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He looked back to Luna, who nodded but said nothing. The four of them looked on expectantly for her to elaborate.
“I didn’t teach it to you because the challenge is in some ways a reward itself. Now, its challenge is considered one of the least dangerous, but in some ways also one of the hardest and riskiest for you four in particular. Upon accepting it, you will find yourself experiencing a number of lives equal to the depth of the floor. Each life will generally be vastly different from your own. They may start similarly and branch off in odd ways, but they will always end up with you living a different life. Still, each life is different enough that you are guaranteed to have a new Concept in each. The challenge here is to overcome each life, figuring out what is happening and deliberately moving on. Should you fail to move on from one life, you will awaken afterwards with that life’s Concept having replaced your own. Yes, even if you do not currently possess one. However, should you succeed by moving on from each and every life, you will awaken with some version of all the Concepts added onto your own. At Tier 11, they will be a little under sixty percent the strength of your main Concept, and I trust you understand how useful that could be, particularly at the deeper floors.”
Aster let out a low whine at the statement.
Luna did not, in fact, have to explain how strong that would be. Having a Concept that could do one other thing would be strong on its own, but being able to do that for seven other Concepts would be amazing.
Susanne asked, “Are there any side effects or downsides? Weakened willpower? Harder to grow your Concept? They can’t grow or something?”
Liz added her own question, “Harder to form your Intent?”
Luna chopped with her hand. “No to all of that. There are no side effects, and the additional effects can potentially grow right along with your base Concept, assuming you practice with them enough. You could think of them as an additional, if unusual, generic use of your Concept, like locking down space or flying. The closer the use is to something your Concept already does, the easier it is to use and expand. There’s a reason that Minkalla is called the place of miracles. In fact, getting this reward will actually make forming your Intent a little easier, but that’s usually attributed to living multiple lives, rather than any of the additional effects folded into a Concept. It even works with beasts, so having an inherited Concept wouldn’t keep you from benefiting, Aster. In fact, some argue it’s better for beasts, as it makes expanding your existing Concept easier in the future. It’s considered one of the best single floor rewards Minkalla has for a reason, and whenever it shows up as the first floor there’s a lot of people who flood in, eager to try and get or change their Concept relatively easily.”
Carol nodded and said, “They also scale with your Tier. If you’re Tier 11, everything works far better than at Tier 14. That sixty percent? If you were Tier 14, try ten percent. That holds true for all floors and their rewards. It’s either cheaper to take the rewards if you’re a lower Tier, or the rewards are better for lower Tiers. Sometimes both. In theory, a Tier 11 can just explore their way through the floors killing monsters and get every floor reward without killing anyone, but that’s only in theory. We have records of tens of Tier 11s who have completed Minkalla’s seven floors, so a lot of this is just speculation. Better to have more Genesis Energy than you need for obvious reasons.” Matt heard the unspoken comment that they might need to kill people and should do so if possible.
That was cold, but he understood. Others would be operating on the same logic, and the higher Tier people would be desperate for more Genesis Energy and might kill anyone they encountered.
Luna continued, “If you do encounter Folded Reflections, it’s important to remember that the other lives aren’t real. Minkalla lies, and it lies well. It’s very, very convincing, but is ultimately just an immeasurably sophisticated illusion array. Things can happen in them which aren’t possible, such as being born in a different Great Power, having a different Talent, having the Empire fall into anarchy, being born as royalty. It won’t show you the future, and what other versions of you do does not reflect on who you are. Many people have gone mad, trying to find people they meet in their other lives or pining after something that never will and never could have happened. It’s nothing more than Minkalla spinning possibilities from your own memories and thoughts.”
Matt couldn’t help but murmur, “What the f**k?”
The thought of living other lives seemed both scary and enticing.
It might just let him see his parents again. Live with them. See them healthy and whole.
He had to ask, “And it’s all fake? How can you know? If it’s from a higher realm, surely it can do more than we’re used to?”
Luna shrugged. “Tests, mostly. Most of the lives will reuse materials such as names and faces. Don’t be surprised if you encounter the same people in multiple lives or see some who are strangely familiar in one way or another. Also, things will tend to go either really well for you in a single life or really badly. It would be useless as a prize if the alternative lives were just you having changed what shirt you wore one day. Though I have heard of one person who did experience that, but that was quite an outlier and that life went quite differently even with such a small change.”
As he started to go into a rabbit hole of what ifs Matt squashed that thought process. It just wasn’t productive for something so remote of a possibility
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