Chương 547: Progress and Plans

After I finished buying my new upgrades, I turned towards my friends. They were still looking at System screens of their own, and I could also see Sallia doing a few basic stretches - it looked like she was adjusting to the crude nature of the Market's mass produced bodies. I cleared my throat.

"I finished dealing with my upgrades. I still have about 100 glut penalty, and around 280, 000 Achievement left to go," I said.

"I ended up choosing all five of the 'useful' Abilities I talked with you guys about last life. What about you all? What did you pick up? Or are you still thinking?"

"I already finished buying my upgrades too," said Anise.

"The biggest upgrade I got was an upgrade to my spellcasting magic system. First of all, I can now devour nearby mist and use it as a way to empower my spells even further. If I combine that with {Empowered Spell}, I should be able to reach pretty incredible levels with my spells, especially since I also levelled up most of my spells several times last world."

"What, specifically, is the definition of 'mist'?" asked Felix.

"I'd like to find a good way to artificially generate mist for you, but we need to know what that means."

"Any form of airborne water particle that exceeds a certain density works," said Anise.

"My ability has a lot of numbers associated with that, but I didn't understand the numbers when I tried to look through them. The simplified version is that as long as I can literally see water in the air around me, it will usually trigger my ability."

"My dress is already a mobile source of water, so as long as we find a way to turn it into mist, I can act as a mobile mist generator for you," I said.

"Felix, do you have any good ideas for how to hook up some sort of machinery or spell to my dress and convert it from liquid water into airborne water?"

"I can think of a few ways to do that, although we would need some other magic materials or technology," said Felix.

"I think the most reliable long-term solution would be to convert Miria's dress directly into a mist generator with the right materials, although I don't know where the materials for Market craftsmen are. So for now, I think it's best if we find something a bit more short term and just hope we get it put together before we fight for more lives. It might mean you don't get much use out of your ability upgrade next life, but…" Anise and I both shrugged.

As long as we got more lives, losing some power afterwards didn't matter. We could always fix our builds and find better solutions after this life - we just needed to make sure there was a future after this life.

"That seems a bit minor for the upgrade from Intermediate to advanced grade," I observed.

"Does your upgrade do anything else?"

"Yeah, I can also contract a few 'mist servants.' As long as I'm located in a fog bank or mist bank, I can summon them. They're giant wolves. I'd like help setting up a mist bank later so that I can create my new summons. We'll have a few helpers when we fight the guardian that stops us from buying more lives. Just don't expect too much from them - they are, apparently, newborn entities with real souls that can rebuild their bodies from scratch whenever they have enough materials and essence.

That also means they'll be newborns when we first try them," said Anise.

"They get Grade 7 stats across the board when I first summon them, so they'll be considerably weaker than us." I shrugged. It didn't sound like they would be a huge power boost, but any assistance was helpful.

"Any other abilities? Last world made it unusually easy to pick up new magic-related skills," commented Sallia.

"I got several that improve mana efficiency, my spellcasting speed, and my reaction time, and a few that boost fire-related magic as well. For now, I intend to focus on fire and mist magic, since those are the strongest spells I have available to me," said Anise.

"Got it. How much glut do you have left, and how much Achievement?" asked Felix.

"I'm a little short on Achievement now. Since my ability to 'upgrade' spells and level them up costs Achievement, I've been spending like mad. I still have a little over 50, 000 after buying my upgrade, but my savings fall far short of Miria's. My keyword ability upgrade took my spellcasting keyword ability from 35 Achievement to 60, and the other miscellaneous abilities cost me 40 Achievement in total. I have 106/320 glut used right now.

Plenty of room for more, but I don't know if I have enough Achievement to fill out my glut penalty. What about you two?" asked Anise. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"I got an upgrade as a reward for ending the fog bank threat, which gives me a way to directly upgrade wood and mist-related materials for a large amount of essence - although it can only upgrade the materials to a certain upper limit, and it's slow and expensive." said Felix.

"I also got two different abilities that give me better instincts for how to use materials, maximize their value, and convert them into powerful items. Apart from that, near the end I managed to get one new Skill from my compound spark, which gave me the ability to amplify any items I use. They get a 50% boost in power now - although I can only use the ability on items I have made myself.

