"Well, I guess that is that," Damion commented when the Unstable Breach vanished.

Mage Laddler cheered when the Breach Vanished. Mages Holden and Dunn stood up and stretched.

"A successful Breach cleared with no casualties," Mage Dunn said. "Even if we made no money, we were lucky enough to meet Mage Wells. Are you going back to exploring?"

"For now, I think I will head to my camp for the night. And tomorrow, resume my explorations. You never know, I might just find a labyrinth."

"That's the spirit," Mage Dunn laughed. "At least we can get credit for responding to a Breach from the Association. Will help increase our reputation and make getting into dungeon runs easier."

"Good luck."

"You too."

Damion summoned his Ice Sword and started floating away while the three mages watched on in envy. Since they had been sent to the area by a Spatial mage, unless they could get back to where the arrived and contact the Spatial mage, they would have to take the long way home.

'We'll fly for a while and then go home,' Damion sent to Phil.

Phil took off from the hilltop it had been resting on joined Damion in the air as he flew towards Phuson. He had no intention of flying all the way back to the town, but he wanted to put some distance between him and the other mages before use used Portal to take him and Phil home.

When Mage Dunn and the other two saw Phil rise into the air after Damion they each gulped. None of them had realized the Demonic Beast was nearby. They thought that perhaps the Ice mage had left his companion back at his camp to guard it, but that clearly was not the case.

"Good thing we declined the second part of that mission request," Mage Holden said as they watched Damion and Phil grow smaller in the distance.

"You are telling me," Mage Laddler agreed. "I thought Wells' creature was a Snow Hawk. What was that thing?"

"I heard a rumor that the beastie evolved into a Demonic Beast. Looks like it was true," Mage Dunn told them.

"Doesn't that make the spell Mage Wells developed even more valuable?" Mage Holden asked.

"Of course it does. Now I wish I was an Ice mage. If I could form a bond with an Ice affinity Ferocious Beast and then evolve it into a Demonic Beast…" Mage Dunn started but was interrupted by Mage Holden

"You'd what? Go beat up all your former classmates from the academy? Found your own White Zone?"

"Nah, he will start a Ferocious Beast petting zoo," Mage Laddler offered with a laugh.

"Maybe I'd just start doing dungeon runs by myself," Mage Dunn muttered at his companion's ribbings.

Despite his companions finding humor in his wishful thinking, Mage Dunn was feeling a large amount of relief that he had not led his friends into a disaster. He had no idea why the higher ups in the Adventurer Association did not want Mage Wells to be able to freely enter Breaches, but any team that decided to accept the mission of injuring Wells so he could not go into Breaches for a while was in for a rude surprise.

Mage Dunn thought about letting the Adventurer Association know about the Snow Hawk's evolution, but in the end he decided against it. It was unfair to Mage Wells for the Association to be actively working against him like this, especially when it appeared that the young mage was just trying to help. There might be a few nobles that would take the special mission from the Mage Association, but he had a feeling that none of the commoner teams would and certainly not anyone that met Phil. Even from a distance, Mage Dunn could tell how overwhelmingly powerful the newly evolved Demonic Beast was.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

After Damion arrived back at his underground home, he gave Phil a good wash using the Clean Water spell. The Blizzard King had been clawing through the Simurgh carcass and was covered in blood from beak to tailfeathers.

Since Damion had made the floor of the cave slightly angled away from his house, the dirty water flowed to the far wall and by making the surface more porous, was allowed to seep into the rock.

When he was done, Damion returned to his house and pulled out his tablet to check any messages. To his surprise, the Cromsdales had sent him a message. He quickly opened the message to see what the leaders of the Explorer Guild wanted.

"Greetings Mage Wells. I am pleased to announce that our Guild has been granted the approval and the funding from the Mage Association to build a map network across all the White Zones, Green Zones and Yellow Zones.

"This is largely a result of your efforts mapping the edge of the Red Zone and you locating the Realm Breaches with the help of your artifact. Given that this is such a large project, I am hoping you will be able to assist with the production of the auto-mappers. Mage Leland and Mage Flannery have agreed to continue to produce a large quantity of them, but the amount needed to cover the entire human domain is no small number.

"Please contact us back as soon as possible to let us know whatever help you can provide."

The message from Everitt Cromsdale ended and Damion was left wondering how he should respond. The Mage Association wanted to use his auto-mapper to create a live network to cover the entirety of the human domain. Not only would this help with detecting Breaches and preventing beast waves, it could also make locating and tracking bandits and other outlaws easier.

However, Damion could not help but feel he had created a surveillance state. His original intent had been to map out the world. By placing auto-mappers across the world though, they could create a live map of the world. At least his artifact and access to the mapping network set up by the Explorer Guild was available to everyone. He may have started a surveillance state, but everyone had access to it.

Taking out his tablet, Damion contacted Mage Cromsdale. He could help, but he had a better way to help than just building artifacts.

"Mage Wells! I'm glad you have contacted me so quickly. The Mage Association has calculated we need over 50,000 auto-mappers to layout a complete grid."

"That is quite the number," Damion commented. Making that many artifacts would take a long time, but he had a way to make it so not as many artifacts were needed. "Is that using the C Rank auto-mappers or the D Rank ones?"

"D Rank. Leland has a few C Rank ones created, but he says the enchantments on them are quite difficult to do and take him quite a bit longer to create than a D Rank artifact."

"Did Leland mention to you about my little side business?" Damion asked.

"Side business?"

"I stayed in Saung for a few weeks after I left Silver Spire Magic Academy. I worked out of his shop upgrading artifacts. I even upgraded his D Rank auto-mappers to C Rank, which boosted the range up to 25 kilometers."

"Amazing. How long does it take you to upgrade an artifact?"

"I can do around a dozen a day, but if I work on nothing else, I can probably bump that up to two dozen."

"Wonderful. Since you called this a side business, I am assuming you charge a fee."

"Of course. I charge two cores for whatever rank the artifact is going to be upgraded to."

"Two cores?" Everitt Cromsdale repeated, a bit confused about the price. Two cores would hardly equal the value of what Damion was offering. "Any two cores? Or are you wanting Ice affinity cores to enhance your power?"

"Any cores are fine. I travel a lot, so cheap cores in one place can be quite rare somewhere else. I've been able to turn quite the profit."

Being a traveler himself, Everitt knew Damion was speaking the truth, but most common cores in one place were usually common in most of other places as well. Turning a small profit with such a scheme was possible, but not always easy, and they were talking about thousands of cores. There was no way Damion would be able to turn a profit on them in the short term, but he figured the Ice mage must be playing the long game.

"Are you able to get back to Saung and start working on upgrading the ones Leland has? If you can do that the rest of the Guild can start placing them in the locations the Mage Association has proposed."

"I'll head over there in the morning."

"We are finally bringing our dream to life. Thank you so much Mage Wells."

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