With Old Mo on board with helping us set up Anise’s ‘ability potion,’ the four of us went to bed for the night. Anise quietly crawled back into the tent with her parents, Sallia did the same, and I quietly tended to my mother, who, according to Old Mo, had stirred a few times during the night, but hadn’t erupted into a full on withdrawal seizure - although it seemed like she might, if a few more hours passed. After returning to the tent I shared with my mother and Felix, I immediately dumped a bunch of healing magic into her.

After that, I laid down and got ready to sleep for night, but a few thoughts started to intrude into my mind as I prepared to go to sleep. I couldn’t help but wonder if Old Mo knew we were hiding things, or if he knew anything about the rest of the Multiverse.

I wouldn’t have considered it before we had entered the ruins, but now that we had seen someone else from the Market on this world. If one person from the Market had set up an ‘inheritance’ on a planet we had visited, perhaps other people from the Market had done the same? I found myself wondering if people from less dimensionally aware worlds might still be aware of the Market. And if they were aware of the Market, I wondered how hard it would be for them to put two and two together if they observed us for long enough. Old Mo certainly knew that something was weird about us, and he had also spent nearly two years acting almost like a parent for me. If anyone was in a position to put everything together, it was him.

Of course, there was also a good chance that Old Mo didn’t know anything about the greater Multiverse at all. I had no idea what the governments of this world knew about other dimensions, and I only had my speculation and imagination to go off of. It was food for thought, though.

Eventually, after thinking about the Market and Old Mo for nearly an hour, I gave up on getting to sleep. I just couldn’t turn my brain off and go to sleep for the night.

<Are you guys awake?> I asked through the communication bracelets.

<I’m still awake,> said Sallia, after a few moments.

<I am too,> said Felix, wriggling slightly on the other side of the tent to let me know he was awake.

<What do you guys think this world knows about the Multiverse?> I asked, after a few moments.

<I doubt they know anything, at least based off of the conversation we had with the Soul Fragment. It sounds like the Market wasn’t very open about information on the greater Multiverse, or at least the owner of the soul fragment wasn’t,> said Felix. <Though I suppose the governments of this world might have figured something out, if they studied the manifestation essence artifacts for long enough. Who knows what explanation they cooked up for why it uses a different essence than the one they’re familiar with?>

I hesitated, and then sighed, and nodded. It didn’t sound like Sallia or Felix could put my worries to rest. I hesitated for a moment, before I changed the topic a bit.

<So did you guys learn anything useful from the soul fragment?> I asked the two. I hadn’t been able to tune into the conversation as much as I might have liked, since I had been so focused on Anise. I had still heard a few snatches of conversation between them, though, and was more than a little eager to know what Felix and Sallia had managed to figure out. Even if it was in a fragmented form, this was the first time we had actually been able to talk with a real member of the Market, since the Market itself was in ruins.

I was more than a little excited to know what information the two had managed to dig out.

<The thing we learned the most about was the fact that the Market wasn’t… very nice during its heyday,> said Sallia. Even though I couldn’t see her face, I could almost hear her frowning. <Some of the stories the soul fragment shared about the Market’s actions were… disturbing.>

I frowned.

<How bad did it get?> I asked.

<Well… none of us have ever thought about this before, and I don’t think we should in the future, but… have you ever considered exactly what the optimal way to farm Influence Achievement is?> asked Sallia.

<Take part in big events?> I asked.

<Well, that’s what we’ve been doing, and that is one way to farm Influence Achievement,> said Sallia. <But there are other, worse ways to get access to more Influence Achievement. If you are strong enough to become a big event, for example, you don’t need to go searching for opportunities to make the world a better place or historical events to take part in. Instead, you can just force the rest of the planet to take notice of you, because they have no choice,> said Sallia.

<How?> I wasn’t quite sure where Sallia was going with this yet, but a certain suspicion was starting to form in my gut. One I was very much hoping was not accurate.

<Apparently, one of the best ways to farm Influence Achievement is to utterly wipe out all life on the surface of a planet,> said Felix. <Completely and utterly murder everyone alive on the planet and turn it into a pile of lifeless ash and rock. You get plentiful slaughter and Influence Achievement, you usually improve your skills a decent amount during the fighting, and you also get some excellent keyword abilities out of fighting an entire planet and winning. It wasn’t encouraged by the Market, even during the Market’s heyday - but there were also no measures taken to stop people from wiping out planets, as long as it didn’t happen too frequently.>

I froze.

I felt sick.

Had the Market done that in the past? Part of me hoped they hadn’t, and that it was all a misunderstanding of some sort.

