Chương 438: Chapter 439: Everfrost

When my eyes snapped open again, I had already been reborn. The first thing I noticed was that it was cold. It was ever present, biting, gnawing, and ripping at the edges of my body like the teeth of a saw. It was even more real than the flesh on my body. Even more bizarre was that I felt like both halves of my body were cold - both the physical, fleshy component of my body, and the other part of my body, the conceptual entity associated with 'hope.' The cold was biting, omnipresent, and painful.

The next thing I became aware of was a woman's pained moans. My eyes and ears didn't work very well, but I could still make out the sight of a woman, bleeding and gasping in pain. I heard someone else yelling and shouting a few moments later, followed by frenzied muttering and the feeling of someone emanating wave after wave of manifestation essence. However, my brain was nowhere near capable of supporting my full consciousness yet.

The last thing I remembered before my consciousness dissolved back into bubbles was a terrible sense of loss. The next time I opened my eyes, a huge man held me gently in his arms. He looked at me with an expression I hadn't seen before - a mixture of nostalgia, sorrow, and a deep, enduring love. He stroked the top of my head.

"There there. *@*#($ here," he said." (@)#$* @*&$@#, Miria. @*#($&@# don't worry." His touch felt warm and comforting, like the first ray of sunlight in the middle of winter. I could even feel that the omnipresent cold was weaker than before - it was still present, and still painful, but it was at least reduced. I felt myself relax at his touch, and realized this must be my father. My consciousness dissolved back into bubbles, as my brain struggled to support my full consciousness. Time began to pass by, as snapshots of life appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye. At some point, I remembered to activate Felix's {Brand of Miria}. I only copied the first two runes from my ability, and then stopped, because I remembered that I wanted to change the third rune to some other ability later on. Even so, the +40 to all of my mental stats helped soothe the raging headache in my skull as my mind tried to support the consciousness of an adult with the brain of an infant. I saw several snapshots of life as time continued to pass. At one point in time, I saw my father and another woman, looking at me with concern as I laid in a white cot. In another, a different man, in white robes and with a ceremonial hat, looked at me as heat and manifestation essence coursed through my body like an untamed wildfire. Before I could make sense of the scene, I lost consciousness again. Time continued to pass by, until one day, I awoke. The first thing I did was check my body. As far as I could tell, I was a little under three years old now - or at least, that was the age I would have if I were a regular human, with a lifespan of around 70 years old. I had no idea what variations to 'humanity' existed in this world, so I had no idea whether my age was wildly different. The next thing I confirmed was my location. I was in the middle of a stone hut. I could see the man I assumed was my father standing in another room, a short distance away. He was humming as he stood over a pot of soup. It smelled delicious. I could also feel that the 'oven' my father was cooking with wasn't powered by anything as mundane as physical fire. It was powered entirely by some kind of manifestation essence - it seemed to be fire magic, or at least something very similar. Where was my mother, though? I did my best to look around, but I couldn't see anyone that looked like a mother in our hut. I frowned, and did my best to push the thought aside. I wasn't in any immediate danger, so the first thing I should do was get a basic understanding of the situation. I started by checking my System notifications. The first one was quite surprising - it was a System notification I had never seen before. Local System detected! Would you like to convert your Market stats and the Market's System into this dimension's version of the System? Note: This will take all of your pre-existing STATS and convert them into this world's version of a Status Screen. Be aware that some worlds have different stats than those the Market use. The Market generally takes a very 'balanced' approach towards each stat - physical strength, for example, distributes a good amount of energy towards strengthening your leg muscles, arm muscles, core muscles, etc. Some worlds have very wildly different Systems, where a Market version of a stat might be divided into two completely different attributes, or multiple Market attributes might be condensed into a single stat. How this works is entirely dependent upon the local System. This is a temporary conversion, but the Market generally recommends that you 'blend in' with the local System. They often give users ways to advance their strength to exceptional levels. The only real downside to utilizing a local System is that you will need to swap back to the Market's System after your death, thus losing all levels, attribute points, or other abilities you may have gained from the local System. Special note: Through analysis, the Market has determined that the local System of this world converts actions and experiences into 'levels' via manipulation of alteration and absorption essence. This means that the local System will NOT take your Achievement away from you in order to allow you to level up. Some Systems do this, but this System is not structured in this way. This does mean that you will 'level up' slower than if you were using an Achievement-absorbing System, but it also means there are no downsides to using the local System. Tired of not knowing the ins and outs of the Local System? Use Level Corp's prized 'System tweaker!' Take advantage of our prized technology, and create a spin-off version of any local dimensional Systems that is perfectly tailored to YOUR needs! Change the very nature of the local System to emphasize the stats you want emphasized, or even change the way some parts of the