Volume 1 Afterthoughts - Markets and Multiverses

This is just a ‘deleted scenes and ideas’ section from my original draft of the first world, versus how it ended up shaking out. Feel free to skip if you’re not interested.

The biggest reason the real version of the story diverges from this plotline is because of stat rolls. I generally write my original plotline assuming that everyone rolls about average - in this world, that would have implied everyone had about Grade 5 in Stats.

Regarding the first plotline, and the land section and landbeasts of the islands:

There is a certain kind of ‘glowing tree’ which is only accessible by moving further in to the forests. It can be absorbed once, and only once… and it permanently increases absorption essence by UP TO one grade (usually it gives +12 to +13 if a normal person with average absorption talent uses it). This would have helped Fuel the monster Sallia was always meant to be, since she could have maximized this and went straight to Grade 6 if she started with an average Grade 5 stat roll. I originally figured that with Sallia’s abnormal weapons talent, high speed rune formation, and close combat abilities she should have been exploring the Forests with the older hunters long before she actually reached seven runes, meaning she should have stumbled across this sap around the time she turned 12 or so? Maybe 10 or 11? I didn’t flesh out exactly when it would happen, but I figure it should have been before the second outsider incursion, and possibly before the glowing fish - though the timing would have been a little dodgy on that one.

This, naturally, could have given sallia the leg up she might have needed to help wreck the Glowing Fish, which I originally planned to give her a pretty good keyword ability. Since she didn’t get it here, she ended up getting a weaker version in the final chapters of MaM volume 1. RIP Sallia.

With her Achievements in the hunt of the glowing fish, and Miria’s insistence on exploring the ocean, Miria and Sallia would have become two pretty well-known up and coming members of the island. Miria’s reputation would have been a bit lower in this timeline, because Sallia would take the spotlight, but once Miria started her ocean exploration, Miria would have probably taken Sallia along too. My plans for Sallia’s abilities are… interesting, and I might still use some of the ideas for her rune abilities from my first draft of this world, so I won’t say anything about them. But I expect her rune abilities would have let her somewhat keep up underwater.

Once Miria and Sallia realized the islands were floating, they would have had the opportunity to make ANOTHER interesting discovery about the islands.

The islands are, in fact, hollow. Right underneath the surface of the island, there is a giant cavity of air. Then, supporting to ‘top’ of the island is a giant tree. This tree is infested with giant ants, most of which are a lot more terrifying than the regular landbeasts… but they also have some pretty unique resources down there. Specifically, mana-sap, which sort of… accidentally keeps the island stable. I don’t think Sallia and Miria would have been able to take full control of the tree unless Sallia rolled Grade 6 stats, but she probably could have taken some mana sap. This can be combined with Black Pearls to moderate its effects some, making it consume less willpower, and removing some of its benefits. It grants people troll-like regeneration if consumed with magic tree sap.

If they seized full control of the tree, they would instead help the village move into the middle layer of the island, thus gaining the ability to make the island fly whenever the villagers throw enough mana at it.

At its heart, the island is a real fantasy floating island. It just never got to achieve its final form. XD

I figured flying the island over the outsiders would have been a pretty hilarious and satisfying way to kill them, and would cost far fewer casualties.

From there, I figured the islands would enter a period of relative calm. Miria would have lost her left arm still during the second ocean exploration, but Sallia would have founded a swordsmanship school where she taught the young’uns to be as good at fighting as her. Miria probably would have helped out - even with one arm, she could be a teaching assistant or something. One of Sallia’s focuses is one-handed swordsmanship, after all.

My plans were kind of vague, since I developed most of those ideas right after rolling up this planet, but that was my rough guess for what the conclusion could have looked like with normal or god-tier rolls for Sallia.

And then Sallia’s rolls ended up being in like, grade 3-4 for all of the important categories. And those plans went RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW. I do think this made her growth as a character far more interesting, and it might have been for the best that Sallia got so heavily nerfed by RNG here. But for those wondering what the original plotline was going to look like, that’s a very rough summary of what I had planned. Obviously, some of those plans probably would have changed as I wrote the story. Some details, like how exactly Miria and co. discovered the hollow island, would have been expanded on, and I might have changed a few details of some magic resources (two saps seems like a bit much. Maybe a fruit would have been better for one of them?) But you get the idea.

A few other modifications to the story itself that I find kind of interesting. These were in the first draft, but for various reasons got cut.

