Merchant Of Yliaster

Romin, Tom, and Maxwell sat in the boy's hut, if it could be called that for now. Tom looked visibly tired, and his eyes were drooping as if he hadn't had any sleep, but Maxwell could see that he was recovering slowly.

Tom - Woodworker - Level 36

I should have observed beforehand, too, Maxwell lamented as he stared at the level of the boy. From what he remembered, the boy's level hadn't been anything out of the ordinary before, so his leveling speed was way too fast. Maybe it was a recent development with all those houses, but only the boy knew the truth now.

Blueberry chirped happily on the boy's head before flying to Maxwell's, making him smile. He widened his hypnotic stealth a bit to let Felix leave his body without causing any panic, and he watched the expression of the others as the dog suddenly appeared near them to their sense.

"What the hell? He was here all the time?" Romin said, looking at Felix with an interesting expression. He picked him up, started petting the happy dog, not quite realizing that he was dealing with a true eldritch abomination.

"So, everything was all right when we were gone?" Maxwell asked. It was not very normal for the bandits to leave this place unattended after Maxwell thwarted the last attack, and he was curious.

"They sent a few scouts, after the last attack, as almost forty bandits returning without any memories of what happened should have created some kind of mystery, but we dealt with them. They seem to prefer not to meddle with this place since then," Romin said, smoking some kind of a cigarette.

Do they have cigarettes here? Maxwell thought. He was somehow doubtful that the thing was simple tobacco, but he didn't really care.

"Well, I will be around here for a while, so we will deal with them if they decide to be a problem. We will have something more important to discuss, though," Maxwell said, and threw a small telekinetic burst to Tom, who was starting to fall asleep.

The boy jumped up, visibly started, and Maxwell noted that his eyes turned to the walls around them like he was seeing things as he woke up. He was probably still getting used to his trait.

"Is this about the nobility thing? I lost my previous title after what you did to me, but I can't really complain. Getting another one seems a bit counterintuitive," Romin said, petting Felix absently as the dog tried to bite the smoke in the air.

"Just accept them, maybe they will be useful. I doubt that the current regime will survive for long anyway. At worst, we can just destroy it ourselves," Maxwell said, realizing that he was slowly falling back to old habits.

Still, the feeling was a bit different now, he could tell. Previously on Zephyr, the odds were greatly stacked against him against an incomprehensible enemy. He was not really proud of some things he did while he tried to organize the world, but they were necessary nonetheless.

Those actions came from a responsibility, and they caused Maxwell to break his moral compass quite badly. Killing people, taking down governments, causing poverty, these things had been a normal Tuesday for him once upon a time, but he thought that he was over them.

If I can think of doing the same things again, it seems like I wasn't as tired as I thought, he thought. When he first came to this world, he thought he just wanted to chill, but there was no rest for the wicked.

He could just stay in this camp, protecting it, and he knew that he would be successful for a long time. There was, though, a problem. This world would open to the outside soon enough, and with how there were different universes and all, it was inevitable that there was some sort of travel between them.

If Maxwell just chilled in the lowest possible position, he could literally die due to an overly powerful fart from a powerful being, if he didn't get powerful himself. Lack of ambition didn't really have a place in this world. Maybe he knew that all along, and now he was starting to disregard it completely.

Well, I won't lead a planet again, that's for sure, Maxwell thought. Delegating though? Maybe that could work.

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Coming out with his thoughts, he realized that he was receiving some weird glances. "You speak too lightly of things too heavy," Romin said, taking a puff tiredly. "I had been under the king for many years, and the knights of the kingdom are many, and they had been strong even before the initiation. The kingdom has some real technology, you know, not the primitive shit nobles call technology," Romin said. It was easy to forget that this guy had been in a very high position before Maxwell fiddled with his vow.

