Merchant Of Yliaster

Bob hit a giant elk with the lion he was holding, as he thought about how his life turned out like this. The flesh gave out in his palm, and the lion's leg detached from its body due to the immense force.

Elk and the lion flew to the distance, and Bob threw away the mushy leg away. He glanced around, looking for more threats, but there were none.

It all started a day ago when Gendor suddenly told him to follow him into a rift. He was not sure how the man managed to gain access to one of the valuable spots, but the people covered in black robes guarding the place gave him a bad feeling.

Bob had never been picky with who associated himself, but he felt like it was high time he did. Hanging around with shady people, while it might be suitable for Gendor, was not suitable for him.

The rift, on the other hand, had been enjoyable at the least. He watched as the elk slowly got up, its body having a texture of wood. This world was almost completely covered with a savanna filled with animals, and for a day now, they had hardly had a peaceful time.

Whenever they tried to camp, they were ambushed by a plethora of creatures, and after a few unsuccessful attempts, they decided to eradicate a part of the forest of the beasts. This brought them to the situation now, as Bob was fighting a peak tier 2 elk by himself.

Gendor, too, had his fair share of trouble, but the man was freakishly good at hiding. He appeared sometimes, picking out troublesome enemies, but Bob didn't even know where the man was at the moment.

He smashed the elk on the head once more, hitting it on the shoulder with its horn. He felt a mild ache in his shoulder while the elk buckled under his fist, clearly dazed. With a following kick under his chin, the beast flipped in the air, falling on the ground as a heap of convulsing limbs.

Bob was offered many complex skills as he leveled, but he chose simple skills instead. He knew himself, and he knew that he wouldn't be very good at using them. His current skills mainly boosted his fighting prowess, and that was enough for him. He didn't do any showy magic or anything.

He gave another kick at the sad-looking elk, and with a crack, the spine of the creature fractured, and a notification came from the system. Bob kneeled before the beast, digging in with his hand before pulling out a beast core.

A peak tier 2 core would fetch a pretty good price, he felt. These things always made him want to eat them, but he managed to hold himself back as always. He heard someone explode before trying just that. While he didn't fear that he would explode, Gendor apparently did, so the man told him not to eat anything.

As he got up, a roar came from his right, and he turned to see a ferocious-looking gorilla watching him from a tree nearby. It was clear what its intention was. Bob sighed as the dumb creature crashed into him with an astonishing speed, launching him through a few trees.

I wonder what Maxwell is doing? He thought as he righted himself, brushing off the splinters from his clothes. It seemed like the fighting would go on for a while.

Gendor jumped from tree to tree, his form wavering like an illusion of light. As he passed, he stabbed a creature he couldn't name and continued on his way. The area was getting considerably less crowded now after a few hours of "cleaning". But Gendor was starting to think that the beasts in this forest were endless.

He killed three more, slicing through their throats without them realizing it, but whenever he returned to a place he had emptied only a few minutes ago, he found new animals in the previously unoccupied place.

The density was so ridiculous that the nearby beasts immediately filled up the empty spots. He had many questions about how this ridiculous ecosystem worked, but he filed them away for later when they were sitting in a camp, if they could manage to make one, of course.

He was still not sure if joining the Civil Militia, or Assassins' Guild, with the name it was called among the people, was a good idea, but he was pretty satisfied with the connection they had.

Buying the rights to enter a rift had been suspiciously easy after joining, and Gendor was happy that he had taken so much trouble to find out where the organization operated from.

He was not very thrilled about the fact that most of the members were obsessed with a shadow goddess, though. Such things never caused anything good, and this godly business felt too real for his tastes, with priests controlling shadows like a plaything.

Well, they can't harm me, so they can be creeps if they want to. He thought. His element was apparently stronger than whatever brand of darkness the priests controlled, so they were helpless against him when it came to a face-off.

He ripped a monkey's throat out, continuing the meaningless genocide. Anything low-level long escaped the area, so these few hours had been very fruitful. The last time he had seen him, the boy was level 38, and he was pushing 42 right now.

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Before coming here, he tried to find Max, too, but the other boy seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. He even found the place he hung out, but he wasn't there either.

He had to give credit where it was due, though. Gendor had many opportunities to try different chefs' cooking as he traveled through the federation, and the cook at The Nest had insane food compared to a place like this. He wouldn't mind being a regular if nothing went wrong in the following days.

