Chương 318: Urgent Request

'Mine,' Phil sent through their bond after the Simurgh collapsed.

"You want to eat the whole thing?" Damion questioned.

'Core, mine.' Damion could not fault the Blizzard King for laying a claim to the B Rank core. After all, Phil had done most of the work in killing this particular Demonic Beast. Ever since he had run out of Ice affinity cores Phil had not had any cores to eat, and evidently his familiar decided it wanted to eat this one.

"Alright, all yours. Just don't expect me to help you find the core in there." While Phil began tearing at the Simurgh's carcass, no doubt in an attempt to find the fallen Demonic Beast's core, Damion took out his tablet. After marking the Rank of the Unstable Breach on his map and sending a message about it to the Adventurer Association, he surveyed the area around them to see if their flying fight with the Simurgh had revealed anything new. Unfortunately, there were no new Realm Breaches showing up on his map.

Much of the distance they traveled once the fight began had been back towards the Yellow Zone. Retracing much of the area they had already passed over. With nothing of interest to see on the map, Damion waited for Phil to find the Simurgh's core. As he waited he tried looking up information on the Simurgh's strange mana siphoning ability. While he found notes from knights and other mages, no one had a good explanation of how the Demonic Beast's ability worked.

The ability was either rare among Simurgh or was not used by most, which led many researchers to theorize that only special Simurgh could make use of it. Familiar as he was with the Mana Absorption passive spell, and despite the similarities, this was something more. Even in fights where he kept Mana Absorption active the entire time, he had never been able to pull mana out of a magic attack before. Unless he directly touched an object, he could not pull the mana out of a thing.

The Simurgh had been able to pull the mana out of his Ice Sword causing it to collapse, but not from Damion himself. Another difference was that when he was riding on the Simurgh, it was not able to pull mana from him even though they were in direct contact. These two things cemented the idea in his mind that whatever the Simurgh was doing was only passingly similar to Mana Absorption. The type of spell the Simurgh's ability more closely resembled was a domain.

Damion now had three domain spells, Ice Domain, Water Domain and Spatial Domain, his knowledge of these spells was growing, but one thing each of them could do was weaken other magic in its area of effect. The Simurgh was certainly not creating a domain, but he thought it possible the Demonic Beast was perhaps somehow replicated a part of a domain. Allowing it to not only weaken magic around it but gain control of that magic and use it to power its regeneration.

If he had the time, Damion thought it might be interesting to try and combine Mana Absorption, a domain spell and a healing spell to see what he could come up with. Unfortunately, such a project would be quite time consuming and would require him to spend most of his time holed up studying instead of out exploring and looking for a labyrinth. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Just as Damion thought he could spend a little of his time studying his tier 5 magic seals, in hopes of completing his final Nashto quest, while he waited for Phil to find the Simurgh's core, an alert came through his communication tablet from the Mage Association. The alert was an indication that an urgent mission was available, and he was a mage close enough and qualified enough to take it on. Opening up the message he took a look at the information regarding the mission.

Urgent: B Rank Unstable Breach located in Phuson Yellow Zone. Report to Phuson Adventurer Association to join team to clear. First to respond will have priority selection. Damion read the request three times before decided to accept the request. If it was a trap, the Mage Association would not be sending out an urgent alert. Not only him, but every mage C Rank and higher within three Zones of Phuson would have received the alert. Looking at the map on his tablet, Phuson was about 70 kilometers away.

He and Phil could easily cover that distance in less than half an hour. Since it was a B Rank Breach, he felt it would be a shame to pass up the opportunity. Especially when he considered that Unstable Breaches seemed to be the best locations to find rare materials like Heavenly Enhancement Fruits.

"Did you find the core yet?" Damion asked Phil.

'Still looking,' Phil shot back.

"There is a Realm Breach nearby. Let me collect the carcass. You can look for the core more later." Phil flapped its wings and hopped off the carcass, allowing Damion to pull the mess into the Magic System Inventory. Once the bloody carcass disappeared, he was grateful the Inventory never required cleaning.

"Let's go," Damion told Phil as he summoned his Ice Sword. Twenty minutes later, Damion and Phil landed outside the gates of Phuson causing the guards posted at the gates and along the wall to visibly shake when they saw Phil.

"Phil, you stay out here. I will go inside and get the information about the Breach. It hasn't popped up on my map yet, so it must be further away. Here, work on your snack." Damion dropped the Simurgh carcass on the ground just off the road for Phil to continue to work on. The guards at the gate went from just shaking to being outright terrified when Phil started ripping the Simurgh's carcass up in the attempt to find the Demonic Beast's core.

"Don't mind Phil," Damion told the guards as he approached the gate.

"He won't hurt people unless they attack him first." The guards, who were only D Rank, were too shocked to respond, barely managing to nod their heads as Damion walked into Phuson. The Yellow Zone town of Phuson was not much different from Bufort or any other Yellow Zone town. Strong walls surrounded it and on the walls were guards patrolling, keeping a watchful eye out for threats.

Ordinarily, this was a sleepy little border town that had occasional bouts of excitement when a beast wave erupted, or a strong Demonic Beast came over from the Red Zone. Today, things were erupting because of a strong Demonic Beast as well, only none of the guards were doing anything about it.

By the time Damion reached the Adventurer Association, the entire city was abuzz with the news of a strong Demonic Beast outside the gates devouring the remains of another Demonic Beast that appeared to have been a massive Simurgh. The guards tried to defend their inaction to the townsfolk, telling them the Demonic Beast was no threat to the city. However, they had a tough time convincing people that Phil was tame when none of them had ever seen a tame Demonic Beast before.

Damion was aware of the growing outcry for action and hoped he could get the information regarding the Realm Breach before someone did something foolish.