[Bonus Quest - Save Drakewood Primary School]
[Drakewood Primary School is surrounded by a horde of monsters. The [Guardian of the Innocent] has asked you to hunt them all down to protect the school's young children.]
[Goal - Hunt the Monsters around the school before they can injure any Child]
[Reward - 2000 Coins, Uncommon Item Choice]
[Failure - Disdain of the Guardian of the Innocent]
A whole 2000 coins, and an uncommon item choice, huh? That was a whole bunch of coins, far more than he had expected to be able to get out of this, and adding an uncommon item made this even more valuable.
[Do you wish to accept the Quest? [Yes]|[No]]
Of course, he had no reason to turn down the quest. He was going to do this anyway.
[[Observer in the Veil] calls foul play]
[[Observer in the Veil] has gifted you 250 Coins]
[[Daughter of the Scarlet Heart] grumbles at the Guardian's abuse of privileges]
[[Daughter of the Scarlet Heart] has gifted you 100 Coins]
[[Executor of the End] stands up from their desk and paces around angrily]
[[Guardian of the Innocent] apologises, explaining their desperation]
'... Desk?' Ashton thought. Constellations had desks? They had legs to stand up from a desk with?
But more importantly, why was the Daughter so annoyed? It had to be because the Guardian was basically gifting 2000 coins to him, but... if he was honest, a mere 2000 coins were nothing to these guys. Well, the Executor was known to be a bit stingy with gifts, but the Observer and Daughter were known to gift quite well.
He stared at the notifications, trying to put the pieces together. The Daughter said that the Guardian abused his privileges... Giving a quest to people wasn't something that every little constellation could do. It was a 'privilege'. But the Observer also gave him a quest, so what was the difference?
"Ah..." he let out, when a thought came to him. He thought that the constellations simply didn't spend so much money early on because it would be a waste to spend money on something so uncertain. But what if the constellations had 'spending limits'?
Obviously, not all constellations were equal. The Observer was more powerful than the Daughter, and both had more power than the Executor. What if the Guardian used the money to get around that spending limit? 2000 coins was a lot this early on, but it was fair considering there seemed to be more than a hundred goblins and at least ten orcs. Ashton would get close to that many coins just from killing the monsters.
The Guardian in particular was known for their fairness, but they couldn't just follow Ashton around to keep giving them coin gifts. So, the quest was a good way to get around that. Obviously, Ashton was more than just happy about this.
Especially because it allowed him to confirm a suspicion that he had.
Quests were like 'contracts'. After he accepted that quest, he could feel a small twinge of something stuck in his already close to filled up vessel, specifically the part where his contracts were 'stored'. The best, most effective way to increase your contract capacity was to keep forming and 'fulfilling' contracts.
Effectively, the more offerings Ashton made to his summons, the more his capacity would grow. After fulfilling the quest of the Guardian, and even the main quests, though less than the others, he could feel his contract capacity increase a ton, even if he couldn't place where exactly it came from until now. He thought it was just the increase that came with his Spirit stat increasing. Maybe the same amount that it had expanded through the offerings he made to the summons by far, Ashton got through each quest, give or take.
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So, since his capacity was Ashton's biggest issue right now, this quest was even better for him than he thought. At least, if he was right - this was just a guess for now, something that he hadn't heard about from the Summoner. Their capacity was so high that they probably wouldn't have even noticed these raindrops adding onto their ocean.
"Okay. Let me take care of the ones on school grounds first," Ashton said, stretching a bit. "Thanks for the help, kids."
"Wait! You're just going? Right now?" Millie asked, confused, "Don't you need to prepare a bit more?"
Ashton opened the door and smiled, "Well, don't I need to prove I'm not a wuss?"
He stepped out of the classroom and proceeded to walk down the hallway. Of course, there was still something he had to do before heading out, and he decided to do it in the gymnasium. While the kids upstairs, the 'bad kids', were dealing with things in their own way for now, at least keeping up their own mood somehow, all the other children were a lot more scared and had no idea how to cope. They did like the undine, though.
Magic was something special. It was quite literally magical, obviously. And what Ashton was about to do would at least look pretty, so he figured it might make the kids a little more excited, despite the situation they were in.
He went inside, and called on the Backpacker, asking to be given a stack of paper and some ink. Taking out the pen from his chest pocket, Ashton quickly started writing a fairly large pattern across multiple papers. He was sitting in the middle of the gymnasium, so before long, children and faculty alike came over to take a look at what he was doing.
