For a true merchant, all of life is a transaction. Even the accident of our births can be considered a transaction. In exchange for living, we allow the fates and gods to use us as pieces in their game. The best merchants are those who learn how to get the best out of their exchanges without letting the customer feel cheated. If you're clever enough, lucky enough, and hard-working, there's no limit to what one can get from this bizarre market place we call life. - A Quote from the Memoir of Red Myriad Merchant
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My name is Jesse Ellington. I was currently wading down the shores of one of the nebula’s many cesspools.
The cesspools were great black lakes of filthy water, corrupted-magic, and numerous other unsavory materials. They were basically cosmic toilet bowls. Filled by apertures of space-time that dumped trash and miscellaneous refuse from the higher-floors into the pit.
The center of a cesspool held yet another pit, that would churn and grind the materials before letting it flow to a cesspool on the lower channels. This would continue until all that energy and raw matter finally hit the root of the realm, where it would be returned to the channels as raw data and energy.
Most people avoided these places, but for the enterprising and desperate, they were a place where rare treasures could occasionally be found.
“And gather…” I said. Casting the spell that was the sole reason I could afford to clothe myself, feed myself, and keep a roof over my head, despite having been abandoned at an early age.
My ability was able to act as an upgrade on the [Harvest] ability which would allow rangers, hunters, and gatherers to smoothly extract, separate, and collect the usable and valuable parts of their quarry.
Our reality was made of data, energy, and the laws that described the behaviors of the former two. There were certain unique beings and magics that could allow one to manipulate one out of the three, but it was inordinately rare for one to be able to manipulate all of the three at one time.
My [Vacuous Dreamer’s Ideation], or just [Ideation] for short, was a so-called swiss-army power. This power of mine, which was the only inheritance left to me by my heartless parents, could do a bit of everything. It was a cheat ability that allowed me to bend and twist and play around with reality as I willed it.
As far as I’d discovered, the only limit to my power was whether I could pay for the costs of actually using the power. Thankfully, mental energy could be restored with a little rest and food. Thus I could use my power within the limits of my “MP,” so long as I didn’t do something stupid like trying to create something from nothing.
My [Ideation] could be used to turn the corrupted magic of the cesspool into low-grade magic crystals. On the off chance, I saw something that looked like it might have once been worth some real money, I could use my [Ideation] to repair it.
I spent the day doing this and ended up making over 140 low-grade magic crystals. I couldn’t help feeling a bit proud of myself. When I was younger and lower-leveled, I could barely make more than ten without totally exhausting myself, and that was assuming that I took breaks in between each individual use of my ability.
Besides the crystals, I managed to find a few spent but usable artifacts, an old scrapped sword, and a few sundry other items that I repaired for resale. Overall, it was a good day. At the very least I’d earned enough to ensure that I’d be able to pay rent this month, and maybe even afford a few luxuries.
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After I’d finished working, it was time to go home. Home was a city, a “live-site” by the name of Goldfish City, currently located in eastern-regions of this channel. The 47th channel.
As far as cities went it wasn’t the biggest within our channel but it was big enough and well-defended enough that raiders and monsters generally left it alone. Thus making it a relatively safe place to live.
Goldfish city’s overall look and layout was pretty standard for the cities and settlements of this channel. The buildings were mostly built of concrete and brick. A few were patched in some areas, with scrap metal. It looked like a city that had been hard hit by war, but the last serious war was hundreds of years ago.
Or at least that was the case when talking about wars between the nations. Wars between the guilds, companies, and gangs happened much more frequently.
I had an apartment inside a ten-floor high-rise. As I passed through the entrance while flashing my ID at the guy at the gate, I couldn’t help thinking about how far I’d come. The place where I lived now might not have been the nicest of places, or in the best of areas, but it was mine.
I used to sleep alleyways, and abandoned buildings. Occasionally, I’d hole-up in one of the quieter dead-sites. Now I could afford to live in a place that could afford to have guards that kept “riff-raff” like my former-self from getting inside and bothering the residents. If there was one bit of praise I could give this terrible nebula in which we all lived, it was that the ease of social mobility was quite high. One could rise and fall quite easily in this chaotic place.
As for me, I intended to rise. I had no intention of returning to the darkness and squalor from which I’d risen. I would grow richer. I would grow stronger. I would rise like a phoenix and live in decadence and ease. This was my goal as a merchant and mercenary of the Grand Nebula.
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Dinner was corned beef and stir-fried noodles. It wasn’t fancied, but I had enough seasoning and cooking chops to make it taste decent. I took a bath afterward, but I had to stop mid-way through because the shower was on the fritz again. The water turned cold and the water-pressure went wonky. Thankfully, that was nothing I couldn’t fix with my ideation. I swear that damned landlord ought to pay me for all the little fixes I’d made to his place in the half-year that I’d lived in that building but whatever.
After I finished my shower, I wound down, by planting myself in front of my PC for the rest of the evening and playing computer games. One would think that video-games wouldn’t be that popular when everyone already lives in a game-like reality, but one would be terribly wrong.
In fact, the game-like lives we live mean that certain games have been made part of the education curriculum, simply because of the similar features that they share with the system that controls our grand nebula.
I was partial to fighting games myself. That and business sims. I finished winding down after having ten or twelve online matches in an oldie but goodie: Seriously Guys, Fighting In The Streets? Aren’t You All Adults? What Are The Cops Even Doing?!, also known as SGFITSAYAAWATCEN. After doing some gaming, and watching that one recording of anime I’d meant to watch the night before, but couldn’t because of work stuff, I went to bed.
“Night, night…”
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Sometimes I dreamed of the sea, but it had been ages since I’d pissed myself because of it, so no worries there.
When I dreamed of the sea, said sea, was always an endlessly deep, pitch-black ocean, with chill waters made of the essence of dead and dying stars.
The sea was home to countless beings, all of them varied in shape. Some of them so vast that even if there was a sun somewhere providing sunlight to our little ocean, the lower depths would never get any. The biggest of the sea creatures were individually unique, taking on shapes beyond description or comprehension.
I knew instinctively that I was meant to be one of those massive, shapeless beings. I knew that so long as I didn’t die or get eaten, I would be just as big as them one day. Yet, for now, I was just a larva, crawling on the seafloor like a hermit crab, or snail.
Suddenly, something happened. Something changed within the dream. Something was being dropped into my ocean. Cylindrical and barbed with spikes, I recognized depth charges when I saw them. I’d played enough war games and watched enough space anime to roughly know what to look for.
The bigger creatures were able to rebuff the bombs. Some even ate them as snacks. The smaller creatures, however, the creatures on my level...As the bombs detonated, the smaller creatures were all blown away. I was no exception.
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I woke up covered in sweat, panting like I’d been jogging all night. I had this pit in my gut like I was a kid again, and had gotten unlucky with the tacos that got tossed out every night by a fast food place I used to fond of.
I had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling. Like, dread mixed with diarrhea. I felt like something scary was looking in my direction. The only relief was a general sense that it wasn’t looking at me in particular, it was just looking down the direction I happened to be standing.
I got out of bed and snagged my smartphone. I opened up the dice-roller app I used to play t-RPGs. I mentally aimed for a 10, then I rolled three 20-sided dies. The result was a 3.
“Shit...Shit, shit, shit...Alright. Guess we’re running.”
