The wooden doors of the Hunter’s Guild swung open, admitting a gust of cold night air and a figure cloaked in grey.

  The guild hall was a chaotic symphony of shouting men, armor, and the smell of stale ale and roasted meat. It was a place where strength was the only currency that mattered.

  The figure walked straight to the reception counter, ignoring the drunken stares. He wore a simple porcelain mask covering the upper half of his face.

  "Registration," the figure said. His voice was calm, modulated to be nondescript.

  The receptionist, a tired-looking woman with glasses, didn't blink. She had seen plenty of eccentrics. "Name?"

  "Zero."

  "Just Zero?"

  "Yes."

  She stamped a copper plate. "Welcome to the Guild, Zero. You start at Rank E. You get promoted based on the number of quests completed, the difficulty of the requests or the rank of the monsters subjugated. Do you know the rules regarding spoils?"

  Alaric nodded. He had done his research.

  The economy of monster hunting was simple. Beasts were just animals strengthened by mana , wolves, bears, boars. Their meat was edible and valuable, their fur used for clothing and other thingd. Monsters, however, were abominations. They weren't biological in the natural sense, they were formed around a Magic Stone core. They were inedible, often toxic, but their parts such as scales, bones, and especially the Magic Stones were crucial for society. The stones fueled artifacts like light, stoves and heaters, while their bodies became ingredients for alchemy ,weapons and equipments.

  "I wont take a subjugation request," Alaric said, scanning the board.

  He ignored the goblin hunts and herb gathering missions. Because working under a client would be hard with his tightly packed schedule, instead he had gather info from merchants that there seems to be a place 5 hours away from the capital which merchants avoid due to sightings of Golems.

  Five hours later, Alaric stood in a desolate canyon, the ground littered with scrap metal and jagged rocks.

  This was the Golem Territory.

  Golems were C-Rank to B-Rank monsters, depending on their size. They were walking tanks made of iron and stone, animated by Earth Spirits dwelling within their magic stone cores.

  They fetched a high price due to their mineral body, but hunters avoided them. Why? Because physical swords shattered against their skin, and standard magic barely scratched them. Unless a party had a heavy-hitting mage or a warrior with a huge hammer, fighting a Golem was a losing proposition. That's why even merchants avoided this place

  But Alaric’s plan wasn't a standard one.

  Alaric sent out a Mana Pulse, acting like a sonar. The wave bounced back, painting a 2D image in his mind. After looking for awhile

  Target acquired. Ninety meters. Heavy metallic density.

  He moved silently. Ahead, a three-meter-tall Iron Golem lumbered through the canyon.

  Alaric stepped out from behind a rock. He pointed his hand at the ground beneath the Golem’s feet.

  “Creo Ventus: Tempest Crown”

  A localized tornado roared to life instantly, the wind spinning at ferocious speeds.

  The Golem, for all its weight, wasn't aerodynamic. The sudden, violent updraft caught its massive surface area.

  WOOSH.

  The monster was launched into the sky, flailing helplessly as the wind carried it fifty, sixty, a hundred meters up.

  Alaric watched it reach the apex of its flight. Then, he snapped his fingers.

  Cancel.

  The wind vanished.

  Gravity took over.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The Golem plummeted. It was simple physics, mass times acceleration due to gravity equals force. A three-ton metal object falling from a hundred meters carried huge kinetic energy.

  BOOM.

  The impact shook the canyon floor. Dust billowed out. When it settled, the Golem lay in a crater, its metallic body shattered, and core cracked open.

  "One," Alaric counted.

  He didn't stop there. He spent the entire weekend in the canyon. By Sunday evening, he had downed eight Golems.

  Now came the hard part.

  Alaric looked at the pile of massive, scrap-metal corpses. He had rented a cart, but no horse could pull this weight.

  He sighed and placed his hands on the first Golem.

  "Creo Terra: Light Weight"

  He cast it on the first corpse, then the second, then the third. He stacked them onto the reinforced cart until it looked like a mountain of scrap.

  He grabbed the handle of the cart himself.

  I need to keep the magic activated till I go back to the capital otherwise actual weight would break the cart he muttered.

