"I think it is about time I sell these spatial artifacts," Damion said, handing the two spatial artifacts he took from the Fontane brothers to Mage Teft.

"You have certainly waited long enough to do this. Are you doing this because you think people will pay more, now that the rumors of the Fontane's having a breakthrough in spatial artifact creation are running wild?"

"Exactly. I don't know if those rumors are true or not. But I think there is a good chance that a breakthrough will be announced soon and since these spatial rings only hold 3 cubic meters, they are rather lacking. I think these will be considered low quality and won't be worth anything once the new artifacts hit the market."

"What makes you so sure?" Mage Teft questioned.

"Just a hunch. You should contact Mage Fletcher, Arica's master and find out how close they are. Maybe he will give you a good deal on a new ring."

Mage Teft rubbed a thumb across her spatial artifact while listening to Damion. The boy had a knack for the unexpected. Being ahead of the market would be something his luck could do for him. The problem of course, was what would the new spatial artifacts cost. Could selling hers now even earn her enough for a new one? Perhaps she should contact Mage Fletcher.

"You wouldn't happen to have been the one to spread rumors about the advance in spatial artifacts would you?"

"I only helped them along. I did not start them," Damion said honestly.

"You tricked people with your Spatial affinity," Mage Teft realized. "You made them think you were taking a lot of things out of those little artifacts and let them draw their own conclusions."

Damion smiled but said nothing. There was no point. It was odd, revealing so many of his secrets, but he felt it was about time he started trusting people. He was not about to go around shouting about the Magic System, or even revealing what he had to Mage Teft and Elicia to others. But he felt they deserved a bit of honesty, and it was actually somewhat refreshing to share some truth with them.

"I'll see to it they are sold, for a good price."

"Maybe, see if we can get a containment unit in exchange," Damion quickly suggested.

"You really want to go looking for a labyrinth."

"Doesn't every adventurer dream of finding one? Besides what am I to do if I find one and can't actually claim it. Don't want to turn a labyrinth over to a local patrol."

"You know, the White Zones were built around their labyrinths."

"Yes, well, we don't have the manpower to secure an unknown area where a labyrinth might appear. How does a containment unit work?"

"You deploy it around a Realm Breach, and it allows you to move it. The higher Rank the Breach, the stronger the containment unit needs to be."

"How strong of a containment unit do I need for a labyrinth?"

"It depends on how many floors have been unlocked. If you go in and clear a few floors before realizing that it is a labyrinth, the magical weight of the labyrinth will become too much for any containment unit. Or at least any you can afford."

"What is the best I can afford?"

"With your two spatial rings? Probably C Rank."

"Then let's go with the best I can get. As long as I can find a labyrinth and not clear any floors, that should be enough for me to contain it and move it somewhere we can secure."

"And what will be your next step?"

"We offer admission to the labyrinth to anyone, under two conditions, we keep 50% of the take, to fund our school, and we enroll their kids into our school."

Mage Teft had to admit, as simple as Damion's plan was, it had promise. A labyrinth would entice people to come and if they could bring their family, and get them an education, all the better. There were no labyrinths, outside of White Zones, so there would be plenty of interest. There were of course flaws in Damion's plan, but the chief one was keeping control of the labyrinth. Once the labyrinth grew enough to unlock A Rank floors and S Rank floors, it was going to demand the attention of the noble families and the Mage Association. Neither of which would be pleased with Damion's entry conditions.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"First you have to find a labyrinth," Mage Teft told Damion.

"No. First I have to graduate. Then I have to find a labyrinth."

As Damion's second term at Silver Spire Magic Academy continued on, he continued to work on his new artifact, though, he did not share with Elicia or Mage Teft what it was, leaving them to wonder. His first prototype was similar to his second body scanner artifact. It was a boxy design, but instead of one Holy affinity Demonic Beast core, it had one on each face of the box. It also did not have a tablet built into it.

