Merchant Of Yliaster

Maxwell stared at the planet below, comparing it to Zepyhr. When they were trying to figure out how to avoid burning in the atmosphere, they couldn't appreciate the planet's beauty.

The planet's name was Rokun. It was a terrestrial planet with more land than water on the surface. Thick forests covered the planet throughout, making it seem like a paradise.

Maxwell could see vaguely that someplace in the northeast seemed to have some sort of civilization, as the forests there had many blank spots. Unfortunately, they were going in the opposite direction.

"Civilization on the planet was cut entirely from communication until a couple of years ago. The colony our ancestors sent was apparently not as industrious as most so they have chosen a more primitive lifestyle." Gendor said, staring at the planet thoughtfully. "Radam probably wants to be something like a king coming here, but he is in for a surprise when he awakens because of the initiation." He chuckled.

"Why didn't they wake him up?" Maxwell asked. Initiation was probably the biggest thing that could ever happen to society, and this man slept through it uninterrupted.

"Funnily enough, they can't. You see, Radam was not precisely a saint, so he couldn't entrust his sleeping body. Seeing no other way, he locked his body inside a safe in the ship. The controls are directly tied to the ship's location system. Actually, he should be having his first bouts of surprise right about now as we arrive at our destination," Gendor answered.

They were really close to the surface now, and Maxwell could glimpse through the clouds that they were falling towards a lush mountainscape. The pod was equipped with thrusters to break their fall, so he was not worried after the infusion that they would crash.

"It looks like we will have a lot of mountain trekking in the future," Gendor said.

Just about now, Bob seemed to come into his senses as he looked around dumbly. "We aren't gonna die?" he said with immense hope in his voice, making Maxwell roll his eyes. This kid needed therapy as soon as they could reach it.

"We won't land near a city as I planned, but we need to lay low for a while anyway. I'm pretty sure a forest should have many resources we could use right now, too." Gendor stated, licking his lips.

Maxwell figured that he was talking about all the animals they could kill in a forest, but he chose not to comment for now. He didn't really know how the man leveled up on the ship, but he was probably hungry for more levels after not having any proper way of leveling up for 2 months.

Soon, they were around 1 km above the ground, and thrusters started to do their job. They were working all right, but Maxwell realized that they were not as efficient as they should have been.

I didn't infuse the pod beyond its outer layer. These are just normal thrusters. Maxwell realized.

It's not like he could infuse the engines even if he tried, since they had so many different components with so many different frequencies.

"We will have a bit of a rough landing," he said as he sat down on one of the chairs and started to strap himself down.

"You realized too? We should be okay, though."Gendor said not really concerned about the situation. He did sit on a chair nonetheless.

Maxwell looked at Bob, and he was surprised to find the boy sitting on one of the chairs already. He was using even the spare straps to strap himself on it as if his life depended on it.

"This should be enough right?" he said hysterically.

"Yes, it should be enough, Bob," Maxwell said. He was starting to get an idea about Bob's apparent abundance of fear.

It didn't take long for them to feel the impact. It was rough, but with their physique after the integration, it felt like an amusement park ride rather than a rough landing on a pod launched from orbit.

They skidded on the ground for a few seconds, along with Bob's manly screams, and with a crash, impacted a giant-ass tree.

New atmosphere detected.

Vitality test passed moderately.

Debuff "Minor Weakness" applied for a day.

Minor Weakness:

Your body is not accustomed to this planet's microbiota. All physical stats (-2).

So this is a thing? Maxwell thought as he felt a mild feeling of weakness seep into his body. He started trying to unstrap the tightened straps with his newfound weakness.

He was a bit curious how they would survive different planets with different diseases and microorganisms, but the system seemed to take care of that in its own way.

He finally could unstrap himself and took a look around. Pod's window was gone and he could see that the front was almost completely ruined. Other parts, except the outer layer, were squished like they were cotton candy, too, so he figured tech in the pod would be unusable in the future.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He used observation on the tree they rudely smashed, as it looked really unbothered by the whole exchange.

Iron Tree - Level 14

A tree was higher leveled than him. He wondered if the tree would survive one of his mana bolt barrages. I probably shouldn't compare myself to something that can't move. He corrected himself before looking around.

"Everybody whole?" Gendor said as he approached the tree. "Wow, even trees have levels…" He said, apparently having also used observation.

"Guys, what are those?" Bob asked, pointing at the right side.

There were around 10 shapes about 100 meters away from them, and they seemed really interested in this weird ball that fell out of the sky.

Maxwell guessed they were something like a hyena, but he was not really sure, as they also had little horns on their head. He used observation on the biggest one, as that one was probably the leader.

Alpha Horned Scrax- Lvl-20 (Hungry)

Maxwell realized that he could see more information with observation since he leveled up. He was curious about the skill as it seemed that it was also influenced by the increase in his soul sense.

