Merchant Of Yliaster

Maxwell landed in the forest silently and stored his mask in his soul space. It was getting tedious to keep up this persona, and he was starting to consider scrapping the whole thing. I guess it will last until it will, he thought as he summoned his notifications.

Myriad Mana Constructs Leveled Up 83→86

Soul's Dominion Leveled Up 12→13

Etheric Duality Leveled Up 8→15

Window of the Soul Leveled Up 73→74

Flying Leveled Up 18→23

Neat, the level-ups were a welcome addition, as he didn't do anything too significant. The thing he did with duality, though, warranted some experimenting. What flowed from his arm back in the fight was definitely not just darkness mana or energy, but pure darkness itself. This suggested that he could actually use real physical elements without actually being able to create them outside his body.

If he could do this, maybe he wouldn't be able to use more than one element at a time with this method, but it would certainly be useful nonetheless.

He infused himself with fire and watched his body slowly turn into fire, partially. His skin cracked, and slowly it started to burn, making him look like a walking campfire. How does this even happen? Maxwell was completely puzzled about how this skill worked.

It was obvious that he could do this due to Etherium's influence, as the material seemed to have some sort of reality-bending effect that could be observed both on Blueberry and Felix, but how it did what it did was a complete mystery.

His skin burned with real fire, but from what he was seeing, the fire consumed nothing apart from some of his mana due to the heat it was radiating. That, at least, followed logic, as very few things seeemed to do concerning him.

He opened his palm, directing to a tree, and willed mana to burst from his hand towards it. Immediately, a huge jet of yellow fire was released from his hand, completely covering the tree with fire. Now that he could actually use something like this, Maxwell could do much more terrifying things.

He focused on the fire and willed fire mana to rush into it, and the flames immediately turned bluish, indicating their increased heat. The whole affair didn't take more than 200 mana, and Maxwell, for the first time, felt like something was being handed to him instead of working for it.

So other people feel like this for all system skills? He questioned. The degree system didn't help him was starting to make him question its intentions. From his interactions with it, Maxwell could see that the system didn't exactly hate him. If anything, it bent the rules to just be able to communicate with him. This meant that there was probably a deeper reason why it wouldn't help him.

Does it want me to learn everything myself for a better foundation? No, thats movie bullshit. Maybe it can't? His second idea suddenly made a lot of sense. If even the traveller thought that the system couldn't read his mind, it made sense that the system wouldn't exactly be able to help him with his everyday magic usage.

Yes, it could partially see his thoughts, as it was giving levels in skills according to that, but he couldn't think of any other reason for this situation. Why would it need to see into my soul to read my thoughts? Maxwell suddenly came to a realization. He doubted that the telepathy skill Nesha had, for example, worked with souls directly. Just manipulating mental energy seemed enough for the skill.

Even if the system couldn't enter his soul, it could still detect mental waves he was releasing, and this would certainly be enough for a being so powerful. If it still couldn't guess his thoughts according to amount of data it was receiving, then it would be unworthy to be a godlike being. In theory, I can trick the system, then, he thought. Though it would be much harder than anything he had done until this point.

Gaslighting Leveled Up 20→22

Rude, he thought, smiling. The system seemed to agree that he was still too far from doing such a thing. This, though, proved that at least some part of his theory was right. So the system doesn't help because it can only guess what I'm planning to do? Somehow, this felt unbelievable and believable at the same time.

Other people only needed to think to activate a skill, but Maxwell's skills were much more complex, and they would get even more complex as time went on. If the system had helped him with everything, it would probably have turned into a chaotic mess immediately if the system had guessed a simple detail wrongly.

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Still, things did not seem as bad as he thought, as even if it couldn't help him with skills, etherium seemed to be able to do the same thing, albeit a bit more cryptically. He pulled the mana out of the burning tree to extinguish the fire, and stared at the ashes for a couple of seconds before sighing tiredly. This was enough theorizing about things above his station.

I still need to find a way to turn invisible. He thought. He didn't want to receive terrified glances wherever he went. Darkness, despite being closely associated with being hidden, quickly proved useless with the task at hand, as using the mana made him even more conspicuous. If you saw a dark spot on a sunny day, standing in the middle of a street, you would probably be surprised, and this was exactly what happened when Maxwell tried to use darkness to be sneaky.

