Filling the empty bottles, of which he had plenty as this was his main source of water for the undine at the moment, Ashton finished up the last batch of potions. He wrote onto the side what kind of potions they were, and the others curiously read it all.

  "Recovery, Antidote... Wait, 'Wood Skin'?" they asked confused, and Ashton smiled, nodding.

  "Mhm. Hold on, I can show you," he said, grabbing a small rag and pouring a bit of the potion onto it. Ashton pulled up his sleeve and rubbed some of the potion onto himself.

  It seemed to immediately swell up, like in some kind of allergic reaction, but Ashton didn't feel uncomfortable at all. The part of his skin that swelled up soon dried out and swelled back down, but instead of fully retreating, left behind a thin layer of hardened skin with folds that looked almost exactly like bark.

  "Ew..." Nicole let out with a slight grimace, before looking away from Ashton's arm and up at his face, immediately panicking. "I-I mean, it just, I-"

  But Ashton just laughed, "Don't worry, I get it. It does look pretty nasty like this. In about twenty minutes, it's going to start slowly smoothing out back into my normal skin without any trace. But until then..." With a smile, he knocked on his arm.

  It wasn't the dull, slight slap that everyone was expecting, but that clear, undeniable sound of knocking on a piece of wood, "It's not especially hard wood, I guess. My resilience stat is only 11 right now. The effect of this kind of potion scales with that, and becomes more effective the higher your base resilience is."

  "... Do you think it would be a good match for me?" Paul wondered. He was the one carrying that massive shield around. He didn't even have any other weapon.

  Ashton thought for a moment. He wasn't quite sure, "Maybe, but I wouldn't count on it. Sure, I'm guessing you have decent growth for resilience and power, so it would scale well, but at the end of the day you're a shield-bearer. Your goal should always be to stop incoming attacks with your shield, obviously, and this potion is too expensive to make to just use it 'just in case'. It would be a better match for the vanguard, in this case John."

  "Hey, I'm also-" Oliver started, but Ashton ignored him and continued speaking.

  "But at the same time, you would also need to be careful. Hammer Fighters aren't exactly known for their agility, but if you're not careful, you might accidentally apply the potion to your joints, which will for one slow you down, and two; make any movement you do manage to make feel like you're ripping your skin open."

  "So... I can give you some, but be extremely careful with it. Use it tactically. And just slightly dab it on, using too much can tear your skin open. Oh, and seriously, I know it's called a 'potion', but do not drink this, it's going to make your throat swell up, and if you can't hold your breath for half an hour, you're kind of fucked," Ashton said, though he only mentally added a last part, 'I'm speaking from experience here... Terrible mistake...'

  He suppressed a shiver and poured part of the potion into a smaller bottle. Luckily, Ashton was decent enough at making larger batches of potions.

  Usually, it was harder to make large batches because it was easier for the mana within the brewing potion to collapse the higher the volume was, but Ashton could control the mana in there well enough to stop that from happening. But there were still a few summons that could help him with this.

  Of course, it wasn't like Ashton was some kind of potion-brewing genius. He wasn't even able to make high-grade, or even mid-grade potions all on his own. Well, maybe he could at some point, now that he was developing as a magic user, but back in Lumia, Ashton was usually some kind of 'overseer'.

  The Summoner considered the beings that were forced into a contract as something lesser. As tools. Mere objects. And so, Ashton was called to be the one to use the tools that were too filthy for the Summoner to touch themself. At the very least, that meant that Ashton knew a lot of details about beings that he could contract that would help him.

  Right now, Ashton could only afford to form 'lesser' grade contracts. There were three on his list.

  Two elementals, Sylph and Gnome, of air and earth respectively. They would simply help Ashton complete a larger 'base' array of magic. He would love to form contracts with a Lumen and Tenebrun, light and dark elementals, as well, but he simply didn't have the materials. Hell, he barely had the materials for a Sylph and Gnome.

  Beside that, it was just about time for Ashton to contract a 'Dismantler', considering the sheer amount of time he spent collecting magic stones. A dismantler would let Ashton do all of that himself. He would have to manually collect things from the Dismantler and give them to the Backpacker, but once the latter's powers grew a bit more, that wouldn't be an issue either.

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  Either way, for now, Ashton had to make some ink. He figured he should start with the ink from a very special material that he promised the Pen of Insight he would make.

  Ashton grabbed the pen and quickly started drawing an enchanting circle on a piece of paper. What these enchanting circles did was simple. They helped align the user's mana in a specific way that would let them attach a certain 'effect' onto the target object.

  The effect of the 'seeking' enchantment Ashton used to make the mana compass was basically a sort of magical magnetism. It was usually used with a specific sample of mana though. This let you seek out particular species of beasts or monsters, or even individuals depending on how you tuned it.

