Maxwell took a breath of fresh air. His world was at normal speed once again. He could hear Bob sleeping on the ground near a campfire.

  They were still near the stream, with no animals around them as far as he could see. Anything that wouldn’t sleep at night wouldn’t attack something that killed the metal crocodile he supposed.

  Gendor was sitting near the boy, crosslegged. He was watching the fire thoughtfully.

  His face was devoid of his usual sarcastic expression and that gave an eerie feeling to Maxwell.

  He still chose to trust the man for now.If he wanted, the man would probably be able to kill them when Maxwell was in a trance. He didn’t.

  How much time did I spend doing algebra? He didn’t realize how much time had passed. He checked his notifications quickly to get an idea about his situation.

  Guide Mana Leveled Up Lvl-36→40

  Mental Resistance Leveled Up Lvl-4→12

  Soul’s Voice Leveled Up 22→25

  Meditation Leveled Up 26→35

  Mana Infusion Leveled Up 20→21

  Skill “Parallel Thought” acquired.

  Parallel Thought: Split your mind into two. The user can change the amount of mental power each section has. Minds can be made automatic for monotonous tasks.

  Maxwell could think of several ways to use this skill. He would need to experiment with it later.

  Monotonous tasks definitely included algebra, as he didn’t feel like he was doing anything right now despite his other mind doing it in the background.

  Skill “Mathematics” Acquired

  Mathematics Leveled Up Lvl-1→29

  Well, that was just embarrassing.

  Mathematics Leveled Up Lvl-29→30

  This is even worse than the other one… Maxwell lamented as he remembered his honesty skill.

  Title Earned: Adept Of Spirituality

  Title Earned: Adept Of Mind

  Titles Merged: Adept Of Soul

  Adept Of Soul: You are adept at using the attribute of Soul without the system's assistance.

  Huh, neat. These would help in his future evolutions.

  Trait: Partial Etheral Body updated.

  Partial Etheral Body: As your existence shifts towards the soul, your sensitivity to energies increases. Your body uses the soul for half of its nourishment, and it continues to evolve towards it as mana flows through your blood.

  Vitality will be obsolete in the future, I guess. Maybe I can trade it? Maxwell thought in amusement. He didn’t think trading a couple of vitality points would get him anything worthwhile, but it was still fun to think about.

  Maybe the whole stat as a concept would get me something good, though, he thought before clearing his mind. Now was not the time for this by any means.

  ‘’So animals aren’t bothering us anymore?’’ He asked Gendor. The man was startled for a second by the sudden voice, and Maxwell could see his breathing getting faster. Maxwell was delighted.

  ‘’You finally awake? We thought you were dead first, but you were breathing, so we camped.’’ Gendor said. ‘The animals were a bit fidgety at first, but they got used to us after they saw us doing nothing for hours.’’ He added before yawning.

  ’’Now that you are awake, your’s truly will go to sleep. This kid sleeps like a log, so I couldn’t count on him to keep watch.’’ Gendor said.

  ‘’You trust me enough to sleep beside me?’’ Maxwell asked. He was really curious about this guy’s mentality.

  ’’Look, kid, I’m sorry that I considered that option, but I hope you will be satisfied with the choice I made.’’ Gendor said in a serious tone for once. ‘’I can’t talk about what I was doing on the ship, but know that it was not something evil or bad for you.’’ He added looking at his eyes.

  ‘’Does it even matter after the integration?’’ Maxwell asked, and Gendor snorted at the question.

  ’’New ways to power only make the people with power stronger. I don’t think this will be different, but it remains to be seen. Let’s leave it at that,’’ he said in his usual cynical tone.

  Maxwell thought about his own world. He is probably right, Maxwell was the strongest man in the world in Zephyr because of his money.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  When the joke of an initiation happened to them, this didn’t make the parties like the military more powerful as it should have. He was still the most powerful, even after 14 years of war.

  ’’We’ll see, I guess. I don’t really care about politics, and Bob probably can’t understand it. I doubt you will see many problems from us.’’ Maxwell said. He didn’t add that, eventually, politics cared about you if you were big enough.

  ’’With the rate you are going, you will be everyone’s problem in the sector soon enough.’’ Gendor said, laughing softly.

  ’’Can you tell me more about the world in general?’’ Maxwell asked, noticing the use of the word “sector.” He still didn’t know anything about the universe he was in.

  ’’I guess I can. You are remarkably ignorant about these matters. Did it happen after your fall?’’ Gendor asked curiously.

  ‘’Yes, everything is fragmented beyond a day before.’’ Maxwell lied.

  Gaslighting Leveled Up Lvl-5→6

  He tried to ignore the message as he watched Gendor for his response.

  ’’Hmm, in that case, let's start going step by step toward the big old universe. Firstly, we're here, of course. This is Planet Rokun of the Demeron Star System. It’s one of the few lush planets we have in this Sector. Also it’s one of the three habited planets in the Demeron System. They probably still have contact with each other as our ship was still operational like theirs should be.’’

  "Are the other planets similar to this planet?’’ Maxwell asked. He was quite excited to hear that there was a pretty big civilization here spanning across worlds.

  Every smart person had a phase in which they were interested in those kinds of stories. Maxwell’s phase never ended as he couldn't see enough material to get bored of the stuff in the middle of a war.

  "No, not by any means. One of them is the first planet from the sun of this system, which is very creatively named Demeron.

