"Ethan, have you thought this through?" Damion questioned.

"What do you mean?" The knight asked.

"There are hundreds of artifacts in this store. Even if I could upgrade them all, it would take quite a while. Not to mention the cores needed. It will probably take a few thousand cores. Where are you going to get that many."

"I don't expect you to do the work in a day. Work out how many a day you want to do for Leland and then you all can let me know how many cores I need to procure."

'System, analyze all the artifacts in this shop and tell me what it would cost to upgrade them all.'

{Affirmative.}

{Analyzing…}

{There are 859 artifacts in this store from F Rank to C Rank that host can use upgrade service on. To upgrade all by one Rank would cost 80944 credits. Would you like to proceed?}

'NO!' Damion shouted at the System.

The last thing he wanted was for every artifact in the shop to suddenly be upgraded.

'I'll be upgrading them in smaller groups at a later time,' Damion told the System.

"Look, Damion," Ethan said, snapping his friend out of his interaction with the System. "I know this will be a lot of work. But it's a huge opportunity for me, Leland and Flannery. After you connected the three of us, I've been procuring materials and they've been making artifacts, which my father and I sell to various guilds and even to some to the Orders. We've become pretty big. Helping us out will go a long way to showing the rest of the region your skills."

"I'm not trying to be famous."

"Just using this as a way to hone your talent. I get it. Trust me, this will help all of us in the long run," Ethan reassured.

"Let's do this, I'll do 10 artifacts a day for the shop while I'm here, provided you get me the payment for them."

"Only ten a day?" Ethan sounded a bit deflated, but it was for the best. As much as Damion would have liked to help his friends make a bunch of money, he was already standing out a lot doing this, doing more would be even more foolish.

"You are forgetting I charge in cores. That's a minimum of twenty cores a day, thirty if they are all weapon artifacts. Even with the dungeons here in Saung, you won't be able to procure that many cores on a regular basis."

"Don't worry about that," Ethan said with a smile and puffed up his chest. "As a fledging merchant lord, I have plenty of ways to get Demonic Beast Cores."

"In that, case, pick out the ten items you want me to upgrade, and I will get working on them. Just make sure you have the cores here tomorrow."

"Will do," Ethan said as he quickly moved around the shop selecting items. When he came back to Damion, he was carrying a lot more than ten items.

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"You do know that each piece of an armor set is a separate artifact," Damion told him.

Ethan had brought over three full sets of armor along with several weapons and a couple utility artifacts in a cart he acquired from somewhere.

"Really? But it's a set. Can't you do the whole set?"

"One artifact. One price," Damion told his friend firmly.

"Alright then. Do this set of armor," Ethan said, setting several pieces of armor on the counter. "And this weapon. And these utility artifacts. That's ten."

"Alright," Damion told him.

Looking at the pieces, they were all D Rank, upgrading them to C Rank should net him a good profit.

'System, analyze these ten artifacts. What is the cost to upgrade them one Rank?'

{Affirmative.}

{Analyzing…}

{Cost to upgrade all pieces from D Rank to C Rank – 333 credits.}

"These ten items will cost you 21 cores. Make sure to have them here tomorrow," Damion reminded Ethan.

Damion struggled to keep his face calm as he did the math. For 333 credits, he was going to get 21 C Rank cores worth 10,500 credits. All he had to do was upgrade the artifacts later tonight and reap the rewards tomorrow when Ethan came to pay him.

"Don't worry. I will have your cores here tomorrow."

Damion was able to complete the upgrades to the artifacts in no time and even had Leland and Flannery check his work in the morning. Both were once again impressed with his ability improve artifacts so much.

When Ethan showed up, Damion was quite happy to accept the 21 C Rank cores from the knight. He slipped the cores into his inventory and let the Magic System convert them to credits. If he could make a profit of 10,000 credits a day it would be quite something, but still would take him over 27 years to reach his goal of 100,000,000 credits. He needed to do things in bulk, but without raising suspicion or he needed to do things of higher quality. If he had 21 B Rank cores that would have probably been close to 20,000 in profits.

Ethan also selected another batch of artifacts for Damion to upgrade. In addition to the work Ethan was giving him, several new customers showed up asking about the service. When they confirmed the price, each of them handed over their armor and weapons to upgrade, promising to return the next day with payment. After signing the service contract they went on their way, leaving Damion and Ethan in the shop.

Seeing Damion accept twice as many artifacts from these walk-in customers as he had for Leland originally, Ethan was a bit miffed. If he could do twenty or even thirty artifacts in a day, why did he only do ten for the shop last night.

However, Ethan believed it might have something to do with the Ranks of the artifacts. All the artifacts selected before were D Rank and Damion upgraded them to C Rank. These adventurers brought in all E and F Rank artifacts.

The next morning, Damion had Leland and Flannery examine his work, including all of the artifacts of the adventures who dropped off their artifacts. Ethan again came to pay for his upgrades and the adventurers brought in their payment without trouble as well. This gave Damion another 13,853 credits. He did not make nearly as much from the E and F Rank artifacts, but he knew by upgrading these the advertising the adventurers would give him would be worth it.

Damion continued to take in people's artifacts without trouble for three more days. He would do ten artifacts for Ethan and the shop, while also accepting orders from anyone who came into the store. Each day more adventurers would show up and the number of cores he was converting to credits increased steadily and he would be sure to have either Leland or Flannery examine his work each time. Part of the reason he did this was so that they might have a chance to enhance their own knowledge of the ancient language and their crafting skills. By the fourth day, Damion thought he might just be able to reach 600,000 credits, until a group of people he did not recognize showed up and he was glad that he had Leland and Flannery's backing.

"Where is the proprietor of this business," the B Rank Fire mage said loudly as he walked into the store.

"We are the owners," Leland said, as he and Flannery came out of the back to confront the newcomer.

The mage was temporarily shocked as both Leland and Flannery flared their magical aura. Even if the B Rank Fire mage could not perceive the aura, it would still feel oppressive to him.

"My son purchased an artifact upgrade yesterday from this shop and the artifact is flawed. I demand to be reimbursed for the artifact and the one responsible for the alterations be turned over to the Crimson Order for punishment."

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