Chương 472: Chapter 470 – Final Preparations

Ding {Magic seal recorded} [Time Domain - (F Rank 5, 000 Mana, 1, 000 Mana P/S) The area around you for 100 meters becomes your domain. In your domain, time itself heeds your will. Age your targets, make them younger, freeze attacks in place or cause them to return to their caster.] Ding {Quest Completed} [Quest: Learn a Tier 5 Magic Spell – Status: Complete – 1, 000 Experience, 50, 000 Store Credits.] With the last of Mage Harris' spells learned, Damion breathed a sigh of relief and hid the Time mage's tablet away. There were only seven magic seals the Time mage had recorded in his repository and each of them cost more mana than any other spell of a similar tier. The difference of course was that so long as you had the mana to use them, the spells were unrivaled. Slow, the tier 1 spell, would let Damion slow time for a target.

Haste and Rollback were tier 2 and could respectively speed up time for a target and reverse time in an area. The tier 3 spell Still allowed him to stop time in an area, but with a cost of 1, 500 mana per second the cost was higher than any other tier 3 spell he knew, even the other tier 3 Time affinity spell, Foresight. The Foresight spell, at the cost of 500 mana per second, let him look ahead in time. The problem though, was that he could only look one second ahead for each block of 500 mana he spent.

To get a useful grasp of the future he would need to spend an inordinate amount of mana and it made him wonder how often Mage Harris had been able to use it. Damion just hoped that as the spells Ranked up they would gain efficiency or he would have to exhaust himself every time he used them. The tier 4 spell was perhaps the one Damion believed he would use the most, aside from the tier 1 slow spell, which he could already imagine putting into devastating use in melee combat, which was Age Target.

For a cost of 500 mana he could age his target by one year. By continuously casting the spell he could in effect age someone to death. Of course, mages that had hundreds of years of life left ahead of them would be difficult to affect with the spell, but there were plenty of old geezers Damion knew would be terrified of the spell and he had the mana to spare.

Time Domain was the sole tier 5 spell Mage Harris had and while it allowed the complete manipulation of time within its boundaries, once the spell ended, so did its effects. Things aged would return to normal, though Damion suspected on many targets it would be easier to make them younger to incapacitate them. A hundred-year-old mage was easier to turn into a baby than age him into an old man. There was one advantage to the spell, which was that when it ended, life could not be restored.

So, if he aged someone to death and then ended Time Domain, the person would remain dead. With the spells learned, Damion had just a few more matters to attend to before he could let himself relax with his family. One of which was to upgrade all of Elicia's artifacts to B Rank. She was not at that level yet, but he wanted to make sure she had the protection she needed should she go adventuring.

He had already made sure all his gear was at A Rank for his journey to the Mother World, so next, was to deal with his share of the spoils. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

'System, convert all the cores I received into credits.' {Affirmative. Calculating… 364 A Rank cores, 674 B Rank and 1321 C Rank cores.} Ding {3, 154, 500 credits applied.} Damion was quite happy with the gain, happier still to know there were still credits available to be had once all the spoils were calculated. Especially from the S Rank cores that would grant him 100, 000 credits each.

And, should he choose to, once he advanced to S Rank and could begin upgrading people's equipment to S Rank, he could potentially gather even more of those cores.

'System, how much would it be to upgrade the Breach Collapser artifact to A Rank.' {Analyzing…} {Cost to upgrade to A Rank 794 Credits.} {Would you like to proceed?}'Yes.' {Affirmative.} Ding {Upgrade complete.} Damion took a look at the newly upgraded artifact in his inventory and was excited to see he could now tell how long it would take to collapse a Realm Breach. The A Rank artifact could collapse C Rank and below in under one minute.

B Rank Breaches would collapse in under five with A Rank Realm Breaches lasting only ten after the artifact was activated. A marked improvement over Leland and Flannery's initial design. Unfortunately, the artifact information provided by the Magic System did not inform him of how long it would take to collapse an S Rank or above Breach.

'System, how long will it take one of these A Rank Breach Collapsers to collapse an S Rank Realm Breach?' {The efficiency of this Rank of the artifact on higher Rank Realm Breaches depends on the overall Rank of the Realm Breach and if it is classified as a Growth, Stable, Semi-Stable or Unstable Breach.}'Give me the longest and the shortest times,' Damion told the System. {Unstable Realm Breaches at low S Rank will require thirty minutes to collapse. Stable peak S Rank Breaches will require approximately two hours.}'What about Growth Breaches?' Damion asked, not that he wanted to collapse a labyrinth, but he felt it was still important to know. {Collapse of Labyrinth not possible with this artifact.}'Explain.' {Labyrinths consist of multiple Realm Breaches tied together. In order to collapse a Growth Breach both anchor Realm Breaches must be destabilized at the same time.}'So, the entrance on the Mother World and whatever other world the labyrinth connects to. Well, at least I don't have to worry about someone trying to use these to destroy the Avalon labyrinth.' With those tasks out of the way, Damion hurried to spend time with his family. He was close to S Rank, but training for just a few minutes in the SS Rank environment of the labyrinth was better than an hour of training in the natural mana density of Nerotath, so he had no desire to miss out family time for paltry gains.

When the one-day deadline came up for Leland and Flannery, the pair evidently decided to save Damion the trip to their store as a young mage came and delivered the artifacts. The young mage was one of the workers at the artificer workshop and seemed quite thrilled to be able to make a delivery to Damion's house. He still had to stop by the shop to pick up his storage crate of excess Mana Absorbing Crystals, but it was mostly on the way.

With the artifacts stored in the Magic System Inventory for upgrading, Damion said goodbye to his family and donned his armor. In addition to his normal gear, he also brought along his third familiar, Peter. The Wind Griffin was still far weaker than his other familiars, but if Damion did not bring the creature along to get stronger the gap would only continue to widen. As Damion began walking out the door, Helge latched onto his leg. The little boy had a fearful look in his eyes.

As much as he would have liked to be able to stay and assuage his son's fears, he had to go. Looking into Helge's eyes as he pulled the boy off his shin guards, Damion said, "I'll be back, son. You stay here and look after your mother and Aunt Bethany." The boy silently nodded back as Damion handed him to his mother, tears welling up in both their eyes as Damion turned away and headed out the door.