Merchant Of Yliaster

Ella came to her senses with a start, breathing hungrily for air. Her whole body was trembling, and she was breathing with fast, short bursts. She fell to the ground as the black liquid around her flowed back into the huge black orb in the air, covered with gold chains.

My daughter is dead? She thought in confusion, as memories of her happy times with her child still flowed through her mind. The first time she walked, the first time she talked, she remembered everything. The nights she couldn't sleep because Sophie was crying, and the times the girl adjusted the signal wrong, giving her a headache.

Tears streamed down her face as she tried to push through the confusion. Through the tears, she could see the man with the green eyes staring at her, and the flow of his eyes looked especially accentuated through the tears.

The sight brought her back to the world, as the stream of tears came to a stop. She stood up over trembling legs, her previous elegance nowhere to be seen. She still felt oddly detached from the sight before her, as if it was someone else's life, but with her mind stat, she quickly analyzed the situation.

The memories overwhelmed my personality completely. Just who is he? There is no such world as in the memory of the federation. Ella thought as she calmed down slowly. She could see the man's point, as she was sure that she would get nightmares about this for years.

"You are right about memories overwhelming you. Memories wth attached traumas are really powerful. For some reason, joy doesn't stick very well to memories, yet grief and pain can. In a usual moment, your personality has no substance to stand before an emotionally charged memory," the man she still didn't know the name of spoke.

She couldn't glimpse anything from him, as her observation came up with nothing, no matter how much she tried, but there was a bigger problem. The man spoke as if he could read her thoughts, and that gave her a very bad feeling.

"You are in my mind space. Right now, you are essentially using my brain to think. I wouldn't be a very good Zephyrian if I couldn't see what's going on in my mind," the man said, still looking at the black orb.

Since she came here, the man had been looking at the orb without pulling his eyes away from it, and Ella could see that his complexion looked worse than before. It was as if the man aged a few years, and he looked more worn than he was at the start of their battle.

"Who are you?" she asked, trying to glean information from anything the man would say. She knew that this battle was as good as lost, but she was never a very ambitious person anyway when it came to positions. Fourth place would be more than enough for her. Right now, though, there was a chance for her to understand more about the human psyche, and she wouldn't miss that. H

How can I think about things like this? I just lost my daughter. A thought spawned in her head, and she broke into cold sweat. The thought was completely foreign and came with the natural feeling of dread attached to it, completely throwing her off.

"Just a merchant, I guess. At least here, that seems to be the case," the man said, the melancholy in his eyes strengthening. Ella, being a psychologist, knew a lot about how the human mind worked. And could immediately spot the look of a man who had lost almost everything.

The man suddenly shook his head and turned to her, glancing at her properly for the first time. "I have shown you too much, so I will need to make sure that you don't tell anyone anything. I will leave the choice to you. I can either remove your memories, or you can keep them if you agree not to speak about them," he said.

Ella was not sure how the man would be sure that she wouldn't break her promise, but she had a feeling that he had a way. He didn't strike her as a naive man. There was, though, a different question in her mind right now.

"What do you sell?" she asked. Maybe he can save my daughter? A desperate thought popped into her mind, and she trembled. This was becoming too much, and she was finding it harder and harder to keep her composure.

"It depends on the payment. Everything, really," the man said, a trace of interest appearing in his eyes. No matter the situation, it was refreshing to see that some of the gloom that was dominant on the man's features disappeared.

Ella ignored the voice at the back of her mind, trying to think of a way to make the best of the situation. "Can you sell skill? Traits? Is this your class?" she asked, and the man just gave her a shrug. It was apparent that she was prying too much.

"Can you sell me perfect emotional control?" she asked, her eyes steady. The man seemed to get surprised, but his eyes unfocused for a moment as if he was checking his stocks in a dimension far, far away. A moment later, he was back.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I can, but, unless you give me most of your lifespan, you can't get it," he said, looking at him with the eyes that made her skin crawl. It was as if the man was valuing her whole existence as he glanced at her.

An offer started to appear in her mind, but she was quite hesitant to voice it. It was apparent from the environment around them that this man was beyond her in abilities to a level that she couldn't really understand how. And in the world she was shown, she was almost sure that most people would be better than her.

