Merchant Of Yliaster

As they neared the planet, Maxwell could feel the friction slowing them increase. There was a slow rumbling coming from the pod as it was trying to push through the increasing force.

"This pod was pre-initiation made, so I'm doubtful that we will reach the surface without problems. "Gendor said as if this was not his problem at all while he was fiddling with the control panel.

Maxwell was not sure if this guy was reliable or an idiot. "So, will we be able to land or not?" He asked.

"Well, we will in some way or form," Gendor answered cheerfully. "I originally planned for us to land relatively close to a city, but this ship seems to dislike that idea."

"In other words, you lost control of the ship?" Maxwell asked. He supposed dying in a spaceship crash immediately after he transmigrated would be original enough for everyone.

"Not exactly, I would say. We are still going towards the planet after all." Gendor said. "If I may be serious for a moment, though, you guys probably should find something to protect yourself. Especially you being a brittle mage and all." He said, pointing at Maxwell in the end.

"How funny," Maxwell commented.

Bob was panicking on the side. "Are we going to die?" He jumped up from where he was standing. "How are you guys so calm?" he shouted, and he started pacing in the small drop pod.

"Be calm, kid. If you die, it will be over before you know it." Gendor helpfully supplied, but it didn't seem to help the scared boy. Now he was pacing even faster while muttering, "We will die... We will die..."

Maxwell could feel that shaking was getting worse as they progressed through the atmosphere, but he was more concerned with what the planet would greet them with, instead of their landing experience.

If the initiation had happened 2 months ago, beasts on the planet should have reached at least grade 2, he figured. In the summary from the system about Zephyr, it said that Zephyr was destroyed after the grade 4 rifts were opened. With that information, he could scale the monster outbreaks back on Zephyr with grades.

On Zephyr in the first month, otherworldly creatures, as they called them, were relatively weak. Only a limited number reached the level where they were nearly immune to conventional weapons. That's why Maxwell could buy most of the Etherium back then. Otherwise, others wouldn't part with it no matter what.

After the first month, though, some of the beasts reached new heights. Now they couldn't fight them with the projectile weapons they loved so much, and only really big weapons like missiles were able to damage these beasts.

In the third year, some beasts that he now knew to be third grade started to appear. These were completely immune to anything except etherium weapons. Luckily, their frequency increased slowly over the years, so they could handle them with the help of efficient etherium usage.

The 14th year was the real catastrophe. The system said that level 4 gates were opened in that year in the summary, but they never saw any stronger beasts than before when these new gates opened. What they saw was more grade 3 beasts than they could ever imagine. He was sure of this as he didn't see any grade 4 souls when he was trading Zephyr before his transmigration. He simply refused to believe that they could survive the Etherium wave even if they arrived on the planet.

Now that he thought about it, the reason why the creatures were immune to conventional weapons was probably the absence of magic on the planet. Maybe the mana changed the planet in a more fundamental way than he thought. After all, after the initiation, if warriors couldn't kill beasts without mana, that wouldn't make sense.

Magic Theory leveled up Lvl-1→8

He was dumbfounded for a second due to the notification, but when he thought about it for a moment, the level jump made sense. It was obvious that most people never saw a world with beasts but without mana. So Planet Zephyr's situation was probably a very isolated case that could be used to see the interaction between mana-based creatures and an environment devoid of mana completely.

While he was thinking, a very bold idea came to his mind. Wasn't their situation similar now? They were falling on a planet properly initiated with mana on a vessel that had been in space for the last two months. His logic told Maxwell that mana in space would probably be less dense compared to a planet's atmosphere.

In theory, if he could somehow make the pod more "manaful" as one might say, maybe it would work as it was intended in the pre-initiation world.

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Magic Theory leveled up Lvl-8→10

It was a small increase this time, but it was all the acknowledgment he needed before trying his theory. He took a deep breath and filtered out the shaking, Bob's mutterings, and Gendor's annoying face. He focused and felt the mana around him.

There were a lot more spots of mana right now compared to the time they were on the spaceship, so he could at least see that his theory about the mana density in space was true. First, he took out a small, sharp iron piece from his pocket. He carried this as a backup weapon as they didn't have anything like a real weapon in the slave zone.

He focused on the mana around him and tried to gather it on the iron piece. He was not sure how he could make the mana be one with the thing but all he could do was try. First, he tried to push the mana into the piece, but that seemed not much different than normally focusing mana.

