Merchant Of Yliaster

Maxwell hit Darve with a low-powered mental energy burst, trying to wake up the unconscious man. He was not sure what Blueberry did to make him stay unconscious, but he was relieved to find the man twitching.

A moment later, he suddenly shot up, drawing his sword to form a flowing attack towards Maxwell. Maxwell raised an eyebrow under his mask and just pulled out the energy of the attack, making it disperse without reaching him.

After his recent level-ups, Darve was like a child in front of him. He watched as Darve sent him a confused glance. Did I remove too many memories? Maxwell was a bit concerned, but the young man's face relaxed, clearly coming to a conclusion.

"Did I lose consciousness? How?" he said, making a face of concentration.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Maxwell asked.

"We entered a cave filled with weird mushrooms, and I think you killed something there, but it's all foggy. I don't remember anything other than that." Darve said, relieving Maxwell's fears.

"You were hit by a surprise attack, but I brought you out. The cave is gone, though. The process was not exactly smooth." Maxwell lied blatantly, his voice not even quivering for a second. Now that things were slowly getting more serious, he was starting to use his past skills more and more. Giving amusing half-truths like he did to Bob would not do anymore.

"I'm not injured, though? My body feels like shit though, I suppose it was a blunt attack? Thanks for bringing me out. Turns out my family was right." Darve said, sounding puzzled at first, but thankful at the end.

Even Maxwell felt a bit helpless seeing the young man embracing his lies so openly, but he supposed a normal person wouldn't have anything to gain in this situation. Drakhabgar also wasn't known to have the means to create this situation.

Gaslighting Leveled Up 22→27

Why do you even call it gaslighting? Lying would do, or you could use some word like manipulation, but this just feels wrong. Maxwell ranted in his mind against the system after seeing the notification.

"Are we going back? Or do you want to hunt some fish?" Maxwell asked. Even though he felt bad about making the young man stay unconscious all that time, he would help if he could. It wouldn't hurt to have a strong connection among the nobles of the city.

"Ugh, I don't really want to, but I guess we had better do that if we are here," Darve said, and they started fishing.

Nesha watched the growing crowd on the exclusive floor of the Nest. With the Nest opening up to high-level individuals on top of nobles, her stream of customers was getting bigger and bigger.

There were around thirty people in the room, compared to the usual ten, and they also looked much more inelegant compared to the customers before the initiation. In a way, this made her happier, as without the initiation, they would have no way to close the gap. The pattern was too set in their civilization.

Nesha always felt unsatisfied with how the world was, but initiation gave her some hope for real change on the horizon.

Also, there was that Maxwell guy. Nesha had admitted the girl he suddenly dropped in the nest in a comparably prestigious school in the outer city, and she was quite happy seeing that she was adapting quite fast. It was as if the girl was simply free from the bad emotions.

Nothing managed to make Mary sad, and she had been a joy to have beside her. She still came back to The Nest after school, and Nesha found herself enjoying the girl's positive presence. She found the teddy bear the girl always carried a bit creepy, but that was only a small inconvenience.

She was curious what Maxwell did to her real parents, but she was pretty sure they earned whatever they faced in the end. This also proved that the man was not very gentle when there was a need to act. Nesha could never observe the man's level, so she was sure that he was powerful.

He seemed quite uninterested in being a noble, but Nesha knew better than to consider the man arrogant just because of this. The fact that her bodyguards didn't move even when they considered the man dangerous was proof enough, as with the new policy of accepting anyone with a high enough level, they were more on their toes than ever.

Her trait, "Psychic" made her able to influence the world using her mental energy, and also enabled her to actually sense the said energy. Despite this fact, though, she was quite clueless about how she could communicate mentally before that guy taught her exactly that, like it was something everyone knew how to do.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Nothing about the man was normal, and even his brother was quite friendly towards him. Clearly respecting his strength despite never actually fighting against the guy. Devon had almost never seen people as equals, and even if he did, he did everything to surpass them, lowering them once more in his eyes. With this man, though, he was totally different, as if he could sense something different about him, too.

Once, Nesha tried to feel the man's mind when he was eating one of his meals, and she was shocked to feel that she couldn't even begin her intrusion. It was like the man's mind existed in a different plane of existence, completely inaccessible to them. She couldn't even feel any mental energy radiating, as his mind was completely isolated.

While she couldn't feel his mental energy, though, some of her guards could feel the man's mana, and their expressions were quite funny when she asked them about it. Giving information to him about the noble system had been a gamble, but she was pretty sure that she had played her hand right.