At the same time, part of me knew that the Market of the past would have done practically anything to get more Achievement. Even wiping out a planet didn’t seem very surprising, when I thought about some of the other records that we had recovered from the Market. My time constantly dying and reincarnating had started to warp my perception of life and death a bit - after all, I knew exactly what was coming after we died, and I didn’t find death to be quite as tragic as I might have in the past. But I still retained enough of my original moral compass to believe killing innocent people was wrong. But I could see how, after dozens of lives, people’s understanding of death might get very twisted. Combined with the constant desire to improve profit margins, it all made a twisted kind of sense.

<There are other ways to farm Achievement too. They aren’t… well, I’m not sure if I consider them better or worse than wiping out a planet just to farm more money,> said Felix. <They’re… I don’t think you would be happy knowing about them. But they exist. I’ll just say… the things that some of the bigger corporations of the Market did to farm Achievement were very twisted. And some of the individuals with more twisted personalities copied them. Not everyone was like that - there were plenty of decent people in the Market as well. But some of the things that happened were pretty messed up.>

I fell silent after that. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, and I definitely didn’t want to think about any atrocities committed by the old Market.

As if sensing my disquiet, after a few minutes, Felix got up, walked over to me, and gave me a quick hug, before patting me on the shoulder.

<Just because the old Market did some bad things doesn’t mean we’re responsible for it, Mir. We just need to keep an eye out for our own actions in the future, to make sure we don’t ever become like them,> said Felix.

That was the end of my questions about the Market for the night. Sallia and Felix had probably learned other things about the old Market from conversing with the hologram, but I wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

It took many more hours for my restless thoughts to finally calm down enough for me to drift off to sleep.

* * *

The next day, as the group began moving again, I found my thoughts turning over what we had learned about the Market. Anise had been asleep while the three of us had talked, and I hesitated a lot when thinking about what to say to her. I eventually decided to wait until Anise had made some progress in her magic studies before broaching the topic. Anise was so, so excited to finally have access to magic again - she was practically bouncing as we walked through the mountain. I didn’t want the information we had gathered to put a damper on her mood, so I would wait a bit before broaching the topic. 

For now, I didn’t mention it to Anise, and also did my best to put it out of my mind. Regardless of whatever the Market had done during its heyday, it was destroyed now. What mattered was keeping my friends alive. The Market’s actions could be processed later, when we had our own existence as transmigrators figured out. I had people I cared about, and they mattered much more to me than whatever the Market had done hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of years ago.

That night, after our group settled down to make camp once again, we once snuck out of camp - although this time, Old Mo left with us, while Sallia stayed behind to tend the fire and make sure that nothing dangerous attacked our parents while we slept.

Old Mo helped us set the stage for a very ‘lucky’ find, by helping us find a rather out of the way place, and then helping us create a ‘corpse’ of a scout from the Coalition army. Which, of course, ‘Felix’ created by practicing how to create an illusion and stick it to a pile of rocks. Since Felix’s ability was supposed to be related to mental communication, I didn’t think illusions were too out of whack for Felix to be able to employ - and as long as we kept pretending that Felix was doing everything, I could use my illusions in plain sight, which might be important in the future. Old Mo gave all three of us a curious glance once Felix asked Old Mo to coach him on what a coalition scout’s campsite should look like. This only deepened my suspicion that Old Mo knew something was up - but now that I knew what I did about the Market, I was more hesitant to broach the topic with him. If Old Mo knew what the Old Market had done, would he be afraid of us, if he knew we were also from the Market? I found myself worried about Old Mo’s opinion of me in a way I had never been worried before.

I did my best to keep putting it out of my mind, as Old Mo slowly coached ‘Felix’ through how to create an illusion of a Coalition army scout. The coalition army was composed of several different nations working together, so Old Mo opted to coach ‘Felix’ on setting up an Ennalian scout camp, since they were the backbone of the coalition army. Old Mo seemed to know every detail of what their uniforms and campsites should look like, from what kind of tent they used to what an Ennalian Scout’s campfire looked like. 

Of course, Felix didn’t actually do much of anything during Old Mo’s coaching. Instead, I quietly warped nearby rocks, plants, and patches of snow by plastering illusions on top of them, all to create the illusion of a ruined Ennalian scout camp.

Once I was done dressing up the campsite, we stuck an ‘ability potion’ into the pockets of teh ‘corpse’ - as well as Anise’s orb, and a few books from the ruin. Old Mo’s background as an assassin lent a lot of his words some level of credence, especially when it came to more valuable objects such as ability potions. So the plan was for Old Mo to verify it was a real ability potion, before giving it to Anise.

Of course, the ‘ability potion’ was actually just colored water, but after drinking it, Anise would be able to openly use her magic missiles, and we would also have an excuse for Anise to openly carry her orb and magic books around.

With the orb and books added to the campsite as well, it would look like the scout had been trying to get Zelyrian artifacts and send them back to the coalition, and had frozen to death before returning home. At least, that was the hope.

With everything set up, we returned to camp, and prepared for our big discovery the next day - as well as the chance to finally get Anise the ability to use her potions out in the open.

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