Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG) Chapter 185: Time’s Worn Tracks

After my failed conversation with my mother, I didn’t try to engage with my mother again. I still wanted her to get better, but most of the ti she was lost in a drug-induced haze, and I firmly rembered how badly my first attempt to help her get clean had gone. I couldn’t communicate with her when she was high, and when she was lucid she adamantly refused to change.

Sallia was the one who had the first stance against my mother when I talked about what had happened in the group.

she said.

I didn’t know if I entirely agreed with her, because I still wanted to see my mother get better and healthier. And my mother had kept alive while I was young and vulnerable: I felt that counted for sothing, even if it was hard to see my mother lost in a drug-induced haze every day and it looked like she wanted to rip my throat out anyti I ntioned quitting. But even if I wasn’t sure if I agreed with Sallia, I promised her that I would at least think about it. She didn’t seem wholly satisfied with that, but she didn’t push .

I still wanted my mother to get better and for our life to improve. But I also couldn’t make her better just by waving my hand and throwing magic at her. Renewal could do a lot for soone who was hurt and needed help. It could even regrow lost limbs. But it couldn’t help sobody fix their psyche when they didn’t want to get better. As much as it hurt to admit it, right now I just couldn’t fix things.

That didn’t ant that everything remained stagnant, though. Even though my mother continued to be lost in her drug addiction, things with my friends got better as ti passed.

For Felix, I continued to slowly modify his face, making him less and less similar to the person we had first rescued from the facility and making him look more and more like himself. We experinted a lot with slightly different facial features and aesthetics until eventually we found sothing Felix was really happy with, and at the sa ti, he started to look so completely different from the body we had rescued that nobody would be able to recognize him.

At Felix’s very strong suggestion, I also modified my face a little bit. I wasn’t willing to change my face much from its original shape, because I was still very happy with my face and body. But Felix pointed out that, while none of the soldiers in the facility had gotten a good look at us due to all of the chaos, magic, Aplos’s escape, and the illusion-based magic that had been flying around, the soldiers might have gotten at least a glimpse of my face. So I tweaked my face just enough to make it hard to recognize at a casual glance by broadening my forehead a bit, shrinking my nose a bit, and slightly lightening the color of my eyes. It wasn’t enough to make unrecognizable if soone knew what I looked like, but considering how hard it should have been for the soldiers to see us in the first place, I felt it would keep them off our trail.

Sallia and Anise went through similar treatnts, although their facial reconstructions were slower, to make sure their parents didn’t notice anything off. Anise’s hair was slowly restored to a bubblegum pink color over the course of a few months, much to her joy and my bemusent. Anise was as attached to her hair color as I was attached to my facial features. It definitely made Anise stand out, since pink was NOT a common hair color on this planet, but her parents seed to find it more hilarious than troubling, so it worked out fine.

About a week after we rescued Felix, Anise did say that the hats in her area had stepped up patrols around important buildings and increased security checks. Her father had apparently been complaining about the inconvenience of the increased security asures in the more important districts of town. I wasn’t even sure whether it was a response to the ongoing war, which had settled into a long, drawn out stalemate, or whether it was due to our rescue of Felix. it could have been either, or both. Either way, the giant, prominent hats worn by the guard were now everywhere in Anise’s district. Amusingly enough, the slums still had about the sa hat presence as before - approximately zero. If the governnt was looking for us, they were looking in the wrong area.

The next several months were rather stable monetarily, if a bit lean for Felix and I. Felix continued to experint with the gunpowder and tal of this world, in hopes of creating so sort of knockoff product we could sell to local gangs. The profit from selling guns would probably be several dozen tis what I got from helping Old Mo, and so I was at least kind of looking forward to Felix succeeding.

I did manage to convince Old Mo to help sell my swiped potions as well. He didn’t even ask where they had co from when I asked him to help . He directly bought them the mont I produced them. Apparently, most of the potions were cleaning related, with a few that were ant to heal broken bones or disinfect wounds, as well as one potion that treated an illness called ‘Ebellia-’ a sort of deep lung illness that caused chronic coughing and lung pain.

In total, he gave 40 Sterlings for the whole batch. It wasn’t a very big payout, but even though I didn’t even get one arling, 40 Sterlings was enough money to keep for a bad day or an ergency.

Sallia and Anise also helped feed Felix. It wasn’t much, but they sotis managed to sneak out a al here, a few sterlings there, and sotis, a few second-hand clothes. It wasn’t anything fancy, and the clothes were often slightly too big or too small for , but they still helped. Sadly. Felix didn’t get any new clothes - after all, he wasn’t willing to put on a dress, and while Sallia did have so clothing that leaned a little bit more towards male dress, there were still so distinct differences between n’s pants and won’s pants in this country.

Felix wasn’t discovered by my mother, likely because she was in a blissed-out haze most of the ti, and nobody else ever ca into our house. We were too poor for anyone to bother trying to rob - which was lucky for the would-be robbers. The idea of a robber breaking into our house only to get t with two superpowered children did amuse , but luckily it never actually happened.

