Do we have any good guesses where she actually came from?> asked Sallia.

<I don’t think so, sadly,> said Felix. <She cursed out Transmigrators in general more than once, so she seems to have some kind of grudge against the Market as a whole. Or perhaps her civilization raised her to hate the Market? If that’s true, perhaps she was raised in some kind of post-Market society… and absorbed their teachings, before coming to explore the ruins of the market? Agh, it’s just so hard to speculate. There’s too much we don’t know.> Felix noisily sighed into the communication bracelet. <Either way, we should be on the lookout. There’s a reasonable chance she came here with an organized group of people. Depending on how big and strong that group is, we might be in trouble. If they’re weak enough, we might be able to extract some information, but things could also go wrong very fast if they’re stronger than I’m hoping they are.

I froze, as I realized Felix’s words were right. Regardless of who the woman was, how she got here, or why she held such a grudge against the Market that had already been destroyed millennia ago, those things didn’t matter to us right now. What mattered more was the fact that she might not be alone. After all, unlike monsters, humans were much more prone to travelling in packs.

I scanned through my final remaining System notifications, in search of a way to improve our safety. Fortunately, as I had been hoping, my use of extinguish had activated {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}.

The results of this check through my System messages surprised me. I had been expecting to get some kind of information about the species of humanoid the woman I had killed belonged to. After all, that was what had happened when I had killed a gang member in our third world - I had gotten a very generic bonus to some ‘human traits’. My memory was a bit hazy, but I was pretty sure it had been a boost to communication skills and mental stats.

Instead, for some reason, I had gotten a skill based on the person we had fought, even though this seemed very different from the behavior {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} had exhibited the other world I had killed a human in.

Was this some kind of manifestation of the differences in laws of reality from one dimension to another? Or was it simply a manifestation of the differences that powerful spellcasters started to exhibit as they broke further and further away from the template they were born as? Or was there a third, unknown factor in play?

Once again, I fell into thought. Eventually, I sighed, and equipped the new skill. At the very least, it could give me more ways to maneuver around a room. That might not be my top priority, but I certainly had uses for the ability.

<I got a new skill,> I said, before I shared the information with my friends. They oohed and aah’d at my new skill, but like me, nobody had a great guess about what my Skill meant. At least, not yet. Eventually, we decided to move on.

<There are eight different exits to this room,> said Felix. <The one near the back of the hall leads to a kitchen, I think - I can see some pots and pans inside. Another entrance is the one we came here from. Do you guys see anything to distinguish the other six halls from each other, or are we blindly picking from the remaining exits?>

I eyeballed the other exits to this massive room, and used my soul-sight and spatial sight to check inside of them. I noticed, to my surprise, that my soul sight couldn’t pierce through the walls of this area very well - it was as if I was looking through foggy glass instead of thin air. This oddity didn’t seem to impact my physical vision - only my soul sight and spatial sight. I sighed, and then shook my head. <No clue where any of them lead,> I said. <Something about these hallways is also weakening my special eyesights.>

<I don’t see anything either,> said Anise.

<I see nothing. I guess we’ll just have to - wait.> Sallia’s voice cut off mid-sentence, and her head jerked towards one of the hallways. <I felt a very faint ripple of absorption essence from that hallway,> she said, pointing at one of the other exits to the room. <It felt like another essence user. I think we’re about to meet that girl’s friends.>

I also stopped, and used my enhanced Perception to zero in on the hallway Sallia had highlighted. My special eyesights didn’t pick anything up, but when I strained my ears, I could vaguely hear a male voice in the distance.

“Amelia! Where are you?” He asked. His voice was very faint, but it was getting closer.

<Sallia is right. I can hear a friend of the lady we killed,> I said.

<Just one?> asked Felix.

I listened more closely, and after several seconds, I nodded.

<Should we ambush him and see if we can get more info from this one?> asked Felix.

<I like the idea,> said Sallia. <Let’s finally get a proper idea what we’re up against.>

<Ambush,> I said. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel·fire·net