Chapter 353 – Found One
While Damion internally grinned from ear to ear at having completed his quest, the rest of Mage Veers’ party moved off. They were disgruntled but had little ground to stand on with their complaints, only Mage Veers remained behind. Damion had found the Breach first, cleared it, and he also managed to contain it. He was now within his rights to do with the Breach as he wished. Through most high Rank adventurers in his situation would sell the Breach to the highest bidder. Which is what they thought he intended. After all, the only reason to actually go through with the cost of securing a Realm Breach yourself was because you could make more money off selling it yourself then just reporting it and accepting your finder’s fee. None of them suspected that the Breach was actually a labyrinth.
“You can expect Mage McCormick and probably at least one or two of the others to file a complaint with the Mage Association about this,” Mage Veers told Damion.
“Will that complaint amount to anything? After all, I found the Breach and I contained it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on who in the Association reviews it. You have your friends there and your enemies.”
“Thank you for the heads up,” Damion told him.
“Not a problem. Good luck.”
With that, Mage Veers took off after his companions, so they could all head back to whatever outpost they had come from. Damion was not too worried about the Mage Association. If push came to shove, he would just say he turned the Breach over to Mage Teft. There were not many in the Association willing to antagonize an S Rank.
Damion watched the map on his tablet, the retreating dots of the party moved further and further away. Once he was sure they were far enough away that they would not be able to detect what he did. Damion stored the containment unit in the Magic System Inventory and heaved a sigh of relief. It was not possible to store the Realm Beach by itself in the inventory, but with it inside of a containment unit, it was not a problem.
“This portal leads home,” Damion told Phil as he cast Portal to his underground house. “I’ll be there in a little while.”
The Blizzard King went through the Portal and then Damion cast another. This time he was heading to Saung, to Leland’s shop. He was supposed to be there as it was. He was just glad none of the mages in the group seemed to be aware of his daily artifact refining responsibilities.
Once back in Saung, Damion took out his communication tablet and contacted Mage Teft. He knew it was possible that people were monitoring his communications, so he decided to be circumspect, but he knew Mage Teft would understand.
“Mage Teft, I found one. I have it secured.”
“Really!” Mage Teft answered, sounding quite surprised. “Your luck knows no bounds. Now we just need a safe place to work. Have you had any success on that front?”
“Not unless you want to clear a Red Zone. But I don’t think that would work. We will be too close. We need to go somewhere far enough away that the only feasible way to reach it is via Portal.”
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“I agree. Then as long as we control the ability to reach us, we will be secure.”
“We could do something like I did for my camp.”
“No. That might be suitable short term, but in the long run it won’t work. Especially not as we grow. And while it might be out of the sight of prying eyes, it is not as secure as you might think. A random beast could still wander in and cause havoc.”
“Then what should we do? I can go deeper, but how deep should I go?”
“Don’t go deeper. And if you do, don’t use your auto-mapper.”
“Why not?”
“Because it will show exactly the path needed to follow,” Mage Teft told him.
She was right of course. By design, the maps created from his auto-mappers were shared with anyone signed up for the Explorer Guild mapping service. Before they had charged nothing, but after the auto-mapper proved successful, they had started charging a small onetime registration fee, to help generate funds for their guild. So far as Damion knew. No one had complained yet about the fee, instead they viewed it as more than a fair price to pay for the service of live maps of the world they were receiving.
He actually suspected that charging a small fee helped the Explorer Guild. Despite being free before, there were few people taking them up on the offer of registering to access their maps, Damion suspected it was because many people did not think anything free would be of value. Whether it was the auto-mappers, charging, or a combination of the two, it did not matter, the Explorer Guild was now raking in money and was able to finance the construction of even more auto-mappers.
“I understand,” Damion told Mage Teft. “What about somewhere like the wilderness survival test area?”
“The test area?” Mage Teft repeated, before going into a long silence. “You have given me a great idea. We just have to hope that I can convince either Bishop or Forlani.”
“Convince them for what?”
“It doesn’t matter. Listen, stay out of trouble for the next few months. Explore if you want but try and keep your head down and rest up so you are ready for when it’s time.”
Mage Teft ended the communication leaving Damion feeling a bit confused. Was he supposed to stay out of trouble while she prepared the safe area for their school? Would that take months to set up? Or was there something else. And why would he need to rest up until it is time? What would happen in a few months that he needed to be well rested for…
The baby!
Damion suddenly realized in a few more months Elicia would come to term, and he would indeed need to be well rested. Once the baby arrived, should he continue going out and explore, should he even be doing that now? Despite still having several months before Elicia was due, he suddenly felt he was very short on time.
Pulling up the Explorer Guild map on his tablet, Damion took a look at the progress made so far in mapping the known world. He had managed to travel a fair amount around the Yellow Zones, but it was still less than a quarter of the way. He considered letting Phil map on its own, the Demonic Beast could fly quite fast and was more than capable of following directions, but if he did that, he would not be able to portal to those areas. For that, he had to have been there before.
After a bit of internal debating back and forth, Damion decided on a solution. He would continue exploring but would not go out of his way to identify Realm Breaches. His detours to identify certain Breaches and then explore them, were part of the reason he was not making as much progress as he could in mapping the Yellow Zone border.
By leaving the Realm Breaches for the Mage Association or the Adventurer Association to identify, it would give them something to do and perhaps new Breaches worthwhile to take their mind off the Growth Breach Damion had secured.
Until their school was ready to open, it was important to keep a wrap on the labyrinth. If any of the noble families or even the Mage Association found it, they would all want to control it.