Even with a fragment of Clementine's memories, she could feel that her skills with her mind had increased by a small margin. In the end, all of these reasons made her unable to ignore her curiosity for knowledge, and she knew a way to get everything.

"Can I work under you to pay this thing? Like the contract you first mentioned," the woman asked, and Maxwell stared at her in surprise. It was not every day that people would ask things like this, and even if they did, those people who asked were usually just naive.

This woman, on the other hand, didn't seem like that. Even an employment contract, when it was enforced by his trait, could turn into a slavery contract, of that Maxwell was sure. At first, he didn't think that this manner of payment would be appropriate, but the trait seemed to accept it for some reason, so he started to think.

"You know that is not much different from slavery, right?" he asked, trying to understand the woman's point of view. He could feel that her mind was in great turmoil due to the traumatic memory he had made her watch, but that still didn't explain why she would throw herself under the wheels like this.

"I would have some conditions and a limited time span, but I'm aware. How many years would it cost if you had full control over me, apart from the things I consider unacceptable? I don't think a normal contract would be possible to form with an abstract condition like that, but I have a feeling that your skill can do it," the woman said, her voice steady.

A hopeless smile formed on Maxwell's face. If anything, the woman was pretty smart, and her condition meant that he would never be able to make her do something if she deemed it unacceptable. Normally, this would be very bad for him, but he found himself not caring much.

While the condition was abusable, Maxwell could also abuse it by attacking the woman mentally and making things to be acceptable forcefully. Not that he would do anything like this. He didn't want to throw away a chance of using his trait, so he entered the condition into the system.

20 years of service is acceptable.

He experimented a bit with the desired result and found that with something like advanced emotional control, he could actually shorten the period until it was around a year. Even the near-perfect control was only 8 years, but after the jump to perfect, the time needed also increased abruptly.

"20 years," he said, glancing at the woman. She was in a much worse shape now, and she looked like she was having a very bad headache. He could see the woman's reasoning in requesting this skill, as it would make her own class much more deadly while getting rid of the trauma he inflicted on her.

If it wasn't for the ridiculous conditions of getting the skill, Maxwell would even call it a great trade for her. 20 years of working under someone with ambiguous conditions seemed hellish to him.

"I accept," this woman, though she seemed to be determined to thwart his expectations, and she accepted after a brief moment of hesitation. He felt his trait activate and watched in fascination as soul energy worked in the real world.

He kept the woman here so that she could show no signs to the outside world, but he could go out himself, leaving a small part of his mind inside his mental world. He had been careful going to the place after the destruction of Zephyr, as going into one's mental world usually increased the intensity of one's emotions many times.

Constructing one would mean that you would have an easier time restraining your emotions, but if you go into your mental realm, you would feel them with increased strength. Maxwell was pretty sure that the experience would be crippling for him if he didn't do this with his newly increased soul stat.

He cleared his mind and started to watch the process of Ella getting the skill she wanted. Slowly, channels made of soul energy formed and started to penetrate into the woman's soul systematically. Immediately after puncturing, they separated into numerous branches and glowed with the ominous green light of etherium twice.

Maxwell knew instinctively that one of the pulses was for the contract, and the other one was for the skill, but both of them looked the same to his senses. He actually felt like he could replicate the branching phenomenon, but he had no idea what to do with those branches after he created them.

It was a frustrating experience to watch it happen without understanding a single thing. After the process was over, he returned to his mind, finding a tranquil-looking Ella looking at him.

"The deal is done. You can do anything you want unless I say something else. I don't really need an employee at the moment. Maybe I will need you when the federation is a bit more connected." Maxwell said.

The woman still seemed to be taking in the new skill, but the effects were immediate. The turbulent mental state of hers was back to normal. And Maxwell could only feel pure rational thought from the woman at the moment, alongside a bit of wonder and relief.

"This is amazing. Even by studying this skill, I can increase my proficiency in my mind for years. Thank you," she said, nodding to him.

Maxwell just shook his head, not understanding how she could thank him after signing a 20-year contract, but he just shook his head before sending her out.

Soon, he was standing back on his platform, his face showing no outward signs. The woman quickly surrendered when they were out of his mental world, and he could feel that people were giving them weird glances because of that.

Anyway, it was time for the finals now. And even Maxwell was quite excited to fight against his interesting enemy.