Erk & Urg

Mark escorted the raid team out of his apartment, leaving him alone with Lucy and a bunch of hunter equipment.

"When are you going?" he asked.

"Ah, I´ll just finish this up and I´m gonna go." she said typing on her laptop.

"Okay." Mark grabbed the hunter equipment and moved it to his room. There was one spear with a shield and a lantern.

'The shield and lantern are easy, but what to do with the spear?' he asked himself. 'Well compared to the crossbow all of this will be a piece of cake anyway.'

"Lucy!" he said from his room.

"Yeah?"

"Could you book me a gate for tomorrow, before you leave?"

"That´s what you are paying me for. What rank do you want?"

"I can go into a B-rank gate alone, right?"

"When the raid is done by a guild, the number of hunters present doesn´t matter." answered Lucy.

"C or B, then. Whatever is free. When you´re at it also book one for the day after tomorrow so our raid team can test their new equipment. I´ll finish it tonight. This one should be D-rank."

"Alright, don´t fall asleep in the dungeon, though." said Lucy from the living room.

With the three pieces of equipment lying on his table, Mark got to work.

[Next day]

The sun was shining in the sky and Mark was driving in a used car he bought this morning due to his frustrations with the public transportation system.

'It´s cheap this way, but still driving forty miles on roads is like hell.'

The whole car was shaking on the bumpy road, leading through the forest. After a few minutes, he arrived at the gate site.

Mark parked on the side of the road and walked into the forest closer to the mana vortex. It was huge this time, at least five meters in diameter.

'That´s to be expected from a B-rank gate, I guess.'

With his trusty grimoire floating next to him and the automaton deactivated in his pockets, Mark stepped inside.

A landscape completely unfamiliar to Mark revealed itself. Instead of dark dingy caves, he stood in a spacious hall, crafted out of stone bricks. The walls even had little decorative carvings.

In contrast to the neat outlook, there were several giant skeletons just lying around on the ground with their essence stones still present.

'Those seem to be either giants or ogres. What could have done that?'

[Kreto mala yeda!] a voice echoed through the halls in an unknown language.

[Tust ta!] another voice said.

On the other side of the hall sat a twin-headed monster. It had grey skin, muscular arms, and a thick belly. The ogre wore only a simple cloth over his crotch.

It was munching on an arm belonging to one of his kind, while the other head was shouting at his twin.

'Is that supposed to be the boss? All the other monsters seem to be dead.' Mark thought to himself watching the distant ogre.

[Urg, you numbskull! That was the last one! What are we supposed to eat?!] the left head shouted.

[More will come. Stop overreacting, Erk.] said the right head while nibbling on the arm.

[Then what? You eat everything that moves.] said Erk.

Urg threw aside the piece of meat in his hand, noticing the intruder. [See, more food came. I was right.] he said pointing at Mark.

[Only a little food] retorted Erk.

The duo stood up to reveal their size, fitting the B-rank. They started walking towards the tiny human.

Mark was already prepared with his barrier up and his magician´s eyes activated. He threw the golem parts onto the ground while pouring his mana into its core.

'Page 14, Automaton, aggression: monsters, tool: free use'

'Let´s see how it faces off against something more than twice its size.'

It didn´t take a second for the silver knight to assemble himself and start running at the boss monster.

Seeing the automaton getting dangerously near, the ogre slapped it away with his right hand.

The spear formed in the golem´s hand piercing the thick skin on the monster´s hand. However, it had no effect. It was still thrown away by the slap and the ogre didn´t even flinch at having his hand impaled.

[Who needs your magic when I have these muscles, Erk.] said the right head.

Even after getting hit by the giant the automaton was fine, running towards the boss once again. A ball of flames appeared in the ogre´s left hand and flew at the golem, blasting him back.

[Don´t doubt the superiority of magic, brother.]

While the heads were arguing with themselves, Mark prepared two magic circles to finish this job quickly.

'Page 8, Sandstorm, locator: magic flare, mode: AoE, Page 1, Stream of fire, locator: magic flare, mode: AoE'

The golem was unstoppable, constantly trying to fight the boss even despite getting thrown away several times. This provided a nice distraction for Mark to hit the boss with a magic flare.

Immediately as the flare entered its body, countless pieces of sand started appearing around flying in the wind at high speed. Flames also appeared enveloping the ogre in a tornado of fire.

[Will your muscles get us out of this, huh?!] said the left head agitated.

Its flesh was being burned and cut by the sand simultaneously. To Mark´s surprise, a loud thump echoed throughout the dungeon.

He dispelled the two spells revealing the monster lying on the ground, with terrible burns all over its body.

'This was surprisingly fast.' thought Mark prepared to take the corpse outside of the dungeon.

However, the ogre´s body started glowing red. The creature stood up with blood-red eyes and ran at Mark.

[BLOODLUST!!!] shouted both heads in unison.

The golem that stood in its way was crushed by a simple punch. Its mana was depleted so it got deactivated.

'Page 3, Automatic rock spikes, mode: Extreme'

A good 10% of his mana left Mark´s body in order to stop the frenzied creature.

Countless spikes over 8 meters tall grew instantly out of the floor impaling the monster through and through. The red hue around the ogre dissipated with its life.

'B-rank gates are really something else.'