Merchant Of Yliaster

Maxwell looked at the wand Audra was holding out toward him once again, eagerly now that the show was over. He sighed before taking the wand from the girl.

"If I manage to improve it, show me your skills from time to time so I can observe," he said. He doubted that the woman would have anything really interesting anyway, so it was better to have someone with occult skills he could observe.

"Just that?" the girl looked at him like he was his saviour. "I thought I would need to get an artifact or something?" she said. She probably heard that from Darve… Maxwell thought.

"No, your skills are interesting enough.".

"Thanks.." The girl went red, apparently taking this as a compliment, but Maxwell couldn't see it as he was too busy checking the wand on his palm.

The wand was simple enough; it contained some blood affinity, probably due to the nature of the wood, and the wood contained wood mana. There was a different mana type, too, though, and it made Maxwell a bit surprised.

Mind mana? On closer examination, Maxwell was a bit surprised to see Blueberry's mana type inside the wand. Considering that the wand produced mental energy, it made sense to have mind mana, but Maxwell was still unsure how mana and energies interacted. This actually made improving this thing a lot easier.

The party was having a lunch break, so he had time to work on the wand. His appetite was terrible since transmigrating, as he was used to eating quality food back on Zephyr; luckily, his body didn't seem to need much.

He focused and started simple. First, he gathered some wood affinity and improved the general structure of the wand, infusing wood mana into it. He then increased the blood affinity, making it a bit more in ratio without diminishing the amount of wood mana. As it was before, the affinity was just decorative; this way, maybe it would have a function.

Even like this, the wand would probably reach tier two, as it became way too durable to stay as tier one, but Maxwell was not finished yet. He started infusing mind mana into the wand, and when he was finished, the most prominent mana in the wood was mind mana.

He stared at the wand. It was a good one, but it felt like he could still do more. Maybe he could carve amplification runes inside the wand? Carving them outside would be quite dumb, as they would easily get interrupted by the user's hand, but placing them inside had different problems. For example, he didn't have a way to get the wood out after making it brittle.

In the end, he chose to place the runes outside, but on the tip of the wand. This way, the user's hand wouldn't interrupt the runes, and he would easily remove the brittle wood. He visualized the complex rune of amplification, twisting the rune around the tip of the wand, carving it carefully with magic carving.

When he was done, he sent a harmless mana burst through the wand, making the brittle wood crumble. The rune was completely devoid of mana as it was just a shape. Maxwell hoped that whenever the wand was used, the rune would be filled with mana, causing whatever effect it caused to be amplified.

He observed the wand after he was done with everything.

Bloody Wand of The Occult - Tier 2+

A wand crafted for the occult arts, using the wood of a tree watered with blood. It is later enhanced by The Merchant, using concepts foreign to occult arts. It's unusually durable.

Greatly enhances the potency of Occult Arts.

Can absorb blood instead of mana.

Slightly enhances Occult Arts utilizing blood.

Maxwell would call this a success. All parameters were enhanced, and the tier was even better than Darve's sword. He was not exactly sure if his amplification rune worked or not, but the change of the word "lightly" into "greatly" suggested that it did.

The blood part was a bit unnerving, but it was expected as Maxwell changed the ratio of the mana. The wand had much more blood mana compared to before, making it much better at channeling the mana.

The part about absorbing the blood was unexpected, though. That was probably due to the occult nature of the wand, as he was not sure what would happen to the remaining blood after the mana inside it was extracted. Would it simply vanish? Considering how Audra's magic seemed to work, that actually might be the case.

He looked at the wand for a moment, his intrusive thoughts winning, before he decided to try something. He grabbed the wand from its handle and pointed towards a distant tree.

He pushed mana inside the wand, and simultaneously visualized a fire appearing on the three. He could feel the mana disappear into the wand, and mental energy appear from the wand, but something felt wrong, or rather missing.

He could manipulate the mental energy just fine and felt that he didn't even need the wand to produce it, as he already was able to do that to form soul channels with soul's voice, but he simply didn't understand how the mental energy turned into real fire. He sighed before letting the energy disappear.

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His mood was still good, though, as he could finally check his notifications. He had been ignoring them since he started observing Audra's magic.

Prima Sense Leveled Up 72→73

Magic Theory Leveled Up 66→74

Soul's Voice Leveled Up 70→71

Mana Infusion Leveled Up 65→68

Magic Carving Leveled Up 21→23

Runic Formation Leveled Up 19→20

Visualization Leveled Up 62→70

Elementary Soul Energy Manipulation Leveled Up 15→17

Again, the soul energy manipulation was confusing. He didn't manipulate any souls as far as he knew, but the level up was unmistakable. Most skills gave him an idea of what he could do with them, but this skill was different. If it didn't show up in the system interface, Maxwell would probably not realise he got the skill in the first place.

