Mage Thresbane narrowed his eyes at the nas Damion had chosen. Both nas were significant, but not in the way Damion knew them.
“How did you co up with those nas?” Mage Thresbane asked.
Turning to the Shadow mage, Damion noticed the man’s aura had completely changed from a mont ago. Before it was relaxed and now the SS Rank mage’s aura seed tense, as if it was on edge.
“I think I read about them in a book as a kid. The nas always kind of stuck with .”
“Which book?” Mage Thresbane asked.
“I really can’t rember. I read a lot of books as a kid, read nearly the entire library at my school.”
Mage Thresbane’s aura relaxed with Damion’s explanation. However, Damion did not understand why the na of two mythical places on Earth would have caused such a reaction from the Shadow mage.
“Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to make a copy of these plans and get my people working.”
“Even though the mountain range isn’t finished?” Damion questioned.
“There are not that many Demonic Beasts in the area. Even if there were, they would not pose a threat to my people while I am there.”
“How will you get back?” Damion asked as Mage Thresbane made a copy of Caleb’s plans.
“First, I am going to my people. Then I will contact Mage Fletcher to arrange a ti and a place for a Portal. By this ti next month, the school and half the first section of the city will be built.”
Damion did not know how many people the Protectorate had, or how powerful they were, but Mage Thresbane seed confident in his people’s abilities, so Damion took him at his word. The SS Rank mage left shortly after that, leaving the Wells family to spend the rest of the day together.
After Damion returned to his ho with Elicia, and let Phil in via Portal, the pair spent the evening together as they usually did. After breakfast in the morning, instead of heading back to Levande, Elicia wanted to spend the day together, so mapping the Yellow Zone was put on hold.
“Have you seen the ocean yet?”
“Not yet. But I still have a few Yellow Zones to map, I’m not even sure if any of them border the ocean or not.”
“When you do find it, can you take to see it?”
“Of course,” Damion answered without thinking too much, but then he realized he should and his answer. From all the stories about the ocean on Nerotath that he had heard, they were dangerous places. Supposedly, Realm Breaches opened underwater and since they could not be cleared, the oceans were filled with Demonic Beasts and were possibly the most dangerous Black Zones on the planet. “As long as it’s safe I an.”
“Is all the exploring you do safe?”
“No, but I can get myself out of most situations.”
“Are you saying my big and handso man can’t protect from a few stinky beasts,” Elicia teased.
“You know what I an,” Damion told her. “Don’t worry. I will make sure you can see the ocean too.”
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The next day, Damion returned to his normal routine of mapping out the Yellow Zone borders. Since he was no longer investigating Realm Breaches and focused solely on mapping as much area as possible, he was able to make good progress.
With the speeds he and Phil were able to fly, in just a few weeks, Damion was able to complete his circuit around the Yellow Zones. When he found his map complete and took a look at it on his tablet, he realized the size of the human controlled territory was not as large as he once believed.
While he had not mapped the White Zones or the Green Zones, others had been hard at work distributing his auto-mappers in each city and town. Looking at the map network set up by the Explorer Guild, he was able to see exactly where each of the White Zones were and how large they were.
The White Zones ford a bit of a triangle in the center, with Green Zones encircling the White and with the Yellow Zones surrounding the Green. The Green Zones varied greatly in size, but typically had only one major city, those that contained more than one were larger, often the border encroaching on a smaller Green Zone.
What Damion noticed was that the placent of the Green Zone cities around the White Zones closely mirrored the layout of the Yellow Zones. A central city with the Green Zones spaced out as buffers around the White Zone, to detect and minimize the threat that any beast wave could have on the jewels of human society.
Being able to see the human domain laid out like this, Damion knew it was planned this way in ages past, but he was surprised to see how uniform it was. The distribution of human settlents pointed to past planning and fairly accurate mapping, but it seed the knowledge of such intent was lost to ti.
One of the reasons he created his auto-mapper artifact was because there were no uniform maps of the world. There were plenty of pieceal ones. Each Zone, White, Green or Yellow, had a map of their own territory, but often tis it was centuries out of date. While the landscape did not typically change rapidly, changes still occurred over ti. The growth of forests, streams and rivers subtly changing their banks due to floods or droughts or animals building dams. Yet there had been no effort to update the old maps.
“Mage Wells, to what do I owe the pleasure today?” Mage Everitt Cromsdale asked when he connected with Damion’s communication tablet.
“I have finished my mapping of the Yellow Zone borders. And I see from the Guild’s map network that all the Green Zone cities have set up auto-mappers around them. It seems like just the Yellow Zones themselves lack fullti mapping.”
“Oh yes, it has been quite marvelous. Your artifact has saved the Guild decades of work and with being able to detect beast waves and Realm Breaches as soon as they occur, they should be able to save countless lives in the future.”
“What about the Yellow Zones? Less than half of them have set up a network of auto-mappers.”
“The Mage Association and Adventurer Association in the various Zones have been paying for or building the artifacts themselves. The Yellow Zones don’t have as much in their budgets to spend on artifacts. Even if the auto-mappers are cheap, it still takes a couple dozen to completely cover a Zone.”
“I should think even the poorer Yellow Zones would be jumping at the chance to get the auto-mappers, just for the early warning benefits.”
“They were at first, but then you mapped the entire Yellow Zone border and located Breaches in their Yellow Zones or just over the border in the Red Zones and now they have a misplaced sense of safety.”
“Because they think all the Breaches have been contained.”
“Right.”
“Don’t they know that new Realm Breaches could pop up at any ti? That is why the Sentinel and Crimson Orders exist, to keep watch for those new Breaches.”
“Very true. Because of your auto-mapper, I think we will see a shift in deploynts. The Outposts in Yellow Zones will probably be unaffected, but I think the Sentinel Order patrols in the Green Zones will be pared down and only respond if the Adventurer Association can’t handle a Breach that pops up.”
“That’s good then isn’t it? The Orders can focus more on the Yellow Zone and keeping an eye out for new Breaches there.”
“Maybe. It might just an that the Orders will decide to push further into the Red Zones and secure new territories.”
After finishing his chat with Mage Cromsdale, Damion sat and considered the possibilities. Humanity gaining new territory was good, but it ca with risks. There was a lot of danger in the Red Zones, but with the aid of auto-mappers, avoiding that danger beca easier. The artifacts also allowed all the other Zones to beco safer, Breaches could be cleared faster, groups of Demonic Beasts and Ferocious Beasts could taken care of before they beca a problem, so why did he have a sinking feeling that all of this was going to end up being bad for humanity.
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