Merchant Of Yliaster

Darve watched as darkness flowed from the man's hand, and the room was immediately covered by it like it was a wave of water. The last thing he could see before darkness closed in on him from all sides was the face of the mercenary, and he could swear that the mask the mercenary was wearing smiled at him hungrily.

All of his senses were screaming, as darkness took a physical form around him. He could see nothing beyond a meter from where he stood, and darkness was still closing in.

He tried to cut the darkness, but it was useless. As long as his attacks touched the mass around him, the mana inside them disappeared as his control over the attacks vanished. How is this guy so strong? It's like that Merchant guy. He thought in exasperation as he tried to find a way out of the situation. He had already used the effect of his sword with his last attack, as his usual attacks were already useless against the man, but this was just ridiculous.

As he tried to find a way, mana kept closing in around him, giving him a claustrophobic feeling. Sweat started to roll down his face as panic started to appear. He took a deep breath and focused. If he panicked in every desperate situation, he wouldn't reach the heights he wanted to.

He focused on activating his wind blade skill, but he did something different. Normally, the skill used a set amount of his mana with every blade; this time, he willed it to use more. He couldn't manage to do this before, but he hoped the pressure would enable him to do it.

Mana flowed as always into the sword the Merchant improved, and Darve's mind strained as he worked on putting more mana inside the blade.

He smiled when he felt that he was successful. Something broke as mana flowed freely into the blade, consuming his whole pool like he had punctured a hole in it. Just before exhaustion consumed him, he swung his sword, unleashing the blade.

Maxwell was staring at the darkness he unleashed with surprise. He expected it to only cover a couple of meters before him, but it managed to completely overthrow his expectations. The room was completely covered with darkness, and he could feel that it was slowly corroding everything inside.

He carefully excluded Gary and Darve from the attack when he first unleashed it, but even now, the thick darkness was slowly expanding like a liquid with high viscosity. He could see through it, as it was his own mana, so he could see Darve desperately attack the walls, which were slowly closing on him.

Maxwell wouldn't kill the man, obviously, but he still needed the man to concede at the least. Then, something unexpected happened.

Maxwell watched as Darve focused before he sensed a comparably immense amount of mana flow out from the man. It was almost comparable to the mana Maxwell used on his last attack. A giant wind blade, one could see without mana sense, shot out from the man's sword and impacted the surrounding darkness.

Contrary to the attacks before, this blade actually managed to progress, and darkness receded from the room, following Maxwell's command. It got thicker before the blade, looking like nothing existed on the wind blade's intended path.

Maxwell could feel darkness exceed its capacity in real time as the blade progressed, but the blade was not in good shape either. Immediately after progressing through half the distance between them, the blade fizzled out of existence, and Darve toppled to the ground due to exhaustion.

Maxwell was surprised, though. If he didn't have his mask, he doubted that he could block that attack with the same amount of mana. The Dark Mask of Drakhabgar gave him something similar to Darkness affinity, countering Darve's affinity for wind.

Usually, Maxwell would expect his efficiency with elements to be lower than that of people with the same element affinity. That would be the case until he recorded them completely in the compendium, he felt. That, of course, was only true when someone had proper skills to control the said elements. For a mediocre mage, for example, Maxwell would still be much better even if the mage had the affinity for the element.

He pulled the darkness back into his body, finding it decreased only a little as some parts of the wind blade were absorbed by it. Darkness mana had truly amazing sustainability. With discretion, he sent Darve a stream of pure mana, infusing the man with it. He didn't want his client to die immediately due to mana exhaustion.

Gary, too, seemed to have the same view as him; the man looked ashen and ran to his master's side.

"Young master!" he shouted with panic and knelt before the young man. Maxwell could see that there was nothing wrong with Darve except being exhausted, but he understood the man's perspective. If anything happened to Darve, they would probably kill this guard too.

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"He is fine, but exhausted," Maxwell said, and he received a furious glance for a moment before the man realized who he was looking at. The guard breathed out to calm down and spoke. "Couldn't you go a bit easy on him?" he said, sounding like he was pleading with his past self.

"It was his own attack that caused this," Maxwell answered, and the man just shook his head tiredly.

"Sorry, sir, you seem to be right," Gary said, recovering his composure.