With the new nature of things, only the strong would survive in the new world. Looking around her, she could see many people with high levels, but none she couldn't identify, including his brother, who was level 27. His brother was on the edge in the recent days, and a purge followed, ridding them of many of their enemies. The man's level also consequently rose, but the terrifying thing about him had never been his level anyway.

Soon, she returned to her room, taking one of her rare breaks. While there was no serving in these periods of rare inactivity, people hardly left the nest. As the environment was unmatched by any place they could go to.

As she was absorbed in her thoughts, she was startled as a bird suddenly appeared, phasing through the wall. She almost screamed, and she was pretty sure Devon would enter through the wall if she did, but the bird was familiar. She stopped herself with a show of will, looking at the creature curiously.

"Why are you here? Did something happen to your master?" she asked. It was an interesting coincidence, as she was just thinking about the master of the bird.

"Chirp!" The bird said, and Nesha found herself laughing without even thinking about it. She was pretty sure the bird just said something like "Take care of him, pet." While any other people would die after saying that, Nesha couldn't feel anger towards the little bird.

In the next moment, something terrifying happened, as the bird suddenly duplicated, shooting out of her own body like she was done with it. Nesha couldn't even understand what she was seeing for a moment, but the bird's body pulsed with a green light for a second before exploding into a mass of green matter.

She couldn't observe this state for long, though, and a fraction of a second later, Felix stood before her, once more in his puppy form. He was even smaller than the first time she had seen her, making her question reality. Could dogs grow backwards? She was not slow, though, and she figured anything that could turn into a bird could easily turn into their younger selves.

Thinking about the bird, her eyes searched for it, but she couldn't find it. Did she phase through the wall? Her mind caught up to the implications quite fast. If the bird could pass through the walls, this meant that she could assassinate almost everyone in the city. This immediately increased her master's political importance in the eyes of her, as pissing him off could literally mean immediate death. She was not dumb enough to think that the bird would be weak, as even a puppy effortlessly killed an intruder in their house before.

She observed the puppy before her, curious about his level, but all she received was a question mark, making her feel hopeless about the situation. The Nest was a prestigious establishment, and it was supposed to attract the most powerful people these days, but the first person she couldn't identify was someone's dog.

After a moment of consideration, she just gave up and hugged the puppy. She had been over this before, and she refused to be more careful around the dog. The next moment, her face changed as she clearly felt a telepathical connection establish itself between her and the dog. Oh, don't tell me. She began to think.

"Snacks?" a loud toneless voice, illogically filled to the brim with hope, slammed into her mind, making her vince due to its heaviness. "Please make your messages weaker," she sent, immediately forgetting that she was talking to a dog due to the pain in her mind.

"Snacks?" a lower, but still quite loud voice asked, but the emotion was definitely toned down. Nesha just shook her head helplessly. "Yeah, I guess I make those," she said out loud, not feeling like telepathy was something special anymore. Maybe sticking to cooking was the way to go?

Maxwell was surprised to feel the start of a sneeze out of nowhere, but the feeling was immediately terminated by Soul Over Matter. Sneezing while playing Drakhabgar would just look stupid, and he was wearing a mask. He was never a superstitious person, but this was quite interesting, as there was no way he could sneeze randomly with his stats.

He boredly tossed a trapfish with tendrils made of darkness, which did not do much beyond being there for show, as he was moving the fish mostly by telekinesis. He had been using these few idle minutes to examine shadows more carefully, as he doubted that the shadows could be any more accentuated anywhere else.

The sun was so bright that even his enhanced eyes were burning due to the sun's rays shining from the sand. Anyone below level 20 wouldn't survive this place for more than a few minutes, he felt. As a result of this, shadows also looked much deeper than they would look anywhere else, as there was only a single sun hanging in the sky.

Even Darve looked visibly tired, as the man had been sweating buckets since they surfaced. He had already gone through liters of water, and even Maxwel felt thankful to the young man's kidneys' hard work.

He watched disinterestedly as Darve ripped the fish apart with his windblades. While he was truly gifted with his sword, Maxwell could see why he would find the wind element useless. A sword had a pretty aerodynamic shape anyway, so the man couldn't even use the element to reduce the air resistance. Well, he could, but it would hardly do anything at his current level.

Other than that, all the young man could use was firing wind blades, as he was not a mage who could create spells, but a swordsman. Maxwell felt like completely ignoring the affinity and focusing on a pure sword class would be better for the man, but he supposed people were too caught up in magic to do that.

He could hardly speak against this, as he also had an obsession with magic.