  The enchantment circle that he used when making the crackling coins was specifically a 'compression' enchantment, allowing him to compress parts of the coins' mana down into those knots that would then start popping on impact.

  But the one that Ashton used now was a bit more specific, and as such a little more complex. It was a 'decomposition' enchantment. It would make the physical object that was affected by this enchantment break down faster, as if time was simply accelerated for it. It was usually an enchantment used in farms to make manure, and certain countries even used it to speed up fermentation. It always turned out a bit funky whenever Ashton tried it on food, but luckily, he didn't need to control the decomposition of the inkcaps too much.

  Ashton finished the magic circle and placed a few magic stones onto it. He then grabbed the plastic container that he kept the inkcaps in and put it onto the pattern.

  "Ooh! Are you summoning something?" Oliver asked, looking up from the magic stone in his hand, but Ashton shook his head without even glancing toward him.

  "Nope. Also, stay away and don't put your hands near this," he warned. An enchantment like this was extremely dangerous if you weren't careful. It could literally make your flesh rot off your bones. "That means you as well, Poppy."

  Ashton took a deep breath and started up the enchantment process with a small spark of mana. The magic stones immediately fell apart, and the corresponding mana flowed into the plastic container.

  The fact that plastic was a thing here was actually an amazing thing. Usually, you would have to be extremely careful about what material the container was, because you would end up with some rust or rotten wood pulp mixed in if you weren't careful. Of course, porcelain or glass was always an option, but having the option to use lightweight, sturdy plastic was great.

  Before anyone knew it, the small, torn apart myconids started falling apart into a thick, sticky black substance. More and more, the inkcaps fell apart and rotted away, until there were just a few chunks left in there that wouldn't fall apart.

  Ashton pulled his hand away from the enchantment circle and let the magic settle down for a while until it was safe to pour out the new ink through a cheesecloth to just end up with the actual liquid, which was quickly put into a number of jars.

  "Wow, you ended up with quite a lot. Did you go foraging today?" Nicole wondered, looking at the fresh ink.

  Ashton looked at her with raised brows, "Hm? Oh, no, I spent all day in town. These guys aren't regular mushrooms either, they're monsters called Myconids. Myconid Shamans, specifically, take the form of inkcaps."

  "Wait, they're... monsters? You made ink from monsters?"

  "Yeah, so?" Ashton replied.

  "Isn't that dangerous or something?" John wondered nervously, "You know, some kind of... magical toxins or whatever."

  "Why does everyone think that? No, it's fine, you can also eat most monsters as long as they're not poisonous. Humanoids get a bit iffy, though, so I wouldn't even get that ball rolling."

  Ashton poured a bit of the ink onto a small cup and placed it down next to an open page of one of his notebooks. He then called on the Pen of Insight's consciousness. "Here, you can have that ink. Feel free to write or draw whatever you want."

  He let go of the pen and watched as it started twirling around in the world. The crystal nib grabbed onto the black ink before the pen twirled around on top of the paper, simply scribbling random shapes onto it.

  And then, it was time for Ashton to get started on some more ink, though some more specific kinds. Sadly, the inkcap ink, while filled with a ton of mana, wasn't great to use as a base for more specific inks. It was however a much more efficient offering than store-bought ink with some magic stone dust mixed into it. He would probably use up less than half the ink as the bonus offering that was absorbed beyond what was used for the actual writing when he used the Pen's ability.

  "So, uhm... What are you making now?" Jacky asked, figuring she should change the topic. None of the others were particularly excited about the idea of eating monsters, and had to digest that thought for a while.

  "Well, now, I'm going to make some ink using an item that I got as a quest reward today," Ashton explained, smiling, "I'm not sure if you saw it, but probably the first post in the community this morning asked for help at the primary school. So I went there, helped them out, and got a quest from a constellation that resulted in me getting a watercolour kit. I can use the colours from that to make small batches of ink that should help me out. Well, I need a few more things beside just those colours, though."

  Ashton asked the backpacker for the watercolour kit, an old metal pipe, and some feathers collected from carrion crows. He was going to collect some rust from the outside of the pipe, and extract whatever mana was inside of the feathers to put into a different batch of ink.

  But as he looked back over at the others, who were surprised, "That was you? On your own?"

  "Huh? Yeah, so? Wait, you know about it?"

  "Of course we know about it, tons of people are talking about it in the community! People went to see what happened there afterward once the school confirmed that they were saved, and they said there was just a mountain of monster corpses on the outside. At least like a hundred goblins and a dozen orcs!"

  Ashton shrugged, "It was eight orcs, but yes."

  "... Just how strong are you?"