He picked up an unassuming plant from the ground, his implant pinging him. Technology was awesome when it came to things like this, as finding valuable herbs was much easier when you didn't need to memorize them.

The cerebral implant has definitely changed a lot since the initiation, turning into a skill for one, and it has lost many functions, but it has kept being a tremendous help.

He wondered what the hell Maxwell was doing as he continued his purge.

Blueberry flew over the seemingly endless sands in the search for something different. She had been flying for almost an hour now, and the world looked identical to before, as if the planet was completely devoid of any variety.

She also couldn't see anything like the cave they were in before, so that too was probably rare on the planet. From time to time, she could see things similar to those of the humans built to live in, but they seemed abandoned.

Also, she discovered that there were birds too, but they seemed not to be very friendly. Currently, she was using one of their bodies, and she had been pushing the poor animal for a while now. She didn't really care, though. Attacking her was the creature's mistake; it would need to pay.

Since hijacking a body, attacks became less and less frequent, as the bird was not exactly low-levelled on the surface. From time to time, she dove and hunted some beasts to level, but they were mediocre compared to the ones her human and Felix fought against in the cave.

A few minutes later, she realized the bird was slowing down, so she connected with it for a moment to see what the problem was. She was startled to feel a scorching heat burning on the creature's body.

Blueberry quite literally hated the way humans communicated, but she could still understand it. The giant mushroom had said that humans were destroyed by the sun, and Blueberry couldn't imagine how that would happen before.

Now, though, she realized why it was possible. She didn't realize it before, but the temperature rose as she travelled.

A few minutes passed like this, and Blueberry let the miserable bird go a few minutes later. She turned herself ethereal and travelled for another half an hour this way.

Twenty minutes in, even her ethereal form was starting to get hurt, but fortunately, there were still creatures living in this environment. It took her some time, but she managed to find a bird to possess.

After that, her progress got faster, and soon, she finally saw some change. Before her, a scorching plain expanded to the horizon, and Blueberry, to her dismay, could see pools of molten glass scattered in the plain.

The still solid part of the ground shone with a blinding light, probably made of a different material. Even the bird she was possessing was starting to get uncomfortable, and Blueberry was starting to have second thoughts about this adventure.

If the bird she possessed died here, she wouldn't have more than a few minutes to find a new body. Also, the experience would be far from pleasant.

In the end, she found herself too curious to turn back, as she could see a place shining with an orange light in the distance.

This place was much less populated, and Blueberry left the bird body for a lizard one. It was a great sacrifice, but it had to be done for greatness.

She ran across the fields for some time, the new body feeling comfortable in this place. Blueberry found herself respecting the lizard despite its very visible lack of wings.

Soon, she reached the glowing plain, but there was a problem. As she approached it, Blueberry started to realize a few things.

Firstly, this plain apparently didn't consist of sand or molten glass, as it moved up and down at a consistent rate.

Secondly, it was not a plain, but a giant mass, almost covering three hundred meters in every way.

And thirdly and finally, this thing looked very much alive, as Blueberey could swear that an eye was staring at her with an amused glance.

Despite being immensely intelligent, Blueberry was a beast at heart, and she found her intuition screaming at her to run.

She didn't hesitate to listen, but she knew it was too late. In every direction, an orange wall glowing with started to rise, and immediately formed a dome.

If Blueberry were any less smart, she would try to phase through the wall, but she knew better. Her ethereal form would vaporize in an instant if she tried that.

Instead, she did the second-best thing. She glanced at the mass on the ground, which was slowly getting up now, and observed the creature. However, she did it in the way that humans did. Possessing people now and then made her understand how to do that.

She didn't even check the information before concentrating on her bond with Maxwell. The bond felt like something imaginary at the moment, as the only reason she could still feel Maxwell was the rift connecting the two worlds together, but she still focused, knowing that her only chance was this.

She grabbed the channel mentally and shoved the output of the observation in, sending it to her human with all the force she could muster. She was copying what Maxwell did before, but on a different scale.

She felt the message go through, and once more turned towards the gigantic creature. She was not sure what it was, but it looked like a deer. Comparing the beast to any creature, though, felt absurd, seeing its sheer bulk.

It was glowing with a blinding light, so this made it quite hard to see the creature with all of its glory. It looked more like a three-hundred-meter-tall fireball.

The beast was now fully standing, and Blueberry didn't feel any more hopeful about the situation. Now, she would need to survive until help arrived.