Chương 308: Race You

Even though the auto-mapper could identify Realm Breaches, it did not have the ability to classify them by Rank or type. The only way Damion was going to be able to know if those Breaches would be of any use to him would be to fly out there and take a look at them himself. Judging by the locations, well outside the areas around the towns and not near roads, by foot would take him a day to travel to each. Thankfully, rugged terrain did not hamper his ability to fly.

Since it was still early in the day and since he had made an agreement with the Justiciar Order to upgrade artifacts starting tomorrow, Damion decided to set out right away. Getting back to his camp would be easy, he could portal back to a location outside the line of sight of Bufort and then fly that last minute or two back. Getting there was what would cause problems. Damion donned his gear and readied himself. It had been a while since he tested how fast he could fly.

Now seemed as good a time as any to find out and it would give him the chance to see how fast Phil was.

"Race you to the first Breach," Damion told the Blizzard King before flying into the air. Phil evidently understood the challenge well enough that it took off in the direction of the Breach leaving Damion behind. Not wanting to be out done by his familiar, he pushed his Ice Sword to fly as fast as possible to catch up to the Demonic Beast. Despite pushing himself as fast as he dared, Damion was not able to surpass his familiar in terms of speed.

The Demonic Beast beat him to the first of the Realm Breaches by a dozen meters, the same distance Phil maintained no matter how fast he flew. Looking at the Breach, Damion was a bit disappointed, it was a D Rank Unstable Breach. Judging by the amount of ground disturbed around the Breach, a number of Demonic Beasts had already left the Breach and were roaming the wilds of the Yellow Zone. Since Damion was too strong to go into the Breach on his own, he was not left with many options on how to contain it.

Casting Ice Wall, he made a large dome around the Breach and then reinforced his Ice Wall as much as he could. Once he left the area, and stopped feeding the spell mana, the Ice Wall would be just a wall of ice, subject to the laws of nature and would begin to melt. Still, he supposed it would last long enough to return to Bufort to alert the Adventurer Association. Looking at the map on his tablet, Damion located the next Breach and headed that direction. This time he hoped it would be a Breach worth his while.

Having won their first race, Phil was now pacing Damion as they traveled to the second Breach. When they arrived at the Breach, Damion was again disappointed. This one was a D Rank Semi-Stable Breach. This at least meant the Breach would not be spilling all its Demonic Beasts out into the world randomly. Unfortunately, it was still too weak for Damion to be able to do anything about other than contain the potential flood of Demonic Beasts.

After constructing another Ice Wall dome around the Breach, Damion and Phil headed to the third Realm Breach which happened to be on the far side of Bufort from where they were. To save time, Damion cast Portal and moved himself and Phil as close to Bufort as he dared. Then the pair continued on to the last Breach. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

When they finally reached the last Breach, it was an F Rank Unstable Breach, but this one had a number of Demonic Beasts roaming the area around it. They were all F Rank creatures and the aura from Phil immediately caused them to begin to scatter. Even though these Demonic Beasts were only F Rank, Damion did not want to let them roam free. They were only a small threat now, but just as Phil had grown, other Demonic Beasts could grow as well.

"Go after the far ones," Damion told Phil.

"Try to herd them back towards me." Phil took off after the Demonic Beasts that had already fled the furthest, easily over taking them. These F Rank creatures looked like a sort of hyena, with wiry hair and long sharp teeth. Despite their fearsome appearance, they were not a match for B Ranks. While Damion flew around on his Ice Sword, alternating casts of Fireball, Earth Shard and Ice Shard, using the Demonic Beasts as practice, Phil was simply swooping down and slicing them in half.

Within just ten minutes of arriving at the Breach, the two dozen Demonic Beasts had been put down and Damion was busy collecting cores and storing the carcasses in his personal spatial storage. Once he converted all the cores to credits, Damion cast Ice Wall and enclosed the Realm Breach. Before opening a portal back to Bufort, he briefly wondered if this is what the Crimson Order did most of the time.

After going through his portal, Damion made his way to his camp and left Phil there while he headed back into the city. The same guard at the gate was still on duty and let him through without any problems, even if he did not know why Damion had returned so soon.

"Mage Wells, I understand you wanted to see me," Manager Holland Smit greeted shortly after Damion arrived at the Adventurer Association. The Bufort manager of the Adventurer Association was a B Rank Earth mage and while Damion was also B Rank, he could sense that Manager Smit was still quite a bit stronger than he was.

"Yes. I have located three Realm Breaches in the area and wanted to bring them to the Associations attention so they can be dealt with."

"Three wild Breaches!" Manager Smit was caught off guard by what Damion said. He had perhaps expected news of one Breach or maybe even news of strong Demonic Beast moving through the area, but three Breaches being found in one afternoon was unheard of.

"Yes, here are their locations," Damion pulled out his tablet and showed the older Earth mage where the Breaches could be found.

"This one is a Semi-Stable D Rank Breach. The other two are both Unstable. One is D Rank and the other F Rank."

"You were able to determine their Ranks?" Manager Smit questioned. It was not uncommon for adventurers to acquire an artifact to measure a Breach, but such artifacts were expensive, and Damion was a young man, so him having one was surprising.

"I managed. The F Rank Breach had already spit out a number of Demonic Beasts. I cleaned up the area, but their might have been more that had already moved further away. All three Breaches I enclosed in Ice Walls. That should give you time to organize teams to clear them."

"Pity that none are Stable Breaches," commented Manager Smit, as he copied Damion's map to his own tablet.

"I heard you had a new artifact for mapping. Did you use that to find these?"

"Yes. While I was making a business arrangement earlier I had Phil fly around with it and he was able to find these."

"Quite remarkable. Perhaps I should get some of those for the patrols. If we can find Breaches before they erupt, we can make this region considerably safer for everyone."

"Leland in Saung has a good supply of them. Just like you, he has seen the potential for these artifacts."

"Excellent. I will contact him about an order, and I've transferred the finder's fee for the Breaches to your account."