When Amos and the rest of the team were done exploring, they all retired to their various beds and slept off.
Meek and his bodyguard were nowhere to be found as it seemed they didn't even leave the room after paying for it.
Anthony woke up from his angry slumber.
He looked outside the window as the sun shined down his face.
'I guess we would be leaving tomorrow as the leader said'
Anthony thought as he left his bed and went about his usual morning routine.
He went to the same dining and ate to his content.
This time he didn't meet any of his teammates and met only those that flirted with him the day before.
Seven hours later...
Amos, Chika and Zayne could be seen talking and laughing in Zayne's room happily.
As they discussed amongst one another, their phones all beeped at the same time.
When it beeped, they all frowned.
Although it was normal for a phone to beep, but three beeping at the same time isn't a good sign at all.
They all looked at one other for a while before Amos looked at his phone first before others.
As he read through the content, he kept an expressionless face till he got to the bottom part where he stopped in shock.
The rest of the crew seeing this, immediately read through the message.
They all had the same expression because what they saw at the end of the message was too shocking.
The message they received was simple and straightforward, it was a mission.....an assassination mission to be exact.
Their mission was to kill Anthony anyhow they saw fit before he returns to the Academy.
The part that made them fall into shock was the price tagged at the ending of the message.
It was a whopping one Billion top mana crystals.
Such amount of money they didn't even dare to dream about.
They have never seen a million top mana crystals talk more of a billion of it.
They could only imagine what they could do with so much money in their hands.
Their cultivation would skyrocket and move through leaps and bounds due to abundance of resources.
The sender of the mission remained anonymous, so they didn't know who gave them the mission.
But the trio couldn't careless about this as it wasn't their concern.
Their concern was how to kill Anthony and how to share the reward stated.
The three of them nodded their heads and were about to start their discussion about the mission.
But before they could even start, they heard a knock on the door.
The three of them frowned again but this time, it was at the same time.
They just got an offer of a life time and a knock sounded at the same time?, it sounded too coincidental to be true.
They all drew their weapons just incase they had to make a move at any moment.
Amos walked up to the door with his right hand now placed on his sword, then using the left to open the door.
As the door swung open, he saw the remaining group which were four in numbers, which are Meek, the masked man, Clara and Zara.
Meek is a straight to business type guy so he didn't bother to beat around the bush and asked in a straight forward manner.
"Did you receive the message"
They argued who would get Anthony's mana saving artifact.
As they saw they couldn't land on a conclusion, they decided to leave it for whoever made the most effort.
As for the remaining things on Anthony, they decided to share it twenty percent each person since they were just five of them here.
As they all agreed to share the remaining loot twenty percent each, Meek's voice sounded.
"Aren't you forgetting about me, although I won't be getting any reward from the one billion top mana crystals, at least I should get something from Anthony's corpse, don't you all agree"
"Don't get greedy Meek, why should you get something when you aren't even lifting a finger during the battle"
Zara said as he started unleashing a tiny bit of killing intent.
The others didn't reply and just waited for his response because they all had the same question.
"Well, although I won't be lifting a finger during the battle, I can at least interfere after the battle"
Immediately Meek said that, his bodyguard's Grandmaster aura instantly flared.
Meek's business mind skill coming into play yet again at this time.
Although he won't fight, after they kill Anthony his bodyguard can at least fight them and kill some of them making them to bend to his will and have no choice than to give up some rewards....if all of them were alive at that time that is.
This was what Meek had in mind when he made that proposal.
And he was sure that they too had this thought in mind as anything could happen on a battlefield.
In an event where Anthony decided to drag out the battle and exhausting their mana and stamina, Meek could just decide to slaughter them like dogs after that.
They won't make a bet that they could finish off Anthony immediately without exhausting their mana and stamina as a battlefield was ever changing.
So, they could only compromise and allow Meek have some reward from Anthony's corpse but not the reward for assassination.
Meek smiled as his plan had worked out perfectly.
This way, if the team succeeded, he (Meek) would still reap rewards and then even if they all fail and Anthony wipes them out, he would still be alive since he didn't interfere in the fight, so his life is the reward.
Therefore he wins in whichever path blooms into reality.
Zayne snorted and said with a stern voice.
"We will all have to a sign a mana contract"
Others also nodded as Meek what just said has caused a problem.
With the amount of assassination reward, who is to say that even Chika won't wipe out all of them in order to keep the reward for himself.
Although Chika couldn't take on all of them at same time, there were many ways to kill someone without even lifting a finger.
So they all signed a mana contract that made them unable to betray one another from this moment on, of course only in aspect to the assassination and not their entire lives.
The only requirement for a mana contract was the ability to weild mana and that's all.
So even a newly awakened F ranker can sign a mana contract.
In other to use a mana contract, all you have to do is will it, and a blank sheet of paper would materialize in front of you.
And with a thought all your thoughts would appear on the paper which would be signed in your name.
Of course others have tried to falsify their names or sign others names on a mana contract and suffered the consequences.
So during any mana contract signing, people only have to look out for loopholes and word play that is on the mana contract.
After signing the mana contract, Meek stood up and left as he had nothing left to do there.
This was how cruel this world was, one minute they were all laughing and teasing one another and the next they are planning an assassination and keeping one another in check.
If people who have known themselves for thousands of years can betray each other, what would you say about someone you didn't even know and only met like a few weeks ago and met on a mission at that.
This assassination mission was no different than breathing to them, it didn't even spark any emotion other than joy for the money that was about to come.
In this world, many people still don't fully trust those who are bound by mana contract with no loopholes.