Wait a second, he came to a sudden realization. Back when he was fighting the wolf, he actually manipulated Slaughter Energy; the problem was simple, really. He didn't have a skill that could do that. So, can soul energy manipulation manipulate all energies? He was dumbfounded by this idea. If that was the case, his class was even more ridiculous than he thought.

No matter how he looked at the situation, though, it didn't make any sense otherwise. On hindsight, he didn't have any skills to manipulate mental energy either, but he still could do it. He always thought that was a part of the Soul's Voice. That was stupid, though, as those skills were never even mentioned, manipulating energies.

This brought some questions to his mind about what the soul even was, but he decided to think about that later. He could already see Audra throwing him weird glances as he stared at the wand like an idiot from her perspective.

Other than his revelation, the level-ups were not as extreme as most times, but this was not all. Maxwell summoned the next window.

Skill "Psionic Sense" Acquired.

Skill overlap detected.

Prima Sense absorbs the new ability.

Prima Sense Level 72→65

Am I getting scammed now? It was already a bit strange that Prima Sense couldn't sense mental energy in the first place, as it could sense the slaughter energy pretty clearly. But on second thought, maybe it could, but not to this degree. Maxwell could actually detect the presences around him right now like Blueberry.

Skill "Occult Knowledge" Acquired.

Occult Knowledge Leveled Up 1→8

This actually proved that occult arts were covered as a different topic from magic. He was still a bit surprised that this skill was not fused with magic theory, though. Maybe some other skills were needed.

Title Acquired: Delver of The Occult Arts

Delver of the Occult Arts: You don't respect the field, yet you still use it to fulfill your ambitions. How rude of you

Haha, very funny. With this, the notifications were over. Maxwell was starting to feel like he was walking on a minefield at this point. Whenever he did something remotely different, a stream of notifications just flooded in. He couldn't exactly ignore them, either, as they could be pretty important.

He glanced up from his notifications and saw Audra staring at him intently. He really hoped that the girl couldn't sense mana very clearly; if she could, she was probably very curious why he was not doing anything for the last minute.

"Here you go," he said, giving the wand to the girl.

She took it with visible excitement, before she used observation on it. Maxwell saw the girl's eyes go wider and wider, and he was soon embraced in a hug.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" the woman screamed about a few centimeters away from his ear.

She seemed to come to her senses quickly, though, and she was soon standing beside him, a shade redder than before.

"Sorry, this is one of my grandmother's items, so I was a bit excited," she said in a shy tone. "She was an occultist before the system," she said.

Maxwell was not really sure how the occult arts could work before the initiation, but the wand didn't have anything about being upgraded or enhanced when he first observed it, so it seemed like they worked to a degree. He really didn't want to know how they could get so much blood to grow a tree before the system, though. He really hoped that it was not human blood.

"No problem, be careful not to cover the runes on the tip of the wand," he added, carefully controlling his voice to cover his inner thoughts.

"Ah, sure," she said as she took the wand closer to her eyes, trying to decipher the runes on the tip.

When he first met the girl, he thought that she was around 20 years old, but now he could actually see that she seemed a bit younger. The aura of command was gone, and it didn't help that she was excited like a kid.

I wonder what happened to that musician guy? Thinking about his encounters made him remember the loud guy. Apparently, he was not a member of these groups, which is similar to Neivor.

Felix stirred on Maxwell's permanently occupied arm, waking up from his slumber. He looked around lazily before turning towards him, looking at him with pleading eyes. He probably wanted food.

Maxwell didn't really hate the feeling as the dog slept on his arm, as his body was far too strong for it to cause any discomfort, but it was still a bit limiting to go around with a puppy sleeping on your arm. He grabbed a bowl of something vaguely smelling like meat before placing it and the dog side by side on the ground.

It quickly started to eat. Maxwell could see some more weird looks getting thrown in his direction, but he couldn't care less.

"Chirp?" Blueberry asked from his head, reminding him of her.

"Yes, yes, go ahead," he said, smiling.

She flew over to the campfire and landed on the side of one of the bowls. There were a couple of alarmed screams, as people thought she would burn herself, but those were quickly stopped by the others from interfering with the bird's meal.

Maxwell watched as she slowly ate the bowlful of meal, not stopping when the part she ate became larger than the bird itself. Others too seemed to be captivated by the scene, but soon, they were interrupted by a dog, demanding more food, while holding a bowl in his mouth.

Maybe I should start a circus. Maxwell contemplated.