Merchant Of Yliaster

To Maxwell's surprise, the building they eventually reached was far from a small place. It even had a giant sign over the door that Maxwell unfortunately couldn't read.

He tossed Tim a figurine, this time in the shape of Blueberry. It had become a weird habit for him to carve things while he was busy with unrelated things.

He also discovered that he could form five different streams of thought with the parallel mind skill at its current level, so he certainly had the capability.

He was slowly getting really sick of mathematics, though, so he really hoped that the library would have something different for his mind to be busy with.

He entered through a big door, and this time, Tim followed him inside. Once again, he left Felix and Blueberry outside. He doubted that a library would allow pets.

The inside of the library was simple. Rows of books covered the walls while small bookcases were placed with similar intervals in the middle of the room. Between them, there were tables for people to read their books.

This was, by far, the most futuristic building Maxwell had seen since landing on the planet. The design, albeit devoid of technology, had a feeling of modernity to it.

It was pretty apparent that the building was designed by someone still remembering the civilization outside this world.

To their right was a small space for the librarian, divided by a counter from the rest of the library. A girl was behind the counter, reading a book.

Maxwell approached the counter, still examining the library. This place would certainly have most he needed.

"Hi, I'm new around here. How can I borrow a book?" He asked the girl, making her jump, startled.

She looked at Maxwell, for a second not comprehending the sentence, before she smiled. "You want to borrow? You will need a library card. It's 10 coppers if you want to borrow a single book at a time, and one silver if you want to take up to ten." The girl said, her voice getting a monotone quality as she reached the part about the price. She probably told the same to the thousands of other people before.

"I'll get the silver one," he said, receiving a surprised glance. Fortunately, Ragnar was thoughtful enough to include some silver pieces in his payment. Paying with a whole gold coin would be hard otherwise. He also saw that Tim was looking around, seeming quite interested. Surprisingly, the kid seemed to be able to read, and his mouth moved as he looked at the books. After a moment of consideration, Maxwell spoke again.

"One for him, too," he said, pointing at Tim. It would be good for the kid to read, and a silver was just a drop in an ocean. For a change, he didn't feel like he would need to specifically work to make money in this life.

The kid was startled, hearing him. There was a confused look in his eyes. Little boys were quite talentless in the art of thanking people. Maxwell chuckled as he gave his card to the boy before moving towards the shelves.

The real challenge began now, though. He stared at the rows of different books stretching before him. The easiest way would be to receive help from someone, but Maxwell was human, too. He didn't want to look like an idiot.

He sighed and selected a book randomly. If he could decipher the alphabet at least, maybe the system would help with the rest. After all, it was due to the system that Maxwell wasn't able to hear the original language.

Deactivate Spontaneous Translation?

Y / N

Maxwell froze, seeing the notification. You can do that? That would make things really easier. One shouldn't forget that Maxwell had 333 in his soul stat. This improved most parameters of his mind, like information retention and speed. If he could actually hear some words being said, it wouldn't take long for him to learn the language.

He smiled, turning to Tim with a creepy expression. "Hey, do you want to earn more toys?" he asked the boy. Even the greedy boy seemed to realize there was something wrong, as a drop of sweat rolled down his forehead.

In the end, though, a child and a man could be seen searching among the rows of books for a dictionary. Some time later, they managed to find some children's books used to teach them how to read, along with a very thick dictionary.

With his mind, Maxwell was pretty sure that if he heard a couple of thousand words, he would understand the rest of the words with contextual clues. This, though, required him to do something quite impossible for the normal human being before the initiation.

First, they opened the children's books, and Maxwell made Tim read them all out loud. Maxwell was still using the system translation. After requesting a piece of paper from the helpful girl from before and paying a copper for it, Maxwell noted all the words on the paper using the Zephyrian language. This, while receiving some weird looks, wasn't that unbelievable, as people simply took him for a foreigner.

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When Tim was finished with the children's books, they started to work on the dictionary. The boy was looking more and more bored as they progressed through the thick book. Luckily, the boy didn't need to read the explanations, as the system did the translation for him.

After an hour of this mind-numbing work, Maxwell was satisfied with what he had gathered. He was holding a bundle of papers that contained around 5000 words of this language.

He once again opened the first children's books, causing a look of desperation to appear on Tim's face. He actually learned that the boy was 9 years old. His younger look was probably due to malnutrition. He also asked the boy how he learned to read, but the boy stayed silent when he asked that.

Once more, Tim started to read, and this time, Maxwell turned off the translation before focusing entirely on the boy's voice. Suddenly, for the first time, he heard the language of this nation. It was a gruff language, with many consonants digging into his ears, but it still had its own charm.

