Merchant Of Yliaster

Maxwell woke up to the sound of Blueberry chirping, a feeling of boredom radiating from the mental waves the chirping released. He lazily got up from the comfortable bed, yawning. He expected to have a couple of nightmares, but he actually had an incredible night of uninterrupted sleep.

He felt suspiciously good after sleeping. It was to a degree that he was starting to think that he actually needed sleep. It was just that he didn't feel the decline when improving his soul stat.

He decided that he would not stay awake more than a couple of days in the future.

He glanced at Blueberry, finding her on the windowsill. The sun was slowly rising, casting an orange glow on the horizon. Maxwell didn't realize yesterday how good the scene was from the window. This building, being even taller than the inner wall of the city, had nothing to block the scene.

This was a testament to the place's prestige, as there were almost no buildings of similar height in the city. He could still see the giant castle in the middle of the inner city, though, and that was undoubtedly taller.

He checked himself in the ornate mirror in the room. And he was startled for a second. He knew that this body was growing with an accelerated pace, but his looks explained why no one questioned his age.

His clothes, being created by his trait, have grown with him too, making him unable to realize the extent of the change. His body stopped growing at the least, probably meaning that he reached around 18 in age physiologically. Looking at himself in the mirror, he was pretty sure that he was actually a little bit older. Without realizing it, he had completely lost the raw look people had before reaching adulthood.

He was not very dissatisfied with this change. Since he transmigrated, being a child has always been a bother. The idea of waiting to grow up for years when you were mentally an adult was depressing.

With a mirror, he could also clearly see that one of his features was completely different from how he remembered it from the ship. When he first checked his new body, his eyes were black. Now, though, they were green. It was actually the same shade of green as the space where Compendium was.

Did this happen after tier advancement? He asked himself. To be honest, he really liked the new look, but it was a bit alarming to find that your eye color had changed suddenly. He was almost sure that his eyes would glow in the dark, as even now, they were shining with an eerie green light.

He stared at his own eyes, thoughtful. Their color made him think about his trait. Etherium Soul was a trait he had complicated feelings about. The fact that at least a semblance of his people existed inside the trait felt both good and bad at the same time.

Who is watching now? He asked himself, and he was answered with silence.

He sighed and picked up Felix from the bed before leaving the room. Blueberry, maybe finally deciding to ruin Maxwell's hair, actually landed on his shoulder, chirping faintly. Maxwell could feel that the bird was doing the equivalent of consoling him. The bird could feel his emotions to a degree, like he felt her's through the Etheric Bond.

He smiled, scratching the bird's head with his finger. The bird was sometimes a lot smarter than it showed, and she already showed a lot.

The corridor his door opened to was like a time capsule, similar to the room where Nesha cooked. It had no windows, and the lighting was the same as before. It gave a faint feeling of unreality to the place, making Maxwell feel like he never actually left it.

He wasn't surprised to find Nesha cooking as he had left before, causing the feeling to get even stronger. The amount of practice the woman was getting was no joke by any means. The system, too, seemed to agree, as her level was the highest he had ever seen from someone in the city. He was pretty sure that fact wouldn't change for some time.

"I hope our establishment was to your standards," he heard, as he let in a message. His passive mental defences were too strong otherwise.

"I slept well," He really did, too. The bed was comparable to his own back in his world.

He could once more see a few people in the room, some looking at him for a short while. He walked towards the counter, and looking at the menu for a moment, decided that he would never use the thing if he could help it.

"Can you give me something for breakfast?" he asked, and soon he was eating his food like everyone else. It was something like an omelet, coupled with usual bread. The quality of everything was still insane, though. Nothing tasted ordinary here.

He could see that some people were puzzled by Nesha serving him food without him saying anything, but having regulars was normal, so they lost interest soon.

He remembered that Gendor mentioned staying in an inn for a couple of days, so today, he would start searching around them. This suddenly gave him an idea. He brought out the paper and a pen he had bought at the library. With his visualization, wouldn't he be able to draw really well?

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He tested his theory, starting from something simple. He imagined the Iron Tree they crashed against when they first landed, and started sketching. His drawing technique was nonexistent, but the outline was still right.

After drawing some other mundane things, he started to get the hang of it. His technique was still shit, but he didn't have so many points in the soul stat for nothing. With his mind now, He would become an unsurpassed genius in almost everything back on Zephyr.

Unfortunately, magic was something really complicated, too, so he hardly felt like a genius when he was trying to understand it.