1) Originally, floatwood had an intricate series of ‘runes’ added by people like Arne to help keep them aloft. This was eventually cut because during the first draft of the story, The four essences did not exist. Instead, everything was Qi and mana.

2) I eventually cut Qi and replaced it with absorption essence, because ‘xianxia’ type stories have a lot of tropes associated with them that I have zero intention of adding to this story, and I didn’t want people to either be put off by the idea of a xianxia story, or come to the story expecting a xianxia story. After all, apart from the name ‘spiritual qi’ I wasn’t really pulling anything from the genre. When I started the second draft, I dropped that system and replaced it with the four essences, because I wanted to give the magic system a huge overhaul. I think I saw someone reference the ‘cultivator roots’ of spellcasters on the islands, and I started sweating because I thought I forgot to remove a reference to spiritual qi from the volume one magic System. XD

Since ‘absorption essence’ is the closest replacement for spiritual energy in the current magic system of the multiverse and the islands, and this world didn’t roll into any of the new two essences, everything was converted to runes and absorption essence. There are still a lot of similarities though.

3) In the second draft, rather than directly interacting with mana, essences manipulated law energy, which then manipulated mana. This was distinctly different from dimensional laws, and name-wise it just ended up being confusing. I ended up not liking this. It felt overly complicated and clunky. So the four essences just directly interact with mana now. Absorption essence absorbs mana, strengthening the body, and the other three… well, we’ll get there in some other world.

Personally, I feel that the magic system overhaul benefitted the story. The four essences create a much more interesting system of settings, magic systems, and worldbuilding throughout the multiverse, especially in some future worlds we haven’t explored yet. It also gives me much more potential diversity and setup for each world, which I really like. Dividing magic into the four essences also forced me to rework a lot of the foundation of the magic system, and created a lot of fun ideas for worlds and settings I can use in various worlds as the main character and her friends start to get more acquainted with the multiverse. It was a big inspiration for refining the first five or six worlds.

4) In the original version of the story, the Market was totally different. The story was originally set during the ‘golden’ age of the Market, and I was planning on having the main characters live through the downfall of the Market. But when I was planning the main characters return to the Market after the end of the islands world, I felt that something was… lacking. The Market was too boring. It was hard to stage any meaningful conflict in the Market, and conflict is the ultimate driver of any story. The overarching plot felt like it wouldn’t kick in for several worlds, and the leadup to that just didn’t feel right to me when I wrote it. I started to wonder if it would feel like a sudden and abrupt tone shift when the ‘main story’ started to kick in, and I also wondered whether the Market was too dull when I couldn’t find ways to make it an interesting set piece, despite the fact that the entire story started off with my wanted to write a story about a weird half-eldritch Market where the souls of the dead traded in basically everything one could imagine. The Market itself was my original inspiration for this story, after all. I didn’t want it to take up the entire story, but I didn’t want it to be dull, either.

This led to the second draft of the story, where I scrapped the ‘golden era’ of the Market, all of the characters that existed in the Market for that draft besides Felix and Sallia, and redesigned the overarching plot. Now, the story takes place ‘after the fall’ of the Market. Personally, I think it makes the overarching plot feel better and more interesting, rather than there just being nothing before it suddenly kicks in after some number of worlds. Idk, I think the story could have still worked in its original form, but it would have been weaker in my opinion. Having the main characters have a problem they’re consistently working towards interacting with and solving feels better from a reader perspective, or at least that has been my opinion when I read stories. Instead of just ‘become stronger and wait for the plot to happen’ I think ‘everything is trying to kill you, get stronger to avoid getting spawncamped by an army of skeletons, giants, and liches’ feels more interesting and fun. It also lets me showcase way more weird and broken advertisements for the Market, since Miria and co. are no longer led around by the original planning and Marketing systems of the market, which was designed to guide them around based on their interests. I find it much easier and more fun to write Market scenes in this draft of the story, at least.

