Scavenger´s new recruits

Mark was improving his new spells for several days and finally, on the 26th of July, he received an email from the Scavenger guild with all the raid details.

[Raid members]

Emma Jones - raid leader

Tyler Paine

Clark Barker

Lucian White

Gina Summers

Mark Williams - guest

Tristan Melton - guest

Except for Emma, Mark didn´t recognize any of the names so he decided to harness the power of Google and look them up in case they were publicly known. The only one who came up in the search was Tristan. He was a reporter and a pretty famous one at that. He was also an A-rank awakened, classified as an assassin, but he chose a different career from hunting monsters.

The others were in the FBH database but with not much info about them. Thankfully in the email, their abilities were described further down and all of them seemed to be truly exceptional.

'They even have names for their skills.' Mark thought with a smile as he read their info.

Emma Jones, S-rank fighter, fencer, and raid leader. She was a young woman with long black hair. Her skills were centered around swordplay and wind. First [Run like the wind] which gave her the ability to move the air around a bit and made her move quietly. The second and last skill was [Sword gale]. That one made her sword strikes create powerful wind whirls.

Tyler Paine was an A-rank tank, who fought with his fists. He was a man nearing his 30s with a large stature typical for a vanguard and a bald head. His skill [Starving for battle] made it so he gets stronger and fiercer the longer he fights. After calming down he gets back to his normal strength level. Then a skill every tank must have [Provocation], which angered every monster who heard his shout.

The team´s support type hunter was Clark Barker also an A-rank. With a pair of glasses and a thin stature, Clark looked like he came straight out of Mark´s high school. He was endowed with three skills. A very basic [Heal] spell, a buff spell boosting one's stamina called [Vitality booster] and another buff focusing on defense, [Rock solid].

Their assassin was an A-rank named Lucian White. Mark was reminded of Ashton the moment he saw Lucian´s photo. He had a tattoo of the moon under his left eye, shoulder-length dark hair, and blue eyes. He possessed only one skill, called [Mirage]. Upon activation, Lucian turned into a wobbly image in the eyes of his enemies disorienting them and making it harder to land a hit on him.

The last raid member from the Scavengers guild was a young lady with ginger curly hair, named Gina Summers. She was an A-rank magician focusing on ice magic. In contrast to her name, her first skill was [Winter´s grace]. The skill turned down the temperature, creating snow and ice in the area which caused her enemies to freeze to death. Her second skill, [Bite of the Frost], enveloped the target in a prison of ice starting from their feet until it devoured them whole.

The five of them were all new recruits so this was their first official raid without any surveillance from their trainer, who was one of the well-known S-rank hunters from the Scavengers guild. Haiden Austin was a man able to clear an A-rank dungeon all by himself. He was a tank by class with unique skills [Nemean bravery] and [Heart of gold] so the team truly had the best coach they could get.

Mark was very curious about their level of strength since he awakened at the same time as their raid leader who even had a lead in terms of magic capacity. However, from the videos he saw and his fight with Olivia, Mark was convinced that he was stronger than them. Maybe not outside the gate, but inside where he had nearly infinite mana he was confident in his abilities.

'I should at first let them show their strength, have a talk with the reporter and then overshadow it with my abilities. That way, most attention will be on me and our guild not on the new recruits.' Mark planned for the future.

He scrolled down the papers to see the gate information.

[Mana measurement: 96 873]

'That´s borderline S-rank. They must have a lot of trust in the team to let them in such a high-level gate. Well, they had around three months of high-intensity training by an experienced S-rank so it makes sense.'

Gates with these high mana measurements were truly unpredictable. There could be monsters never seen before, dangerous environments, and bosses with unrecorded magic. The chance of it turning into a red gate was also high. Not over 1%, but even the 1% chance is high when it comes to human life.

Even further below the gate info was the equipment provided to every hunter by the Scavengers. Mark was interested in the top-grade weapons and armor they had, but he ended up a little bit disappointed.

For the weapons, there was a short sword for Lucian, a rapier for Emma, and a staff for Gina. Tyler was a fist-fighter, but there were surprisingly no gloves for him, only a chest plate made from draconic leather. All of the equipment looked sleek, elegant, and very expensive, but for Mark it was boring.

'That´s just a bunch of hardening and sharpening enchantments. The weapons are made from the corpses of earth elementals, which is impressive for sure, but the enchantments are all kinda lame.'