  For the next eight hours, Alaric walked back to the Capital, dragging a cart that should have weighed twenty tons. He had to keep the Lightweight active on every single golem body constantly and also had to strengthen himself the whole time.

  It was midnight when Alaric rolled the cart into the Guild courtyard. The main hall was still active as hunters never slept but the intake yard was quiet.

  He rang the bell. An appraiser walked out, looking grumpy.

  "We don't buy scrap metal, kid, we buy…."

  The appraiser stopped. He shone his lantern on the cart. He saw the shattered limbs of Iron Golems. He saw the glowing magic Cores still embedded in the wreckage.

  "You... you killed all of these?" the man stammered, looking at the lone figure in the mask. "How did you even tow this back? Where is your party?"

  "I am the party," Alaric said, his voice distorted by the mask. "Assess it."

  The appraiser spent an hour weighing the metal and checking the quality of the cores.

  "Eight Golems. High-quality iron and Intact cores," the man muttered, sweating. "Thirty silver per head. That's the best I can do."

  "Deal," Alaric said.

  The man handed over a heavy pouch.

  2 Gold, 40 Silver.

  Alaric took the bag. It was heavy. For a commoner, this was enough to live comfortably for a year. He walked out into the night, smiling behind his mask.

  He had struck a gold mine. The Golem grounds were dangerous for everyone else because they tried to fight the Golems. Alaric just let gravity do the work. It was an unexploited market, and he was going to bleed it dry.

  With his financial issues temporarily solved, Alaric turned his attention to his next project.

  Since the Nightmaw hunt, he had been obsessed with one thing: Lightning.

  He knew he couldn't just "learn" a lightning spell from a book because, because it didn't exist. But Alaric knew better.

  Lightning doesn't have to be magic, it was just a natural phenomenon he could simulate with magic.

  It was simply a charge moving from Point A to Point B due to a potential difference.

  Air was an insulator. It stopped electricity. But if the voltage difference , the "pressure" became high enough, the air molecules would rip apart. The electrons would be stripped from their nuclei, turning the air into Plasma. Plasma was conductive.

  If he could create a path of plasma, the electricity would flow.

  For the next month, Alaric disappeared into the training forests.

  He stood in a clearing, his hands held out in front of him.

  Step 1: The Heat.

  "Creo Ignis: Whiteflame Cataclysm."

  A focused, white-hot flame erupted in his right palm. But he didn't shoot it. He condensed it, feeding it air with his left hand using precise Wind Magic.

  The flame turned from orange to white, then to a blinding blue-white. The temperature skyrocketed. The air between his hands began to shimmer and distort.

  Step 2: Ionization.

  "Strip the electrons," Alaric whispered, sweat pouring down his face.

  The superheated air turned into plasma. Now, he had a soup of heavy positive nuclei and light negative electrons.

  Step 3: Separation.

  Using Wind Magic, Alaric acted as a filter. He pushed the heavy positive nuclei toward his right hand and while light negative electrons were left at his left hand.

  The tension in the air became palpable. The hair on his arms stood up.

  He had created a massive Potential Difference between his two hands. Nature hated a difference. It wanted to equalize.

  "Hold it..." Alaric gritted his teeth. "Wait for the breakdown..."

  CRACK!

  A jagged streak of blinding blue light arched between his palms. It wasn't a soft magical glow but raw, violent electricity, snapping and roaring as it bridged the gap.

  "Success."

  He separated his hands, aiming at a tree ten meters away. He manipulated the plasma trail with mana, extending it toward the target.

  BANG!

  The bolt of lightning shot from his hands, following the ionized path. It struck the tree trunk, instantly vaporizing the top half and setting the bottom half on fire.

  Alaric dropped his hands, panting heavily.

  He looked at his palms. They were covered in Null Magic Barriers. Without them, the heat and the backlash would have cooked his own nerves.

  He clenched his fist. His arsenal has grown to a point that even he knew he was strong. He was becoming a weapon.

  "I won't lose anymore," Alaric whispered to the empty forest, probably wishing the other him was listening. He was ready.