Soon, he held a pretty good drawing of Gendor and Bob in his hands. He also tried to draw Blueberry, but he felt that he failed to capture the weird quality her looks had. She still felt more real than the world around her. Now that he had seen his own eyes, he knew that this was probably due to the Etherium Bond, as his eyes gave a similar feeling, too.

He checked his notifications, having heard some when he was trying to draw better. It was obvious what they were about.

Skill "Drawing" Acquired.

Drawing: Other people hone their craft by diligently practicing; you learn it over breakfast. Please don't draw everything you can imagine.

Maxwell was a bit lost on the system's joke this time. But the skill would be useful, he supposed.

He left The Nest soon after, with his drawings at hand. He was not sure how he would find the inns in the city, but after a small search, he actually could find a place to buy a map from. If Gendor was forging an identity as a merchant, Maxwell doubted that he would stay at a shabby place, so he ruled out the places too far from the inner wall.

That, while being helpful, still left him with many places to visit. The sooner I start, the sooner it finishes, I guess. He thought dejectedly. At least, this would make him get to know the city better.

The first couple of inns were not very fruitful. Their owners losing interest as soon as he said that he was not a customer. They talked after he said he would give them a silver coin if they could tell him where the guys in the drawings was, but unfortunately they have never seen the duo.

In the sixth inn, Maxwell was pretty sure this wasn't the place as soon as he stepped inside. Almost all the people inside looked shady, and they looked at him like they were trying to understand if he had anything to steal. I will probably get some of them following me around after this, he thought.

The inn was dirty to a degree that it made Maxwell think that it was intentional. As he approached the bartender, the guy sent him a cynical look, clearly thinking that Maxwell was a naive man who didn't understand where he wasn't supposed to go.

Maxwell still offered the bartender money for the information, though. He would deal with the trouble when it came, and gave a chance to the man despite the clues. He guessed he could walk out without asking, but then, sometimes, he could be petty, too.

"Have you seen these guys around here," he showed the bartender the drawings, as he held out a silver coin on his palm.

It turned out that the trouble had come sooner than he had expected. As he offered the silver to the bartender, he could immediately tell he would try something from the glint in his eyes.

Immediately, almost everyone in the inn stood up, circling him.

"Are you retarded? This is our turf you dimwit, you think you can come here loaded like that, and leave?" The bartender said, laughing.

Maxwell found himself feeling weirdly happy. Looking around the room, he could see no one above level 15, and some of them were even tier one.

It didn't take long for the first attack to come, yet for Maxwell's eyes, it was pitifully slow. He watched the fist slowly approaching him as he contemplated how he could deal with this situation. Uncontrolled damage was out of the question, as they were in the middle of the city. He probably shouldn't kill anyone, too, so that limited his options a lot, too.

Maxwell, always a believer in novel solutions, started to visualize his next creation. He opened his palm, holding it open in front of himself. He could still see the punch, but it wouldn't arrive before he was done with this.

He visualized a sphere on his palm, and he quickly condensed it using metal mana. The next part would need some hardness.

When the sphere of mana was condensed enough, he simply told it to expand while ignoring him. The effect was immediate.

The ball rapidly expanded, and Maxwell was amused to see the fist directed at him slam agains the sphere of mana, now encompassing Maxwell with a crack, the sound coming from the now twisted wrist of the guy.

The sphere, though, was far from done. Other unfortunate friends could only release a short scream of alarm before they, too, were slammed by the same mana wall.

The only thing mana ball discriminated against was Maxwell, and he watched as all the furniture around him was swept away from him, along with the people around him.

A sound of creaking could be heard along with a mayhem of different sounds as even the building itself was being damaged by the expanding mana ball. Everything broke and splintered as a tide formed of broken furniture and desperate men, moving toward the outer reaches of the inn.

There was a limit where they could go, though. Along with screams and a deafening crashing sound, the ball eventually reached the walls of the inn, or at least the tide reached it.

Maxwell visualized a border for the expansion to stop, as he was pretty sure that the walls would last longer than the people within, if he didn't.

Immediately, the expansion ceased, but the mana construct didn't disappear. Maxwell couldn't help but laugh, looking at the comical scene around him. All of the walls were covered with distraught men, looking at him in disbelief as they were pressed against the walls and each other in ridiculous positions.

"The spell will wane with time, I will continue searching if you don't mind" he said, still having a remnant of his laugh in his voice, and simply left the inn, going through the sphere of energy and through the door. He could hear screams, and swears as men fought with each other for the little space they could claim.

"Chirp?" Blueberry asked, looking back at the inn with strange eyes.

"No, we can't do this to everyone," Maxwell muttered as he walked towards his new destination.