A visitor

The Raiders guild seemed to be working nicely. Its raid team cleared their first dungeon with no problem amassing around 2 thousand dollars in a single day. Mark earned a whopping twenty thousand in funds with his B-rank gate clear. Lucy was taking care of all the bureaucracy and selling the resources.

There was a slight inconvenience, though. The guild didn´t have a building to store and process the resources. It also didn´t have the countless workers capable of transporting monster carapaces. Right now the guild was able to sell just the boss monster, which reduced the profits.

However, this problem will be solved with time when enough funds accumulate for a building to be bought and new workers to be hired.

Mark himself had finally some free time on his hand. Not that he was all that busy, but for the last week he was always working on something, making the automaton, establishing a whole guild, creating several magic weapons, or upgrading his grimoire. Right now he had no project to work on so he decided to uphold his promise and call Arthur.

A young man with long black hair dressed in casual clothes stood in front of his apartment.

"Dude, I was starting to think you´ll never call." said Arthur coming through the door.

"Well, I told you I´ll call you when I have time and it takes a lot of time to make a guild."

"Really? You have a guild? Who are the members? Your mom and dad?" Arthur said with a smirk.

"It´s actually fully functioning. There is only one raid team, but in the first two days of existence it made 22k."

"Fuck you, man. I get that for participating in 16 gate clears. What are you raiding? Banks?"

"That´s the power of having a small and capable raid team. Me soloing a B-rank dungeon could have also helped." Mark said with a smile. "What do you want to drink?" he asked.

"Do you have a beer?" Arthur said while sitting down on the couch.

"What do you think?" Mark asked sarcastically while tilting his head to the side.

"Ok, what about coffee?"

"Yeah, Lucy complained that I don´t have anything so I bought some. I don´t have any fancy machines, just a kettle."

"That´s fine." Arthur said with a sigh.

Mark moved to the kitchen in order to make the coffee with Arthur watching over his shoulder.

"You reminded me of something with the soloing." said Arthur.

"Hmm, what is it?" asked Mark filling the kettle with water.

"When I was starting as a hunter. That´s like three, four years ago I met a few guys who were clearing dungeons on their own. They had always goofy names. One particular name comes to my mind. I´m not joking by the way. This motherfucker was called Ashton Shadowblade."

Mark trying hard not to burst out laughing asked, "What happened to Mr. Shadowblade?"

"That´s the surprising part. I got to talk to him and he was around my age at that time, maybe a little bit younger, about 18 or 19. For his rank, he had some absurd skill for solo clearing. He´s probably still around clearing D-rank dungeons on his own."

"That´s some guild member material." Mark said jokingly.

"I met a lot of those edgelords. They were funny as hell. Most didn´t survive, though. They were fixated on working alone, refusing to join a guild or a raid team. The restrictions on entering a gate also weren´t so strict back then."

"You think there are still people like that?" Mark asked while handing Arthur his cup of coffee.

"For sure. You just don´t see them because now gates have to be reserved."

Arthur took a sip and grimaced. "Where do you have sugar?"

"Oh, here you go."

Arthur proceeded to put six teaspoons of sugar into the cup.

"Dude, I have hot chocolate too."

"No, this is perfect." Arthur said with a satisfied smile, much to Mark´s confusion.

They moved into the living room and sat on the couch.

"How´s Owen and Agnes doing? I haven´t seen them since the last time."

"They´re fine. Owen actually adopted a puppy last week."

"From a shelter?"

"Yeah, wait a moment I´ll show you." said Arthur, taking out his phone.

The duo talked for over an hour. Arthur began sharing the hottest gossip going around in the Zeus guild. Mark couldn´t resist the urge to proudly show off his creation and presented started a whole presentation about the automaton.

[Several hours later]

Mark decided to check if what Arthur told him was actually true. He turned on his laptop and searched through the FBH provided list of hunters.

'Ashton Shadowblade, he really exists.' Mark looked at the monitor with a grin.

[B-rank assassin]

[Guild affiliation: none]

'Of course, he is a fucking assassin. How couldn´t he be?'

After seeing that this guy was active, going solo even after several years he looked through countless gates that were booked by one person only, to find more people like him.

'Dante, Blaze, Justice. Oh my god, I hope these are aliases. Who would name their kid Justice?'

Seeing these countless hunters with relatively high ranks Mark came up with something. He called Lucy to ask if his idea made any sense.

"Hey, sorry to disturb. Is it possible for a guild to employ a raid team with only one person?"

"Well yeah, that´s practically what you are doing when you enter a dungeon alone." sounded from the phone.

"Okay, and would it be profitable to hire someone like that?"

"Of course, it´s just... Why would that kind of person join the guild then? They would be giving away a cut of their earnings for essentially nothing."

"What if I gave them magic weapons?" he asked.

"Mark, your equipment is one of a kind. It would be very valuable even if you sold it, but it can´t solve everything." said Lucy rubbing her forehead.

"I can give it a try, though."