The 30 seconds it took for Damion to ask the Magic System to upgrade Knight Coleman's chest plate went by, and he was quickly left with nothing to do. Since he was hoping for more people to come by with more orders, he decided not to go out of the city to practice. Instead, Damion sat down and started reviewing the magic seals he knew.

Now that he had knew four tier 4 and four tier 5 magic seals, he was hoping he could push his mastery of Nashto to the next level. The quest to Master Nashto was perhaps the easiest of his quests to complete and the tempting reward of 1,000,000 credits would be enough to triple his current number of credits.

Late in the evening, after a long day of study, Damion received a message from Phil. The Snow Hawk was on its way back to Saung and the city was now within sight. Rushing out of the store, he summoned his Ice Sword and flew in the direction he sensed his companion.

Phil, sensing Damion's approach, started moving closer to the city. The two met without incident and turned to race back to their temporary home.

Damion was not sure how the city guards felt about him flying in and out of the city. But since he was a B Rank mage and there were only a few people in the entire city at A Rank, he did not think they would dare complain.

Once back in his room at Leland's, Damion settled in for the night with hopes that the next day would bring him more than a single customer.

In the morning, Damion arose early and headed out of the city to resume his physical exercise and spell casting practice. The shop would not open for several more hours and he did not want to continue to skip his training.

After the initial shock of a few guards, Phil's presence was becoming well known to those around the city and they did not even look surprised when the pair left the city or when they returned an hour later. Damion thought it was possible that Manager Halsey had something to do with alerting people, but he did not bother to find out for sure. As long as people knew better than to bother Phil, that was enough.

For the second day of Damion's fledging business, his only customer was Knight Coleman. Who returned to collect his chest plate and pay Damion his fee.

"It really has become D Rank," the Knight said, shocked. Even though Leland had vouched for the young man, he still harbored some doubts.

"I will be here for a few weeks if you want to have more artifacts optimized," Damion told him.

"I hope to scrape up the money to afford the cores needed to upgrade my sword. You said three cores for a weapon right?"

"Yes. As long as it isn't broken or too badly damaged, three cores will be all I charge."

"You aren't going to start raising your price when you get a lot of orders are you?" Knight Coleman asked.

"No. My prices should stay the same. Like I said before, the only time I will charge more is if an artifact is broken or badly damaged."

"Then I will see you as soon as I've acquired more cores."

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After Knight Coleman left, Damion spent the afternoon mentally working on Nashto. It was not until late in the afternoon that someone else came in. However, this person was not a customer.

"Damion! It is so good to see you again," Ethan Hoyt shouted when he spotted his friend in the back of the store.

"Ethan! How goes the shipping business?"

"Boring as hell. Now I know why my father always insisted on accompanying shipments."

"Why is that?"

"To break up the monotony of manifests and invoices. The only time anything remotely interesting happens is when we run into a Ferocious Beast or a bandit during shipping. Everything else is just so boring."

Damion slapped his friend on the back before responding, "Be careful what you wish for. You are only D Rank and too much excitement might affect the bottom line."

"Ha!" Ethan let out a laugh. "I hear you are opening your own business."

"Just for a little while, to earn some traveling money."

"How about you upgrade these for me," Ethan said, taking out a pair of D Rank daggers.

"Three C Rank cores each."

"I don't get a discount?" Ethan said with fake shock.

"I could always charge you more if you'd like."

"You are turning into a first-rate merchant. Never had you pegged for the life of a trader."

"I'm just working on my skills as I pass the time."

"Planning on going somewhere?"

"To the Yellow Zones. Probably near the Red Zone borders."

"Why the hell would you want to go out there?"

"If I want to keep advancing I need to. The noble families want to slow my growth down by not letting me into any Realm Breaches. If I am to keep advancing I need to keep challenging myself."

"And your side business?" Ethan asked.

"I'll keep improving people's artifacts for a fee when I have time."

"Guess I should look to upgrade a lot of stuff before you go. Explain to me your fee structure."

Damion explained to Ethan his simple price model for upgrading people's artifacts. After taking a few notes the D Rank knight started writing more notes and then muttering to himself. Finally, he looked back to Damion to ask a question.

"What is your turnaround time?"

"What?"

"For upgrading an artifact. How fast can you do it?"

"Depends on the artifact," Damion said honestly. It was true. The worse the artifact or more badly damaged it was, the longer the Magic System took to analyze it and upgrade it, but that was still only a matter of seconds. Not that he was about to tell Ethan that.

"What about the maximum you can push an artifact to?"

"The highest I can push an artifact is to B Rank."

"Can you upgrade an artifact you have already upgraded?"

"Yes, but…"

"Another fee. No problem. Okay, give me a minute to talk to Leland and Flannery."

Damion had a feeling his businessman friend was about to make a deal with the two artificers in hopes of churning out high value artifacts in order to turn a hefty profit. It was not that he minded, but he also did not want to bring too much attention to Leland and Flannery. If their shop suddenly had a bunch of B Rank artifacts the noble families in the White Zones would take note.

"Alright, here's the deal," Ethan said rushing back to Damion. "You upgrade everything in their shop by one Rank. I will provide the Demonic Beast Cores."

"How does this help you make money?" Damion questioned. If Ethan was providing all the cores he did not understand how the knight was going to make back his investment. All the artifacts in the store belonged to Leland and Flannery.

"They'll be splitting the profits of the sales with me."

"And they are just going to do that? Split the profits with you for every artifact in their shop that I upgrade?"

"In exchange for me helping them pay for the upgrades, yes."

"This is going to cost a lot of cores," Damion told him.

"You are telling me. I've got a full inventory of the store here and I'm still calculating how much this is going to cost."

Damion looked around the store, there were several hundred artifacts, ranging from F Rank to B Rank. The B Rank, he could do nothing with, not that there were many of those. It still left hundreds of artifacts he would need to upgrade. Even if the System could upgrade them in mass, Damion could not do so. That would raise too many red flags. Even for Leland and Flannery.

There was one pressing issue aside from the time element, it was cores. This many artifacts would require hundreds of magic cores to upgrade. Where was Ethan going to get that many cores.

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