Chương 204: Crimson Order

"The Crimson Order?" Damion questioned while he gave it some thought. The Crimson Order was responsible for patrolling Yellow Zones and Red Zones. Richard Thorn was given to them for his punishment and as an A Rank mage, assigned to a Red Zone patrol. Unlike Thorn, if Damion joined, he would only be required to fulfill his assigned patrol for the duration of his enlistment and would be allowed to keep half of everything he killed.

The other half of his spoils would go to fund the Order's outposts and recovery efforts for areas affected by beast waves. Elicia's idea had merit. It would let Damion not only explore, but also give him access to Demonic Beast cores. The best part was that as a member of the Crimson Order, he would be shielded from the influence of the noble families. Any of the knight orders could offer him that protection, but most orders had long enlistment periods and were filled with scions of noble families.

The Crimson Order, however, was more flexible with their recruits because they were always in need of quality manpower, as upwards of half their force were knights and mages that were sent to them for punishment and very few nobles willingly joined them for fear of being seen as guilty by association. As a volunteer, Damion would automatically outrank those in the Order for punishment and any unruly actions by the forced conscription lot, would result in longer terms of service.

As much as the noble sons and daughters of the Crimson Order would like to get revenge on someone, none of them wanted to extend their punishment. Especially, not when at any time they could be ordered into a Red Zone to head off a strong beast wave.

"Each of the Orders and a number of guilds from all over will be in attendance for the career day," Elicia went on.

"You'll have plenty of options, or you can choose none of them. But joining an Order will give you some protections for when you leave school."

"No, I understand. I will take that into consideration. I was just wondering what other jobs there are out there that I might be interested in." The next morning, after his run and breakfast, Damion pulled up a list of all the artifact stores in Argentum. He needed to unload his spoils from the dungeon, but he needed a store that was unlikely to cooperate with nobles, should they come nosing around. As Damion scrolled through the list of stores, a single name stood out to him.

Teft Artifacts and Adventurer Supplies. Everything he had learned the day before flashed through his mind and Damion could not help but be overwhelmed with curiosity. He was sure the Teft's were not friendly with the nobles, but he was unsure if that distrust would extend to a pile of money should a noble family come asking for information. Even if it was a risk, Damion could not put aside his desire to see what his mentor's family was like, even if it likely meant upsetting her.

"We're going into the city," Damion announced as he memorized the address and put his tablet away.

"We are?" Elicia questioned.

"I have a lot of materials to sell, can't keep my spatial rings filled forever. I think I found the perfect shop to sell to. But it's on the far side of Argentum, so we'll need to take the tram."

'Come?' Phil sent to Damion through their bond.

"I'll let you out so you can fly around the school, but you can't go into the city," Damion told the Snow Hawk. The academy may tolerate a Ferocious Beast flying around, but he did not think the residents of Argentum would be as magnanimous. The pair headed out of the dormitory and to the pickup location for the bus to Argentum. A short time later they were getting off the tram outside a moderate sized artificer shop.

When Elicia saw the name on the building she understood why Damion had refused to tell her the name of the store they were going to, because she would have tried very hard to stop him. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Are you sure this is a good idea? I can't think of anyway this ends well."

"Relax. They probably won't even know who I am. Just a student coming in to sell his spoils," Damion told Elicia as he opened the door. The inside of Teft Artifacts and Adventurer Supplies was much the same as the other artifacts shop he had been in before, though it was much neater compared to Flannery's and less colorful than Leland's had been. There were displays of armors and weapons arranged throughout the store, most of which were D Rank, according to True Sight.

"Welcome. My name is Helena, how can I be of service to you?" a woman greeted them. She had brown hair and light blue eyes, similar to Mage Teft's, but that was not enough for Damion to be sure this was one of his mentor's relatives. The woman could be nothing but an employee.

"I have a supply of Demonic Beasts, ranging from F to C Rank to sell or possibly trade. I only want to keep the cores."

"I take it that the Demonic Beasts have not been processed?"

"No, they were stored in a spatial artifact right after being killed."

"We charge a 5% processing fee for Demonic Beasts. We can remove the cores and assess the value of the carcasses. The remaining value can either be paid out directly, or you can select from the items we have available in trade. If you would like a custom artifact created, we would only charge you for the fee for the artificer to create the artifact and the cost of any materials not provided by you."

"Sounds fine," Damion said. He really did not care too much about the value of these Demonic Beast remains. Aside from the cores, he had no use for any of it.

"I do need sizeable space to pull out the Demonic Beasts, I have quite a few."

"This way, please," Helena led the Damion and Elicia to an adjacent room that, once they entered, they found was more of a warehouse. There were rows of shelves, filled with all sorts of furs, ores, even a large area that looked to be setup for hydroponics where they were growing herbs and other magical plants. Damion was quite amazed at this place but confused on why they were being shown it. He had never seen an operation like this, it had to contain any number of secrets.

"Very impressive, but I need an open area. Some of the carcasses are rather large."

"This way," Helena said walking through the warehouse to another room. The room they entered was, on its own, larger than the warehouse area and Damion could feel this room was a spatial construct, similar to his dormitory.

"This is our intake and processing room. Feel free to deposit the carcasses wherever, the automated functions of the room will handle the rest." Damion did as Helena instructed and began pulling out Demonic Beasts from his personal storage space. He tried to make it appear he was taking them out of his spatial artifacts, but he knew Elicia would easily be able to tell that what he took out was more than the space available in his rings.

However, he was confident in her discretion in that she would not point out this fact. In order to not exhaust his mana, Damion had to alternate the order in which he took things out of his personal storage space. Ice Boar, Snow Lion, Frost Hare and repeat. Each Ice Boar put a burden on his mana he seldom felt before.

If they were not in a spatial construct, Damion could have turned Mana Absorption on and mitigated the strain, but as it was he had to rely just on his normal mana regeneration, aided by turning off his other passive spells as well. Once all the Demonic Beasts were out of his personal storage space, Damion looked around the room trying to gage if the room was large enough.

"Can you make this room bigger?" Helena raised an eyebrow but said nothing as she tapped on her tablet. A moment later the walls and ceiling of the room grew larger by several folds. Once Damion felt the room was large enough he let Helena know.

"That should be good. This is the last one. A C Rank Arcdotus." Since this Demonic Beast was coming out of the Magic System's Inventory and not his personal storage space, Damion did not have to fret over the cost of the mana it would require.

"Magnificent," Helena said when the hill sized corpse appeared in the room.

"The cores should all be removed within a few minutes. I must say, I am impressed by your spatial artifact. Even the best spatial artifacts I've seen could not even hold a tenth of what you brought in, who created it?" Damion was glad that Helena was convinced everything had come from his spatial rings, but he had no plausible explanation for how two spatial artifacts each with three cubic meters of storage area could contain the mountain of carcasses he had brought them.

Now he was thinking that perhaps he should have sold things in stages.

"They were made by the Fontane family," Damion said truthfully. If he could not explain the circumstances, best to shift the blame. Let people start wondering if the Fontane's were hiding a secret method of making spatial artifacts better. The turnabout seemed fair to Damion, they had, after all, leaked that he had two spatial artifacts. Might as well play it up a bit.

"And they store that much?"

"I took them off of some of the main family brats when they tried to kill me. First spatial artifacts I've ever used. Perhaps the Fontanes have been holding back their best artifacts for their family members."