"I will return in a couple of hours," Maxwell said, and his figure shot upwards. He infused himself with some earth mana and passed through the roof seamlessly. At least that's what it looked like from an outside perspective. In reality, due to him using earth mana only partially, the experience felt like he was getting pushed through a very narrow tube.

He soon surfaced on the ground level, taking in a breath of relief. Fortunately, there was also darkness under the ground. Otherwise, he would probably need to use more earth mana in the process just now. He was aware that he could use the elevator, but he really wanted to skip all of that business of slowly walking alongside a guard.

He felt like he could do this with another boost from the compendium without problem, though. Just for the phasing, earth was a very useful element, so he would invest some time to improve the recording in the future.

Now, though he had more immediate problems, as people were looking at him like he was a demon, it didn't help that he suddenly emerged from the ground. His answer to this problem was simple. His form floated off the ground before flying into the distance. Fuck the rules he thought, irritated.

"There is a new mercenary in the inner city, watch him closely." A man pushed an image to the woman standing before his table. The man had short brown hair and brown eyes, and he wore sleek steel armour.

"What's his name?" Ellie said, and took the image before making a weird expression. In the image, a dark figure could be seen, and the image was more of a drawing, as all the cameras were still broken after the initiation.

The only thing relatively clear in the drawing was a mask, and even that seemed like the drawer gave up while trying to draw it. One side of the mask was detailed, but the other half looked like the drawer cried over it and just scribbled randomly before considering it finished.

The man checked the papers before him for the name of the mercenary and found it pretty quickly. Just as he was going to say it out loud, though, a weird feeling consumed him. For some reason, he really didn't want to say the word out loud. It felt like turning your back on an open door in the dark. "This," he said, pointing at the name.

"Drakhab-" Ellie started reading the name, but she too abruptly stopped, looking around suddenly. For a second, she could swear she had seen shadows move around them. They made eye contact with the man, and a mutual agreement was made immediately not to speak this name out loud.

"What's with all the weird new people showing up recently? First, that merchant guy and now this D-.. mercenary," Ellie said, almost saying the name out loud once again.

"Initiation really fucked everything over. How is the gathering going on in that area?" the man said. The Merchant character apparently reminded him of the new zone filled to the brim with valuable resources.

"We are gathering the outer borders, but there are strong beasts inside the zone, so we are having difficulties in the core region. We still can't enter the cave that fucker strolled in like he was a tourist." Ellie said, her tone getting irritated as she got to the part about the Merchant.

"Where is that guy?" the man, the commander of the army of Kralor, asked.

"He didn't enter the inner city with the token I gave him. Finding him in the outer city with the current situation would be impossible, I think." Ellie said, sounding apologetic.

"I still don't understand why you didn't bring him directly here. Now, we've got an immensely powerful wild card moving in the city, and we don't even know where he is," the man said. His tone was not accusatory, but this made it even worse.

"I don't know. If it will make you feel better, I don't think I would be able to even if I tried," she said.

"Never mind, we've got enough bad news as it is. There is a new outsider camp in the Olegor Kingdom, and I have a feeling that they will push them towards us at the first opportunity," the man said.

"Outsiders? You mean the people coming from the stars?" Ellie asked.

"Don't speak like you are an uneducated villager, Ellie. Haven't your grandmother taught you enough?" The man's features hardened with irritation after hearing Ellie. "I suppose you are right, though. If it wasn't for the initiation, we would be facing a real problem just about now," he added.

"Their tech got wrecked too?" Ellie said, glancing at the drawing in his hand briefly. There was something familiar about the drawing, but she couldn't place what it was.

"They almost killed themselves when they were landing. They still got the basic tech, though, and they have better scholars than we do. If we let them progress in peace, they will once again be an immense problem. With the new nobility system, I don't doubt that their leader will become a noble soon," the man said, rubbing his eyes. These last months had been tiring beyond belief, and there hadn't been a day in which he hadn't cursed the job he had picked.

"You don't think they will trouble Olegor Kingdom before us? They can only manage so much with limited people," Ellie said. She could use her brain when she wanted to.

"Well, who said they would have limited people after their leader became a noble? I fear that they will control the kingdom soon if the king there doesn't do something about this," he said. He sometimes couldn't believe the stupidity of the Olegor's nobles. The said kingdom was only a weak one, but this made everything worse. It would mean that the outsiders would have an easier time conquering it after all.