Merchant Of Yliaster

Maxwell was not someone easily angered. To understand his anger, one would need to know the situation of the civilization back on Zephyr.

The advent of telepathy caused many changes in Zephyr, and the sharp drop in domestic abuse was one of these changes.

The everyday people didn't have a way to abuse their children or family members without it being detected by routine mental checks performed in schools and hospitals.

In Zephyr, child abuse was something of the past, almost forgotten, filed away with old brutalities of the developing human civilization. Right now, though, Maxwell was faced with a completely different reality.

Maxwell stared at the girl's uncle, who came out of the room with a stick in his hand. The man smelled so bad that Maxwell could smell him from where he stood.

"Who the fuck-"

Shut up.

Maxwell felt a sense of unity come from his soul as Etherium Soul activated once more, this time with ferocious intensity, as if even the people of Zephyr were angry.

The mana in the atmosphere obeyed, as Maxwell's command radiated as mental waves. Guide mana activating with a finality it never did before. The man made a choking sound and fell to his knees, his throat being constricted by the ambient mana, eager to do what Maxwell wanted.

He made eye contact with the disgusting man, seeing the fear in his eyes. He simply couldn't care less. He mentally dove into the man's mind, rummaging through it without a care. In the distance, he could hear his screams, making him smile.

His smile, though, was replaced with a snarl as memories started to flood in. Maxwell stopped the flood, as he had seen enough. He could feel that what he had seen was just the tip of the iceberg, but he didn't want to continue.

Apparently, the reason the man even agreed to look after Mary was to have some fun with her. He didn't want to think about what the man would do in the following months if Maxwell hadn't arrived here in time.

The woman he heard from before chose this moment to enter the corridor. She took a second to take in the situation before she let out the start of a scream.

This time, though, Maxwell didn't even need to command the mana, as the scream abruptly ended with a gurgle, mana constricting around the new target it had found.

He didn't even think in his anger, making the woman fly towards her husband with a wave of mental energy. Through the haze of his anger, he could hear a faint notification, but he couldn't care less now.

He did the same thing he did to the man to the woman, causing her to scream as he dug into her mind, finding even worse things. The woman apparently was a great scientist, as she gave Mary food laced with different things all the time. From the memories, Maxwell could feel the woman's sickly curiosity as she had done these things. This was why being in the mind of a psychopath was dangerous.

Maxwell expected to find an abusive household, but instead, he found a household occupied by psychopaths. Mary was just a way of having fun for them.

Now that he was sure that they were both guilty, he would proceed with his plan. He gently placed Mary on a relatively clean spot nearby, taking the teddy bear temporarily away from the girl.

The couple were still making choking sounds as he moved without hurry. Streams of tears could be seen on their faces, both from the breathlessness and the mental damage.

He stared at them, thinking about how to proceed. He started simply by infusing their bodies with vitality. If they died too quickly, his plan wouldn't work.

The thing about vitality infusing was that everyone had a limit. You couldn't cause someone to have a thousand vitality, as they wouldn't be able to handle the mana. This seemed like a good opportunity to see the adverse effects excessive vitality would cause.

He watched as the couple let out muffled screams, their wet, bulging eyes staring at him with incomprehension and fear. They didn't faint, as vitality flowing in their blood kept them awake.

Maxwell could see swathes of negative energy in the air, and he simply directed it towards the teddy bear. It was only right that he would harvest as much as the toy contained before letting them go.

Minutes trickled in as he continued to infuse their vessels with immense amounts of blood mana. The only sound in the room was muffled gurgles and screams of the couple. Maxwell fed his anger with the memories he had seen whenever he felt a smidgen of conscience to continue. He could see flesh proliferate, as cancerous growths appeared on the couple's bodies, as they turned into something different. The process looked painful, and from the negative energy pouring from them like a river, it clearly was.

He observed them when they completely turned into screaming masses of flesh, only alive due to vitality flowing in.

Abomination - Level-20

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Abomination - Level-18

They leveled up? At least they will be useful in death, then, he thought as he checked the creatures' increased level. Calling them human was simply impossible at this point. The only part they had still resembling a human was two pairs of eyes filled with pain, and even those looked almost five times bigger than normal eyes.

He could see that the negative energy inside the toy had finally doubled, indicating that he had inflicted enough pain to account for the girl's. In his heart, he could feel a desire to continue, as memories he had seen were still vivid due to his increased soul stat, and they would remain so for the rest of his life.

He managed to curb his anger a little and cut the stream of vitality, causing the blobs of flesh to start showing signs of decay immediately. They simply didn't have anything to sustain themselves on. He acted fast, though, as this was just preparation for something bigger. He felt his trait activate, and this time, it didn't even ask questions. It knew what he wanted.

