Unlimited power

Walking over to the drenched assassin, Mark asked. "Let´s go write the contract, okay?"

Ashton turned his head towards the roof of the cave, thinking through his decisions. The dark fog filling the cave slowly dissipated.

"Are you good?" asked Mark. The irritation he felt with Ashton was quickly replaced with concern.

"I´m alright. I´ll probably just have a bruise on my back." he said, getting on his feet.

"Sorry, I don´t have a healing spell. They´re pretty hard to make." Mark apologized.

Ashton collected his daggers from the dungeon floor and with a sigh he said. "Fine, I´ll join your guild."

[Next day]

"I think 35% is fair. With the guild doing all the paperwork and the opportunity it provides." said Lucy.

"No, I won´t go higher than 30%." said Ashton with his arms crossed.

"Okay, okay. 30% is fine. We can work with that. Most of the time you clear D-rank gates solo, right? So do you have any experience with higher ranking gates?"

"Before the restrictions on solo clearing were imposed I´ve cleared countless C-rank gates and even some B-rank ones."

The two were negotiating Ashton´s contract in Mark´s apartment. Until the guild has an office the guildmaster´s home will probably be used as one.

"What equipment do you want?" asked Mark. "The earlier you tell me the earlier I can start working on making it."

"I´ll keep the electric dagger, but I want another one which has a sharpness enchantment." said Ashton.

"Are you serious?" asked Mark with a raised eyebrow.

'That´s incredibly boring. I expected flaming swords or shooting spears.' thought Mark disappointed.

"I´m always serious." Ashton retorted in a flat tone.

'Of course, you are.' thought both Mark and Lucy in unison.

*Bzzn*Bzzn*

Mark´s phone buzzed inside his pocket.

"Excuse me, I´ll be right back. I just need to go answer the call." said Mark walking into his room.

[Viper guild]

[XXX-XXX-XXXX]

He accepted the call and said. "Yes, Mark Williams on the phone."

"Hello, Robert Martin from the Viper guild. A support-type hunter from one of our A-rank raid teams has fallen sick with a fever." sounded from the other side.

'How ironic. Well, healing illnesses is very much different than healing missing arms.'

"I see. When is the raid supposed to take place?" asked Mark.

"It´s the day after tomorrow. I´ll send you all the details in an e-mail. Right now we just need to know whether you´ll participate or not."

"Yes, I´ll join in."

"Great, you should have the raid information in a minute." said Robert ending the call.

His phone buzzed again as he received the details. Mark came out of his bedroom and told Ashton. "When you have time bring me your dagger so I can enchant it."

"I always have it on myself." Ashton said revealing the sheathed blade strapped to his waist. He then handed Mark the dagger.

"Yeah, that makes sense." muttered Mark.

It didn´t take long for the negotiations to end and for the Raiders guild to gain its 7th member. Mark quickly finished the dagger and gave it to Ashton before he left. He already made a similar one for Hal to use on dismembering monsters with tough skin so this was a piece of cake.

They also reserved the first gate for the guild´s second official raid team. As expected Ashton was very eager to raid some C-rank gates.

After everyone left his home Mark decided to look through the information he received about the future raid.

[Rank: A]

[Mana measurement: 63,982]

[Day of appearance: 14.7. 2015]

[Participants: XXX,XXX,XXX,...]

'With this much mana in the air Magic-siphoning barrier should be very effective. I´ve postponed it for a while because I didn´t have a problem with my mana reserves. However, if I´m going to clear gates as high as A-rank I should probably write the Siphon spell.'

Mark picked up a notebook from the drawer and started making the draft.

'If I take the principle that I previously used to make the magic siphoning barrier and instead make a long twisted pipe. Then I can pump air through the pipe, while the pipe absorbs the mana particles from the air. When that is all well and done I just need to transfer the mana stored inside the whole construct into my body. This shouldn´t be too difficult to do as the human body absorbs some mana from the air naturally.'

He leaned back into the chair and sighed.

'All of this however needs testing before it can be used in a higher ranking dungeon. I need to book a gate for tomorrow so the spell would be ready. Well, that sucks. I wanted to relax for a few days and visit dad.' he complained to himself.

[Next day]

Somewhere in New York inside a C-rank gate stood Mark. Next to him were two pieces of equipment floating on their own. The first one was his grimoire and the second one was the magic siphon. It looked like some strange trumpet.

'Page 2, Magic-siphoning barrier, Page 10, Air supply, Page 1, Stream of fire, temperature: 1500°C'

The dungeon was filled with raging flames as every single monster was burnt to ashes. The lone magician walked through the caves with essence stones lying around everywhere.

As he looked at the havoc he caused, Mark thought to himself. 'All of this and I didn´t spend a single mana particle.'