With his staff completed, Imri spent a considerable amount of time testing it. He pushed the limits of what it could do, chaining spells together in rapid succession. There was a minuscule delay between his thought and the manifestation of his spells. Fortunately, it was nearly imperceptible and wouldn’t be an issue.


    The next issue was what to do with the panel that housed his repository of spells. It was far too cumbersome to carry around. He considered using micro portals to connect to it, but that would have been a massive mana sink. Fortunately, that was his backup plan. Instead, he placed the reference array inside his Inner Domain.


    He knew mana could get in and out of his domain without issue; otherwise, the world would have been cut off when he placed the world core inside. Theoretically, the information sent through his enchantments would work similarly, as it was simply shaped mana.


    Imri gripped his staff tightly and formed the thought to activate a Teleportation spell through the enchantment. To his immense relief, he found himself standing on the other side of the room, just as he had intended.


    He took a small amount of time to revel in his accomplishment. Unfortunately, there was too much to be done to slack off, so he enjoyed a meal with Emelia. This time, she cooked, preparing the equivalent of a pork loin from the newly domesticated quil hogs and some apples that were reduced to form the sauce. Imri devoured nearly an entire pound of pork, having missed meat that wasn’t drake.


    Returning to his workshop, he began work on another idea. The concept of versatility and power being trade-offs was something he could iterate on. He had done one extreme, creating an item so versatile only he could use it. Therefore, he decided to try making something that was highly specialized but should be incredibly powerful.


    He had yet to make an item using Teleportation or any of its lower-tier variants. However, teleportation was now powerful enough to be used at long ranges, similar to his portals. Unfortunately, his original idea of having a user define the teleportation destination didn’t seem feasible with the inefficiency. However, there was still value in teleporting to a pre-defined destination.


    The main design challenge was defining precisely what was being teleported. It wasn’t hard to determine the person, but the enchantment would lose much of its value if it left the user’s belongings behind. So, he expanded the effect to include everything touching the user. It took a bit of testing to get this working correctly, as there had been issues with containers teleporting without their contents. On the opposite end of the spectrum, teleporting while barefoot hadn’t worked at all because the enchantment tried and failed to move the entire building and everything in it. He worked around this by having the enchantment exclude any object more massive than a car.


    Finally, he made the location configurable to specific Dimensional Waypoints. He created a design similar to the portal network, with a terminal that could add approved Dimensional Waypoints. Like the portal enchantment, it would open a micro-portal to query and ensure the area was available. However, unlike the portal, it only looked for available space. Imri could set aside designated locations and enchanted sensors to determine their occupancy.


    He sighed, realizing his simple idea had become an engineering project. Fortunately, with his Spatial Beacon being upgraded into Dimensional Waypoint, he wouldn’t have an issue placing down more pre-defined locations. He didn’t think the platform would need to be overly large, as there only needed to be enough space for people temporarily until they stepped off the platform. He also decided to confine the scope to only one location for his initial launch.


    Before committing to the final design, he ran his proposal past the city council and several experts, including a city planner and an architect. The immediate concern was customs and security; if the enchantment ever circulated widely, keeping track of people coming and going from Celestia would be impossible. This was already a concern with the portals but was mitigated by their infrequent use, allowing customs agents to be present during every portal opening. However, as mana became more readily available, it would become a logistical nightmare. There was already a proposal to build a large complex around the portal, almost like a condensed airport, including overpriced convenience stores. Imri had no qualms about building the teleportation platforms within the same complex.


    The main sticking point was the timeline. Imri wanted to start production before the auction, which meant the transit hub would need to be completed within a week. Ultimately, Imri decided to solve the problem by investing his resources, mainly his credits, in the project. The council was happy to take him up on his offer if he could find a building group to take on the construction on such short notice. Imri sighed, knowing this would probably result in an even more significant credit expenditure.


    As it turned out, all the builders were booked out for months. Fortunately, money talked, and Imri convinced a large company to temporarily hold off on their other work. While the construction was taking place, he prepared as many of the components ahead of time as possible so it would be a simple lift and shift once the space was ready.


    He also crossed off a few items that he had been putting off. He placed three more portals: one near the farming town, one near the college town, and one in the valley. With that done, the network had now expanded to nine locations: six across the various settlements on the plateau, one at the base of the mountain at the edge of Seagrass Plains, one in the valley, and one in New Chicago. Having so many portals without the mana production to support such an expansive network was a bit of overkill. Still, Imri was glad they were set up for future use.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    Mana production was still the most critical area of improvement. Imri spread out the dull drum, spending several hours each day enchanting as many panels as he possibly could. The mana-gathering farm now looked like a respectable industrial industry with over a hundred panels operating. Unfortunately, he never could get ahead of the demand, as any excess supply had dozens of people looking to use it. Imri had slowly been raising the price on his mana, not wanting those who truly needed it to go without it but not wanting to give it away either. So far, there had been only minor grumblings with the raised prices, but it hadn’t prevented anyone from buying. The income generated by his mana generation was still only a tiny fraction of his net earnings, especially with the dragon-scale windfall.


