Merchant Of Yliaster

Maxwell dreamed of blueberries. He could see a big field of them covering the world. Just before him, he could see a huge one. It looked delicious. Just as he was going to take a bite, it exploded.

Maxwell woke up with a gasp, drenched in sweat. His head felt like the time he acquired his first trait, but that still felt better than the embarrassment he was feeling.

He was on the ground, and he had a prime spot to see that his bed was gone. It seemed that your mana was pretty docile when it came to killing yourself, so he didn't have any injuries as far as he could tell.

"What was up with that dream anyway? I wonder if they have blueberries here?" he mumbled. He checked his system notifications after gathering his bearings.

Mana manipulation Levelled up 1->3

Soul Sense Levelled Up 1->2

You Learned The Skill "Blunt Trauma Resistance"

Blunt Trauma Resistance(Lvl 1): Damage reduction when facing blunt attacks.

"Maybe I should blow myself up a couple more times?" Maxwell scrutinized the screen.

"Blow me a couple more times what the fuck did you do?" Bob screamed unelegantly from the side.

"Oh, Bob, you are awake. That's good to know." Maxwell said. He was happy that he didn't kill his first possible friend in this world.

"Who is Bob?" A confused Bob asked.

"Don't worry your head over it. Can you recap our plan? I wanna see if I'm forgetting anything". Maybe the boy would forget in time that he wasn't Bob. That would solve a lot of problems.

"You became so weird since coming back 78, you speak like you-"

"Just call me Max, it's easier."

"Exactly what I was talking about! Did you hit your head or something?" Bob screamed once more but got a hold of himself when a couple of children sent them strange looks. He seemed genuinely worried like a grandma. It was disturbing to see it from a giant kid like Bob.

"I told you that the cleaner found me unconscious, right?"

"You were serious about that? Wait 78-"

"Call me Max."

"Fuck you, Max! Do you think we have a disease or something? Think about it, I fainted without any reason!" Bob started to become really distressed. Maybe he has a mental problem… Maxwell thought as he watched the kid rapidly get consumed by his anxiety.

"You didn't faint without any reason. You slipped and fell down, don't you remember?" Maxwell lied lamely. After all the high-level corpo shenanigans in his past life, he was just trying to have fun at this point.

"Did I? I did, didn't I? I remember it now!" Bob said his voice progressively getting more hopeful.

Maxwell just stared at him. Is this guy retarded? he thought, maybe he could make do by himself.

"Why did you faint then?" the boy asked.

"I slipped and fell…"

"…"

Skill acquired: Gaslighting

Gaslighting: You got this skill from being all truthful. Don't you remember? It also helps you be right more easily. After all, you are such an honest guy…

Maxwell has decided that he didn't see any notifications.

"So the recap?" he spoke without any hint that he had received an insult from the system.

"Sigh, okay. You were going to unscrew the ventilator cover, and we were going to sneak out in the night hours. Ventilators are turned off at night in this sector of the ship. We would be able to use it to reach the escape shuttles. The ship is scheduled to land tomorrow, so this is the last night we have to pull it off. After landing on the planet, we should lay low for some time, though, because Radam's forces would at least send out a warrant against us to the whole planet. You still know we are slaves, right? I guess no one can hit his head hard enough to forget that." Bob suddenly blurted out a paragraph.

Bob might never understand how much he explained to Maxwell with these simple words. However, it was apparent that he really thought about this a lot, as he was probably not this coherent usually, from the first impression Maxwell got from the boy.

They were on an interplanetary spaceship. Maxwell already guessed that, but it was good to know for sure. The fact that they were slaves wasn't hard to catch, too, considering their living standards and age. But the fact that they only had this night to run away was shocking. Maxwell couldn't believe how lax Bob seemed, considering this, but he figured he couldn't expect much from a 16-year-old boy.

He got up and started moving at once. He needed to check the ventilator shaft since he didn't know if it was closed or not. He remembered the way he came well enough. He told Bob to stay in the dormitory despite his protests.

