The first thing I did was click on the ‘remove an ability’ option. Before messing with ability customization, I needed space. That meant getting some Glut free, to see what I was working with. I also needed to make sure the bed wasn't broken after centuries of neglect. Thus, I wanted to see what happened if I tried to remove basic-grade swordsmanship. This ability had long outlived its usefulness. With the exact same stats and level of skill, Sallia could utterly crush me with her incredible combat instincts. I could reach a moderate level of competence with a sword, about equal to someone who had some talent and worked hard. However, my swordsmanship was nowhere near as useful as my other skills by now. Extinguish, my teleportation and space related abilities, and my healing were much better uses of my limited training time. I hadn’t used my swordsmanship for anything practical last world. Furthermore, abilities seemed to improve when I did something 'impressive' with them. That was much harder for me to manage when it came to physical combat, where my natural talent was lacking. Since the prospects for swordsmanship were dim, I decided to cut my losses. I had better uses for my Glut, and 20 Achievement wasn't a high price to pay.

  I started navigating menus. After I selected 'Remove an Ability' from the previous System menu, a new screen popped up, listing my Abilities. I scanned over them.

  {Identity}. {Echoes of the Deep}. {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}. {Eldritch Soul}. And, finally, {Basic One-Handed Swordsmanship}. All of my abilities were listed, one by one.

  Or were they? I frowned, as I realized an ability was missing from the list.

  “I don’t see {Body Control} on the list of abilities,” I said, ending my singing for the moment. I was hoping to hear Felix or Sallia's theory about why that might be the case. To my surprise, before my friends could comment, the bed answered me.

  “Replying to user: {Body Control} is not a real ability.”

  “What?” I asked, baffled. It took me a moment to realize that I had heard correctly. Had the bed replied to me? However, it only took me a few moments to realize I was being silly. The previous menu had mentioned an AI was present in the bed. Why wouldn't the bed be capable of speech? I had seen other signs of the Market’s advanced technology and magic before. A talking bed wasn’t very surprising in light of the other things I had seen. I mentally shrugged, before I focused on the bed's words.

  “{Body Control} is listed in my status screen along with all of my other abilities. Why wouldn’t it be an ability?

  “Replying to User: All abilities are, foundationally, built upon ‘glut penalty.’ Glut penalty is, in a sense, a penalty. However, it is also a numerical representation of how much an ability warps reality. It is a calculation of how much burden your abilities place on your soul as you warp the world to suit your needs. This is why every Ability costs Glut. How does {Body Control} escape this problem? The simple answer is that it doesn't. {Body Control} isn’t even a proper magic effect... at least not from the user. {Body Control} lets you tell the Market what type of body you want to reincarnate in. It is a menu option. Then, the Market records your preference and manually cuts off any connection you form with a body of the wrong type. If you are familiar with the idea of ‘magnets,’ then think of it like this: all empty bodies and souls have magnetic attraction to each other. Empty bodies pull in souls until they are filled up. {Body Control} makes the Market manually stick a block of mana between your soul and the empty bodies you don’t want. You will note that the MARKET is doing this - your soul is not. Thus, {Body Control} is a fake Ability. It's you asking the Market to do something - not you yourself doing something. Of course, there are many, many other ways to accomplish the same thing. If you wish, you can even get an ability to control bodies manually, instead of having the Market do it for you.”

  I blinked in surprise. I… hadn’t thought about that before. The idea that {Body Control} cost 0 Glut was actually pretty indicative that something was odd about the ability. After all, every ability cost Glut besides that one.

  "Why does the Market give new Transmigrators {Body Control} for free?" I asked. It seemed... rather different from the Market's usual money-grubbing behavior.

  "Query not found in database."

  I sighed. I should have expected that. Why would an AI be privy to the decisions of the Market’s upper management? Either way, I was still glad I had {Body Control}. Being left to the whims of fate was bad enough when it came to my stats and parents. Flipping a coin to see if I ended up with a body I hated every reincarnation would have been miserable. If I had ended up in a male body during our first world, I would have felt completely off-balance the entire life.

