Chương 182: Profiting

Damion and Elicia were escorted out of the Justiciar's compound and quickly made their way to the nearest public tram to head back to the school. When the tram arrived at the stop closest to the drop off point for Silver Spire students, instead of following Elicia to wait for the next ground car to the school, Damion headed the opposite way.

"Where are you going?" Elicia asked quickly catching up to Damion.

"Flannery's. I have a lot of extra quality artifacts I need to unload."

"What?" Elicia was shocked that Damion would sell the artifacts from his kills, especially since many of them belonged to noble families.

"If you sell those artifacts they can be traced back to you. Aren't you afraid the noble families will come after you for killing their members?"

"They will come after me anyways. Do you really think that my involvement in their deaths and the fact I actually killed several of them will be kept secret?" Damion asked in disbelief. In theory Justiciar investigations were confidential, but there was no way the noble families who just lost members were going to sit on their hands and not look into the deaths. They probably would not even need to bribe anyone to learn it was Damion who was responsible.

He felt fairly certain Justiciar Straus would let it slip for free. If not outright call them and tell the nobles. Aside from being a true A Rank knight, Damion was not sure how such a blatantly corrupt person became the most powerful Justiciar in Argentum. The man had clearly wanted to keep Damion's spoils and even after being called on it, still tried to hang on to the spatial artifacts.

If not for the Headmaster and Mage Teft being there, Damion was sure he would have received nothing but a quick brushoff about the spoils and would never had a chance to keep them.

"Have you ever encountered such a corrupt Justiciar before?" Damion asked Elicia.

"Corrupt? Because he was going to keep the items from the nobles? Don't be so quick to assign motives to him. He could have been intending to return the items to the owners' families, to minimize their reactions." Damion considered Elicia's theory for a moment before dismissing it. The feeling he got from Justiciar Straus was one of selfishness, not one of looking at the big picture.

"Whatever his motives were, it doesn't matter. He tried to keep what wasn't his. He could have asked or offered that as an option. The way he went about things makes me almost certain he was just wanting to keep my loot for himself."

"But don't you think selling the items is a bit… provocative?"

"And trying to kill me isn't?" Damion snapped. Elicia took a step back at Damion's tone. Sure, he had just been through a lot, but she felt it was a bit unjust for him to take it out on her.

"Sorry," Damion told her when he saw the hurt look on Elicia's face.

"Most of the time in these situations, the spoils are sold back to the families or traded back for other things of value," Elicia explained.

"If you sell them, you will just make them even angrier."

"This isn't the first time someone has tried to kill me you know. When I was 15 a member of the Bianco family tried to have a local guild kill me."

"Do you think it is the same person?" Elicia questioned.

"Probably not. He gave up after that one attempt. And I haven't seen him in years. Other than meeting his aunt briefly when they tried to get me to go to Erythraean Academy, I haven't had any contact with them. I think it was the Thorn family or maybe the Fontane brothers acting on their own."

"The Thorn family I understand. You disgraced one of their most powerful mages. But what makes you think the Fontane brothers were behind it?" This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

"I was in a dungeon run with them last year. They were not pleased I upstaged them as a knight. And now, here I am a mage. I bet they thought I pretended to be a knight just to embarrass them or something."

"I guess that could be true. The Fontane family is one of the richest families around. They control a number of very profitable low Rank dungeons. They are able to acquire very rare materials frequently, but they horde them to prevent the prices from dropping. I heard that one of the dungeons they control actually has extremely rare Spatial beasts as well."

"That would explain how both of the brothers had spatial artifacts," Damion said as he entered Quality Surplus Artifacts. The place had changed in the few weeks since he had been here. Gone were the overflowing tables of damaged and broken artifacts, replaced with quite the assortment of boxes.

"Sorry, no time for sales at the moment," Amos Flannery shouted from out of site in the back of the store.

"I'm actually here to sell. Or to at least get a fair appraisal if you aren't willing to buy," Damion shouted back.

"Now that's more like it!" Flannery shouted as he rushed to the front.

"Pardon my boxes. In the process of moving! Found a wonderful new business partner in a Green… Oh, it's you."

"Hello again," Damion said with a smile.

"I must thank you. Your contacts were indeed sublime. I'm heading to Saung to open up my shop. I'll handle used goods, while Leland handles new products. Wonderful arrangement we've made. You said you had something to sell?"

"Let me show you," Damion said as he moved over to an empty table and began unloading his spoils. A full set of C Rank armor and a C Rank longsword from Knight Macmillan. The armor was heavy and bulkier than Damion liked, but it was well made and of quality material. Macmillan's longsword also had a fire attack glyph on it, similar to the one Damion made use of on his spatha. Aside from the spatial artifacts, the Fontane brothers had been carrying a pair of D Rank daggers made from Aurichalcum.

These Damion left in the spatial artifact as he had been in need of a quality dagger for some time. Sure, his Ice Sword was useful, and he could adjust its length, so it could be an ice dagger, but having a weapon that did not rely on magic was a good thing to have in reserve.

Most of the rest of Damion's attackers had worn only D Rank armor or worse, and carried only E or F Rank weapons, since they were mages, they had little use for a melee weapon, keeping a dagger just to dig out the occasional Demonic Beast core. The exception was Mage Blanche. While he had used Ice Sword and did not carry an artifact weapon, he did wear an impressive set of armor. The dead Ice mage's armor was B Rank and of very good quality.

If this was a video game, Damion likely would have kept the armor for himself to use, but he found he could not bring himself to wear a dead man's armor.

"Quite the array of artifacts you have here," Flannery said as he examined each piece in turn, spending quite a long while on the B Rank armor pieces.

"I do trust the provenance for these pieces is not in question."

"I laid claim through justified combat. I have been cleared by the Justiciar and awarded the spoils." Damion proclaimed. The law of the land was clear. If you tried to kill someone, they were free to kill you and take whatever you carried. Of course, the intent of the law was to discourage banditry and encourage adventurers to take missions to quell bandits and rogue guilds, but some took it to mean they could just kill and take whatever they wanted from anyone.

The law required the Justiciar to investigate and if the combat was found unjust, meaning under the Justiciar's investigative process they detected a person lied about something, the person claiming rights to spoils could lose those spoils and face criminal charges themselves. What happened most of the time, was that people simply did not report the combat to the Justiciar. Obviously bandits and assassins did not, but many adventurers just did not want to bother with the formal process.

This left merchants like Flannery in a difficult position. If the origin of artifacts was murky, or outright suspicious, many would not dare resell them. If someone came forward saying the artifacts were stolen, or belonged to someone who was murdered, it left the merchant in the precarious position of losing money as the Justiciar could confiscate such items if such a claim was made. However, since Damion proclaimed he had obtained these through justified combat, it meant the Justiciar had already been involved.

If anyone came later, claiming foul play, Flannery could direct them to the Justiciar, who would proclaim the goods as legally obtained. Most merchants, would actually take the step of contacting the Justiciar ahead of time, just to be on the safe side.

"For the low Rank and mid Rank artifacts I can give you 400 gold. The B Rank, I'm afraid will have to be sold on consignment. I don't have the currency to pay you for such a set of armor right now."

"There aren't many takers for B Rank armor in Saung. Even if you took it with you to sell, it might be sometime before a buyer shows up. I think I'll hang on to it for now." Damion collected his payment from Flannery, not bothering to haggle. Even if the goods were worth a bit more, Damion had no desire to profit more than he already had in this situation. He put the B Rank armor back into the spatial ring and pretended to pocket the ring.

In reality he stored both of the spatial rings in the Magic System Inventory, before leaving the store with Elicia.