Chapter 478 – All In
After upgrading the few hundred artifacts Mage Teft had left him to S Rank, as well as all of his own artifacts and the Breach Collapsers, Damion was left with little to do but practice his magic. When two days passed, he stuck his head out of the workshop and traded spatial artifacts with Mage Teft.
The first batch he had upgraded to S Rank, but now these were all artifacts that were from A Rank people were looking to upgrade to S Rank. A few of the artifacts he was having the Magic System upgrade were familiar to him as he had been the one to raise them to A Rank previously. Glad as he was for repeat customers he was even happier to have the S Rank cores as a fee.
With each S Rank core rewarding him with 100,000 credits for the Magic System Shop, Damion’s worry about exhausting his credits if he purchased more upgrades were quickly put aside. He made a mental note to reserve four million credits to save for an emergency upgrade to SS Rank and focused instead on upgrades to his mana capacity and magic regeneration.
‘System, purchase Increase Magic Regeneration enough times that I will have 1,000 mana recovery.’
{Calculating…}
{Purchasing twelve Increase Magic Regeneration upgrades for 28,816 credits to boost mana recovery by 690.}
The boost to mana recovery gave put him a base of 1,072 mana recovered per second. With the extra boost from his gear, he was now at 1,286 per second. Even with all his passive spells active he could now easily keep a domain spell active and cast other spells. Though Time Domain would require him to boost his regeneration further or shut off a few passives to be able to effortlessly keep it up.
With one upgrade out of the way, Damion moved on to boosting his mana capacity.
‘System, purchase Increase Mana Capacity until I have at least 100,000 mana.’
{Calculating…}
{Purchasing eleven Increase Mana Capacity upgrades for 5,672 credits to boost mana capacity by 32,750.}
As the Magic System applied the upgrade Damion could feel his reservoir of mana expanding. His total mana increased by nearly fifty percent and boosted him to 102,178 mana. With his newly boosted magic power and his increased mana capacity he felt confident in his ability to open a Portal back to Nerotath.
Of course, he could not actually open a Portal at the moment to test his belief. Ardnet was protected by a series of artifacts that blocked the Portal spell. Similar to the jamming artifact the Alfar had used, though not as portable. He considered leaving the safety of the city and opening a Portal so he could send a message through to his family and let them know everything was going alright, but he held off.
With any war there was the possibility of spies and while he did not want to doubt anyone in Ardnet it was still a risk to expose his increase in power. The longer he kept everything a secret, the longer his advantage would last, or at least that was what he hoped.
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Damion eyed his credits and questioned if he should go ahead and purchase the increase to his magic power. Even if he did rise to SS Rank, the idea of actually controlling that much of an increase to his magic power was daunting. Just boosting his magic power by 100,000 had taken a bit of getting used to. A jump of 4,000,000 would mean there was a good chance he would not able to control his magic.
‘System, is there a recommended magic power I need to reach to accomplish the goal?’
{Unknown. Current magic power is sufficient to undo the enchanted seal and restore the Mother World’s core.}
The Magic System’s words were both a comfort and burden. He supposedly was strong enough to accomplish the task, but Damion knew the ruins were filled with strong Demonic Beasts that had been feeding on each other and growing stronger for generations. His own experience with his familiars told him the creatures were likely the strongest Demonic Beasts he would ever encounter and that S Rank likely was not going to cut it.
‘System, can I request you to purchase an Increase Magic Power every six hours until I reach SSS Rank?’
{Calculating….}
{Total purchase cost will be 9,000,000 credits. Host can purchase now and one upgrade will be applied every six hours. The 90 upgrades will be applied over 540 hours.}
’22 days,’ Damion realized. In three weeks, he hoped everything would be over and done with.
The problem was, he needed to increase his magic power, quickly, but safely. Smaller increases were easier to handle and while right now 100,000 per increase represented a large percentage of his overall power, that ratio would shrink as he got stronger. Just as 50 magic power was once a large portion of his E Rank power but was nothing to him anymore, he suspected that as his power grew he would be able to increase the number of upgrades applied at once.
‘System, can you increase the number of upgrades to my magic power as my magic power increases?’
{Elaborate.}
‘When I reach 2,000,000 magic power, apply two upgrades at once, so 200,000 magic power per upgrade. Keep my increases at or below ten percent of my magic power. I think I can safely handle a ten percent boost every six hours.’
{Calculating…}
{Applying purchased upgrades in this manner will require 29 applications and take 7.25 days.}
‘A week to reach SSS Rank,” Damion thought. ‘How many days to reach SS Rank?’
{5.25 days.}
‘I can live with that. Purchase the upgrades and apply the first upgrade in six hours.’
{Affirmative.}
Despite dumping 9,000,000 credits into upgrades to his magic power, he still had more credits for the Magic System Shop now than when he arrived on the Mother World. The Iblis had been generous with S Rank cores. Providing cores for upgrades to their artifacts as well as the artifacts carried by the expedition members. Damion was confident that once they returned to Nerotath and those who decided not to continue on to the Mother World found out about artifacts it was going to cause problems.
Luckily, once he got back there would not be anyone capable of threatening him, his family, or his allies. With the prospect of becoming Nerotath’s first SSS Rank mage, Damion was feeling quite confident.
Taking out his communication tablet, Damion signaled for Mage Teft, Mage Levine, Mage Fletcher and Mage Veers to join him in the workshop. He also sent a message to Visault and Visneer. With his new confidence, he felt it was time to start hammering out their plan of attack and he felt it was at least polite for him to let them know his magic power would be growing over the next week, least they think something was wrong when they started noticing the jumps in his magic power.
As each of them entered the workshop they were surprised to find that Damion had reached S Rank. They knew he was close, but seeing was believing. With this increase they each felt more confident in their chances. Another S Rank was a big boost to their overall strength and with Damion’s ability to use multiple affinities that boost was amplified.