Chapter 437 – Who Do You Think You Are?

Having already been through all the B Rank floors and being anxious to reach the S Rank area to be able to train efficiently, Damion did not spend much time on them. When he first started out, he was worried that Nyx would not be able to easily keep up with him if he flew on his sword. However, when he summoned his Ice Sword and jumped on, the Shadow Cat used an ability he had not seen before, it vanished into his shadow.

The spell had to be some combination of Shadow Step and One With Shadows, but Damion was not entirely certain how it functioned. He was, however, very grateful for it. This let Nyx stay with him, hidden and able to attack at a moment’s notice. This ability also gave Damion an idea for a new spell, he just hoped he would be able to work it out while raising his magic power on the S Rank floors.

When Damion reached the thirty-first floor he paused for a moment. He had been here and trained here before but had never left the safe area around the entrance. From the information the S Ranks had gathered, most of the A Rank floors were a haunted forest. Wargs, Ghouls and Wraiths were the most common of the Demonic Beasts.

Sadly, as difficult as such creatures were to kill, there was little value in them with the exception of their Dark affinity cores. With this being an A Rank floor, there would be numerous C Rank and B Rank Demonic Beasts for him to fight and collect their cores. However, the other A Rank teams in Atlantis also farmed these floors resulting in much of the easier targets having already been picked off.

Unless he wanted to wait for the labyrinth to begin repopulating the Demonic Beasts he was better off moving on. Damion kept an eye on his auto-mapper, hoping that there would be a few Demonic Beasts in his path towards the next floor, but the path from entrance to exit was clear. This was an indication that not much time had passed since another group had passed through the floor. Damion did not know if the group passing through was just an A Rank team or if it was the S Ranks going through, but as long as he had an easy path to the S Rank floors, he did not really care.

He quickly made his way through the A Rank floors. According to the reports filed by the previous explorers’ reports the guardian of the thirty-fifth floor was a mid A Rank Demonic Beast. This meant the creature’s magic power was likely between five hundred and six hundred thousand. Easily strong enough to squish Damion like a bug should he encounter it.

Luckily, all these floors had been cleared before and, with the aid of Concealed Aura, Damion was able to largely go unnoticed. Even if the floor guardians were restored by the labyrinth, since he did not need to confront them to proceed, he was able to advance to floors where he normally would not dare to go without an escort.

It was not until the thirty-ninth floor that Damion encountered any troubles, but that came not from Demonic Beasts, but from adventurers. Having been gone for a number of months and the city growing in his absence, it was not too surprising for Damion not to be immediately recognized, but he would have thought his return would have made reached all of Atlantis’ residents by now.

The thirty-ninth floor was quite possibly the busiest floor in the entire labyrinth. This was not because it was the second to last A Rank floor, but because it possessed Demonic Beasts with one of the most sought-after affinities, Spatial. Realm Breaches that contained Spatial affinity Demonic Beasts were exceptionally rare. Dungeons controlled by families like the Fontanes were only D Rank and thus artifacts produced from materials from those dungeons were limited in their Rank.

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The Spatial affinity dungeon Damion had discovered as James Picard had been A Rank, but the Mage Association had taken ownership of it and was only slowly doling out the resources taken from it. With a floor of the Avalon labyrinth being high A Rank, it meant there was a large amount of high Rank Spatial affinity materials to be found there from the Spatial affinity Demonic Beasts, this also meant that the A Rank adventurers who had made their home in Atlantis wanted to focus on farming that floor to make as much money as possible.

While Damion was making his way from the entrance of thirty-nine to the passageway to forty, a group of adventurers spotted the lone dot on their auto-mappers and thought they were seeing a Demonic Beast moving quickly through the dungeon. They had no reason to believe a mage would be attempting to cross this floor alone, as the only mages capable of that were S Ranks and they all already progressed to the deeper floors. Unfortunately for them, their logic was flawed.

The group of adventurers that moved to intercept Damion were quite surprised when they saw a human flying through the air on an Ice Sword. One would think that, given this was Damion Wells’ well-known method of transit, a person flying on an Ice Sword would be immediately associated with him, but after the initial shock, this group of adventurers simply moved to block his path, rising up into the sky with their own flying artifacts.

“Can I help you with something?” Damion asked when he reached the group of four, two A Rank mages and four upper B Ranks. In his shadow he could sense Nyx tensing, as if waiting for the command to strike.

“You are crossing through the territory assigned to our guild,” one of the A Ranks said, while one of the B Ranks tried and failed to get the attention of the speaker. The speaker hushed him and waved his hand backwards towards him in a motion that told Damion he was telling the B Rank to stand down.

“I’m just making my way to the next floor. I have no intention of encroaching on your territory.”

“Good. But that does not solve the problem that since you are passing through…” the B Rank finally had enough and forced a whisper into the ear of the A Ranker. The A Ranker looked to the B Ranker and then to Damion and then back to the B Ranker and said, “Don’t be absurd.” Before turning his attention fully to Damion.

“As you are passing through our territory, we demand to examine your spatial artifact to ensure that you have not stolen anything from our territory.”

The A Ranker looked confident, and Damion could guess what the B Ranker had said to him, which made the situation somewhat amusing. Not wanting to waste time with this group, he decided to take a direct approach to resolving the situation.

“The territory charter does not give you the right to search a person passing through your assigned sector. In fact, the path between passageways to floors is no one’s territory. This was done specifically to avoid conflicts. Now, can I pass, or are you going to risk ruining your guild’s reputation?”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” the A Rank snarled.

“Damion Wells. Ice mage, co-founder of Atlantis and Avalon.”

There was a brief pause where no one said anything. Then the B Ranker whispered, “I told you.”

The A Ranker face slowly paled as he realized what he had done. However, instead of admitting that he had screwed up, he chose to doubt Damion’s identity.

“Damion Wells is missing and despite what some people say, probably dead. I don’t know you think you are fooling, but…”

Before the man could continue talking Damion cut him off. “You all should really rethink who is your leader in the future. Now, you all have wasted enough of my time.”

With a cast of Ice Domain the area around Damion drastically dropped in temperature and the ambient mana the group was relying on to stay aloft with their flying artifacts was stripped. They were not high in the air, so Damin was not worried they would be hurt by the fall. Seeing the panicked look on all of their faces as they suddenly struggled to replace the mana their artifacts relied on brought an involuntary smile to his lips.

Not bothering to check if the adventurers were okay, Damion continued on to the next floor. He was almost to the S Rank floors and then he could finally make some progress in his training.