บท 40: Forbidden spell

The first thing Mark did when he came home was to take a shower. But the second thing he did was upgrade the automaton. He got several dozens of B-rank essence stones so he decided to remake the whole spell with them.

He wrote an additional option to the spell regarding dismembering monsters. There was a small problem with locating the essence stones since they don't emit mana to their surroundings, but Mark solved that by propagating mana through the corpse as essence stones have a very different texture and magic conductivity to the rest of the carcass. Afterward, he let the 3D printer do his job while he enjoyed a well-deserved rest on the couch.

He took his phone and started scrolling through the news feed, coming across several articles about hunters.

'Maybe I should look through the raid participants.' Mark thought to himself.

Danny told him that the details about the gate will be sent to Mark´s email the moment he gets them. That should still be around a week from now, though. However, there is one participant they were sure of.

'Emma Jones, S-rank fighter' Mark decided to look her up.

Lo and behold countless videos and photos from the Scavengers guild came up documenting her spars against other S-rank hunters.

Mark watched a video of her training swordsmanship with another hunter and thought to himself. 'Yeah, I know nothing about sword fighting. This just seems like something my automaton can do but faster. Are there any fights against magicians?' he searched further, but to no avail.

'Nope. Well, it doesn´t really matter. With my range, there is no way any monster gets close enough for other hunters to step in and do something. I should focus more on showing some cool magic to the reporters. They seem to like that shit.' he thought to himself sprawled on the couch.

[Next day]

Mark was inside a gate once again. He had two new spells in mind, but they were far from completion. The problem was that they were so dangerous that experimenting anywhere outside of a dungeon was like asking for a catastrophe to happen. The gate was B-rank and quite large, which gave him enough space to try out the prototypes.

Three large humanoids came to inspect the intruder and found Mark. They had the stature of an orc except they also had thick white fur.

'Page 18, Bullet barrage, locator: aim assist'

This spell was just a handheld version of the turrets. Mark made it simply because deploying a turret all the time isn´t the most effective and sometimes a bullet to the head was the quickest solution even against magic beasts. Several magic bullets started raining from his hand. He easily killed two of the three yetis and trapped the third one inside a dome-shaped barrier.

"I´m sorry for this one, but you´ll have to endure a lot of pain. It´s not very humane, but you are not friendly either."

[Rrrhaa!] The yeti groaned at him aggressively.

"Yeah, that. That´s what I´m talking about."

'I´m speaking with magic beasts. What is wrong with me?'

'Page 20, Acid film, locator: magic flare'

After the magic flare hit the monster translucent liquid flew through the air after it. The acid was producing a little bit of fumes in the process.

The moment it coated the yeti was not a nice sight. Its skin was corroded almost instantly and it turned into a disgusting dark orange liquid while the monster screamed in agony. Quickly after the yeti lost consciousness from the pain.

Mark saw some pretty nasty things, monsters burned to death, froze to death, cut up to countless pieces, the list goes on, but he had to look away from this.

'First of all, I´m never using that again unless it´s absolutely necessary. Second of all, I need to change the targeting system for this spell. The fumes look super dangerous. Thankfully I have the barrier.'

When he saw Olivia´s acid magic he wanted to replicate it. Most of his regular spells focused on limiting the functions of a living body. The problem with that was that there are inorganic magic beasts and also undead.

The corrosive spell seemed like a great solution, so Mark decided to enhance it and replace the acid Olivia used with something stronger. With a quick google search, he found fluoroantimonic acid, a superacid far superior to something like the sulfuric one.

'I think that´s a far worse way of dying than being burnt alive. My high school teacher would be proud, though.' he thought as he looked back at the orange puddle of liquid, turning translucent.

Mark went further leaving the essence stone submerged in the highly corrosive puddle with a simple thought. 'I´m not touching that.'

As another trio of yetis approached the lone hunter he swiftly shot them and deployed the automaton to gather the not dangerous essence stones.

Saving up his last spell for the boss monster he annihilated all the magic beasts with a barrage of bullets until he finally came across the boss room.

There were dozens of yetis. One of them, whom Mark assumed to be the boss, was towering over the rest, holding a large hammer in his hand and even some armor on the hairless parts of his body.

'Page 19, Thermobaric bomb, locator: manual'

A dark ball flew to the middle of the room as the monsters readily neared the mage. When the ball made contact with the floor it burst into a cloud of dust that filled the whole room. Swiftly afterward the cloud erupted into flames, followed by a shockwave that shook the whole dungeon.

As the dust settled an empty room was revealed with no signs of magic beasts inside, just Mark and his automaton behind a barrier pumped with supraphysiological amounts of mana.