5) Originally, there were two chapters devoted to the onset of diseases brought about by the outsiders. However, given how easily the village resolved it and how little impact it had on the rest of the story, it ended up getting cut from the second draft. Everyone’s Fortitude is just too high with the rune magic system for diseases to matter. XD

6) Originally, there was a fourth transmigrator in the first arc of the story. But his personality overlapped a bit too much with Felix’s. I originally put him on one of the other islands and introduced him around the hunt of the giant glowing fish, because I wanted to make a point about how distant transmigrators could be while still being ‘geographically close’ by the standards of the bracelet. But I eventually ended up cutting him. The fact he wasn’t introduced for, like, the first half of the first major arc seriously hindered his ability to integrate into the rest of the group, which put him in a really awkward position from a narrative and storytelling perspective. Not to say that new permanent characters won’t be introduced later - I just felt that this character didn’t add enough to the story to be worth keeping around, especially since there are so many loose ends and pieces of information I already wanted to juggle and straighten out in the second draft of the first volume. He may show up later on in the story in a slightly revised form, though, so I won’t say much else about who he is or what his hobbies are. After all, we may still meet him someday…

7) There was also originally a chapter where Miria learns to swim, which I cut because I felt like the first volume was already a bit too long, and Miria originally got a brother around the time of the Glowing Fish attack. He got cut because I felt the story was already starting to get a little cluttered chapter wise, and he did absolutely nothing in the story. Also, Miria kind of died a little too soon after his birth. So he kind of existed only as a footnote. Shockingly, two year olds don’t do much, and four year olds aren’t much better. So he just… kind of technically existed and got mentioned every now and then. Since his character served so little purpose (and because I kept forgetting his name) he got cut. Should’ve had a better name, Laust! I blame you for this! Who named you? Why did you have such a hard to remember name? Me? No, I take no responsibility for this. It’s your fault!

8) There were originally 15 Stats instead of the current 10. There were 3 social stats, and there were 3 stats related to Cultivation and 3 stats related to manipulating Mana. I cut the Social Stats because they had too big of an influence on a character’s personality, and I HATED writing that. If a random roll changes who Miria is as a person from world to world, I feel obligated to ‘fudge’ that roll, because I want to write a story about MIRIA, not whoever Miria becomes when her ‘empathy’ stat drops 40 points for no reason. I like it when RNG dictates a bit of how strong each character is, because it results in interesting situations I didn’t foresee, like Sallia getting super-nerfed on the world I thought she would stomp everything on. But I hate Stats actually changing who someone is. So in draft 1 I fudged all the rolls for Social Stats!

Then I realized that if I felt obligated to ‘fudge’ the rolls for a Stat I was randomly rolling, and if the Stat changed the personality of a character, I just didn’t like the Stat existing at all. So Social Stats got cut, and the Spiritual Qi and Mana stats became Binding, Manifestation, Alteration, and Absorption Essence stats. Much cleaner this way in my opinion, and less annoying to deal with. And no more Stats that fundamentally change who a character is. Sallia with Grade 3 Willpower may have ‘Ooh-Shiny’ Syndrome turned up to the max, but she’s still Sallia at her core. Miria with 70 Empathy vs. 120 is just a completely different person, and one I didn’t enjoy writing.

9) In the first draft, the outsiders were a few more generations removed from the islanders. So nobody knew wtf the other side was saying. I had some fun chapters written where Miria and her village chief play charades with the outsiders and people try to figure out wtf the other sid was talking about. I ended up cutting it because I felt like I was creating problems JUST for Miria to solve them, since she ends up learning part of the outsider language. but I realized she only had Grade 4 intelligence, and really, she shouldn’t be doing much of any language learning with her garbage intelligence. Then the whole scene kind of fell apart, so it got cut, because the scene was much less entertaining when the village chief was the one playing charades with the outsiders in third person. I figured I might as well just get on with the story.

I’m still very fond of the idea of Miria playing charades with a group of people she can’t communicate with. Maybe that will make its way back into the second volume. I have dreams.

10) Finally, in draft 1 Transmigrators didn’t receive notifications for when they unlocked new Abilities or earned Achievement. They would feel themselves earning Achievement, but would only get to see that at the end of a world, and would only get to see what abilities they unlocked then. I pretty quickly realized I wanted more Stat notifications. I like LitRPG’s, and I like seeing System notifications sometimes. I don’t want them to overwhelm the rest of the story, but a little bit of number in my story makes me happy, both as a reader and a writer. So the System is more aggressive with notifications in draft 2 and 3. Then, I started thinking that if the System was already adding notifications, the Market would DEFINITELY slip in some ads. You guys also know what the Market is like by now. And, well… that’s now how the System works. XD

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about the deleted parts and scenes of the story, and what-if scenarios. I hope those of you interested in the story had fun reading through my somewhat random list of changes from the first major draft to the third, final draft.