He got out, ignoring his migraine, and moved, trying to look as ordinary as possible. After covering some distance and turning left from a corridor, he was faced with three boys. Noting that these were the boys who were looking angrily at him before, he guessed that their intentions were not good.

"So you were just fucking with us huh?" The big kid on the front asked angrily.

Maxwell was speechless. He had no idea what the kid was talking about. Don't other transmigrators get the memories of their previous hosts? What am I? A discount transmigrator? He grumbled mentally. Though thinking about the exchange with the system, there was a chance that he might actually be a discount transmigrator.

"You won't say anything after you played us like that? We thought you were dying you little bitch!" the big kid shouted and took a swing at Maxwell.

It was a clumsy swing even for Maxwell's standards. He had some rudimentary training in martial arts in his past life, but even he could dodge it without much problem. He quickly took a step back and stared at the boy. He activated telepathy to see if he could get a feeling of what the boy was feeling. This time, though, he tried to do it more delicately.

Immediately, he could feel a jumble of emotions from the boy. Relief, anger, and, surprisingly, some guilt were present. So they really did something to the previous host? he contemplated.

He concentrated and tried to summon the feeling he felt when he made Bob faint. He used as much effort as he had used in his previous life for telepathic exchange. This seemed to be too much force with his current stats for these kids. He didn't want to use his mana bolt as he hadn't tested it yet. If he made the kid explode like his bed, it would be a bad situation from many perspectives.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Unsurprisingly, the big kid's eyes rolled back, and he fell to the ground, not knowing what happened. His two friends looked at him dumbly. Their whole worldview was shattered right before their eyes. People just didn't make others faint by looking at them.

Maxwell quickly "gazed" at them, and before they knew what exactly happened, they joined their leader on the ground.

6623-Brawler(Lvl-2) Defeated

6624-Ranger(Lvl-2) Defeated

6620- Fighter(Lvl-3) Defeated

Level up. Stats distributed.

Telepathy leveled up

Maxwell closed his eyes and tried to sort the information coming to his mind as his migraine became even worse. Telepathy without etherium as a bridge was very jumbled compared to what he was accustomed to. Combining the knowledge he got from the other kids with his own, he came to a conclusion.

The kids found the original 6789 while he was trying to unscrew the ventilator cover. Being the kids they are, they wanted to have some fun, so they started throwing things at him. It seemed innocent enough at first glance, but this was after the initiation. Their throws were considerably stronger with their excitement. In the end, one of the stones they hurled hit the 6789's neck, and the next thing they knew, they had a boy choking with a collapsed trachea in front of them. They tried to help him for a couple of seconds, but in the end, they panicked and ran away.

Maxwell contemplated this silently. This was one of the signs of how everything would change with initiation. Bullies in schools now could crush skulls with a simple stone throw. The previous 6789 was a simple victim of the start of this change. A casualty of old habits in a new world.

He looked at the children sprawled on the floor thoughtfully. He guessed they wouldn't wake up until they were gone tonight. Bob took that long to wake up, even with his little explosion, but he hit them with a small telepathic attack each to be sure. He carried them to somewhere more concealed, huffing and puffing, before continuing on his route.

He sneaked through the corridors until he reached his destination. On the way, he saw some soldiers with real guns too. This confirmed that at least some sort of enforcing power existed on the ship. The shaft he needed to open was a sad little rectangle near the roof. There were four screws on it on the four corners and he could see that one of these was a little loose.

"So I couldn't even unscrew one of them, huh?" He started to climb hurriedly as he didn't want to stay here more than he needed.

"Athletics" skill acquired.

Makes sense, he thought. When he was close to the shaft he stopped and squinted to see how much he needed to turn each screw.

"Observation" skill acquired

This is becoming distracting.

He started unscrewing the loose screw with a metal piece they found near the dormitories. It came off cleanly. After unscrewing the other two, he realized he had a problem. The fourth one was too far away for this little body.