He watched as the creatures started to disappear into dust, and he felt the familiar intrusion of his trait into his senses. From the bodies of the abominations, something floated, Maxwell's senses straining as his trait used his senses to once again manipulate something beyond his level.

Two souls tainted with negative energy floated as Maxwell felt himself grabbing them with threads of soul energy, similar to the time with Bob's soul. The bodies of the abominations were already gone, as a pile of dust could be seen on the floor.

The souls faded out of the world like they were being slowly deleted. It was similar to how The Traveler disappeared. He turned his gaze to the toy. Now, it was the time for the last phase.

Energy appeared around the teddy bear, given by the system as a payment for the souls, and it rushed into it. Maxwell watched, as the energy coalesced inside the bear, fusing with the negative energy, incorporating it into itself.

As his trait worked, he prepared to do something. He didn't add it to the trade as he felt that he could do it himself. As a nascent soul formed inside the bear, making his mind ache as he tried to focus his eyes on it, he started to form a soul channel with it.

Protect her.

He gave a simple message to the soul as it formed, making the message the first thing it received as it came into being. He disconnected the soul channel from himself as he felt his message reach its destination, but he was not done.

He quickly turned the channel's now-empty end toward Mary, hoping that the girl's connection with the bear would be strong enough to sustain the connection without him.

He was relieved to see that, while the connection weakened a bit, it remained stable, forming a link between the girl and the bear. As he was done with his job, he could feel that his trait was also done with its.

He watched as the teddy bear on the ground made a twitchy movement, like it had been electrocuted, and then went slack. For a second, he thought that something had gone wrong, but in the next moment, the toy started to move. Its movements had a weird sense of fluidity. It got up slowly and turned towards Maxwell, staring at him with its emotionless face.

In the next moment, it suddenly started expanding, becoming bigger and bigger until it towered over Maxwell. It brought his head close to Maxwell, tilting his head, as if trying to understand if he was a threat.

It seemed to decide that he was not, though, as it turned away, glancing with its beadlike eyes towards Mary. Somehow, Maxwell could feel that the bear was concerned despite its tailored face not having an expression. He observed the creature he had created.

Pax - The Living Construct - Level - 25

To his surprise, an additional window was summoned, similar to the time he created Blueberry's race.

Pax, The Living Construct:

Formerly a toy, Pax was changed by the initiation, gaining a trace of consciousness due to the intense emotional potential radiating from his owner. In the following weeks, he absorbed immense amounts of negative energy, trying to make his friend happy in the only way he could think of with his limited mind.

The potential inside was amplified by the Merchant of Yliaster, causing him to turn into a fully-fledged life form. He continues to absorb the negative energy, strengthening himself in the process.

At the core of his artificial soul, a simple command resides, and for him, nothing is too much to fulfill it.

It had a consciousness even before this? Maxwell was surprised to learn this. The creature's level was ridiculous, probably placing it above most people in the city.

His command seemed to have settled nicely on the creature's soul, causing quite an ominous phrase to appear at the end of the description.

Pax picked up the girl from the ground, looking at her with concern. Maxwell could see that he had paws on his hands, suggesting that the construct was not limited by having soft stubs for arms. It made sense, as he could apparently change his size, too.

Maxwell watched as the construct turned toward him, carrying the girl. His movements were still oddly silent. He watched in surprise as he placed the girl on Maxwell's arms. He pointed at the door, motioning for Maxwell to go out.

Maxwell humored the creepy creature and tiredly got out of the building. Creating the creature hadn't been very easy, and he could feel a familiar heaviness in his mind. He even turned off the parallel thoughts, as there was no need for it to manage his thinking speed.

Immediately after he left the house, he heard a growl behind him, sounding oddly muffled. Sound of wood creaking followed, before the building Mary used to suffer in collapsed with a deafening sound, shattering outwards, launching shrapnel everywhere.

Apparently, the place was attached too much to the things the girl suffered for the bear, as he violently demolished it. Maxwell was a bit confused about how his growl worked, but that was a question for some other time.

Maxwell noted that the shrapnels avoided the spot where they were standing, meaning the bear was careful not to harm the girl, even when he was really angry.

From the toppled building, a beam of wood seemingly lifted itself, and Pax appeared from under it, reduced to a normal-sized teddy bear. It walked towards them, having approximately the same height as Felix. The dog, who had been particularly calm in these last few minutes, was suddenly onto Pax as he tried to play with the new friend.

Pax, though, apathetically jumped towards Maxwell and landed on Mary. Maxwell watched as the girl hugged the bear, conditioned by the time she spent with it. Maxwell smiled, seeing Pax stop moving and behaving like a normal teddy bear once again, so as not to disturb the girl.

He might have committed several war crimes in the process, but he really liked what he managed to create.

Whoever tried to hurt the girl would certainly be in for a surprise.