Chương 371: Your Turn

After Damion pretended to empty a spatial artifact onto the sorting platform, he left Ethan all of the dead Demonic Beasts from his run and led Phil home. While walking he took a look at the notifications he had been ignoring from the Magic System. Twelve spells had risen in mastery. Being free to use whatever spells he felt like had given him quite the haul. Torrent, Earth Prison, Ice Armor, and Water Mastery all rose to E Rank. Telekinesis rose to D Rank.

While Earth Shard, Fireball, and Summon Ice increased to B Rank. Frost Over and Ice Familiar jumped to B Rank, but best of all, his Mana Absorption passive rose to A Rank. With Mana Absorption now able to pull in 80 mana per second, the increase doubled from B Rank which surprised Damion, he hoped that he would be able to make some headway with advancing to A Rank. While he was making steady progress, it was nothing like the speed of his rise to C Rank or B Rank.

'System, status.' [Magic System] [System Level: 3] [User: Damion Wells] [Age: 19] [Magic Talent: EX] [Magic Affinity: Ice EX, Water E, Poison D, Spatial A, Fire A, Earth A, Shadow A, Holy C] [Mana: 7, 001/6, 365] (10%) - 7, 001 [Magic Power: 11, 494] (10%) - 12, 643 [Mana Recovery: 382 P/S] (10%) - 420 [Strength: 127] [Dexterity: 129] (10%) - 141 [Vitality: 302] [Intelligence: 148] [Experience: 14, 800/20, 000] [Store Credits: 3, 692, 854] When they got close to the house, Phil flew up to the roof.

A roost had been made for Phil up there on the shell built around Damion's house and the Blizzard King seemed quite happy to be able to sleep outside instead of the cave where they had been living. Inside, his parents were playing with Bethany and Elicia had just picked up baby Helge to greet him. No sooner had Damion removed his armor than the infant was thrust into his arms.

"He needs a diaper change," Elicia told him.

"And it is your turn." Not daring to argue with her, Damion took baby Helge gently and headed to the changing station that was among the items his mother insisted he bought during their shopping outage. The setup had places for everything that could be needed for changing a baby. Luckily, Damion had prior practice from taking care of his little sister when she was in diapers, so it did not take long for him to complete the job.

"How can you be so good at that already?" Elicia asked, seemingly disappointed that Damion had managed to make changing a diaper so easy.

"I have a little sister, remember? I helped mom all the time with Bethany." Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"I wouldn't say all the time dear," Sharon said from across the room.

"You spent most of your time training and doing missions for the Adventurer Association."

"Well, I guess not much has changed," Elicia laughed as she took Helge off the changing station and cuddled him.

"So, how does the labyrinth look?" Given that his father had for the most part designed the city, and that Damion was in effect the cofounder, Mage Teft had agreed it would be silly to keep his family in the dark regarding Realm Breaches. Especially when it was likely that everyone coming to the city would already be aware, since they were coming specifically for the Avalon labyrinth.

"I got through the first five floors, all F Rank so far. There is a good variety of Demonic Beasts. Lighting, Water, Earth, Wind and Fire affinity beasts. And if the floor I cleared at B Rank to stabilize it is any indication, then there should be at least Shadow affinity beasts as well."

"F Rank Lightning affinity beasts will certainly attract plenty of people. You didn't clear each floor entirely did you?"

"You'd think I'd be able to get back in in one day if I cleared the entirety of each floor?" Damion teased.

"At most I killed a fifth of the Demonic Beasts on each floor, but I don't even think I handled that many. The floors are fairly large, at least larger than the F Rank floors of the Argentum labyrinth."

"That is a good thing though right? The floors being larger. More room for more people. Since the city only has the labyrinth and not any dungeons, the bigger the labyrinth is the more it can support."

"True, but if you remember, the deeper you go into a labyrinth, the larger the floors get. It makes me wonder how large the B Rank floors will be."

"Yeah, but with your auto-mappers you can see across the whole floor, the floors might be bigger, but you've made it easier for people to know where to go."

"Perhaps I've made it too easy," Damion said, thinking of what would happen if large groups made use of his artifact to take out every Demonic Beast on a floor.

"You worry too much," Elicia said, carrying Helge to his crib.

"Besides if the floors keep getting bigger, your mapper won't work unless you start putting more on the floors or improve it again." Elicia was right about that. Until he reached A Rank he could not improve his artifact further. Not unless he started learning more about how the Magic System was making the changes. Sure, he understood the basic principles, correcting flaws in the enchantments and materials, even going so far as replacing the materials used to increase the Rank of an artifact.

But exactly how did the System do that? While Damion was not going to claim he could do what the System was doing on his own, he was sure that if he tried to, he could make some basic improvements to artifacts. There was no way he was going to be increasing an artifact by an entire Rank or improve the materials used. The only way he could think he would be able to achieve that would be to create an entirely new artifact with new materials.

Which begged the question, where was the Magic System getting the materials for its upgrades and what did it do with the leftovers from the improved artifacts?

'System, how is it that you can upgrade artifacts?' {Artifact upgrades are purchased from the Magic System Shop.}'I know that. I'm asking how you do it? Where do the materials used come from? How do you know how to even do such a thing?' {Error. Unable to disclose information. Please continue on with Hidden Quests to learn about the main objective.}'The main objective again huh.' Damion thought. Whatever the main objective was, it seemed to be related to more than just the quests he had received so far.

The biggest clues Damion had were: how humans learned magic and what the other races were doing inside Realm Breaches. There was more going on, what Damion had yet to figure out and not for a lack of thinking, but he simply had too few clues to go on. He had been hoping to run into goblins again to ask more or maybe running into another nice Iblis since he certainly did not want to come across another Alfar.

That encounter had been quite intense and luckily, he had not been expected to fight the Alfar since he had been pretending to be a Spatial mage at the time.

'Wait, System, why didn't I get a quest regarding the Alfar when I encountered it? You gave me one for the goblins and the Iblis, what about the Alfar?' Ding {New quest available.} [Quest: Learn the truth of the Alfar] [Description: You have encountered one of the Alfar. But this creature did not seem anything like the legends and tales of a noble race of wise leaders. Find out what you can about them and what their goals are.] [Reward: 1, 000 Experience, 100, 000 Store Credit.]