It's a shame I didn't have time to finish pushing that skill to intermediate grade - if I had a few more years, I might have been able to push that skill to a ridiculous level." I brightened up. That was a great upgrade. It was a shame that we didn't get more time, but I still thought Felix was underselling how helpful that could be.

"If you use the {Splinter of Annihilation}, it'll knock off 11 grades of stats from the target, instead of ten. That's already a big boost in power," I said.

"It could even knock off 12 grades of stats. We never did figure out how the diminishing returns for higher grades of stats work," said Sallia. Felix nodded thoughtfully.

"That's true. I can't say I'm perfectly satisfied with all of my upgrades and improvements last life, but I suppose I still made good progress."

"How about remaining Achievement and glut penalty?" asked Anise.

"I have about 300, 000 Achievement left. Glut penalty wise, my new ability to upgrade wood and mist related materials was an upgrade to my alchemy system keyword ability. It's now advanced grade, and costs me 50 glut penalty instead of the previous thirty. The ability that boosts the power of an item I've created cost me another 30 glut penalty, and the two instinct-related upgrades are a total of 30 glut penalty. I went from 83/320 glut to 163/320 glut.

Expensive, but I think the upgrades are worth it - and I still have plenty of room for more upgrades." I nodded. Felix had gotten some sizeable, useful upgrades too. I turned towards Sallia.

"What about you, Sallia?" Sallia sighed.

"I didn't get an upgrade for my rune abilities, sadly. It seems like I didn't do enough. My manifestation keyword ability got an upgrade that makes me far more maneuverable in midair, though, perhaps because I kept using it to fly around and handle midair maneuvering. I got it while fighting the water elemental - although the ability did mention I had battled multiple powerful monsters using aerial combat methods, so I think it was counting some of our earlier battles against the universal tree's minions, too?"

Sallia shrugged.

"In any case, I can basically fly and hop around at will while in midair now. I don't need to pay attention to the number of times I've moved in the air, or anything like that - I can essentially treat the ai as if it were solid ground. Apart from that, I got a few boosts that make my wrists stronger, make me faster at swinging my sword, and make my physical body faster and stronger in general.

My 'base stats' are essentially grade 15 now, and coupled with all of the other abilities, boosts, and modifiers I can stick onto myself, I might be able to reach around grade 22 or 23 in my physical stats. Although my perception can't actually keep up with that, so in practice I can't make use of all of those stats the way I wish I could."

"That's still pretty impressive. Our base stats are only grade 10, if we're running off of the baseline Mass-produced Market bodies. What about your glut and Achievement?"

"I have about 150, 000 Achievement left. The manifestation magic system upgrade cost me 25 more glut, so the keyword ability is now 35 glut in total. The other assorted abilities cost me another 50 glut in total, so I'm at 152 in total." Now that we were done going over everyone's upgrades, I looked back at the ruined city. It was as desolate as ever. I sighed.

"Time to plan for more lives," I said.

"Indeed. What's our next step?" asked Felix.

"I have some thoughts, but it sounds like you have an idea too?"

"Yeah. I was thinking we should start out by trying to find a body workshop or factory somewhere in the nearest inner district of the Market. The system notification that appeared when we returned to the Market said that we have some kind of 'guidance system' that'll lead us to a place we can buy more lives. We can use that to quickly find the nearest inner district of the nursery, then go look for new bodies instead.

If we can find a way to manufacture more bodies and swap our souls into them, we can extend our stay in the Market quite a bit - and also upgrade our base stats by another grade."

"That's a reasonable idea," said Felix.

"Gives us more time to prepare for the final fight, and makes us stronger. I was planning to get Anise's mist generation set up first, but we can look for tools or materials to do that on the way."

"Sallia? Anise? Do you two have any other suggestions or ideas?" I asked. They shook their heads.

"Your plan sounds reasonable to me. If we aren't strong enough to even gather some more bodies, I doubt we'll be strong enough to buy more lives, and this is the best way to quickly improve our power inside the Market," said Sallia.

"Let's do it," said Anise. Since Anise and Sallia also assented, we had finalized the first step of our plan to get more lives and survive. It was time to hunt down some new bodies.