A moment later, Damion felt an increase in his abilities. Several of his artifacts provided boosts to his abilities and evidently with the increase in Rank of the artifacts their passive boosts also increased. He took a quick look at the Magic System Equipment menu to see how much they had improved.

[Helmet of Sight (B Rank) - Increase sight range by 10%]

[Armor of Repose (B Rank) - Decrease fatigue accumulation by 10%]

[Bracers of Reflection (B Rank) - Grants 10% chance to reflect spells at caster]

[Greeves of Shielding (B Rank) - Reduces physical damage by 10%]

[Boots of Freedom (B Rank) - 10% chance to avoid movement impediments]

[Necklace of Regeneration (B Rank) Increase Mana Regeneration by 10%]

[Ring of Magic Power (B Rank) Increase Magic Power by 10%]

[Ring of Mana (B Rank) Increase Mana Capacity by 10%]

[Belt of Dexterity (B Rank) Increase Dexterity by 10%]

Seeing the passive bonuses going from 5% to 10% was a surprise to Damion. He did not know what the lower Ranks were at for boosts, was a D Rank artifact only 2.5%? The bigger question was, what would the boost at A Rank be? Or S Rank. If it kept doubling, just how strong would he become just from the Magic System's artifacts.

The boost from the artifact passives made Damion want to start buying up Upgrades to his magic power and mana capacity. He had not purchased those boosts for a while, since it was better for him to increase those abilities naturally. Still, his desire to grow stronger faster was eating away at him. In the end, he decided to go with a different sort of boost, one that could help him in the short term and the long term. Passive spells.

'System, purchase five random passive spells.'

{Host should be aware that the accumulative effect of maintaining so many passive spells may cause mana exhaustion.}

Passive spells were useful, and he considered buying even more of them, but like the Magic System warned, there were limits to magic expenditure. Even if he had the mana regeneration to maintain these spells or more, every time his body expended mana and regenerated it, his body or more precisely, his core did work and if it did too much work without rest, his core would become exhausted, even if he still had mana he could use.

Over the course of a week, he could run a dozen marathons, but if he tried to run a dozen marathons back-to-back, no matter how strong his body was, it would fail him. Just as his mind and body needed rest, so did his magic core.

Passive spells did not put as much strain on the core with their small drains as active spells, but when you factored in how many he now had, the drain was the same as if he was trying to maintain a high tier spell constantly.

'Passive spell usage helps with strengthening my core and thereby makes compressing my mana to raise my magic power easier correct?' Damion questioned the System.

{Affirmative}

'Then go ahead with the purchase. If the strain is too much, I'll just shut down ones that are only good situationally until needed.'

{Affirmative}

{Five Random Passive Spell purchased for 2,215 Credits.}

{Generating spells…}

{Passive spell generated. Congratulations host you have obtained spell Heat Resistance, Cold Resistance, Silver Tongue, Poison Resistance and Lightning Resistance.}

[Heat Resistance - (F Rank 5 Mana P/S) Increase your resistance to all forms of heat. Higher mastery increases resistance up to complete immunity.]

[Cold Resistance - (F Rank 5 Mana P/S) Increase your resistance to all forms of cold. Higher mastery increases resistance up to complete immunity.]

[Silver Tongue - (F Rank 25 Mana P/S) Increase your ability to talk your way out of situations and improve your negotiating skills. Higher Rank will allow for higher chances of success.]

[Poison Resistance - (F Rank 10 Mana P/S) Increase your resistance to types of poisons. All poisons at or below current Rank, user will be immune to.]

[Lightning Resistance - (F Rank 5 Mana P/S) Increase your resistance to all forms of lightning energy. Higher mastery increases resistance up to complete immunity.]

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'These could be very useful,' Damion thought as he began activating his new passive spells.

'System, what is the percentage of resistance gained on these resistance passives?'

He felt the question was important. If it was only 1%, then the spell would hardly worth keeping active outside of using it to gain some easy credits before switching to a different one. But if it had a high level, even if only acquired once the spell reached a certain Rank, these could be game changers.

{The resistance percentages for passive resistance spells are as follows: F-25% E-30% D-35% C-40% B-50% A-60% S-75% SS-80% SSS-90% EX-100%}

'Okay, so more than a little useful,' Damion said, instantly impressed with the effect of these passives. 'Wait! SS, SSS, EX Rank? Does that mean my EX Ice affinity and magic talent are that much better than S Rank?'

{Affirmative. EX Rank is the pinnacle of Ranks and symbolizes inexhaustible potential.}

'You could have told me this sooner,' Damion complained to the System.

