Chương 471: Chapter 469 – Breach Collapsers

After turning Mage Harris' body over to Mage Thresbane, Damion and Mage Veers went their separate ways. Both were eager to consolidate their increased magic power, though Damion had a few other things on his mind as well. As much as he would have liked, Damion's next stop was not to his home, but to the Atlantis Adventurer Association.

Since they had passed the midpoint of the labyrinth and he would likely not be returning from labyrinth and or the Mother World again for a while, he needed to halt his mission to gather Magic Absorbing Crystals. The Adventurer Association, as it turned out, had continued on with the mission and Damion now had a container the size of one of Hoyt Shipping's trucks. Thankfully, size did not matter to him.

With a simple command to the Magic System, the cargo container was pulled into his Magic System Inventory and Damion left the workers at the Adventurer Association in awe of his spatial artifact. With plenty of Magic Absorbing Crystals, Damion headed to the shop Leland and Flannery had founded in Atlantis. The two artificers split their time between their shop in Saung and here, but since commissioning artifacts for the expedition, the pair had been spending most of their time here, crafting as many as possible.

"Damion, excellent timing," Demetri Leland greeted as the younger mage entered the shop.

"From your reports of the troubles facing you on the Mother World, Amos and I have devised a new single use artifact using the Magic Absorbing Crystals you provided us before." The news of a new artifact to help on the expedition surprised Damion but considering that Leland and Flannery were two of the best artificers he knew, them coming up with something fresh was not too surprising. He just hoped it would be as useful as they claimed, especially if it was only single use.

"You have my attention," Damion smiled.

"What do you have for me?"

"A Realm Breach Collapser," Mage Leland said.

"I told you, we should name it Dungeon Imploders," barked Mage Flannery.

"From the names I can guess what your new artifacts do, but can you give me a bit of an explanation?"

"The Realm Breach Collapser," Mage Leland said pointedly.

"Is a way to safely destabilize and collapse any Realm Breach. Be it Unstable, Semi-Stable, Stable or Growth. The artifact is made up of Magic Absorbing Crystal with a few special enchantments I thought of, and had your friend Arica help me with, and when placed partially within the entrance to a Realm Breach will cause it to collapse within a few minutes."

"Is the time to collapse a Realm Breach related to the Rank of the Breach?" Damion asked.

"Perceptive of you, yes."

"How long to collapse an S Rank Breach?"

"Well, we can't say for certain," Mage Leland said.

"What he means to say, is we have only tested on Breaches up to D Rank," Mage Flannery cut in.

"And it took an hour for that to happen."

"Yes, well, we are improving the design, and we should be able to do better. I suspect we can get it down to just a few minutes, even for S Rank Breaches."

"Do you have one I can take a look at?" The two artificers quickly pulled a cloth off a nearby table revealing what looked to be nothing more than a long crystal box. The artifact was just under a meter long and about eight centimeters wide while only four tall. Etched on its surface were runes making up the enchantments and even with a cursory glance with his knowledge of Nashto, Damion could tell what they did. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Despite what Leland and Flannery had told him, Damion was still surprised when he read the information True Sight gave him. [E Rank Realm Breach Destroyer.] [Siphons mana to create Portals inside a Realm Breach to destabilize and collapse it.]"This is quite the artifact," Damion said after a moment.

"How many of these do you think you can build in a day?"

"Maybe a hundred," Mage Leland said.

"The problem is we have used up the mana absorbing crystal you had provided us before. Between the Realm Breach Collapsers and the artifacts for the expedition members we ran out."

"Not a problem," Damion smirked.

"Where is your holding area?" Leland led Damion to the back of the shop to show him their unloading and sorting area for materials. After determining a space to the side was large enough, Damion pulled out the cargo container of Magic Absorbing Crystals.

"Make as many of the Realm Breach Collapsers as you can by this time tomorrow," Damion told the pair.

"I will take them with me and work on upgrading them. Maybe I can make them so they can close even high Rank Breaches quickly."

"You'll have time to do that while you journey through the labyrinth?"

"With the midpoint cleared, there won't be much to do on the way out. We have plenty of S Rank and A Rank mages that can handle the new floors on the way to the Mother World. Most of the improvement will be theory anyway," Damion lied. He could simply dump all the artifacts in the Magic System Inventory and have the System upgrade them, but he could not tell Leland and Flannery that.

Doing so would cost him a bit of credits, but he was not too worried about the cost, not if these artifacts could really collapse high Rank Realm Breaches. After leaving Leland and Flannery's store, Damion was finally heading to see his family. However, before he reached his house, he was waylaid by one of the couriers who had been bringing supplies into the labyrinth for the expedition and taking Demonic Beast materials out.

"Mage Wells, so glad I caught up to you," the courier said before offering out a necklace that was a spatial artifact.

"This spatial artifact contains a portion of your shares of the spoils from the expedition so far. Mage Teft felt that you would prefer receiving your share as Demonic Beast Cores, so we were able to set a portion aside for you while everything is still being calculated." Damion accepted the spatial artifact and examined the items inside. He was quite surprised to find hundreds of cores ranging from C Rank to A Rank.

Unfortunately, he did not see any S Rank cores inside the spatial artifact, most likely the workers were still consolidating the spoils and would be for quite a while.

"Thank you," Damion told the courier as he moved the cores from the necklace to his own spatial artifact.

"Keep up the good work." With the cores from the labyrinth, he doubted he needed to worry about the cost in credits to upgrade the batch of artifacts Leland and Flannery were going to have for him tomorrow. What he was concerned about was having enough of them. If the artifacts worked as well as he hoped, especially after upgrades, then he had a feeling they would be essential in his attempt to reach the Mother World's seal.

"I'm back!" Damion announced, as he entered the house. A moment after his declaration, Bethany and Helge surged towards him, both demanding to be picked up. Damion happily obliged, easily lifting each of them and setting one on each of his shoulders.

"How long are you here for?" Elicia asked. She knew the expedition could not be over yet. Damion's arrival likely meant the team had reached the midpoint. This also meant that when he headed back into the labyrinth he would be gone for a much longer period.

"Just a day. I'll be heading back into the labyrinth tomorrow. The midpoint is the fifty-third floor and while we managed to clear it, we lost Mage Harris."

"That is horrible," Elicia exclaimed.

"Who will be taking the leadership of the Assembly?"

"For now, Mage Levine and Mage Moretti seem to be splitting it, they both achieved SS Rank. But I think Mage Harris wanted Mage Veers to take on the leadership role. For now, none of that matters. We have to complete the mission on the Mother World, once that is done, then we can figure out who is in charge." Elicia nodded but did not offer any further discussion on the subject. Damion was right, none of it mattered until they were successful.

Neither of them bothered to say there was no need to plan when there was a chance those plans would fall apart if people did not come back.