Merchant Of Yliaster

Maxwell weighed the situation calmly, looking at the giant pack around them. They were four people facing a pack of over a hundred wolves. It certainly didn't paint a good picture.

Protect Felix, he sent Blueberry. The bird seemed dissatisfied to be the bodyguard of her new opponent, but she still responded by landing on the dog's head.

Felix, meanwhile, was looking around in a naive curiosity. Where did all of these friends come from? Maxwell didn't know how much Blueberry could protect the dog, but he didn't have any other choice at the moment. He would also keep an eye on them.

The alpha with two heads was weighing them, too, but it seemed not very concerned with the encounter. Maxwell couldn't blame the beast. He wouldn't take them seriously if he was in its place.

Surprisingly, the mercenaries were calm even in a situation like this. It was apparent that they were elites through and through, despite their weird personalities.

"Can anyone see its level?" Ellie asked. Maxwell long theorized that observation uses one's own perception skills, and this seemed to be the case, as their levels were similar enough, but Maxwell could see the level just fine.

"Level thirty-two," Maxwell said,

"Fuck." the woman expressed the situation pretty well.

The regular wolves' levels were similar to before, so they should not become a problem. Probably the alpha hoarded all the experience in the pack. Otherwise, it wouldn't be this high-level.

Maxwell had an idea he could try against a crowded pack like this, but it was a bit dangerous, as all of his ideas seemed to be.

As he was thinking, the alpha let out a small howl, causing an immediate reaction from the pack. They moved in unison, immediately starting to run towards them.

Ellie quickly positioned herself at the front, as if she could hold back a hundred wolves from passing, and Erne once again started shooting his arrows. Neivor, meanwhile, did something unexpected. The guy began to chant in an alien tongue suddenly, his voice having a distant quality.

The effects were immediate. Maxwell felt his stats getting boosted as he felt faster, stronger, and better in all aspects. The guy's class couldn't be simple if he could simply buff everything like this. Going from the startled expression of the other two, this was probably something he acquired after the recent event.

Maxwell knew he didn't have much time if he wanted to try what he had in his mind, so he got to work quickly. Shutting out the outside world, he started to work on a construct.

The construct was simple in nature. It was covered with pure mana on the outside and shaped like a ball. Inside the ball, though, Maxwell tried to fill it entirely with space mana. After the ease of manipulating metal mana, space mana felt slow, but he managed to make it work.

When the construct was ready, he started the main project. At the center of the ball, he visualized the space expansion rune he nearly killed himself with. This time, though, he tried to tell the mana not to rush inside immediately. He really didn't want to explode himself once again.

Creating the rune was done without problems, as he had the visualization skill. The harder part was completely holding back the mana from entering the rune. The next step, though, was the hardest. For this to be a reliable attack, the mana had to rush into the rune at some point.

The hard part was that Maxwell was unsure how to make the mana understand when it should rush inside the rune. In the end, he decided to make it simple. He connected to the construct and gave a simple command. When he severed his connection with the ball, the mana would rush into the rune as fast as possible.

When the command settled in the construct, he turned towards the pack to choose a suitable spot to dispose of this abomination of an attack. He could see that there was still a concentrated group of wolves near the alpha wolf. That place seemed suitable enough.

He focused on the construct and willed it to fly towards the area. His constructs always had been fast, and this was no different. Even the alpha wolf only had a single moment as its eyes widened in alarm before the ball reached the intended spot.

What followed was simply strange. Maxwell would later learn that expanding space in an open area was hardly advisable by authorities.

The reason was not hard to see, though. The ball detonated as Maxwell severed his connection with it, causing the place where the wolves were to look like an optical illusion. The space expanded, and the world gained a completely unnatural look.

For a moment, there were big empty spots between every single blade of grass. Any empty spot in the soil was enhanced to a degree that it looked like a pit. The distance between the wolves were expanded too, as they looked around, startled by the strange phenomenon.

There was a sharp sound of air moving as it rushed into the newly created space, and in the next moment, everything turned into chaos. The space was back to normal, but the air was still present in quantities completely unfitting of the space it occupied.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The first change started with the wolves, who were suddenly thrown outwards by the pressurized air, trying to gain its freedom. Maxwell really wouldn't want to experience the air pressure they were facing; for a moment, he could see a wolf's eye pop due to compressed air.

The party suddenly had tens of wolves flying towards them, and they quickly braced for impact. Ellie heroically covered Erne, and Maxwell simply created a shield from mana in front of him and others. When the first wolf met with the shield, though, it was apparent that he would need more.

The wolf turned into a paste on the shield he had created, and he could clearly see that it was destabilizing due to the extensive damage. He immediately reinforced the shield and created a couple more behind it.

This proved to be a wise move, as incoming bodies immediately decimated the first shield a moment later. The pandemonium took only a second, but the landscape was completely transformed by it.

