Ashton pulled up his staff and looked at the messages that popped up in front of him. 35 whole coins for killing Gordy? That was ridiculously impressive.

  The amount of coins that you received for killing something was calculated based off their overall strength. It was some calculation between levels, classes, the amount of mana someone had, species, and so on. It got a bit more complicated when you took non-combatants into account, but in general, the higher the coin reward, the more powerful the being that was killed.

  There was an exception for special monsters like bosses, though. The reward for those was usually set separately.

  But the coins weren't really the main thing that Ashton was focused on. The sylph and gnome had each levelled up, but even that wasn't the most important part.

  [Your favourability with the Constellation [Eight-Legged Queen] has dropped significantly for killing their Disciple]

  [You are now an enemy of the Constellation [Eight-Legged Queen]]

  Disciple? Gordy was turned into the constellation's disciple? That was a title given to only the highest tier amongst the people sponsored by a constellation. Basically, it didn't just mean that they were 'reserving' a person, they had basically already purchased them.

  While the position of disciple gave a person a massive amount of power, it also took something from them. While a regular sponsorship agreement just forced you to act in specific ways sometimes, it was still you yourself that was making that choice. Plus, though there were severe consequences, it was apparently possible to cancel an agreement if you really wanted to. At the end of the day, you were still the same person as before you made the agreement.

  Becoming a disciple was different. It actively changed a person. Usually, it was a change in personality. People would become more aggressive, more combat-hungry, more greedy in pursuing knowledge or suddenly become obsessed with death. Sometimes, when it came to more powerful constellations, Ashton even heard of physical alterations. A low-grade constellation like the Eight-Legged Queen wouldn't be able to do that even to their disciple, but when someone became a Marked that simply fit the changes that you would have made anyway, then the degree of 'influence' a constellation could exert on someone might be a lot higher. That might explain how Gordy became so powerful so fast.

  Ashton really had no way to rule that out, especially not at this point in time, now that Gordy was nothing but a corpse on the ground.

  "Oh, darn it, so I'm your enemy now?" Ashton asked, picking at the inside of his ear with his pinkie. "Does that mean spiders hate me now, or something?"

  He laughed a bit, because he knew that wouldn't be the case. Sure, beings that were aligned with the Eight-Legged Queen or people that were sponsored by them were going to be hostile toward him, but frankly, a low-grade constellation shouldn't have a massive amount of pull.

  There might be specific clans of spider-folk, any sort of more intelligent, sapient species of often humanoid spider-people, that followed the Eight-Legged Queen, but it wasn't exactly the most threatening thing in the world.

  [[Eight-Legged Queen] swears to never forget the sin you have committed today]

  "Aha, sure, if you say so."

  No more messages came from the Eight-Legged Queen after this, so Ashton figured that they just went on their way for now. He wasn't quite sure what this all looked like from the constellations' perspective, but they could obviously just go wherever they wanted.

  Well, now that Gordy was dead, it was time to clear out the rest of this place. If he didn't, then Ashton was going to lose the bet. He quickly looked out of the doorway and saw that the spiders, who were working together to expand the 'nest' so much until now, were starting to scatter to go on their way and seek out their own personal hunting grounds, rather than sharing space like here.

  Ashton looked over at and channelled the wisp to have them grow as large as it could. By now, the elemental was actually fairly big, almost a whole foot in diameter when fully 'blown up' like this, so the light that they could give off was pretty strong. Or at least, it was enough for Ashton to find any other spiders hiding out here.

  He used some of the undine's water to whip or wash away lots of the cobwebs spread around the space, and gathered together some air through the sylph and used it to really push it out through the door. There was plenty of other dirt and dust that was being pushed away at the same time, like this place hadn't been properly cleaned in weeks even before the apocalypse.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  "Urgh..." Ashton shuddered slightly as he ducked behind the bar and found what was essentially a mummified rat hiding between the liquor. This had been dead for a while.

  Ashton continued to look around. With just ten minutes left on the clock, he started taking down the all the sacs hanging on the wall and brought them outside for now, where there was more light. At least, he did that with the ones that were wrapped-up corpses. When it came to the ones that were clearly egg-sacs, Ashton really, really carefully gathered them outside in a single spot to burn all at once in a bit. Just in case, he used the gnome to dig a hole in a patch of dirt nearby and put all the egg-sacs in there and would return to it later.

  And beside that, Ashton figured that he was done. The only spiders left in here were regular spiders, not the monstrous arachnids that were roaming around the area now.

  He took out his lantern and placed a coal briquette and a pre-made summoning circle for the salamander onto it. The salamander was quickly summoned again, "Hey there, bud. I think I need your help with something," he said, smiling lightly as he looked at the elemental. Ashton quickly grabbed a spark from the salamander and placed it into the hole in front of him. The spider-thread immediately caught fire, and Ashton continued to push the flames down and into the egg-sacs.

