Chương 564: Chapter 555: A Being of Your Creation

The back room of the body creation facility looked like some kind of strange mix of a blacksmith's shop straight from the middle ages, mixed with some kind of deranged cult society's meeting spot. Finally, there were a few bits and pieces that looked like they belonged to some kind of spacefaring civilization, complete with detailed, well-made computer interfaces attached to some kind of holographic projection devices.

The bits and pieces that looked like they belonged to a crazed cultist gathering were the most prominent. In every corner of the room, I could see bits and pieces of what appeared to be people laying around. There were discarded bits of human skin, bones, flesh, and joints laying around on the floor. Just above them, on the shelves and in display cases were bits of more refined, well-made pieces of humans.

Many of the walls also looked like they were splattered with blood, which caught me off-guard at first, because our bodies didn't actually bleed the same way normal, living bodies did. Anytime we started 'bleeding' in the Market we seemed to leak light instead of regular blood - so the person who had decorated this room must have deliberately chosen to make this area look like some kind of butcher's shop gone wrong. In the center of the room, there were dozens of anvils laid out on the floor.

They looked almost exactly like the kind of anvil one would find in a blacksmith's shop from the middle ages. I had absolutely no idea why they were shaped like that, or what their actual purpose was. Finally, near the back of the room, there was something that looked kind of like a cryogenic sleep chamber. Attached to it as a large computer monitor, with a hologram projected off to the side.

"Why the heck does this shop look like the setting for a horror novel?" asked Felix, as he looked at the room.

"The blood splatters have to be made manually with paint or something," said Sallia.

"Otherwise, there's no way they could look like this in the middle of the Market."

"What a strange theme for the decorations of this shop," said Kexley.

"How do we actually make a new body? Do we just grab the random chunks of skin, bones, and joints off the wall and assemble it ourselves? That's quite… gruesome," said Anise. I took a few more steps into the room, and tried touching one of the anvils to see if anything happened. Body Customization - Arms Please insert a sample of your preferred material for bone, skin, muscle, and tendon construction. Error - not connected to any of the displays.

Please finish customizing a display to match your preferred body shape and aesthetics first, then connect the anvils to upload the relevant data. Cost: 500 - 5, 000 Achievement, depending on measurements, quality of materials, and preferred skin type.

"It says it needs to be connected to one of the displays," I said.

"Do you think that's what the big computer monitor in the back is for?" Felix wandered over to it, and then squinted at it.

"I don't know how to use this," he said, as he stared at the machine in front of him. Valeksi scurried over to it, before he grinned.

"This looks a lot like one of the computer models we saw in our fourth world. If it's similar, I think you need to touch it and then give it voice commands." He then did exactly as he had instructed, by placing his hand on the computer screen for several seconds.

"Computer, please tell me what functions you have," he said. Nothing happened.

"Computer? User manual?" Nothing happened.

"Hmm…" Valeksi trailed off into thought.

"How are we supposed to know how to use these?"

"I imagine there were probably shop helpers or something that were originally hired to walk us through the process," said Sallia.

"Too bad they're not here anymore." We spent several more minutes messing with the computer screen, until Anise finally realized that we needed to use it like a magic writing tablet. The computer only accepted essence as a valid way of 'inputting information' into it, and one needed to use essence as both a mouse and a keyboard. It was one of the least intuitive pieces of technology I had ever seen, but at least we had figured out how to get it to work.

After that, each of us moved to one of the other computers in the room and started playing with them. We quickly figured out what the hologram was for.

"It shows us what our completed body would look like," I said, before I cackled.

"It even shows us what the final stats of that body would be, and what material samples we should use to get the exact aesthetic and texture we want for our skin and muscles." I finally understood what all of the cult-esque limbs, bones, and skin pieces were for on the shelves and display cases. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. The others grunted in acknowledgement as they messed with their own computer, while I played with my own version.

After a few more minutes of fiddling with the controls, I figured out how to make the hologram take a 'snapshot' of my current body, and use that as a baseline for further customization. There was another option in the menu, which would let me upload all of the measurements for body parts to the anvils in the room. I assumed that from there, the anvils would spit out the right sizes for whatever body parts I wanted. I spent several more minutes learning the ins and outs of customizing these bodies.

Fortunately, buried in the settings menu, I finally got a more concrete idea what the 'finished products' would look like for these bodies. First of all, any bodies made in this shop would have a durability of about two years. That was a huge amount of time that we could spend in the Market, getting stronger and preparing ourselves for the final battle. Compared to our previous timeline of two months, this was an obvious, massive upgrade.