The soil was upturned, and the trees around the battle zone were riddled with holes coming from the particles launched from the explosion. More than half of the pack was gone, and the other half was looking around, not comprehending what had happened. They were the lucky ones, as they didn't get hit by their friends' bodies.

The alpha, meanwhile, stood very close to the explosion when it happened. Its body was covered with a sheet of ice, and the sheet was riddled with cracks throughout. It had a couple of shallow wounds throughout its body, but it looked relatively unharmed. It seemed the explosion was still not close enough.

Well, I consider this a success. Maxwell thought. The others were looking at him with complicated expressions.

"Are you sure you are human?" Ellie asked, sounding exasperated. Neivor, however was smiling knowingly.

Erne seemed to ignore the whole thing for his own sanity as he shot his arrows, picking out the dazed wolves still standing.

The alpha, though, was far from impressed. The beast howled and opened one of its jaws towards them, releasing a stream of cold air.

The attacks didn't look like much, but the ground it passed over was immediately covered by a sheet of ice, indicating otherwise.

Maxwell decided not to block the attack and grabbed Felix before expelling a mana burst from his arm, launching them sideways. Blueberry, meanwhile, turned ethereal like an illusion and moved even faster towards the sky.

Neivor, meanwhile, didn't seem shocked by the sudden betrayal. Maxwell didn't really think that whichever god who made the guy their vassal would let him die this easily.

True enough, the man started to shine with a golden light as the attack approached him. The golden light then expanded, forming a sphere of light. The attack reached him just at this moment, and the sphere started to show cracks immediately as the attack connected.

It was a close match, but ultimately, the barrier held back the formidable breath attack after a couple of seconds of standstill, creating a round spot of unharmed grass where Neivor was standing.

The wolf seemed not to expect someone to block its attack, as it was staring at the priest intently. The former attack from Maxwell was stronger than he expected, and now it was seeing a strong defense unexpected from such a low level being.

It howled once more, and with a simple howl, all the wolves gained their bearings, answering the primal command coming from their leader.

There were still close to a hundred wolves left, and they made a formidable scene, standing near the alpha.

Once more, the wave of angry wolves attacked the party, but this time, the alpha didn't stay back. It started to run at an unexpected speed and attacked the closest enemy it could see, Ellie.

"Come, puppy!" Ellie screamed as she kicked towards one of the jaws of the beast. The right jaw of the beast shut with a sound of teeth clacking together, but the beast had two heads.

The other head, this being the culprit of the icy breath, was quick to react as it tried to bite the woman in the leg, managing to leave a deep gash on her leg as Ellie tried to dodge.

The woman though, seemed pretty much unaffected by the significant looking injury. She answered with a punch towards the head which connected squarely on the nose of the animal. The animal, though, didn't seem much harmed by the exchange, it attacked once more, and this time, Erne had to stop what he was doing to interrupt the creature with an arrow aimed at its eye.

Maxwell stopped watching for a second and glanced at the battlefield. He still had most of his mana, so he might as well clear the wolves before fighting the big boss. He was surprised to see Blueberry among the chaos.

The birds was in her ethereal form, and he could see it enter the bodies of the wolves one by one. Each wolf the bird entered started to act differently, as if they were being controlled by something. Maxwell watched, as a wolf attacked an another wolf, getting killed by a lot of its former friends in the process.

From the carcass, Blueberry appeared just to enter the wolf that killed her former prey, and continued to cycle.

She can do such a thing? Maxwell was dumbfounded by the scene. The bird was level 14, and it was efficiently disposing of beasts similar to or higher leveled than herself. It was a great contrast to her innocent appearance.

Maxwell smiled at the scene helplessly before focusing on his own job. This time, he was going to approach things differently. He imagined a simple bolt of iron mana around 30 centimeters. This was more like a crossbow bolt of old times instead of his former mana bolts, which were shaped like a ball.

The design was simple, but the mana was not. Maxwell pumped the little bolt with almost a thousand mana, as he focused on it being as sharp and as stable as it could be.

His pure mana was sacrificed to drag in more and more metal mana, and the bolt became more and more concentrated as the construct started to look almost like real metal. Beside him, the bolt floated, vibrating with the intense energy it contained.

Maxwell closed his mind to all stimuli as he focused on the bolt. The world slowed down as he focused on controlling the bolt. The compendium increased all parameters, so was control and range one of those parameters? He would soon find out.

With a mental nudge, the bolt started to move, and Maxwell guided it towards the nearest wolf. The bolt moved at an incredible speed, and it soon pierced straight through the wolf's head. This was not the end, though. Maxwell smiled as he could feel that he could do what he intended.

He directed the bolt to another wolf, and this one followed his friend to the afterlife, too. Then another, another, and another. A white streak moved in the battlefield, leaving dead bodies wherever it passed. It was barely visible due to its speed, and it left a whizzing noise wherever it passed.

It was not hard to see that this was a bad day to be a wolf.