He could maybe use light mana or something like that, but that too seemed tedious. Even if he found a mana type like clarity or something, he doubted that it would make him completely invisible. I wish people would just ignore me, he thought. That would make his life much easier. Wait, can't I do that? He suddenly got an idea. In theory, he could release a telepathic field in his domain to make people ignore him. This, though, was easier said than done.

He was pretty competent with telepathy due to his extended experience, but this was nothing like he had ever done before. He would need to experiment a bit if he wanted it to work. Even if he managed to make it work, the skill would be useless against higher tiers, as his mental intrusion wouldn't be able to affect them, but that was okay. Maxwell's reason for getting this skillwas largely to consider people who had low levels anyway.

He was soon walking back into the outer city, and he was steadily releasing mental waves. He was keeping them low-powered, as he didn't want to accidentally kill someone with a particularly powerful mental wave. This was not as simple as saying "ignore me" to the people, as people wouldn't know who "me" was unless they knew who they were getting the message from.

He needed people to ignore the spot he was standing at all times instead of ignoring him specifically, and it was a formidable challenge. He tried some methods, but all he managed to do was to make a kid scream and an old lady look around, panicking. They would probably believe in ghosts until the end of their lives due to the trauma he gave them.

This made him shift his method. Sending people thoughts was hardly useful, it seemed, as it worked in the completely opposite direction from what he intended to accomplish with this skill. There was a skill in his options that worked through his eyes, and he really wished he could have a look at that skill now. It would help immensely to know how to tie a skill to seeing something.

What if I just attach the mental energy to light mana? His thought process suddenly made him think of something quite doable. Inside his domain, he could communicate with mana effortlessly, and all light had light mana intrinsically. While light travelled far faster than he could interact with it, he could definitely keep a cloud of mental energy that could interact with them as they came and got reflected from his body. That was how seeing worked after all.

He got excited, as he had a good feeling that this would work. He quickly formed a mental energy cloud tightly covering himself, and he focused on the cloud with a small mind created with his parallel thoughts skill.

This mind would infuse the cloud with the simple feeling of ignoring something, as Maxwell carefully discarded everything the mind contained. The skill's increased level also helped greatly, as he wouldn't be able to customize this mind if he still had the low-level version of the skill.

Soon enough, he could actually see that people were starting to ignore him even without giving the command to the cloud to interact with light. Although being more abstract, that was actually simpler, as essentially, this was just setting the target of the telepathy, and his intention was enough for the cloud to only interact with light.

As soon as he focused on this, he could immediately tell the difference. People just stopped looking at him, their eyes just sliding over him whenever they reached the spot where he was standing. He was pretty sure that the skill would be useless if he did something affecting the world, if he didn't cover that too with the same mental energy cloud, but the skill was immensely malleable. He was actually surprised that the system didn't give him a new skill for it. Oh, maybe, he thought, and crouched a little, making himself smaller like he was truly sneaking.

Skill "Hypnotic Stealth" Acquired.

Hypnotic Stealth: People sneak as they mind their own business. You, on the other hand, seem to be unable to respect the sanctity of their minds as you convince people who look at you that you are not actually there. Be careful, as sometimes, people are hard to convince.

Hypnotic Stealth Leveled Up 1→3

Elementary Soul Energy Manipulation Leveled Up 46→51

Finally, Maxwell thought, resuming to walk normally again. He was working on this skill for almost two hours now, and he was starting to get really sick of it. Now, though he was truly happy, this skill was really good, no matter how he looked, and it seemed like it was still tier one. This meant that it could become even more amazing. He would need to be careful in the future about the size of his soul space, though, as he guessed that the skill would lose its effect greatly outside his soul space.

He walked to a side alley to be sure that he was not seen, and Drakhabgar walked outside from the other side. This time, though, the terrifying presence he was releasing was met with indifference as he walked among the crowd like he was a simple commoner. Maxwell was pretty sure that if cameras ever worked again, this would make a hilarious sight.

Soon, he was convinced that the skill was working, and he floated up before starting to fly towards the inner city. When flying, the city felt a lot smaller than it was, and he was soon passing over the wall. He still landed when he passed over the borders, though, as there could be people inside with decently high levels.

He started to walk towards the Leyn Mansion. Maybe this time, he could actually enter the damned rift.