  That being said, {Body Control} did highlight a rather interesting facet of the Market’s culture. The Ability {Body Control} let me make ‘requests’ to the Market… but it didn’t specify that I had to stick with the type of body I had first entered the Market with. If I ever wanted to try being a boy for one life, all I had to do was hit a button, and the Market would switch me over. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to do so, since I was much happier remaining a girl… but it did indicate that the Market didn’t care much about so called ‘gender.’

  On the other hand, why would they? The Market was a society of souls that hopped from one body to another. A physical body was like a pair of clothes - you could swap them or toss them out at will. Changing gender for one life was kind of like trying on a new color of clothing here. There were no 'fundamental' differences between male and female souls, at least as far as I could tell. In light of that, it made perfect sense that swapping gender was so easy in the Market. In the end, we were all humanoid souls. Those who weren’t part of the Market had a 50% chance of being born ‘male’ and a 50% chance of being born ‘female’ each life. Chances were that most people who had once walked these streets had been both male and female countless times before joining the Market. From the perspective of the Market's upper management, being 'male' or 'female' was like preferring the color blue over the color red. If they found that giving people {Body Control} for free increased how much people earned, and thus how much they could tax... I could see why the Market's upper management would give the Ability away for free.

  I shrugged, and then stopped thinking about it. I had no intention of ever changing my preferred body type. We could debate how and why the Market acted the way it did... some other time. For now, I had to finish my Ability removal. I selected {One Handed Swordsmanship}, and another System popup appeared.

  Yes, I thought. 40 Achievement drained out of my body, and then seemed to enter a series of invisible pipes. Through geometries I couldn't understand, the Achievement shot towards the center of the building. I blinked in surprise. Maybe it was possible to go ‘recover’ our spent Achievement later? That would be nice. When I bought Soul Fragments to boost my stats, my Achievement transformed into the Soul Fragments that I wanted. In short, it was used as a crafting material. There was no way to go grab my Achievement back after spending it. The bed did not work the same way. My Achievement had clearly gone somewhere else. In fact, there might be quite a bit of Achievement hidden in this building, as long as we could retrieve it...

  My thoughts were interrupted by stabbing pain in my gut. I felt like someone had plunged a knife into my intestines. I gasped in pain, and my humming cut off, plunging our group into silence. Sallia immediately started humming for me as I felt something exit my body. I swapped to my soul-sigh, and made sure nothing was wrong with my soul. I relaxed a moment later, as I felt something being carefully extracted from my soul. A few moments later the pain stopped.

  I checked my Status Screen, and grinned. Basic Swordsmanship was gone. I moved my limbs a few times, and confirmed that nothing was wrong. I had 4 more glut than before. The bed might have been covered in dust, but it was still working just fine. I navigated the menu until I reached the next option I had been interested in: Partial Ability Removal. The next screen asked me to focus on what ability I wanted to modify, so I focused on {Echoes of the Deep}. It was the ability with more Keywords to it, and I was more than happy to remove a few of them.

  The next System menu looked different than I thought it would. It showed the same screen I usually saw when I read the ability’s description, but it had a few rather important lines of text added to it.

  After seeing this System screen, I had a much better understanding of how Keyword Abilities worked. Every single Keyword wasn’t just something that amplified my ability. Each and every keyword was also responsible for a part of my Ability. In other words, if I cut out a keyword, I would lose part of that ability… and also free up a keyword slot. I had suspected it worked that way, but there were also some surprises in the Ability. I was also more than a little curious about what a ‘fragmented keyword’ was, although I had a rough guess after reading through what it did. It looked like a ‘fragmented keyword’ gave me some sort of extra ability… but since it wasn’t complete, it cost a bunch of extra glut penalty? I was basically paying more Glut to keep a keyword slot free. I didn’t know if there were any other ‘notable traits’ of a fragmented keyword, but it was useful information, either way. I sent my friends a few of my guesses about what I had seen and what it meant, before I got back to focusing on ability removal.

