28 Silver-blue knight

Yesterday Mark and Lucy agreed on establishing the guild, but they needed one more member for that to be possible. The duo decided to handle that the next day so they could deal with other things regarding the guild.

However, the day came and they had to find another member. Mark scrolled through his contacts and came across Rick. He remembered his first raid with the team.

'It´s worth a try.' he thought to himself as he dialed the number.

When the call connected Mark spoke. "Hi. Rick, right?"

"Yes." sounded from the other side of the phone.

"It´s Mark, from a few months ago if you remember."

"I was thinking you´ll never call. So what´s up?"

"I´ve been wondering if you have a free spot in a raid somewhere near in the future."

"Not today, but we have a raid tomorrow. Do you wanna join in?"

"Yeah, that would be great."

"Alright, I´ll open up one spot for you and send you the details. I´m not home right now, but I´ll get to it later, okay?"

"Thanks a lot. See you tomorrow then."

"See you." Rick ended the call.

Having a day´s worth of time on his hands, Mark decided to continue working on his automaton. It was almost finished and after some time he could probably take it to the dungeon to test it in a real raid.

'The attacking and walking patterns are both pretty smooth. They´re not perfect, but for the first run, it´s fine. If I hurry up with the commands it should work fine on the raid tomorrow.'

Mark encouraged himself and got to work. He spent the whole day making the final touches and ended up falling asleep the moment his body touched the bed.

[Next day]

The gate was located in the suburbs. Rick, Hal, Allen, and Ava, the whole team was already at the site waiting for Mark to arrive. They sat in the cabin provided by the FBH.

After a while, the door opened and Mark walked in wearing his magician robe, grimoire on his waist, and the automaton parts in his pockets.

"Hi, guys. Haven´t seen you in a while. What was it, like two months?"

"Well, you took your time. That´s for sure." said Allen leaning on his crossbow.

"I´ve been getting stronger. That takes time, you know?"

"Pick a less lame excuse, like a girlfriend or something."

"Yeah, but I´d have to lie for that, though." Mark responded with a slight smile.

"You´re making me sad. Let´s go to the gate already."

Rick said. "Lea-"

He was quickly interrupted by Ava. "Leave your phones here. We know. It happened once, dad."

"Okay, okay fine."

Hal was overlooking this whole ordeal without saying a word.

The group then got outside and faced the blue swirling vortex. It was moderate in size, just about two and a half meters in diameter.

"Wait a minute I need to prepare." announced Mark as he emptied the essence stones from his pockets.

Mark pulled out the small steel plate and poured his mana into it. It flew towards the stones and started assembling itself. First a connection formed between the parts, second a thin film of the translucent barrier formed around, and last a sturdy silver-blue plate armor enveloped the whole automaton.

The golem stood two meters high with the essence stone in the head acting as an eye-scanning its surroundings.

"Don´t tell me you built this?" asked Rick.

"With my own hands." said Mark proud of his creation.

'Plus the 3D printer, but no one cares about that.'

'Page 7, Magic book, Page 13, Magician´s eyes, Page 14, Automaton, follow: me'

"I´m ready." announced Mark.

"Yeah, for the apocalypse." added Allen in astonishment.

"Do you want to lead? I´m starting to think I´m unqualified." said Rick with a chuckle.

"I´ll let the automaton lead if you don´t mind. I wanna test it out."

"Feel free to do so. My wrist still kind of hurts from the last raid." Rick said.

"Yeah sure, from the last gate. Got it." Allen said with a smirk.

Hal rolled his eyes at the joking goober.

"Alright, let´s go." Mark commanded as they stepped inside the gate.

They appeared in the same old familiar cave. There were no signs of intelligent monsters, like goblins or kobolds. No torches or wooden barricades, just a cave made of stone.

Before Hal could light his lantern a ball of light appeared above Mark as he walked deeper, with the golem behind.

Two shining yellow eyes were hiding in the distant darkness. Mark however saw the monster in its full glory, due to the spell in front of his eyes. It was a huge black jaguar watching the hunters curiously.

'Page 14, Automaton, aggression: monsters'

The silver-blue knight didn´t hesitate at all and ran at great speed towards the jaguar.

Seeing the incoming threat the monster tried jumping away, but it was to no avail. The golem outranked it completely in terms of strength and speed.

The automaton grabbed it with its hands and effortlessly rammed the creature into the dungeon wall, killing it.

"How strong is that thing?" asked Rick, in awe.

"Depends on the essence stones, but right now it should be like a B-rank hunter, in pure strength." responded Mark.

A roar echoed through the dungeon as another jaguar ran towards the golem, ready to attack with its sharp claws.

The monster pounced at the automaton, which grabbed it in the air and threw it to the ground. Then it proceeded to stomp on the jaguar´s head crushing it.

"That´s enough brutality for the day."

'Page 14, Automaton, tool: sword'

Its right hand turned into a meter-long blade.

They walked further into the cave. Everything that moved was massacred on their way by the mindless guard next to Mark.

It didn´t take long for the team to arrive in front of the boss. The boss was a large lion with a golden mane laying on the cold ground.

Everyone just watched Mark and the golem. They were already expecting that they didn´t have to do anything in the final fight.

'Page 14, Automaton, tool: free use'

Its sword morphed into a spear as the golem ran towards the lion. Seeing the attacker running its way the boss monster swiped its paw in defense.

The silver-blue spear impaled the paw and stopped it in the air. Panicking due to the injury the lion backed off cutting its paw even more in the process.

In the meantime, the spear morphed into a sword once again and a shield appeared in the other hand of the golem.

It pushed the lion away with the shield and cut its torso with the sword. The boss monster kept struggling but it quickly succumbed to the overwhelming force of its opponent.

"That was fast." said Rick.

Allen with a smirk said. "Yeah, th-"

He got interrupted by Hal. "Don´t you dare."

"You´re no fun." Allen protested.