Damion walked into his old room and closed the door. After hearing Leland's footsteps moving away he told the Magic System to get started.

'System, purchase Upgrade Non-System Artifact and upgrade all D Rank artifacts in this room to C Rank.'

{Affirmative.}

{Processing…}

Damion had never tried to upgrade so many artifacts at once, but as he had come to expect from the Magic System, it did not take long for it to complete his request.

*Ding*

{Upgrades complete.}

'System, convert the cores in this box."

{Affirmative.}

After a few moments the Magic System announced him gaining 1,000,000 credits. Between the gain and the spending of almost 200,000 credits for the upgrades, he had still gained a huge amount, with more to come, once Ethan delivered the 506 cores owed.

'System, status,'

[Magic System]

[System Level: 3]

[User: Damion Wells]

[Age: 19]

[Magic Talent: EX]

[Magic Affinity: Ice EX, Water E, Poison D, Spatial D, Fire A, Earth A, Shadow A, Holy C]

[Mana: 5,309/4,827] (10%) - 5,309

[Magic Power: 10,308] (10%) - 11,338

[Mana Recovery: 212 P/S] (10%) - 233

[Strength: 120]

[Dexterity: 125] (10%) - 137

[Vitality: 275]

[Intelligence: 148]

[Experience: 11,300/20,000]

[Store Credits: 1,847,076]

He was steadily getting closer to getting the Magic System to level 4 and his goal of 100,000,000 credits. It may have been a risky decision to reveal he could upgrade artifacts, but it had turned out to be a profitable one for him.

After he was done, Damion activated his Metamorphic Bracelet and headed downstairs, nodding to Leland as he left. On his way out, Damion was surprised to see Mages Dunn, Holden and Laddler heading into the shop. To arrive in Saung so quickly, the trio must have relied on a Spatial mage to Portal them to the city. He considered sticking around to see what they were up to but decided to keep moving instead.

Once outside the city, Damion cast Portal and sent himself back to the area his underground home was in. After removing the Metamorphic Bracelet, he closed his eyes for a moment to locate Phil and then flew off on his Ice Sword towards his companion.

Phil had been quite busy in the couple of hours Damion had been gone. The Blizzard King had flown deep into the Red Zone, mapping a large swath of it with the auto-mapper and had even uncovered two Realm Breaches according to the map on Damion's tablet.

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Since the Realm Breaches were on the way to where Phil appeared to be resting, Damion flew close enough to each one so that he could check their Ranks. One turned out to be a C Rank Unstable Breach while the other an F Rank Semi Stable Breach. Of course, Damion could not enter either one, but he made a mental note of which was which so he could alert the Adventurer Association in a few days, after all, right now he was supposed to be upgrading artifacts.

When Damion finally reached Phil, the Blizzard King was resting on a frozen hill. Crushed beneath its talons was a creature that had long mud colored hair and looked like a cross between a man and an ape. For a moment Damion wondered if Phil had killed bigfoot, but he remembered there was no such Ferocious Beast on Nerotath, there were, however, Yeti.

The Yeti was a fairly common Ferocious Beast in Red Zones and could have any number of different affinities. Since this one had brownish hair, Damion guessed its affinity had been Earth or maybe Wood. With it being dead, True Sight could no longer tell him.

"I see you found lunch already," Damion told Phil as he landed.

'Tastes bad,' Phil replied through their bond.

"How strong was the Yeti?"

'Weak.'

"Weaker than the White Griffin?"

Phil appeared to consider for a moment. It had been a few months since their fight with the B Rank guardian of the Holy Forest dungeon. But the fight was still fresh in their minds. The White Griffin was one of the weakest B Rank Demonic Beasts, if Phil said the Yeti was stronger than that, then the Yeti would have been a B Rank Ferocious Beast for sure, weaker, than likely only C Rank.

'Weaker.'

"Shall we look for something tastier then?" Damion asked his familiar.

'Yes.'

Phil did not waste any time and took to the air quickly. Damion flew after him. For several hours the two flew deeper into the Red Zone. They did not spot too many Ferocious or Demonic Beasts as Phil's presence scattered them well in advance of their arrival.

At one point they flew overhead of a herd of Donetto Stone Bulls. There were at least 100 of the Demonic Beasts in the group, all E Rank. Damion used Summon Ice, split into a hail of small razor-sharp ice crystals to bring down nearly half the herd with one attack. The remainder of the bulls he left to continue charging off. He was not too worried about them since they were not moving in the direction of the Yellow Zone.

After collecting the carcasses of 47 Donetto Stone Bulls, Damion and Phil resumed their journey deeper into the Red Zone. However, as they went deeper, Damion began to feel an oppressive weight coming over him. A quick check of the map on his tablet told him they were still quite far from the Black Zone, which meant the weight he was feeling must have been from a High Rank Demonic Beast.

Damion did not want to try his luck with fighting a Demonic Beast in its own territory. Instead, he marked on his map that the area likely had a strong beast in it and opened a Portal for him and Phil to go home. Tomorrow would be a new day, and they could fly out and explore another area of the Red Zone. Perhaps there, they would find something interesting to fight or maybe a Realm Breach that would be useful to them.

Back at their underground home, Damion was relaxing while checking his messages. Leland had let him know Ethan had come by, but only had about a third of the cores owed for upgrading the auto-mappers and it would take about a week for the young knight to acquire the rest.

Damion replied back to the message that it was fine. He was in no rush for the cores. Even if those cores were worth more than a quarter million credits, having those credits this instant did not matter, he had plenty of credits at the moment.

Enough in fact, that he decided it was time to upgrade a few more pieces of his gear. He had long since regretted not upgrading the Aurichalcum Dagger he had. Several times now he had regretted not upgrading it, so now he was going to boost it all the way to B Rank.

'System, purchase Upgrade Non-System Artifact.'

{Affirmative, please select which artifact in the Inventory you wish to upgrade.}

'D Rank Aurichalcum dagger.'

{Analyzing…}

{Cost to upgrade to C Rank 140 Credits.}

{Would you like to proceed?}

'Yes, upgrade it all the way to B Rank.'

{Affirmative.}

The Magic System deducted another 1,500 credits to upgrade the dagger from C Rank to B Rank, but it was worth it. With a B Rank physical weapon, Damion had one less than to worry about if he was ever in a situation where he could not use his magic for some reason.

The next artifact on Damion's upgrade list was his C Rank auto-mapper. At C Rank it had a range of 25 kilometers, and he had thought that would have been plenty of range. However, now that he had been out in the wider world for a few weeks and seen how vast these wild areas were, he realized he should have upgraded his auto-mapper to B Rank from the start.

'System, upgrade my auto-mapper to B Rank.'

{Affirmative. Upgrading auto-mapper to B Rank for 250 credits.}

{Upgrade Complete.}

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