    As the day drew closer, Imri continued enchanting with zealous determination. He spent over twenty hours a day on his work, only taking brief breaks to alleviate some mental fatigue over the constant multi-thread thought patterns he was engaged in. He found that walking around the lake with Emelia would alleviate some of his anxiety.


    Emelia had been equally busy throughout the day. There was no shortage of demand for a healer, both mundane and magical, with a constant stream of refugees still trickling in. She had finally managed to learn the Meditation skill, but it was still rank F in the first tier. However, even that improvement had greatly increased her healing output. As a result, she had gained several levels, putting her at level twenty-nine.


    “It’s not enough; I need to level faster,” she vented to him on one of their walks.


    “You’ve been leveling faster than ever before, and there are only a few people higher level than you,” Imri pointed out.


    “Says the level forty-six who has been leveling his profession at a ridiculous rate over the past month,” she countered.


    “It’s not a competition.”


    “There is literally a leaderboard in the nexus. If that isn’t a competition, I don’t know what is,” she said.


    “This hasn’t bothered you until recently, so what changed?”


    “I’m worried about my tier two heritage,” she admitted. “I thought Caroline would have found a way to unlock the special heritage rather than just evolving me into a slightly stronger mundane human. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll have to do that on my own.”


    “Not on your own; you have me,” Imri said.


    “How did you do it?”


    “I realized I was connected to the world when a giant parasite tried corrupting the core to xenoform the planet into a hellish hive world.”


    “Yeah, I don’t think that one will work for me.”


    “In all seriousness, I’ve advanced my heritage whenever I learned something profound about myself. It couldn’t hurt to focus on introspection,” he suggested.


    “I hope you’re not suggesting I do more meditation,” she practically growled.


    “Not necessarily more, just with intent.”


    Emelia sighed but nodded. They finished their walk in silence, enjoying the natural beauty around them. Returning home, they quickly transitioned into enjoying each other''s natural beauty.


    As the auction day drew near, enough of the transit hub was completed so he could install the teleportation platforms. The actual platform was a two-meter square with True Distance runes to detect when an object was on the surface. There were currently eight platforms, though he had left plenty of room to expand.


    After installing the platforms and terminal, he tested the Returning enchantment. The next instant, he was standing on the first platform. Imri had a massive grin as he returned to his workshop to finalize a quick production run of his newest product. This time, he decided to go with a different form factor, not wanting everything to be a ring. The final product looked like a computer chip the size of a slim phone. On the back, written in plain English, was a description of what the enchantment did.


    A day before the auction, a system prompt got Imri’s attention.


    <table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 99.9817%; background-color: rgba(52, 73, 94, 1)" border="1">


    <tbody>


    <tr>


    <td style="width: 98.9589%">The auction will begin in twenty-four hours. Participants, please make your way to a tier-three settlement nexus. The auction will take place in two parts. The first will be an auction of user-provided items. The seller will have control over the starting bid and increment of increase within system parameters. They will also be able to limit whether the item is open to all settlements or to restrict it by species. All sold items will be transferred to the nexus of the buyer, with a ten percent transport fee added, in addition to any applicable taxes. All individuals participating in the first auction must pay a one thousand credit entrance fee. The entrance fee is waived for the nobles controlling the settlement and nobles ruling over them. Information regarding the second phase of the auction will be provided after the first concludes.</td>


    </tr>


    </tbody>


    </table>


    Imri read the notification several times but didn’t find anything overly surprising. He suspected the second phase would consist of the system-generated treasures mentioned in the original notification. He suspected he would be mostly a seller in the first phase, though he would have to watch out for natural treasures like the golden plums that Sylvi had found.


    Imri and Emelia made their way to the portal hub the following day. Most people wouldn’t be participating due to the relatively high entrance fee. However, dozens of people still had gathered around the portal, hoping to take advantage of this opportunity. Imri was one of the last to arrive, having taken advantage of every last hour to finish a final few enchantments. Fortunately, due to the increased mana generation, there wouldn’t be an issue opening the portal twice in relatively quick succession. They also planned to leave the portal open to allow several thousand immigrants through.


    Imri reviewed his progress over the last couple of weeks. He had gained another two levels in his Runic Engineer class, bringing him to level thirty-three. He had also gained one more rank in his mass-assembled trait. This meant he had made significant progress on his profession rank-up quest, and if he could get the final two ranks of mass assembled within the next couple of months, he would complete the quest without issue. Within his Inner Domain were dozens of each type of enchantment. With hundreds of items to sell and over fifty million credits to spend, he should be able to buy whatever was needed.