Second, bodies in this shop would all hit 130 in every stat, assuming we used upper grade materials. Of course, this would also cost us a fair amount - to get every body part upgraded, and using the best quality materials, we would need to shell out about 20, 000 Achievement per person. Of course, for my friends and I, this was a very manageable cost - but I was a bit worried about Valeksi and Kexley. Third, there was an aspect to these bodies that caught me off-guard.

"Apparently, we can't just constantly remake bodies and keep inserting our souls into them over and over again," I said.

"If we stay in the Market for more than two years at a time, the amount of Achievement our soul needs to consume per second to remain intact will start to increase rapidly, until it becomes untenable. This has… something to do with the Market itself, and whatever nonsense the creator of the Market used to allow souls to persis in this dimension. The details get a lot more technical than that, but I have no idea what most of the terms in this document mean," I said.

"For now, it doesn't matter," said Felix.

"What matters is that we can only spend about two years here, preparing for the final battle." The others nodded. Finally, once I satisfied my curiosity and figured out how to use the computer interface, I started actually designing my new body. I used my current body as a baseline, but I added in a few things.

First of all, I made the face of my new self a little bit better - I wasn't going to go absolutely crazy making myself into some kind of absurd, unrealistic beauty - but within certain limits, I still enjoyed looking nice. I spent a little bit more time on my eyes, in particular, and made the blue color a little bit more vibrant. After some thinking, I also decided to add in a few speckles of gold into my eyes - just because I thought they looked nice.

After that, I fixed a few of the smaller issues that I had noticed with the generic bodies the Market provided, such as slightly stiff joints and slightly incorrect proportions. As I was looking through the details for my new body, I got more and more excited to know what it would feel like to be in a new vessel. Which also made me aware of just how strange my experiences had been since joining the Market, and how unusual my perspective on human life and bodies were now.

When I had first joined the Market, I had thought it was strange that people in the Market seemed to treat bodies the way a regular, non-Market person treated their clothes. Now, I found myself feeling the same way. I looked forward to changing out my body for a different one, the way I might get excited to try on a new dress or eat a good meal with my friends. Centuries in the Market had changed me. I got a new idea.

I didn't mind slowly changing over time, in bits and pieces - but I also wanted some part of my body to show who I was. What mattered the most to people. I turned towards Anise.

"Hey Anise, can you come over here for a second?" I asked.

"Sure. Why?" she said, as she looked up from her own computer screen and moved over to me.

"I want to borrow your hair color for something," I said. I used one of the tools from the computer to take a picture of her hair, and then added the exact same color to my own hair. I left most of my hair as is - but a few highlights of Anise's bubblegum-pink hair seemed like fun.

"Oh, that looks really good!" said Anise. She grinned at me.

"Can you lend me your eye color for a second too? I'm adding my third and fourth eyes back in, and I think I'll use your eye color for that. The little flecks of gold look especially pretty." I moved over and let Anise borrow my eye color. After that, I also pulled over Sallia for a moment, and after some thought, added in a few strands of red to my hair as well, followed by a few strands of Felix's hair to my eye color.

Felix's hair didn't really match the coloration for the rest of my hair - but I wanted a little bit of something in my body to represent each of my friends. I also found myself lending my friends my own hair and eye color as they added in a few strands of me to their own bodies - Sallia decided she liked my eye setup, so she decided to outright copy it, while Felix added in a few strands of blonde to his own hair. It wasn't much, but it was enough to show his sentiment, which made me happy anyway.

After that, I uploaded a copy of my newly designed body to the anvils. The hologram had also given me information on what each material was, and where to find it in the shop, so all I had to do was grab the skin, bone, and flesh samples, drag them over to each anvil, and then pay the cost. Each anvil then generated the appropriate body parts.

After that, I carried all of my new legs, arms, torso, and head to the back of the room, where I placed them all in the chamber that looked kind of like a cryogenic sleep chamber. Body Assembly Place all desired body parts into the matrix and select 'assemble' to complete your body construction. Unless you specify otherwise in the option menu, your soul will automatically be pulled out of it current vessel and added to the new one right afterwards.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Let's do this one at a time. We don't know how long this will take, and some new monsters might attack us while we're getting into our new bodies," said Sallia. That was a good point. I hadn't thought of that.

"Sounds good," I said.

"Who's going first?"

"You go first. We can wait," said Kexley. I gave him a thumbs up, and then pushed the 'assemble' button. My vision went black.