Reborn With a Magic System

Once the Demonic Beast collapsed, Damion released his Ice Clone and turned off all of his passive spells. He needed a few moments to recover his spent mana, and it was faster to do so without the drain of the passives.

Spotting where Geoffrey had fallen, Damion rushed over to him and hopped off his Ice Sword, releasing the construct, letting it disintegrate into ambient mana. Ronald was trying to aid the Fire mage, but the young man was not pleased with the care he was receiving.

"Just drink the potion," Ronald insisted as he tried to shove a low-grade healing potion in Geoffrey's mouth.

The blow from the Emperor Chalco Beetle had not pierced flesh, but solely due to the protection of the wards on his school robes. While the blow from the Demonic Beast had been stopped, the kinetic energy from it had still sent Geoffrey flying. Since his wards had used up most of their strength stopping the first blow, when he landed, he suffered injuries.

Several of the Fire mage's ribs were bruised or broken from his landing and he appeared to have a broken ankle. Damion did not blame Geoffrey for refusing to drink the low-grade healing potion. The potion would be effective for small cuts and bruises, but it was not possible for Ronald's potion to mend bones, at best it would slightly speed up Geoffrey's natural healing.

"I knew it was a mistake going into a dungeon without a healer," Geoffrey moaned.

"I don't recall you objecting before," Inara said coldly.

"If my ankle heals funny, I'm going to make you pay for the extra healer fees to fix it," Geoffrey spat at Damion.

Damion had been about to take out his Light artifact and use it to pretend to heal the Fire mage as an excuse to use Minor Heal on him. As much as he'd practiced the spell, not having any actual injuries to heal meant he had not advanced his knowledge of the spell much.

"Come on, someone has to have a decent healing potion," Thomas said in defense of his friend.

"I've got something better," Damion said as he pulled the Light medallion out of one of his waste pockets. The oval medallion glowed slightly as he brought it out and everyone quickly realized what it was.

"Well, aren't you Mr. Moneybags," Yuri said when he saw the quality of the artifact. C Rank artifacts were not cheap, even their own noble families hesitated to give such valuable artifacts to youngsters.

"As you all have noted, I've been in dungeons and the wild before. I wanted to make sure I was prepared," Damion told them.

Ronald moved out of the way as Damion approached Geoffrey. Holding the artifact in his hand, but instead of channeling mana into the artifact he cast Minor Heal repeatedly on the Fire mage. Hovering his hand a few inches above Geoffrey's chest, Damion slowly moved his hand over the injured area before repeating the process on the Fire mage's ankle.

Minor Heal was only strong enough to mend minor wounds. With repeated casting, the spell could serve to heal more severe injuries, though other spells could have done the job with a single cast, saving Damion mana. But that would require him to know them. Though, despite Geoffrey's moaning in pain, his injuries were not that severe.

A moment later, Geoffrey was wiggling his foot in amazement. His pain had vanished, and he had regained full motion in his ankle.

"That is one heck of a healing artifact," Geoffrey told Damion. "Makes healing potions worthless."

"I wouldn't go that far," Damion told them.

"Yeah," Thomas cut in. "Healing potions may not always be the best, unless you really spend on them, but you may not always have time for an artifact or the mana to use it. Don't start thinking one of those artifacts is a fix all."

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Geoffrey and the rest of the team reflected for a moment on Thomas' advice. Damion absolutely agreed with him, but he was not going to say that out loud.

"Phil, anything in the area?" Damion asked his familiar.

'No prey.'

"Any predators?" Damion shot back.

'Tall dark one. Far away.'

Damion was not quite sure what to make of Phil's description, but he felt the Snow Hawk was probably referring to whatever had made the tracks they had followed before. Hearing that the 'tall dark one' was not close to them was a relief, especially since Phil classified whatever it was as a predator. That probably meant it was at least C Rank.

"I think the thing we were trying to follow has moved some distance away, but I don't think we should follow it."

"Why not?" Yuri asked.

"Phil considered whatever it was a predator. If Phil doesn't think it is prey, we should be worried."

"What did Phil think of the Emperor Chalco Beetle?" Inara asked.

'Tasty,' Phil told Damion through their bond.

"He considered it food."

"I'm up for heading back to the gate," Inara announced.

"Yeah, we walked for how long since the Slash Rats and only found one Demonic Beast. And that one nearly killed Geoffrey," Yuri agreed.

"It did not nearly kill me," Geoffrey shot back. "But I'm up for going back too. I don't think we should stick around. I have a feeling the next thing we encounter will be stronger than that giant beetle."

Thomas and Ronald both looked to Damion to try and guess which way he was leaning, but it was Ronald who spoke up first.

"I've been saying we should leave for a while. That hasn't changed, only reason I've stuck around was because I didn't want to abandon the team."

"Then let's head back to entrance," Damion told the group.

"What are we going to do with that?" Thomas asked pointing to the Emperor Chalco Beetle's carcass.

"I've got it," Damion said as he walked over and pulled the Demonic Beast into the Magic System Inventory.

"What the… there is no way that spatial artifact can hold something of that size," Thomas said angerly. "How did you do that?"

"I told you before. This is one of the Fontane's new artifacts. Took it off Lucas Fontane myself after I killed him. If you want to know what their artifacts can do, go question the Fontane family."

Damion ignored Thomas' further protests and started climbing up the broken hill the Emperor Chalco Beetle had destroyed when it woke up. If they wanted to head back on the same path, they had to climb up the hill.

While he walked, Damion checked on the Magic System notifications and was surprised to see he had received three more skill increases.

*Ding*

[Spell Ice Shard mastery increased to B Rank]

*Ding*

{Quest Completed}

[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit]

*Ding*

[Spell Ice Clone mastery increased to E Rank]

*Ding*

{Quest Completed}

[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit]

*Ding*

[Spell Minor Heal mastery increased to E Rank]

*Ding*

{Quest Completed}

[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit]

'Status,' Damion mentally said to the Magic System.

[Magic System]

[System Level: 2]

[User: Damion Wells]

[Age: 18]

[Magic Talent: EX]

[Magic Affinity: Ice EX, Water E, Poison D, Spatial D, Fire A, Earth D, Shadow C, Holy C]

[Mana: 3,228/3,741] (5%) - 3,928

[Magic Power: 8,674] (5%) - 9,107

[Mana Recovery: 51 P/S] (5%) - 53

[Strength: 115]

[Dexterity: 119] (5%) - 124

[Vitality: 212]

[Intelligence: 145]

[Experience: 7,300/10,000]

[Store Credits: 21,946]

Seeing that he was slowly climbing his way higher in experience points to level up the Magic System, Damion was quite satisfied. If he could get the ability to convert magic cores into store credits he felt he could safely go on a long-desired shopping spree. What he would spend the credits on though, that was an entirely different matter.

With Ice Shard finally reaching B Rank, Damion could now cast multiple Ice Shards at once. Multicasting cost more mana, but being able to launch three, four or even five attacks with one cast made the spell far more lethal.

"Is there any way for us to get back faster?" Yuri complained. "I've got sand in my boots and could use a break."

"If you need a break, then we'll take a break," Damion told him. "As for getting there faster, unless you all have flying artifacts, we walked here, so we've got to walk back. I don't have a ground car in my spatial ring."

"Couldn't you fly us?" Ronald asked. "I mean you fly on your sword; can't you make it big enough for all of us to stand on it?"

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