Maxwell listened and tried to completely understand how the alphabet was pronounced. Luckily for the boy, the language was relatively straightforward in that respect, without having many exceptions, so he was satisfied before they reached the dictionary once more.

He once again turned on the translation, before patting the kids back. The kid, though, was looking at him with expectant eyes. Maxwell chuckled and took out two pieces of wood from his satchel. One of them was a tier one ingredient, but he didn't really care.

Under the astonished gaze of the boy, the two ingredients started to turn into figurines in real time, Maxwell not even touching them.

Soon, on the table, there was a tiger, to be specific, the tiger Maxwell burned to death some time ago. Tier one material, meanwhile, was turned into something more special. A figure in medieval armor could be seen on the table. It even had a sword and all. The most important thing was not yet revealed, though. Maxwell reached out and took the helmet off the figure's head. Under the helmet, Tim's face could be seen.

The child couldn't comprehend what was happening. He knew magic was real, as that was an apparent fact after the initiation, but he never saw it this close. The figures, though, were the real reason why he was so taken aback. Which child didn't want to be a knight when he was a kid?

He smiled brilliantly at Maxwell, and to his surprise, bent down a bit. "Thank you," he said in an embarrassed tone. And he was out of the library with a flurry of movement as if he expected Maxwell to take the figures back.

Maxwell shook his head before getting up from where he was sitting. Now that he had some words he could read, he would need something more colorful in its contents. He picked a biography for this endeavor, as finally, he was able to read the titles of the books.

Ten minutes passed, and Maxwell stared at the book he was holding. It turned out that reading a book took really little time when you had hundreds in the soul attribute. He really couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a thousand or something. It looked like he would need to hoard books in the future, as he liked reading quite a bit as a pastime.

He also felt that he was pretty confident in understanding this language pretty well now. He still wouldn't speak without translation, though, as nailing the accent would be a challenge he wouldn't be able to overcome by sitting in a library.

This time, he picked books according to the things he supposed to know but didn't. He picked a book about the history of the world, one about the history of the empire, and one about explaining the education of this world. Like the library, the books were more sophisticated than you would expect from a world such as this.

A couple of hours passed like this, and Maxwell was interrupted by a message from Blueberry. She told him that Felix was hungry, but she probably was too prideful to admit that she was bored from waiting.

He groaned, stretching his body. These last hours were really productive, as he learned a lot about the planet. He had a small mountain of books in front of him, and while he put the books where they belonged, he went over what he had learned.

The weirdest thing about the planet, which was its obvious medievalness, was apparently due to an early battle between two groups of colonizers. The history books didn't exactly say that, of course, as the winners were shown in a much more favorable light, but Maxwell was not a child.

The winner of the conflict apparently wanted a world devoid of technology, and this world was born. The world was made up of a lot of kingdoms and empires, and people were uneducated to a fault. Only the nobles had a semblance of technology, and it was seen as bloodright. Maxwell found the hierarchy pointless, really.

All of these colony wars and all happened almost a thousand years ago, proving that this civilization was far from new. The kingdoms had complex cultures, and their development level was ahead of the usual schedule for human progress.

He was now in the Kingdom of Thres, and the language he learned was Thresian. The kingdom was not a very weak one, but it wasn't very powerful either. It was a good middle ground to land, he supposed. He would later ask Gendor where Radam's new city was.

Similar to his own world, though, this world also didn't have a perfect censorship system. From the books he read, Maxwell could see that there was enough knowledge even in this library to create a pretty high-level technological civilization. It was just that it was in the form of theories and was buried under a lot of words.

He would guess that there was a lot of illegal technological activity on the planet. Especially after the system, considering his gains after reading a couple of books. He gazed at his notifications, thoughtfully.

Skill "Linguistics" Acquired

Linguistics: Somewhere in the universe, someone is very envious of your ability to learn languages.

Linguistics Leveled Up 1→32

This was simple enough, as it helped him learn languages better despite the weird explanation. The skill probably made the whole process of learning this language a lot faster.

Skill "Writing" Acquired.

Writing: Don't roll your eyes. This is a skill people earn a living through.

Writing Leveled Up 1→6

I can't say much against that… This probably came due to his note-taking.

Skill "Physics Knowledge" Acquired.

Skill "Chemistry" Acquired.

Maxwell didn't summon the explanation of these skills, as he learned them mainly as an experiment. Though he didn't doubt for a second that these skills would become a nightmare for the nobles soon enough.

Maybe if he could get a couple more, they would fuse together. It would certainly help with the clutter. For now, though, this was enough for today. He picked a couple of books to take with him and left the building.

Now, being able to read like a normal person, he would find something decent to eat.