He stopped for a second and thought about how he could do this. As a different approach, he tried to feel the mana inside the iron piece. Maybe there was something that made the mana in the iron piece and the outside mana different.

As he focused more and more, he could sense something in the mana particles. Some seemed to "vibrate" in a different way compared to others. Mana he could feel in the iron piece was vibrating in the same frequency all over, but the mana in the air was completely mixed. He could see some with the same frequency occasionally, but he was quite lost on how he could differentiate between so many particles.

Soul Sense leveled up Lvl-7—>15

Shit... That's more levels than I had originally, he thought as the world became a lot clearer in his soul sense. This was the most noticeable change he ever felt when it came to skills leveling up. He could suddenly identify countless mana specks with different frequencies in the air, just floating leisurely. It was a very intriguing experience, but Maxwell focused on the job at hand.

He started small at first. He tried to pull the particles with a similar frequency towards the iron piece, but he found that he dragged a lot more than the intended particles. He pushed on anyway as he couldn't care about perfection right now. He directed the mana towards the piece, and he was delighted to see that the mana with the same frequency lingered in it.

As he was getting happy with his discovery, he was disappointed to see that the attraction was not strong enough. Particles were slowly starting to disengage from the blade. He tried to keep them in the same place, and it seemed to work for some time, but there was still something missing in the equation.

He thought about the situation on Zephyr. Was there no mana in Zephyr? He was inclined to say there wasn't, but when one thought about it, wouldn't the beasts at least bring some mana with them in 14 years? So there was something different than just placing the mana inside something, as that could happen by sheer chance.

The difference between other worlds with mana and Zephyr was that they had the system. Also, his attributes suggested that the spirituality attribute, which usually supplied mana, could be fused with the mind to form something greater called the soul. So maybe what he was missing was the mind?

He tried something according to this principle. When he was pushing the mana into the blade, he imagined that the particles of mana were like people he used to use telepathy with. He tried to relay to them the idea of staying on the blade and connecting with the other particles.

It was quite a schizophrenic concept he was trying to prove, but the strain in his mind was real as he tried to exert his will upon the particles. And surely, little by little, the particles started to stick together.

Skill "Mana Infusion" Acquired

Mana Infusion: Infuse mana of compatible affinity to matter using your soul to cause various effects. Usage on other living beings causes the efficiency of the skill to drop sharply. Cannot be used without the Soul attribute.

Meditation Leveled up Lvl-6→12

Mana Manipulation Leveled up Lvl-12→20

Maxwell let out a genuine chuckle for the first time in a long, long while. He got up from where he was sitting and looked down at the planet. It was getting closer, all right.

"How much time do we have for this thing to be inoperable?" He asked Gendor, earning a calculating look from the man.

"So you have an idea? If we turn off the thrusters, I guess it would take around 10 minutes for us to impact the ground. Though anything we do after 7 minutes or so wouldn't change much in this state since we would already be cooked alive," he said. He was weirdly detached from the situation.

"Wait, what do you mean we would be cooked?! You said we wouldn't die if we protected ourselves!" Bob whined.

"Well, it's not hard to see why I lied," Gendor said cynically.

Maxwell ignored the exchange. "Then I have 6 minutes to fix this," he said and closed his eyes. He tried to feel the mana on a grander scale, encompassing the whole pod, and felt for the mana particles inside the outer part. It was the same particle as the metal piece in his hand, as far as he could tell.

He started to use the mana infusion skill on the shell of the pod. More and more mana rushed into the pod, and he could see the density of the mana increasing in the matter.

He found the process a lot easier now that it was a system skill. As they fell, mana density outside the pod increased, and as that increased, he could pump more mana into the pod.

After 5 minutes, beads of sweat were falling down from his forehead, and his mana was almost completely gone. He could feel that the trembling of the pod was a bit less than before, but he was unsure if this would be enough.

"Kid, whatever you did worked wonders," Gendor said. There was a genuine quality to his happiness this time.

"It's still shaking, though." Maxwell half stated, half asked. Then it occurred to him that this was a fucking drop-pod. It was never something stable. If anything, he shouldn't be able to stand upright at the moment, but on the contrary, it was pretty comfortable in the pod.

"You look funny when you realize how dumb you are." Gendor chuckled as they continued to fall.