In the end, the Backpacker gave Ashton the random box as well as the bag of magic stones he got from the vending machine. They should be perfect. Usually, Ashton had to guesstimate which magic stones to put into which part of the magic circle to spread them out somewhat evenly. Rather, he would have needed to make these more precisely filled magic stones himself at some point, so having a different source of them really helped.
He placed the small marbles down onto different sections of the magic circle, and placed the white, small random box into the middle.
[[Observer in the Veil] wonders what you are doing]
Ashton smiled. This would look pretty weird to the Observer. What he was doing was basically the process of enchanting something, but why would you ever enchant a random box? That wouldn't change what it was. They were special, magical objects whose basic existence could not be altered, or they should be.
And of course, the Summoner never had to rely on something like this. They just poured the magic naturally inside of the boxes to max them out, and then that was that.
But Ashton had to use a mana-transfer process, which was usually just a step of the enchanting process to place enough mana into the object to be used in later steps, and hyper-charged it.
With just a tiny bit of his own mana, Ashton was able to activate the magic circle. The magic-filled ink began to glow, and the magic stone marbles fell apart into glistening dust. That dust was carried through the air above the random box, and was syphoned right into it in a whirlpool of magic.
The children watched this process excitedly and loudly, laughing and grinning at what they were witnessing, which brought over more and more of them. Soon, as Ashton repeated the process a few times, almost the entire gymnasium was gathered around him. The teachers even made sure that the kids that came over later could get their turn watching Ashton from up close.
But then, at some point, the magic simply wouldn't go into the random box anymore. It was maxed out for now. Maybe with a more complex magic circle, he could stuff a bit more into this, but he would probably also need higher-quality ink to support a magic circle like that. For now, this was fine.
[[Guardian of the Innocent] thanks you for cheering up the children]
[[Observer in the Veil] still questions your intentions with that enchantment]
Ashton smiled as he picked up the random box. He pressed onto its side with the intention of actually opening it, and then almost immediately, the box began to fall apart. All the magic that was now inside of the box gathered together in a small sphere above Ashton's hand.
But when that sphere compressed further, changing its shape, Ashton was surprised, and the children were... disappointed.
What dropped onto his palm was a pack of red shoelaces.
"Urgh..." Ashton groaned loudly. Was his luck really that bad, that he got shoelaces of all things out of this? "I guess they look nice, but..."
Though, as he was holding onto them, he noticed that these weren't quite the mundane item he thought they were. There was definitely magic in there, and it wasn't just the leftover magic from the random box.
Immediately, Ashton grabbed a piece of paper and channelled the Pen of Insight, connecting it with the last bit of ink left in the pot and the paper, and then tagged the shoelaces in his hand.
The pen sprung to life immediately, surprising the kids once again. They were still a bit disappointed, but watching the pen come to life seemed interesting.
"... I could use one of those..." one of the teachers muttered. It seemed like everyone was pretty curious about what was happening, and soon, Ashton knew what exactly these shoelaces were. This wasn't a fail at all - he had hit the jackpot, especially for the quest ahead of him.
Silent Step Shoelaces
Grade - Rare
Bright red shoelaces with special magic imbued into them. When placed onto any pair of shoes that would normally have laces, the sound of their footsteps will practically disappear.
At the same time, a message appeared in front of Ashton that lifted his mood even more.
[Contract | Pen of Insight - Level 2 -> Pen of Insight - Level 3]
Though Ashton didn't have the ink ready to use the pen more right now, nor the time or need to really use it for now, he was excited to see how much more information the pen could provide after this. Though what it just provided was already an amazing thing.
"Thanks for your work," Ashton smiled as the pen twisted around on the paper. It was scribbling something with some of the leftover ink, but Ashton didn't really mind either.
He quickly stood up and asked the children to make way, jogging around in the gym a bit. The squeaking of his shoes echoed around the place. And then, Ashton quickly dropped down and replaced his shoelaces. It was slightly annoying to do, and it was an awkward feeling to be watched while doing so, but it was worth it.
Because soon, he stuffed his regular shoelaces into his pocket, and once more jogged around. The squeaking and the sound of blunt impact was almost completely gone this time. The kids and teachers didn't seem to notice, since they were too busy talking over the sound that would usually be heard, but Ashton knew. The sound was gone.
With this, Ashton was ready to go kill a horde of monsters.
[A [Bonus Chapter] has been redeemed]
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