Three people sat awkwardly in a room filled with weird pieces of furniture carved out of rock. One of the people in the room was particularly fidgety as they sipped their tea from their cups, which were also carved from rock.

  Maxwell was unsure what to do after Bob’s perfect execution of his command, "Bring them.". He was not sure if he had broken the boy with his trait or if he had been like this from the start.

  After killing three pursuers, Maxwell was conflicted about what to do with the last one. He looked at Darve, who was slowly shedding his noble way of speaking out of sheer stupidity of the situation. He was clearly agitated as his eyes darted from side to side as he sipped his tea.

  ’’So, what do you want to do with the last guy?’’ He asked the guy. For a change, he didn’t want to decide if someone lived or died.

  ‘’I can take him back to the city. My father would be happy to have someone like him.’’ Darve said. Maxwell was not sure what the man meant by that.

  ’’What do you mean?’’ He asked. He wasn’t really bothered by exposing his ignorance about matters on this planet. This was a multi-planetary civilization, so probably there were some outsiders from time to time.

  ‘’As workforce, you know? Ehem… I suppose I can just call them slaves.’’ Darve said.

  ’’Oh.’’ Maxwell said, finally comprehending. He was obviously against slavery as someone from a modern civilization, but he also knew he wouldn’t be able to change this situation easily. In medieval cultures, slavery was something seen as normal.

  Darve seemed not to realize his awkwardness on the subject as he continued explaining, mistaking Maxwell’s silence as urging him to continue.

  ‘’He could use this guy as a bodyguard or something. He often faces assasination attempts,’’ he added, apparently finding this fact normal.

  ‘’What about the person who hired them?’’ Maxwell asked. He was curious about the puppy in the memory he saw. Why would someone rich send four very high-level people after a puppy?

  ’’They are probably mercenaries. Pissing off the wrong people and becoming a slave is very common in their line of work,’’ he said, frowning as he was speaking. He seemed to consider something before taking a deep breath and speaking.

  ‘’Look, I will be real for a couple of moments here. I’m a mercenary myself as I don’t get on well with my family.’’ He made a weird face as if he remembered something distasteful. ‘’They are stuck-up assholes who don’t understand that this will become the era of individuals, not families or groups,’’ he said. He sounded like he had spoken this sentence many times before.

  ‘’If they can still hire people with money, they might be right,’’ Maxwell said, but he also knew that as many people they could hire, there were only so many willing to work for them. If you could steal from the rich without anybody stopping you, it wouldn’t make sense to keep being the underdog.

  ’’For now, he might do just that. But any time some random guy with a higher strength than his employees can appear and take everything.’’ Darve said. He was looking at Maxwell weirdly as he said this. ‘’Someone like you guys, for example,’’ he said reluctantly.

  “Don’t your family also level up?” Maxwell asked. He was quite curious, as these people were like miniature versions of himself in his past life. If initiation happened as it should have in Zephyr, he was not entirely sure he would be any better.

  Who am I kidding? I had the world in my palm. His mind created a narcissistic thought, and he found himself agreeing with it. No matter how laid back you were, there came a point that you would be proud of what you accomplished.

  ’’They have all chosen non-battle classes believing that this too would be a world ruled by the one with the most money.’’ Darve said in a depressed voice. ‘’They probably got good advancements, and they level up really fast as they are quite successful in their job, but they can’t directly channel that into battle power.’’ He added.

  ’’So you are trying to be powerful enough to protect them?’’ Maxwell asked, perfectly knowing that this was far from the truth. He just wanted to point this guy in a relatively more reasonable direction.

  It seemed to work as Darve was startled visibly when he heard the question. Maxwell could see that he was confused. Maxwell knew young people would easily deviate from their families when they disagreed with them. Maybe this kid could have a better life if he could change his mind a little.

  ’’What… Oh… Of course. Exactly like that. If I don’t save them, they will be destroyed by someone random.’’ The boy said as he convinced himself in mere seconds. Suddenly, he seemed more like the boy he was rather than a mercenary.

  Gaslighting Leveled Up Lvl-6→10

  Maxwell frowned at the weird level-up; he had gained way too many levels out of that. He chose to ignore the skill as he always did. He would probably need to find a way to hide the skill in the future.

  ’’Good luck to you then. Are you going back to the city? Why were you in the forest in the first place?’’ He asked in curiosity. Maybe this guy would say something about the puppy.

  ’’There is a big area towards the south with lesser beast reportings for the last week. The military regularly sends people out for them to level, and this has been impacting the efforts quite severely. I came here to scout the area and, if I could, fix it.’’ Darve said. Maxwell had a feeling that Darve never believed that he could fix this problem in the first place.

  Maxwell was excited as this was a clear hint for him. Something that would cause animals to leave a large area was clearly a territorial animal. Maxwell had a couple of dogs throughout his past life, and he knew how territorial they could become.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  This theory also explained the puppy image. They probably were trying to kidnap the puppy as it would doubtlessly turn into a strong pet.

  He was skeptical that they would be able to do what they intended to do, though. Even he wouldn’t dare to try something like that as he was currently. A simple mole with a high level almost beat them a couple of days ago; he was not optimistic about facing an animal that could claim such a large area.

  “So, are you going to continue your mission?” Maxwell asked, sounding a bit more threatening than he intended. What could he do? He liked dogs.