  Almost immediately, a flood of small, coin-sized burning, newborn spiders climbed out of the hole. But they weren't exactly sturdy enough to persist against the magical flames clinging to their bodies, and quickly perished.

  [You have killed an [Arachnid]]

  [You have killed an [Arachnid]]

  [You have killed an [Arachnid]]

  [You have killed an [Arachnid]]

  [You have killed an [Arachnid]]

  ...

  A flood of hundreds of messages popped up in front of Ashton's eyes. Killing these guys didn't award Ashton any coins, simply because they were too weak to even give someone a single one. This also wasn't exactly giving Ashton any particular amount of experience points. The

  Seriously, the flood of messages was mostly just a bit annoying. Once the rest of them were killed, Ashton extinguished the flames and closed up the hole with the gnome's help again.

  "Now, all that's left is to look for Sabrina," Ashton stretched slightly, but he didn't even have to do much of that. Instead, Sabrina herself was already on her way toward him. Though, from the slight limp she had, she had clearly gotten hurt.

  Quickly, Ashton rushed to meet her halfway, looking down at her leg, "Are you okay?"

  "Do I look bloody okay?" Sabrina groaned, simply walking past Ashton toward the casino. "One of those spiders managed to bite the shit out of my leg. You better be grateful that I kept luring them away."

  "Of course I am." Ashton smiled, as he helped prop Sabrina up to get some weight off her leg, bringing her into the casino. A lot of the furniture had been destroyed, but there were some tables and chairs that were still alright for now.

  "Holy shit... is that Gordy?" she asked, looking at the 'human' corpse laying on the ground, barely illuminated by the light flowing in through the door and that was given off by the wisp and salamander.

  Ashton nodded as he put the lantern down onto the table next to where Sabrina sat down, "As far as I know, yes. He was a seriously tough opponent as well. However, as you can see..."

  Sabrina laughed a bit as she readjusted the way she was sitting on the chair. "Yeah, yeah. You won the bet."

  She held out her hand, and Ashton shook it, and the magical chains that were briefly visible earlier reappeared, and broke apart into small motes of mana. Those motes quickly floated toward Sabrina, and her eyes soon focused on a window in front of her.

  Immediately, she held out her hand and summoned a coin from her 'Gambling' skill and gave it to Ashton, "This should work now, I think? Usually, they just disappear when I let go of them, unless I flip them, of course."

  Ashton smiled and happily took the coin, "Perfect. Thank you very much."

  [You have received a [Gambler's Coin]]

  "Awesome," Ashton said to himself. Basically, the system notification was there because the system actively mediated the transaction started by the 'Betting' skill. But that wasn't the only great thing about what just happened.

  It was a minuscule amount, but Ashton had been practically staring at his vessel this entire time, and his contract capacity had increased.

  It was likely that his capacity would increase more the tougher the terms of the bet were, but just this knowledge alone made one thing clear. He had to keep Sabrina around.

  For now, Ashton gave the coin to the Backpacker, while also asking for something else. An antidote potion and a healing potion, as well as a small cup.

  "Here, drink this," Ashton said, giving Sabrina a small bit of the antidote potion, "It's going to help against the venom. You'll probably be a little tired, but by the time your leg is fully recovered, you should be fine. Now, pull up the leg of your trousers."

  Sabrina looked at Ashton confused. He sighed. "Do you want me to drink it first myself? I was also bitten a bit so I could use some."

  He took a swig of the potion and felt as its magic started slowly coursing through his body. Sabrina slowly drank the potion he gave to her and seemed almost immediately calmer, as if a lot of the pain she was feeling had been relieved.

  She did as Ashton asked and pulled up the leg of her trousers, revealing a gnarly, bloodied wound. It looked pretty terrible, but nothing that a healing potion couldn't fix. Ashton cleaned up the wound and quickly bandaged it up after applying some of the potion to it, and then got up.

  "Alright, I've got some harvesting to do. You can just sit here and relax for a bit, I won't be taking too long. And then after that, we'll look for those slot machines. I didn't find them when I was looking around earlier."

  Sabrina slowly nodded. "They should be right in that big cobweb ball over there. At least, when I left they were in that corner of the room."

  Ashton raised a brow. In that case, they were probably covered up by the threads. Or rather, that's what he hoped for. If not, then he might have lost something extremely valuable.

  Shops were a way for the system to directly interface with the physical world. They weren't a natural result of mana, but something placed here by the council in a similar way to monsters. There were simply a lot of things you could get out of them that you couldn't get any other way. And these machines were likely to be the same in that regard.

  That being the case, Ashton had to first get rid of all those webs, and of course take apart the spider queen's corpse, or at least what was left of it. Ashton was sure that Gordy hadn't destroyed everything useful, so he should at least take a look.