local System work entirely! The System tweaker is an item that lets you create a custom version of a System that's just right for you! This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Certain restrictions may apply. Dimensional shipping and handling is done at buyer's expense. Base price is 10, 000 Achievement, plus an extra 1, 000 Achievement for each ten thousand quanta of distance this item needs to travel through. I ignored the Market advertisement, and instead focused on what I had learned from the first System message. This world had a local System? That was not what I had been expecting to see at all. We had actually seen a few mentions of 'local Systems' in the Market, but I also remembered them being pretty rare. The odds of landing in a System world via a regular pool of reincarnation were… not exactly nonexistent, but not high, either. At least it seemed to work in our favor this time. Combined with the splinter of wood that Felix had smuggled out of the Market, it looked like we might have a real shot of surviving our fight for more lives next time we returned to the Market. I had no idea how the local System worked yet - but if it could give Felix some kind of advantage when it came to crafting, he might be able to go above and beyond our wildest dreams when he was working with the splinter of wood. I smiled to myself, before I checked my father again. He was still happily stirring the pot of soup, so I turned my attention back to my status screen. Before agreeing to convert my Stats to the local System version, I decided to see what my regular Market-version rolls looked like. Physical Mental (+40) Essence Strength: (104+100) Grade 10 Intelligence: (79+100) Grade 10 Absorption: (101+100) Grade 10 Agility: (72+100) Grade 8 Willpower: (120+100) Grade 13 Manifestation: (116+100) Grade 10 Fortitude: (71+100) Grade 8 Perception: (130+100) Grade 13 Binding: (121+100) Grade 11 Alteration: (73+100) Grade 8 Then, I converted my Status Screen from the Market version to the local System. Before my eyes, my Status Screen scrambled itself and then rearranged itself. Name: Miria Age: 2 Sparks: 0 Level: N/A Basic Attributes Strength: 38(-80%) Resistance: 37 (+18) (-80%) Vitality: 17(-80%) Sense: 57 (+55)(-80%) Agility: 17(-80%) Mind: 18 (+22)(-80%) Mana: 96(-80%) Traits: Child: All stats are reduced by 80%. This Trait will constantly decrease in effect as you get older, until it completely fades away at the age of 16 Sparkless: You have yet to acquire your first Spark. Until you acquire a Spark, you cannot level up. Unusual energy: You have two unusual forms of energy, both of which are different from the standard two forms of essence that create 'mana.' These strange forms of energy act as completely separate mana pools, and may allow you to do odd and unique things. Strange Runes: You have two mysterious runes inscribed on your body, each of which provides you with a unique spell and a substantial boost to your Mind and Sense stats, and a partial boost to your willpower stat. Mind: +22 Sense: +55 Resistance: +18 Unique Spells: Miniature Gate, Abyssal Perception Skills: None Feats: None I blinked in surprise. I had always known that each grade in a stat provided us with a significant boost. According to what my friends and I had estimated, the first five grades provided us with a compounding 1. 5X multiplier to our stats, and then stats got slightly weaker with each new grade, but they still gave us notable boosts. However, seeing all of my stats translated back into concrete numbers really put that into perspective. Based on some napkin math, assuming nothing strange had happened during the conversion from Market stats to local stats… the average adult in this world should have stats of around 5 in everything. Meanwhile, my Sense stat, which was my most absurd attribute, would have a total of 112 when I got old enough for my 'Child' penalty to disappear. That was… quite the boost in eyesight, hearing, and all of my other senses. All of my stats were ridiculous, at least compared to an ordinary adult from our previous worlds. In addition, my runes were nowhere near reaching the height of my previous life. The moment I finished rebuilding my third rune, I would instantly be able to finish copying all of my other stored runes onto my body, which would give me ANOTHER substantial boost in my stats - and even more unusual abilities. For a moment, I basked in the feeling of being overpowered. I apparently couldn't level up without a Spark, which was a bit of a bummer - but I would figure out what a spark was and how to acquire it later. Then, I saw the next line of my usual 'early reincarnation' System notification spam, and my heart leapt into my throat. Congratulations on Successfully Transmigrating! Analyzing this world… Analysis complete! Essences Present in this dimension: All four essences present. Manifestation and Binding essence are intertwined, and seem to form the basic structure of this world's primary spellcasting system. Special notes: The local System of this world seems to run on a mixture of alteration and binding essence. It 'binds' certain actions or achievements to the user, then alters the body to fit those achievements. It is recommended that the transmigrator make good use of this local System to amplify their accomplishments and earnings in this world. Estimated tier: 6 (according to the Market's standardized power evaluation scale) Special Notes: This world is not a single dimension - it is part of a large dimensional cluster, estimated to be linked to at least one thousand other dimensions. Dimensional Cluster appears to be at war with a major multiversal faction that the Market is on (Error) terms with. Please proceed with caution. When I read the last two sentences of the System message, I felt the urge to throw something at the wall. This dimensional cluster was at war with a major multiversal faction? One of the ones that had probably laid siege to the Market, had huge dimension-spanning empires, and probably had dozens or hundreds of incredibly strong Law-9 powerhouses? What kind of ridiculous situation was this?