When he was finally ready to test it, Damion actually took to the sky on his Ice Sword and manipulated the sword to lock the box into place off the front tip of his sword. Aerodynamically, the setup was ridiculous, a big box attached to the tip of a sword, but since the sword flew by magic and not thrust and lift, the design made no difference.

"Are you going to tell me what it does yet?" Elicia asked, as Damion started rising from the ground.

"See if you can figure it out by the time I get back," Damion told her as he flew off.

He did not fly far. Nor was he flying very high. In fact, Damion was flying a simple pattern, back and forth across the school grounds, not even paying attention to where he was going, as he was just looking at his tablet the entire time.

On his tablet was the information received from his new artifact, the auto-mapper, as he called it. The artifact was scanning the area he was flying, in all directions and creating a map of the area on his tablet.

What Damion was doing, by flying back and forth, was testing the auto-mapper's ability to correctly update its map. He wanted the auto-mapper to be able to create up to date maps of wherever they were and give him an accurate map of the area. If the auto-mapper could not reconcile the new image with the old, then he would end up with a garbled mess of images laid on top of each other, leaving shadows or echoes of things that had changed.

Once Damion was satisfied that the update feature was working, he started working on the range of the scan. If the auto-mapper only had a range of a few meters, or even a few hundred meters, it would not be very useful. Trying to map the whole world would take thousands of devices and just as many people willing to use them.

Tricia Cromsdale had told Damion that their tablets had a range of a few hundred meters, so he was aiming improve that to at least a few kilometers. If he could get the range of his device high enough, then mapping entire regions would not be an outrageous task. There was also the chance that he could get other guilds and the Orders to participate in the mapping, he just had to make it so they did not need to do anything. His goal was a wearable device, that would transmit its scans to a central database.

Right now, all he had was his single prototype, but if this test proved successful, then he was sure he could make it smaller. And if he could make it small enough, he was sure he could make it so the scans it collected could be sent to the Explorer Guild.

When Damion landed and dismissed his Ice Sword, Elicia was ready to guess what he was doing.

"You are making a map."

"Yes. I think if I can disperse enough of these, as people go around and travel the world, we can map most of the known regions with little difficulty. And if I can get high Rankers to take them with them when they enter the Red Zones, then we can learn a lot about those areas without having to scout as much.

"And who is going to pay to build all these artifacts?" Elicia asked. She was aware of how much time Damion spent building just this one. If he wanted dozens or hundreds built, it would occupy him for years.

"Once I am sure my artifact is sound, I will make a few and provide them to the Explorer Guild, along with the design."

"You are getting to be quite the inventor," Elicia told him. "Two artifacts in one term. After last term I thought you were going to be a spellsmith, who knew you'd be an artificer instead."

"The design of this artifact is not that different from my body scanner. Even though it has multiple scanners, it is not trying to get as great of detail of things, so it is capable of scanning things further away. How far away is what I am trying to figure out."

"And you think other people will just build and use them?"

"Maybe a few. I'm hoping the Explorer Guild will build most of them, especially if I give them plenty of materials to get started. If I can show people how useful it is, people will start to want one for whenever they go out on missions."

"Why would they want to lug around something like that?"

"Not like this, smaller, wearable on top of your hat or on your armor. I need to make it smaller to make it practical. But think about it. If you had this and it mapped your surroundings, you would never get lost. And if once you got back to a city or an Order outpost and it connected to the communications network and updated your map with other people's maps, then you will have a lot of information at your fingertips."

"Okay. I can see how it would be useful for adventurers and even for the Orders. But you still have to make it known to people. Until you get people to even know your invention exists, no one will know they should want one."

"I have to start from the beginning, but don't worry. I'll be sharing my design with Leland and Flannery in Saung too. I don't expect them to make a bunch of them, but I'm sure they will be more than happy to make a few and start selling them. Once demand for them starts kicking up, they will be able to make a tidy profit."

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