Automaton

In Mark´s living room lay a thin steel plate with runes and scribbles written all over it. In the middle was embedded a blue crystal. There were 13 other crystals laying around.

[Walking algorithm prototype 42]

'Alright let´s go' he thought and poured his mana into the essence stone.

The stones arranged themselves to a humanoid shape. Head, Shoulders, Elbows, Hands, Hips, Knees, and Feet. Then a translucent silhouette of a featureless man formed around them. Afterward, the figure got covered by thick hefty armor.

'Page 14, Automaton, follow: me'

Mark then took a few steps back and to his surprise, the golem followed.

'Oh my fucking god it works!'

Every day before going into the dungeons he would work around three hours on this needlessly complex piece of equipment. He started by buying a simple 3D printer since the enchantments had to be small and his hand wasn´t precise enough to write them down.

Designing the joints and armor wasn´t anything that difficult. To make it scan its surrounding was also not that big of an issue. Mark already had experience in this regard. The problem was to get this thing to walk. For people it's an instinct, but teaching a robot how to walk proved to be quite difficult. The internet helped a lot, but it still needed some tweaking to work properly.

'Page 14, Automaton, aggression: me'

The golem swung its fist at Mark in a very robotic fashion.

*Ding*

Its fist just bounced off of Mark´s barrier. The golem kept on doing the same motion just alternating his fists.

'I guess that´s it for today. Success is not made overnight. I´ve already managed to do this much in just four days.'

'Page 14, Automaton, deactivate.'

The golem disappeared leaving only the sheet of steel and several essence stones rolling on the ground.

Mark then looked at the time on his laptop.

'It´s already 1 PM. I should get going.'

Having booked a D-rank gate at 2 PM he put on his robe and set off.

This gate didn´t have a particularly high magical reading or size. It was that way most of the time. Gates with a rank higher than C were almost immediately swooped up by the big guilds. C-rank gates were easier to come by but you had to be quick. Mark decided to raid any gate just for the sake of having a stable income. There was also another reason.

[Most gates cleared this month]

[1st ..... - 18]

[2nd.... - 15]

3rd Mark Williams - 13]

'We´re barely a week into July and some maniac already cleared 18 gates. I need to up my game.'

The FBH provided these statistics publicly so anyone could see them. There were many rankings, such as gate clear time, gate magical reading, hunter score. A lot of people looked at the hunter score. It was practically the numbers of gates cleared times their magical reading. You could find people like Thomas Andre, Alexander Wright, or Quinn Hall on these.

The statistics were quite an encouraging factor, especially for Mark who already clears gates on a daily basis. Seeing his name in the top three was nice. Most high-ranking hunters raid once or twice a week. Only the low-ranking ones clear gates like this, primarily for money.

'Let´s get to it.' He thought to himself as he stepped through the vortex.

'Page 6, Shockwave, strength: A-rank'

A booming blast shook the cave, echoing for several seconds.

'It´s not very effective at large distances, but for this level, it should be enough.'

In the dungeon, no monster was left alive. Every wolf Mark came across was lying dead with ruptured lungs.

'Page 11, Waterjet'

He collected the essence stones on his way and kept on moving forward.

When he arrived at the deepest point of the cave a big black wolf was waiting there. However, it didn´t look menacing at all. The wolf had issues with even walking straight. It was scared and injured.

'The shockwave even got to you, huh.'

*Whimper*

'Page 3, Automatic rock spikes'

A spear of stone penetrated the wolf´s heart ending its life.

'This was a quick one, probably around 8 minutes.'

'Page 15, Levitate, mode: follow'

When Mark poured his mana into the grimoire a magic flare left his right hand and hit the wolf. The corpse then flew a meter off the ground.

With the boss´ remains floating behind him he headed out of the gate.

"Can you take care of the loot?" Mark asked the employee on site.

"Of course."

"Thank you very much." said Mark as he emptied his pockets full of essence stones.

The employee counted the essence stones and wrote down some things in a form.

"79 essence stones of D-rank quality. Around 4 thousand will be transferred to your account. The body will take a while to sell, but it shouldn´t be more than a week. Here you go." he handed Mark the paper.

"Uh-huh. Have a nice day."

He returned home not even an hour later after he had headed out. The pieces of the golem were still lying on the ground in his living room.

'I really need access to higher-ranking gates, but all the big guilds hoard them.'

On his way through the apartment, Mark stumbled upon his backpack.

'I should clean up more.'

He grabbed the backpack ready to put it in a closet.

'There´s still something inside?'

Mark then proceeded to dump the contents all over the floor. His old brush, eraser, and some other things from the red gate. But in the junk one thing stood out.

A gray metallic card with a green viper slithering on the outline.

[Alexander Wright]

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