Finally, everyone’s skills and magic continued progressing as ti passed. Anise grew more proficient in using her Shadow-Dryad’s eyes and magic missiles to grow stronger, Felix managed to push his tal attunent to ‘advanced’ state, Sallia managed to push her way to her fifth rune and get all of her spellcasting abilities from the manifestation system online and tailored to this dinsion. She also managed to push her swordsmanship up to advanced grade. I managed to push my attunent to [Expert] grade, where I had gotten stuck last life, and I also managed to form my fourth absorption rune.

Power: Form a [Expert] Grade attunent (Note: this dinsion does not have the laws to support alteration spellcasting. Significant Achievent penalty).

Achievent 200

Power: Form your fourth rune (Note: this dinsion does not have the laws to support runes, although it does sowhat support absorption spellcasting. moderate Achievent penalty).

Achievent 280

With the 4,922 Achievent I had previously had, the new 480 Achievent pushed to 5,402 Achievent.

Sallia was the first one of us to ever push our runes past the ninth rune. Due to Sallia’s rune upgrade, her first three runes were essentially the first nine runes for a normal user of the magic system - aning that her fourth rune was equivalent to the tenth rune, a threshold none of us had ever crossed before.

On the day that Sallia’s fourth rune was ford, she was incredibly excited.

She yelled into the friendship bracelet. Even though the friendship bracelets used telepathy instead of real sound to let us talk to each other, I could practically feel my ears vibrating from her excitent.

asked Anise.

said Sallia.

I said.

said Sallia. said Sallia.

It took a few more months before I created my fourth rune, but when I did. I also got a rather interesting upgrade. It almost felt like my ability was asking to make a choice.

It only took a few monts to pull up the relevant part of my rune magic ability and figure out what was going on.

The fourth through sixth runes will now fundantally alter one sensory organ, providing 10 Perception per level, and also giving you improved vision when trying to see space. Additionally, each rune will provide you with a significantly increased ability to resist external spatial manipulation targeting you or the area directly around you.

When I ford my fourth rune, the first thing I noticed was that my eyes got much better. I had already had excellent vision, courtesy of my high Perception stat.

Combined with the benefits of Sallia’s noodle bowl pushing my stats higher, my four runes, and my base stats, my stats in this life had started to reach truly ridiculous levels.

Physical

ntal ( 61)

Essence

Strength: (40 128)

Grade 8

Intelligence: (20 92)

Grade 8

Absorption: (40 82)

Grade 6

Agility: (40 94)

Grade 6

Willpower: (40 106)

Grade 10

Manifestation: (20 77)

Grade 4

Fortitude: (40 80)

Grade 6

Perception: (30 130 10)

Grade 11

Binding: (20 114)

Grade 6

Alteration: (40 91)

Grade 6

My physical stats, especially my strength, was starting to push the boundaries of what was ‘possible’ for a normal human in this world. My youth still worked as a shackle that dragged down my physical abilities, but when I beca an adult, my weakest physical stat would already be on par with a trained soldier or athlete, and my strength would probably just barely touch the truly supernatural realm. And with the help of Sallia’s noodle bowl, my stats were still improving. I had hopes that by the ti I beca an adult, people would assu that I had taken a superstrength ability potion.

However, my perception was my most prominent stat. I was starting to notice that my perception stat mildly warped my perception of ti, in addition to letting spot the patterns on an insect’s wings from a hundred ters away. I was beginning to see things travel more slowly, especially when I focused. Combined with the low-speed gunpowder bullets of this world, I was actually starting to reach a point where I could track the slowest-gunpowder based projectiles entirely using my eyes, without even needing to use my spatial perception to track things more accurately. My body was completely incapable of dodging, of course, but I was getting a better handle on just how ridiculous a few extra grades in each stat truly were.

By my estimations, if I had grade 20 Agility and perception, I would probably be able to just dodge guns entirely using my physical body, give or take a grade or two. It would depend so on the type of bullet and gunpowder used, of course - this world’s bullets were definitely on the slower side, so I could probably dodge them with a grade 16 or 17 instead. But I suspected that at grade 20 even the fastest bullets from a dinsion like this one would be easy to deal with.

I spent a long ti considering which organ I wanted to use my fourth rune to improve, before eventually choosing my ears. The ability to hear people sneaking up on and activate my dinsional perception ability earlier would help protect myself against my greatest vulnerability right now - sneak attacks. In a head on confrontation, I could protect myself against most problems, so ensuring nobody snuck up on felt like the best investnt of my sensory organ upgrade right now.

The enhancent felt almost like I had directly added another grade to my perception, but only for my ears. But that wasn’t all it did.

After the upgrade, I could hear space itself. It was quiet and subtle, but when things moved around , I could hear space distorting ever so slightly accommodate that movent. I wasn’t sure if it was quite the sa as the echolocation so animals used, but it definitely felt similar. I could track exactly where almost every object in my surroundings was using only my ears and my Perception stat after my sensory organ upgrade.

My eyes also got an upgrade, although it was less pronounced. After the smaller upgrade to my eyes, I could see the way space and reality curved and bent whenever soone ssed with space - which was completely useless in this world, since we had yet to et a single space-magic user besides . But it would be useful in the future at least.

I found myself increasingly curious about what would happen when I pushed into grade 12 of Perception with my next rune, and then upgraded yet another sensory organ.

Finally, the month we turned six, Felix started laughing maniacally.

“Miria! Co take a look! I think I made a working gun!”