  I already knew what I wanted gone. I focused on ‘Duality’ and ‘Death.’ Neither of them were useful enough to keep around. The actual benefits I had derived from it were a mild boost to extinguish, or one Grade of Fortitude. The boost to Extinguish was weaker than upgrading my attunement by another grade, and while it was somewhat useful, it wasn't amazing. I certainly didn't think it justified losing an entire keyword slot. The one Grade of Fortitude was even less impressive. Altogether, these abilities consumed two whole keyword slots. I wanted them gone. As I focused on the Duality and Death Keywords, as well as the fragmented Life keyword, another System popup appeared.

   I said.

   said Felix.

  That sounded like a good idea, so I did as Felix asked. Then I hit yes.

  The world turned into fire. I screamed for several minutes as something punched into my soul like a hot poker. Through my soul-sight, I could see the arms of the bed, reaching through my skin as if it weren't there to touch the soul underneath. The arms of the bed cut, stitched, and removed. However, at no time did I feel like I was in danger of death or any dangerous injuries. Finally, the bed stopped. I sighed in relief, and checked my new Ability.

  The ability was simple, clean, and useful. Everything that I needed, and nothing that I didn’t need. I turned to my other ability… and grimaced. It was far more complicated than the previous one.

  I had always thought this ability was unusually expensive, but now I had a better understanding of why. I had three ‘fragmented keywords’ in here… and every single ‘fragmented keyword’ cost me extra glut. No wonder I was paying 40 freaking Glut for this Ability! The problem was… most of those fragmented keyword abilities were the best parts of that ability. The ability to steal abilities from monsters I killed was insanely useful, even if I only got limited versions of each ability. It helped me gather intelligence about enemies, and helped me adapt to each world. I didn’t want to lose it. Space was also very useful, since it was hard to fight back against Space-related abilities with a space ability of my own.

  I sighed.

  “Is there any way to build a fragmented keyword into a full keyword?” I asked, hoping the AI would answer.

  “Of course! Two or three ability upgrades in the right direction will add a fragmented keyword and upgrade it into a full keyword! You can also choose to keep a fragmented keyword ability as a fragment, if you don’t want to pay the extra keyword slot! You can find more detailed options if the situation arises in a future world,” said the AI. "Keyword abilities aren't static - that's part of what makes them so important! They evolve to fit the user's needs and actions with every upgrade!"

  I sighed, and decided to keep both fragmented keywords for {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}. Maybe in the future I could get Hunger and Space as actual keywords, or maybe I would find a better ability later. Madness, on the other hand… Madness was not useful enough to keep. So I removed that, at the cost of another 400 Achievement. However, I freed up another 8 Glut, giving me even more room to grab new abilities or keyword abilities in the future. With that final expenditure paid, my Achievement had dropped from 8,175.09 to 7,035.04 over the course of my time on the bed. My Glut was now at 73/105, and I had lost very little actual power in exchange for that. Most importantly, I now had four keyword slots free, instead of one.

  I glanced at my friends, to make sure the spider was still contained. After I made sure everything was still all right, I opened up the next menu that interested me.

  I had finished cleaning up the unwanted bits of my abilities. Now, it was time to find new abilities and ability customizations to fill my glut back up. I was weaker than I had been when I walked into the building… but I now had room to play with some upgrades. It was time to see what ability customization looked like.

  Extra note - The Market is either weirdly toxic or weirdly supportive towards trans people. Honestly, you could kind of consider them to be either, since their response is basically ‘gender itself isn’t real, so if you prefer being male or female… good for you?’ I don’t know how I feel about that, but it’s what made the most sense in the worldbuilding. Just keep in mind that the Market’s views do not represent the author’s views. I think I mentioned this for the souls and babies chapter as well? Anyway, try to keep the political discussions to a minimum, yeah? This is a fantasy story, where magic and souls are well-known, well-established parts of the Multiverse. And where your gender is a coin flip every reincarnation, because that’s interdimensional soul-physics for you. That will obviously change the morals of the societies aware of this fact - both for the better and for the worse. Don’t try to apply it to real life too closely, ne?

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