Chương 168: Sidewalks and Trams

The next few stores Damion visited were small artifact shops that seemed to be family owned. They each had pieces of C Rank armor for sale, but none of them had complete sets and C Rank artifacts were the limit of what they produced. Damion recalled a few years back when Arica had met Leland. She had suggested Leland move to a White Zone with his business because his quality of work was superb. Leland, however, was not so enthusiastic as he would be in a more competitive environment.

He could not help but feel these smaller artificer shops were forced not to make anything above C Rank for fear of being squashed by a few large shops that Damion had a feeling were owned by the noble families. When he expressed his guess on this to Elicia, she confirmed it.

"The four most powerful families each have an artificer shop. The families don't usually completely own it, but they usually have a controlling share in the business," Elicia explained.

"And all the other shops in town they either shut down or prevent from making high-quality artifacts."

"First, they try and recruit the talented artificer to their stores. If that doesn't work, then they tend to be a little more forceful."

"And the Justiciars don't intervene?" Damion asked. The Justiciar Order's core responsibility is law and order. They are responsible for keeping adventurers in check and bringing to justice people of any Rank that break the law. Damion found it hard to believe none of these small shops had never sought assistance from the Order when one of the noble families made an attempt to put them out of business.

"The Order prevents the noble families from overtly breaking the law and forcefully shutting down the small shops. But small shops that don't adhere to the nobles' rule of not producing high ranking artifacts find themselves not able to purchase the needed materials for making artifacts."

"Because the noble families also control the trade companies," Damion surmised.

"Precisely."

"They can't control everything though, right?" Damion asked as he looked at his terminal trying to figure out which of the four artificer shops that advertised B Rank belonged to which family. There were hundreds of shops on the list, but most were small shops, so he filtered the list by what the stores were offering to try to find what he was looking for. The last thing Damion wanted to do was go to the shop owned by the Thorn family.

If Damion had not filtered the list, and just scrolled through all the stores, he likely would have found a shop he would be interested in visiting: Teft Artifacts and Adventurer Supplies. As it was though, he never saw the store name on his list as he searched.

"The Sorin, Moretti, Caplan and Thorn families are the largest of the noble families. They each control a number of smaller noble families as well."

"I knew a Justiciar in Saung named Mathis Moretti, think he is related to the Moretti family here?"

"Probably. The Moretti's tend to push their less talented mages and knights into public service. Makes them seem more altruistic, but really, they are just building up their powerbase." Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Any idea which shop I should go to?" Damion asked. He still had not figured out who owned which shop.

"The Thorn's shop is Rosebud's Artifacts," Elicia said looking at the list of shops Damion had pulled up.

"The Sorin family controls Clear Sky. Fire's Hammer belongs solely to the Moretti's and Calm Sea is the Caplan families."

"Well, I know which to avoid. No way am I going to Rosebud's. And Clear Sky might be awkward for you and complicate things if I go in and get a discount but still refuse to join them. That leaves the Moretti family and the Caplan family."

"The Moretti's focus on Fire affinity artifacts while the Caplan's focus on Water. Being an Ice user, they would likely have armor you are more compatible with."

"Sounds like a plan, but they are on the other side of the city," Damion said after pulling up the location on his tablet.

"Follow me," Elicia said leading Damion to a staircase leading down into the sidewalk. At first Damion was wondering where they were going, but then he remembered that running under the sidewalks was a sort of train network. The stairway Elicia was taking him down must run down to their platform. Damion's guess proved correct, and Elicia led him into train car that could fit about ten people, though right now it was only the two of them.

Damion did not see a map, or a list of stops and he was about to ask Elicia how they would know when they should get off to transfer to another line when she spoke the address for Calm Sea. The train car sudden took off along the underside of the sidewalk. Behind them, Damion could see the rest of what he thought was the train. It turned out each compartment could move on its own.

As Damion looked around, he noticed Elicia was holding onto a handle, similar to the ones in Manager Halsey's ground car and he realized the train needed magic to run so he grabbed hold of another handle.

"You've never ridden on the public tram system, have you?" Elicia asked as she watched Damion as he looked at everything he could.

"Nope. My first time in a White Zone was when Teft brought me to the school. Seeing the huge buildings and all the air cars was amazing. When we did the labyrinth run last week, we took the ground car straight there. This is only my third time in the city."

"Each tram can take you wherever the sidewalks run in the city. You shouldn't have to ever walk more than a few blocks to find a station."

"What happens if there are no trams at a station? How long do you have to wait for one to show up?"

"The city has a system in place where the trams will get redistributed if one station starts running low on trams."

"How do the sidewalks support the trams without structural support? Especially when they cross streets from one side to another?"

"Why ask me? I'm not an artificer," Elicia told him.

"Oh, right. Sorry, my dad was an architect. He liked designing things, but he wasn't a mage, so I don't really get magic construction."

"All the trams and all the sidewalks are artifacts. I don't know what kind of enchantments they have, but I do know they don't fall because of the enchantments makes them weightless. So they don't need a lot of supports to hold them up."

"Weightless, floating or anti-gravity?" Damion asked quickly as he eyed the underside of the sidewalk their tram was traveling under.

"What's the difference?"

"Weightless, would mean the enchantments makes them weigh nothing. So, anyone could pick them up and move them around. Floating means they are enchanted to fly, but only stay in one place. They probably didn't enchant them that way, it would likely cost too much mana," Damion trailed off as he considered the possibilities of these trams and sidewalks on Earth.

"And anti-gravity?" Elicia asked, snapping Damion back to reality.

"Oh, well anti-gravity would mean they are enchanted to either ignore or reverse the effects of gravity. So, instead of constantly being pulled towards the ground, they can float."

"How is that different than a floating or flying enchantment?"

"Flying enchantments cause motion. They force you to move through the air. Anti-gravity enchantments counteract the motion of the gravity pulling you down."

"Well, I'm glad to see you have been paying attention in Professor Heinrick's class. But I still can't tell you which it is. Or even if it is any of them. You can probably ask the Professor though. I'm sure he will appreciate you trying to solve the puzzle. This is our stop."