After thinking about it for a couple of seconds, he decided to try something probably way out of his league. It was stupid, and he could probably solve this problem by other means, but he really wanted to try this.

He focused and tried to turn mana in a way that will make the screw unscrew. He could feel the mana and since it could blow him away it should be able to turn a little screw too, he thought.

This, in practice, proved a lot harder. After 10 minutes of anxious concentration, he had a little mana whirl going around the screw. He did manage to turn it a couple of times, but he was getting really tired. But finally, the long-awaited moment came and the screw fell to the ground. Now, a small tug should be enough to remove the cover.

He was a bit weirded out that they didn't place any security around here, but maybe they just underestimated children. Considering the effects of initiation, that seemed like a bad decision, but he was not new to bad management. He checked his notifications and there waited the fruits of his labor.

Mana Manulation Leveled up Lvl 3-->8

Soul Sense Leveled up Lvl 2--> 4

Athletics leveled up Lvl 1-->3

He was quite pleased with himself. This might not be the most efficient way to do this, but it was certainly one of the most silent and, of course, interesting ways. He couldn't help but be very interested in magic, as it was something he always wanted to use.

On the way back to the dormitory, he constantly tried to turn some mana around his arm in a similar way as before. Maybe he could train his manipulation like this. There was an addictive quality to leveling skills.

He checked his status.

Name: Maxwell Aurelius

Age:15(54)

Class: Mage

Level: 2

Nobility: None

Traits: Etherium soul, Merchant of Yliaster

Stats:

Strength:7

Agility:10

Dexterity: 11

Vitality:9

Soul:19

Free Points: 2

HP:80

MP:285

Class Skills:

Mana Manipulation(8), Soul sense(4), Magic Theory(1), Mana Bolt(1), Telepathy(2

General Skills:

Blunt Trauma Resistance(1), Gaslighting(1), Observation(1), Athletics(3)

His soul attribute became 19 with the addition of 2 mind and 2 spirituality. Maybe Soul was an average of both? It didn't matter for now, he supposed. He tried to add one free point to his soul to see if there would be any problems and he was surprised to see it go up to 20 without any problems. Maybe the system makes sure that we don't face problems with free points... he thought and added the second point to his soul too, making it a respectable 21.

Bob was waiting for him when he arrived back. He once again had that disturbing, worried look on his face.

"Everything is in order," Maxwell said.

"You didn't fall again, right? It doesn't seem that you did."

"Nope," Maxwell said and laid down on his bed, or what remained of it at this point. "I will take a nap before the night. I suggest you do the same. You fell down quite badly after all." Maxwell said.

Gaslighting leveled up 1-->2

Maxwell facepalmed under Bob's confused gaze.

They rested for a couple of hours, waiting for the nighttime of the ship. Human beings needed artificial day cycles on these ships, and these artificial night modes were the answer of the engineers for this problem.

Now, 15 minutes remained until night mode. Maxwell could see that Bob was quite anxious to get out of the spaceship. He couldn't really ask any obvious questions at least now but he was quite curious about Bob's past. He didn't seem to have any other friends than him, or at least they were not close enough to let them know of the plan.

The system saved me from a spaceship, and now I'm saving myself from another. I hope this doesn't become a trend, he thought.

He looked at their dormitory and he found that he didn't feel anything. It was just another place to come and go, he supposed. He could see Bob was quite emotional about leaving the place, though.

They set out a couple of minutes after night mode kicked in. Enforcers would expect them to set out later, so they felt that this was a better idea. Maxwell didn't know what level the enforcers were, but he knew they were at least level 10, according to Bob.

That seemed like a level they couldn't fight now. From Bob, he learned something really interesting, too. This ship was en route when the initiation happened 2 months ago. That meant all staff had to fight each other as training to level up, since they couldn't kill anything. He doubted that they were that much higher leveled than level 10 with this environment.

As he was thinking, they were nearing the spot where his adventure in this ship began. They could arrive at the spot without alerting anyone. However, there was a small setback.

There was a smiling beggar just below the ventilator shaft, and he was looking at them.