{Host never asked.}

Damion wanted to give the System a snarky response back, but it was right. He had never asked. And now that he thought about it, the System had already shown him EX Rank, along with SS and SSS when he was reviewing the credit values of cores. He had just been too focused on the value of the cores he had to pay attention to things above S Rank.

His magic affinity Rank aside, he wanted to buy more passive spells. To get resistances to other forms of magic. If he could do that and level all of these spells to their max, then he would be able to become immune to any magic attack. The problem of course, was mana exhaustion, he needed to strengthen his core, strengthen himself further to be able support the weight of that many passives, still, it gave him another goal to work towards. Once he understood how much strain the current spells placed on him and he became comfortable with it, he would add more.

Once all his passive spells were active, Damion took a look at how much mana keeping them all active was costing him. 86 mana per second. It was quite a lot, much more than most mages would be able to endure. Fortunately, his natural mana regeneration was at 212 mana per second and with his System artifact it boosted him to 233. Nearly three times what he was using. Until he started casting spells or using spells like Ice Sword or Ice Clone that added a constant drain, his mana regeneration would keep his mana capacity full. Even with casting spells, it would not be long, even after casting multiple spells for his mana to reach max capacity again and that was without even using Mana Absorption, which was at B Rank and would give him another 40 mana per second recovery boost.

In the morning, Damion left Leland's guest room to find both of the older artificers working on breakfast. It had been some months since he had a meal cooked by anyone aside from himself and he felt it would a welcome change from his mediocre cooking skills.

"Good morning," the duo greeted as Damion took a seat at the table.

"Morning. Have you selected which artifacts you would like me to optimize?"

"We have indeed. We have chosen a F Rank weapon, an E Rank piece of armor and a D Rank utility artifact and would like to see what you can do with them," Leland said.

"I'll take a look after breakfast and can probably have them back to you tomorrow."

Flannery looked a bit disappointed at not being able to observe Damion work, but as a fellow artificer, he knew some secrets were not shared easily. Even he and Leland, who got along wonderfully since their first meeting, kept their workspaces separate.

"That will be fine," Leland told him before shoveling food onto everyone's plates.

Once Damion ate his fill he headed down to the store and looked over the three artifacts that Leland had picked out. The Magic System informed him the weapon artifact, a short sword, would cost 17 credits, the armor, which was a chest plate, would cost 12 credits and the utility artifact, an older belt of purification, would cost 29 credits.

Damion gathered up the three artifacts and retreated to his room. After having the system upgrade each of them one Rank, he took a look at his remaining credits, which were still above 500,000. Half a million credits, every time he looked at the figure, he wanted to rush over to the System Shop and buy everything he could.

Closing the System, to avoid further temptation, Damion activated Mana Absorption and focused on oversaturating his core. Even with the advantage of the passive spell, it was still a task to force more mana into his core than it could hold. The more mana he forced in, the faster the excess mana leaked out and with over 4,300 mana, it took a while to get his core saturated enough to begin the process of compression to increase his magic power.

He spent the entire day training his mana capacity and magic power. Ordinarily he would want to head outside to exercise and practice his spell casting, but he wanted Leland and Flannery to at least believe it took him some effort to improve the artifacts they gave him. Thus, he stayed cooped up in his room for the entire day. When it was time for dinner, Damion headed to the kitchen with the three artifacts for Leland and Flannery to examine.

"Remarkable. Truly remarkable," Leland said holding the short sword that Damion had increased from F Rank to E Rank.

Flannery was quickly moving his hands around the newly improved C Rank Belt of Purification.

"These enchantments. How did you come up with them?" Flannery asked as he examined the belt.

"I found I have a fairly intuitive grasp of Nashto," Damion answered.

"Yes, I heard about your achievement of creating a tier 2 spell on your first try. And I've seen your auto-mapper. But this work is a cut above the rest."

"Well, I didn't have to try and work out the creation of the artifact. Improving something someone else did is a lot easier than making something new."

"Yes, even the improvement on your own creation after the fact was remarkable," Flannery said.

"Tell me, are you going to share the improved blueprints for your auto-mapper?" Leland asked.

"Why don't I work one of the ones you've made tonight. That way you can study it and copy those changes. Maybe you will even find a way to improve my modifications."

"What a wonderful idea," Flannery remarked. "If we can keep going back and forth with the auto-mappers, then maybe we can make something truly remarkable."

"Like what?" Leland asked.

"A live map of the entire planet!"

At first, Damion thought Flannery's idea was a little over the top, but after thinking about what the Magic System could do, he realized it might be possible. If he was able to upgrade an auto-mapper to S Rank or higher, the artifact might just be powerful enough to show the entirety of Nerotath in real time.

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