That only proves my theories. Maxwell thought. As technology became more and more widespread, Maxwell didn't want this place to suddenly get destroyed by a nuke. While being very powerful, nukes had been around for many years, and they were not really advanced when it came to technology. If someone managed to make them in the world after initiation, they would have a real problem on their hands.

And we still have that Radam guy, what's his problem with Bob's parents anyway? There were many unsolved problems still, and Maxwell just sighed. Among themselves, Gendor and Bob would have problems whether he liked it or not.

Now, he could either manage the crisis well as it came, or ignore it until he made a mess of it when the time came. It was not hard to choose.

"Accept your nobility titles. A couple of my friends will have titles too, and even without me showing much strength, we will have great political power. This world with its social castes is fucked anyway, so we might as well build a little haven here," Maxwell said, accepting the reality finally.

It was good and all to just stay in The Nest and do things as he wanted, but he could probably still do those things while dealing with real problems, too. At least, this time, he had magic.

"Whatever you say. I hope you are not being too arrogant. Don't forget to consider the power vacuum you would create if you destroy the kingship, though. There wouldn't be a point in destroying it just to go under another king who uses the opportunity to conquer the country," Romin said, and left the room, placing Felix on the ground.

"Did he tell you anything about his past?" Maxwell asked Tom, who was dozing off once more. The boy woke up once more and looked around with the same startled gaze, taking in the walls like they were alive.

"Huh? Oh yeah, a couple of things, at least. Apparently, he was noble by birth, but his family was destroyed by something, I don't know what, though," Tom said.

Maxwell got up and pushed a branch to the side to leave the hut. "I see, I will leave you so you can get some rest," he said, walking out, leaving a sleeping Tom behind. He wasn't sure if the boy heard him or not.

He walked to a small stream nearby and stopped beside the lonely knight. Romin was staring emptily into the waters, lost in thought.

"Bad past?" He asked, pulling the man out from the abyss of his mind. He glanced at him and smiled.

"I guess you can call it that. You are right about this world, it's fucked to the core," he said, pulling out another roll of cigarettes.

"I was born a noble, as the kid said, but I didn't remain as one for long. At least not in a practical way. A noble without any family is not much different from a commoner after all. At that point, I used one of the few boons I still had and joined the trials to be a knight. I thought that maybe I could make the world a better place through that, but as you can imagine, I was too naive," he said.

"Governing bodies are very rarely righteous. The problem is the motivation, I think. No one who wants to govern just for the sake of it could be a suitable person to lead a country, as they are usually too power-hungry," Maxwell said. It was a bit hypocritical of him to say this, but it was not he who wanted to lead the world in his previous life.

To a point, he was as power-hungry as the average politician, but he was already sated when shit hit the fan. After that point, it had been a pure survival game where no one could remain corrupt. At least, they couldn't when Maxwell was breathing on their necks. In this, there was probably a piece of wisdom. A true cataclysm could destroy corruption along the civilization itself, it seemed.

"I guess you are right, but it's a bit hard to see that in a backwater world like this. I had some access to proper literature and education when I was a kid, but they hardly went into politics. And in the knight academy, most of the things you learn are pure propaganda, so they don't really help you in creating a good world-view," Romin laughed sarcastically.

"Working with bandits should have been a big red flag, I think," Maxwell said with a small smile, and Romin smiled likewise.

"Well, I wish the commanders were dumb like that, but unfortunately, they weren't. They rarely sent anyone with ideals to missions like that. You can probably see why that changed now that we have unbreakable knight vows with the initiation. I wonder if they have lost their shit over mine being broken. Maybe that's why they are so careful about getting near this place," the former knight said, and threw a rock into the stream before turning to face the camp.

"Anyways, can you see how much time we have until the nobilities are dealt? I wonder if it will accommodate the new vow I have?" he asked Maxwell. His voice sounded better now.

"Just around five minutes," Maxwell replied as they started to walk back to the camp, Felix trodding alongside them with a fish he caught in his mouth. Maxwell had no idea when that happened.