  It’s a mining planet for some rare metals. The other one is a bit weird. Its name is Sendir, and they use it mainly for experiments. Like, the explosive kind.’’ Gendor said in an educational tone.

  ’’Who are they?’’ Maxwell asked. It was clear that Gendor saw himself separate from whoever this civilization was.

  ‘’I will eventually answer that. Anyway, this star system and a couple of others are grouped into a sector. This sector is named Sector Ghanam. It’s not somewhere you would want to migrate to as the people who live here are usually like Radam, who is a massive psycho if you haven’t noticed.’’

  Gendor smiled at his own joke, and seeing Maxwell staring at him silently, he pouted before continuing his tale.

  ’’You are too serious. Take a shit or something. Where was I? Oh yeah, Sector Ghanam is a bit barbaric. Not as much as this planet, mind you. They still have technology and plumbing and stuff, but you can still duel people to death if you have a beef with them.’’

  Maxwell couldn’t care less about plumbing in a universe like this. His body was barely producing any waste with just 13 levels. He guessed that it would cease to produce any soon enough.

  ’’From your expression, I understand that you don’t understand the holiness of plumbing. I will continue.” Gendor said, throwing him an expression of mock disgust.

  “There are 13 sectors inside the federation. Some of them are similar to Ghanam, and some of them are vastly more civilized. The most important Sector you should probably know is the Sector Xeronite. This sector also has the Capital Planet inside with the same name.’’ Gendor yawned again.

  ’’So they will just let Radam do whatever on this planet?’’ Maxwell asked. He would focus his attention in the immediate future for now.

  ’’Galactic Federation -which is named way too ambitously- is a big federation. It can’t really help the planets if they can’t protect themselves because sensing any meaningful force takes too much time.”he stopped for a second thinking.

  “It will probably worse now as they can’t even transmit information instantaneously now, as that was something fucked by the integration, among other things.’’ Gendor was starting to sound really tired as he went. Maxwell suspected that the man was doing it on purpose.

  ’’I will sleep now if Your Majesty is satisfied.’’ Gendor said before lying down. Before Maxwell could say anything, he was already sleeping.

  He is becoming more and more cynical… In just a day, the guy in front of him changed from an old, ignorant cleaner to a smartass agent, and he was still transitioning into an even more insufferable state of existence.

  Jokes aside, Maxwell was quite happy with the information he managed to get from the man. Not that he neeeded to exert much effort as Gendor seemed to enjoy hearing his own voice.

  This universe was making his blood boil with excitement. Contrary to popular belief, back in his own world, he was not a workaholic.

  He really liked traveling and seeing new places. Usually, people forgot to take the fact that he had been fighting a war for many years into account when they analyzed his personality.

  13 sectors. Who knows how many planets are being changed by the integration? I will not be getting bored for a long time.

  He could feel that he was improving mentally since his transmigration. His incredibly high soul stat probably played a part in that.

  The important thing was that no matter why he was getting better, this was the most excited he had felt in the last, maybe 20 years.

  He felt like he was in his old days when he started to earn money for the first time. There were so many possibilities back then too, but they were nothing compared to what he had now.

  One step at a time. He was not that different from the state Gendor was in, a couple of minutes ago as he stared at the fire thoughtfully.

  It didn’t take too much time for his attention to turn into magic once more after staying still for a while. While he was looking at the fire, he got an idea.

  He learned metal from metal and blood from blood. In theory, he should be able to learn fire from fire if things followed a similar logic.

  He immediately started testing this theory by turning up his Prima Sense. He could clearly sense the mana particles inside the fire.

  There were a couple of different particles mixed in, but most of them were the same type. He figured this was the fire affinity mana.

  He tried to communicate with the particles, but it was very inefficient compared to controlling his mana stream.

  I probably shouldn’t use that as a standard, That was a part of himself after all.

  He could see the fire getting smaller as he pulled fire affinity mana outside it. He was careful not to extinguish it though, as he didn’t know how to light it again. It would be embarrassing to wake Gendor up for that.

  He observed the fire as he fed it with small branches, and he was surprised to see that fire mana could actually be created by fire itself.

  While fire disappeared when he took the mana out, it didn’t really need the mana to come into being. It needed the mana to keep existing though.

  Considering his theories before, fire probably couldn’t burn the oxygen in the air, which was infused with mana, without being infused with mana itself. That made sense in his own little theory.

  Magic Theory Leveled Up 12→16

  Well, maybe not only in my theory… He thought.

  He was still clueless about creating fire from nothing though. Or creating anything from nothing, really as he couldn’t do that with anything yet.

  Blood mana was just a pile of red mana. Metal mana was a white mana that made mana orbs and metals more stable.

  Truth be told, he just wanted to throw fireballs but that seemed very hard for some reason.

  Maxwell had seen choppers destroyed in the air by magic attacks before though ,and those were not pure mana like his mana bolts, so there was definitely a way to create things with magic. He just didn’t know how.

  After an hour of testing, he could generate fire from something burnable just by using his mana. Albeit unable to generate fire from nothing, fire mana still created heat as metal mana created hardness. This way, he could pile fire mana to burn things.

  Even as it is, he could definitely throw a fire affinity mana bolt, and that would probably still cause a "fiery" explosion, but it would still be a lot weaker than what it would be with real fire.

  Also, everybody knew throwing a real firebolt was way cooler than throwing a red ball.

  Magic Theory Leveled Up Lvl-16→21

  Even the system agreed.