  Darve was dumbfounded for a second as his expression morphed into fear, acceptance, and relief in order. He spoke calmly after a couple of seconds of silence.

  “Of course not. Now that I know there are people I can trust here, I will leave that to your hands.” Darve said, sounding like he found the secret to happiness. “By the way, what should I call you? I will probably need to tell people about you,” he asked carefully. He was probably anxious about them trying to silence him.

  “You can call me Merchant for now. Call my friend Shield if you need to mention him.” Maxwell answered, feeling particularly uncreative at the moment. He could see Bob making a weird face in his peripheral vision.

  “Are you a merchant?” Darve asked with a shocked expression. This made Maxwell realize that this guy probably never used Observe on them out of caution. He laughed as he was amused by the guy’s reaction. They certainly didn’t look like they were merchants.

  “Not exactly, but you could say that I am, in a way.” he said, still laughing softly.

  “What do you sell?” Darve asked. He sounded particularly interested despite his supposed distaste of the trade.

  “Depends on what you want and what you can give,” Maxwell answered, not knowing how he could explain his trait without sounding like a swindler.

  “That's very broad.” Darve said, looking at him weirdly. He was thoughtful for a few seconds as they sat in silence.

  “Do you have anything that will make me more powerful?” He asked, looking at Maxwell hopefully. He wouldn’t usually believe in someone randomly saying something like Maxwell did, but he could see that Maxwell had no reason to lie.

  “Unless you gave me something really unique, I don’t,” Maxwell said, trying not to sound too patronizing.

  “How is this?” Darve asked as he pulled out a small satchel from his bag. It seemed like a regular satchel to normal eyes, but Maxwell’s senses were far from normal.

  Expanded Satchel - Tier 1

  A satchel slightly expanded with magic. It contains twice the area it is supposed to have.

  Maxwell just stared at the explanation for a couple of seconds. So items also have tiers, he thought faintly before that thought was consumed by his excitement.

  This thing was quite useless practically as it wouldn’t matter if you had a satchel two times bigger than it should be, as it would be pretty small even then.

  What made Maxwell excited was the fact that he could actually feel space mana from this thing. Even if he couldn’t, he could at least identify a mana particle related to it.

  “Do they make these kinds of things in the city?” he asked curiously. If he could get a couple of things like this, he could probably learn a lot of affinities.

  “They do. This one would be costly, though. One of my brothers has chosen to become an artisan, and his affinity is apparently space. He crafted this after a lot of work.” Darve said. He seemed to like this brother of his, as there was a trace of affection in his voice.

  “What’s your affinity? I suppose you can use some kind of magic?” Maxwell asked, starting to get an idea of what he could give to the boy.

  “Well, I’m a swordsman, so I have skills related to that. My affinity is wind, though.” Darve said. Sounding a bit ashamed of his affinity.

  “What’s wrong with wind?” Maxwell asked. He didn’t know anything about affinities as he was free of them in general. “Can you show me?” he added.

  “It’s a suboptimal element for doing something physical swordsmanship,” Darve said. He sounded quite convinced that his element was subpar. He unsheathed his sword and swung it towards the sky, firing a wind blade.

  That actually looks powerful. Maxwell was curious what they were telling to this guy for him to think that his affinity was weak. Nonetheless, he got what he wanted as he felt the wind particles in the blade.

  “Okay, I can give you something for this, but nothing too drastic. If you don’t like it, you can take the satchel back, as I’m not sure if this will turn out to be as good as I intend. Now, give me your sword.” Maxwell said rapidly. He intentionally didn’t give Darve any time to think.

  Darve hesitated a bit before reluctantly handing his sword to him. It was a beautifully crafted shortsword with a generously decorated hilt. It had many precious gems on the hilt. Maxwell used observation on it.

  Sword of House Leyn - Tier 1

  A pre-initiation family heirloom of the Leyn family. It’s been strengthened by a talented young blacksmith.

  It was respectable for this blacksmith to turn this sword into tier one item. Normal people didn’t have Maxwell’s infusion after all. The said skill has reached level 37 after his carving adventures in the last three days.

  He focused and got to work. As a start, he imagined metal mana coalescing on the sword, making it stronger. The sword was still far from being as mana-dense as other things were in its current state. The sword was unharmed in a mana-infused world only because of its superior craftsmanship.

  He imagined metal mana making the sword harder, stronger, and sharper. This part of the process was easy and probably enough to pay for the satchel, but Maxwell wanted to add something extra. In other words, he would experiment a bit on the sword.

  He started to feel for the wind mana as he tried to infuse it into the blade. As he expected, the mana was quite disagreeable. This was where the hard part began. He started to imagine the wind mana sticking to the metal mana inside the sword as he sent this image to the mana.

  For the first time in days, he could feel a strain in his mind as the mana protested the ridiculous notion, but he didn’t give up.

  Soon he was relieved to see that some of the wind mana was starting to stick to the metal mana particles inside the sword. He was not sure what kind of an effect this woulda have, but he was pretty sure it would have at least some effect.

  After using about half of his mana pool, which was gigantic for his level, he was done with the sword. He could feel that about a quarter of the mana inside the sword was wind mana, which meant that his efforts had been successful.

  The system also seemed to acknowledge this as he heard a notification soon enough.

  Item Successfully Upgraded

  Tier 1→ Tier 2

  Title Acquired: Infusion Enchanter

  ’