Maybe it was like an information manager using the user's senses while being assisted by the system. This was certainly more plausible than the idea that a common skill like it would pull in all the information from the system.

He quickly observed other Hyenas. They had levels ranging from 8 to 15. They were slowly closing in on them. He refused to call them scrax in his mind, as they were way too similar to hyenas.

Gendor licked his lips as he looked at the hyenas. "Food in every sense delivered itself to us hehe," he said creepily.

Bob, for once, didn't look fearful; he looked at the hyenas with something like excitement mixed with anger. Maxwell realized that the boy was not really fearful when it came to battle. The boy acted much more cowardly when there were things he couldn't control. He used observation on Gendor and the boy to see how their odds were against the hyenas.

Gendor - Assassin - Lvl-10

Bob - Warrior - Lvl-8

Maxwell was surprised to see their levels as they are, one of them lower and one of them higher than he expected. He also noted that Gendor didn't realize that he was being observed.

"Gendor, why are you still level 10?" he asked. He didn't plan to hide the fact that he could see his level.

"I didn't like the new classes offered, so I'm waiting for new ones to show up," Gendor said, and he dashed towards the hyenas without waiting for a reply.

He still had the sword and pistol from the enforcers and started firing as he ran. The pistol wasn't really effective, but it was at least a distraction. Bob, seeing this, didn't wait as he charged too, along with the man.

They sure are bloodthirsty. Maxwell thought. He checked his mana to see it was 315. So every point in soul gives me one and a half points in mana regeneration, huh? He thought, noting that just five minutes ago his mana was almost completely gone. Mages were much more sustainable than he expected.

Before starting with his mana bolts, he tried to feel the beasts' minds. He was surprised to feel something quite different than a human mind. Their minds felt less attentive and more primal.

There were a couple of projects back on Zephyr to install etherium implants on dogs for better communication, but they had much more pressing concerns at the time, so they were never properly funded.

Beasts in front of him didn't use their minds to shape their behaviours like humans did. He felt that trying to take them out with telepathy would be much harder than for normal people. Even if he could take their consciousness out, they would still have their strong instincts.

He started with 10 bolts this time, and an idea came to his mind. He tried to infuse the surrounding mana into the bolts like he did on the drop pod and was quite surprised to see them grow slightly bigger, eating up the mana he pulled from the atmosphere eagerly.

He sent the bolts towards the three of the lowest leveled hyenas he could see, dividing the bolts into three groups. One hyena was closer to him, and it was swallowed by an explosion before it could understand what happened.

The other two hyenas could see the mana bolts flying at them with impressive speed, but unfortunately, they were too slow to escape completely from the blast, one losing half of its head while the other losing a big chunk from its side.

Albeit not completely annihilated like their friend, they were not high enough leveled to survive such injuries.

Horned Scrax- Level 8 Killed. Experience rewarded.

Horned Scrax- Level 8 Killed. Experience rewarded.

Horned Scrax- Level 9 Killed. Experience rewarded.

Well, that was easy. Maxwell thought. If he couldn't kill things close to his level easily with the broken soul attribute, though, he probably didn't deserve it.

Mana Bolt Skill Changes detected.

Proceed skill readjustment?

Yes / No

Maxwell was surprised to see the last notification, but mentally pressed yes.

Mana Bolt Lvl-10 → Infused Mana Bolt Lvl-8

Infused Mana Bolt Leveled Up Lvl-8→10

Skill readjustment complete.

Infused Mana Bolt: Create bolts of mana and fire them at your enemies. The number of bolts created is connected to how much mana you can control at a time. Created mana bolts absorb the ambient mana in creation, making them slightly stronger than normal mana bolts.

Mana Manipulation leveled up Lvl-20→21

Maxwell was pretty satisfied with the skill he readjusted as the system put it, but his satisfaction was interrupted by a hyena jumping at him from the side, taking advantage of his distraction.

Maxwell frantically jumped back to dodge the hideously smelling hyena. From this range, he couldn't really fire a bolt at the creature as he would also hurt himself, so he was a bit lost for the moment.

Hyena landed on the ground and somehow managed to look surprised. It didn't shy back from jumping once more toward Maxwell, though, and it was quite faster than he was, too. Maxwell had no option other than to block the animal with his arm, watching as its teeth sank into his arm.

He felt an agonizing, burning pain as the hyena proceeded to shake his head in a respectable attempt to tear his arm off. He gasped with pain and tried to focus through it as he tried to find a way out of this situation.

He pulled his free hand back and concentrated before striking the animal with his fist in an act of desperation. The hyena seemed amused by the feeble human's attempt, but it was in for a surprise.

As Maxwell hit the animal, a devastating amount of mana spread out from his hand in a burst. The unlucky animal kept shaking his head in ignorance as his lower body exploded in a shower of blood, leaving Maxwell staring at a hyena head with bloodshot eyes clamped to his arm.