Chương 315: Exploration

The plans for a dinner party occupied Sharon and Elicia for the rest of the afternoon. This left Damion with the unfortunate trouble of figuring out how to explain his use of Portal. After a while, Damion finally had a solution. He simply did not have to tell anyone who cast the Spell. Portal was a tier 3 spell and cost 100 mana per second to maintain, but he could easily just keep the spell active.

All he had to do was cast the spell before any of the people not in the know arrived and leave it up until it everyone passed through the portal to his home. Once everyone was at his house, he could simply deactivate the spell and cast it again in private when it was time for people to leave. Of course, this meant that he would need a secure place to host the spell, but that was easy enough. His parents' apartment would work just fine. People could arrive there and then walk through the Portal to his house.

However, Damion realized this was a problem of a different sort. The guest list was not exactly large. Damion did not have many friends and how could his parents explain to their new neighbors who he was, or Mage Teft or Arica and her master. Either the guest list would be limited to the few people who knew, or they were going to have to expand that list quite a bit. Not sure how to come up with a solution to this problem, Damion decided to point it out.

"How are we going to have a big party when only a few people even know who you all actually are and who I am?"

"You do have a point," Sharon conceded.

"Perhaps a party can wait awhile. Instead of a housewarming party we can make it a celebration for your baby. After all, we don't need to be hidden forever. You are already so powerful. It would be fine if we quietly came back to life right?"

"I think that is a question best asked to Mage Teft. In any case, I intend to keep growing stronger and eventually it won't matter what other people think." Both Sharon and Elicia smiled at Damion's boast. His mother knew he was strong but, not having magic herself, she had no idea what it meant to be a 19-year-old B Rank Mage. Elicia understood but given the gap between B Rank and A Rank, she did not think it would be anytime soon that Damion could make good on his promise.

"I'm going to head home for the day. I have a lot of things to put away. Tell dad that I'm sorry I missed him."

"I will," Sharon replied.

"And make sure you put everything where I told you. When we visit again I'll be checking." Damion smiled at his mother's insistence and then cast Portal and stepped through. Once he was back in his house he cast the spell again to go to the surface check on Phil. The Blizzard King was happily munching on the remains of what looked to have been a Wind Wolf. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

'System, status.' [Magic System] [System Level: 3] [User: Damion Wells] [Age: 19] [Magic Talent: EX] [Magic Affinity: Ice EX, Water E, Poison D, Spatial D, Fire A, Earth A, Shadow A, Holy C] [Mana: 4, 978/4, 671] (10%) - 5, 138 [Magic Power: 10, 285] (10%) - 11, 313 [Mana Recovery: 212 P/S] (10%) - 233 [Strength: 120] [Dexterity: 125] (10%) - 137 [Vitality: 265] [Intelligence: 148] [Experience: 8, 700/20, 000] [Store Credits: 950, 458]'I wonder how long it will take me to reach A Rank?'

Damion mused after looking at his status. He was a long way from that goal. In fact, he was still considered a low-end B Rank. Still, with his mana recovery as high as it was, he was able to train faster and harder than anyone else in history. It was time he started taking advantage of that again. There was no reason he could not train and explore at the same time.

"Let's go to where we left off yesterday," Damion told Phil.

'New hunting land.'

"Yes. We can explore a new hunting land." The pair had been flying along the edge of the Red Zone and Yellow Zones, slowly making an accurate map of the border area. He had already received a message from the Cromsdales. They were quite excited to see Damion's mapping data coming in and asked if he would be willing to do a complete circuit of the human domain. The request piqued Damion's interest.

If he mapped around the entire Red Zone and Yellow Zone, it would take him quite a while, even at the speeds he and Phil moved. Still, this was a good opportunity to provide valuable information to the Explorer Guild, the Crimson Order, and the Mage Association. Already on his journey Damion had discovered three previously unknown Realm Breaches. The discovery of those had likely prevented a beast wave and he was sure the more he explored the more he would find.

Even if the Breaches were too low Rank for him to enter, their discovery would help earn Damion a reputation hopefully would convince the nobles and the Adventurer Association to stop bothering him. Damion and Phil flew well into the evening, mapping out a large segment of the border before they decided to return home. Given the lack of cover on the open plain, Damion opened his portal to the open cavern area next to his house for Phil to be able to sleep in.

The cargo container had been restowed and during the shopping spree with his mother and Elicia, he had added a number of extra linens and other materials Phil could use to turn the area into his own nest. Once Phil was happily settled, Damion headed to bed himself to consider the best method to continue to train. He already kept Mana Absorption on most of the time to aid in oversaturating his core.

Every chance he had, even if his core had not reached the maximum saturation level, he would meditate, trying to condense his mana to raise his magic power. With the help of the Magic System, Damion knew he was making progress. It was just that the progress was slow. A Rank required 50, 000 magic power. Reaching that level was not something anyone could do in a short time, still he wanted to keep working at it. Eventually, he would reach that level.

After meditation lost its interest, Damion would review the maps his artifact created. Checking to see if any Realm Breaches were discovered. Despite his history of finding them, he was quickly finding out it was impossible to continue to be that lucky all the time. He knew at some point he would locate more, but even if he did, there was still no guarantee that the Breach he found would be of any use to him.

What Damion did not take into account was that, while the border area was not well mapped, it was still patrolled by the Crimson Order frequently. Most Realm Breaches along the borders were discovered by those patrols and reported. If he was going to find a Breach, it was going to be a brand new one and Realm Breaches simply did not form that often, so he would have to be patient.