Using his staff, Ashton pulled the spider-silk off the dome on the far side of the room, trying to bundle it up as much as he could. He had to treat this material well if he wanted to turn it into proper fabric. So, once his staff was covered completely in spider silk, he slowly pulled the entire bundle off and gave it to the Backpacker.

  Ashton continued that until the Backpacker had basically no more space left for any silk. It was obvious that Ashton wouldn't be able to take all of it, though it still annoyed him a little bit. He might be able to come back later and grab some more, but he would then find a space where he could stash all of it outside of the Backpacker's void.

  He could technically fit in a little more, but since the silk wasn't all that Ashton was going to collect, he had to just leave himself a little bit more space in there. But then...

  [Contract | Backpacker - Level 6 -> Backpacker - Level 7]

  Another cubic foot of space had just become available inside the backpack. Ashton stuffed it with a bit more of the silk, and was happy to just tear down the rest of this nest on his search for those slot machines.

  As he continued to clear away the cobwebs, he noticed that bits of concrete were placed in-between the layers of silk, basically fortifying the entire thing. He had been wondering where it all went. It wasn't like that hole in the ground was particularly small. A lot of the tiles that were on the ground before as well as the crumbled-up concrete foundation were spread around this place, but it was far too little.

  There were some species of monsters that ate rocks, but he hadn't heard of regular arachnids eating rocks, so that would have been a surprise. There were spider monsters that ate rocks, but they weren't these guys.

  Ashton pushed all of the concrete back down into the hole together with some of the silk as he was tearing the dome down. And soon, as he tore away a thick layer of silk, a dim light shone through. Before long, the slot machines were revealed.

  As Sabrina had said, there were three of them. Like a lot of slot machines these days, they had pretty outrageous themes to them. The one on the left was called 'Dragon's Hoard', and seemed to be the one that took coins. It was basically in the shape of a stone tower with a red dragon coiling around it.

  "Ridiculous..." Ashton clicked his tongue, and Sabrina, who had come a bit closer seeing that the machines were uncovered, looked at him confused.

  "What, do you not think that dragons would be a thing?"

  "Hm? Oh, no, just... it's a bit lazily made. I mean, look at those horns, that's definitely an elder dragon, but it's the size of what's clearly just a youngling," Ashton sighed, crossing his arms. "I mean, I get it, creative license or whatever, but it's such an easy mistake to not make, you know?"

  Sabrina looked at him baffled, not sure what he was saying. Ashton laughed a bit at her expression and looked at the other vending machines. The one furthest to the right was themed like some kind of mine, with bright blue, glowing magic stones growing out of the walls. It was literally called 'Magic Stone Mine', and as Sabrina said, there was a small sign specifically asking for those magic stones. Again, ridiculous, but a little less so.

  There were some rare places where naturally-occurring magic stones could be found, but they were very different to the ones inside of the monsters' bodies. The ones that grew naturally were filled with numerous impurities and had to be refined before they could be used, while the ones from monsters were usually already pure, with some exceptions.

  But the slot machine in the middle was the most interesting to Ashton, mostly because he had no idea what this was supposed to be. It was basically just a black obelisk without much of a design to it otherwise, at least on a surface-level. As Ashton ran his fingers over it, he could feel some very slight grooves on its surface.

  There were three pads on its front that were likely going to display the 'slot' aspect of this thing, and below that there was a glass orb, barely large enough to fit a whole hand onto it, was sticking out of the side of the obelisk. Either way, this one really wasn't screaming 'slot machine' in any way. Then again, it wasn't like Ashton ever went into one of these places before, so he wouldn't know if this was weird or not. Sabrina recognised it as a slot machine, at least.

  "Have you tried this one out yet?"

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Sabrina immediately shook her head, watching as Ashton leaned closer to the machine to try and see all the grooves in detail.

  "I tried, but nothing worked..."

  Ashton looked at that glass orb on the surface of the machine. Usually, these were receptacles for mana, so it was likely that you just had to pour some inside there. But Ashton would try that out later. First, he wanted to test out the others, because they had slightly more predictable outcomes.

  He pulled a coin out of his status window and pushed it into the vertical slot on the machine, and looked around.

  "What now?" Ashton asked. Nothing was happening.

  Sabrina pointed at the dragon's tail, "Just pull that down, like a lever."

  With a sigh, Ashton did just that. If a real dragon saw this, they would burn this entire town to the ground out of anger.

  As he pulled on the tail, it snapped into place and slowly started to return to its original position as the slots in front of Ashton started to spin. He could spot a few of the symbols. There were three symbols that were just differently sized piles of coins. There was one with what Ashton could only figure to be a pile of ash, and another one with a dragon's head on it. The last one, though, appeared a lot more rarely than the others, and completely out of order as well. Sometimes it followed the dragon head, sometimes it was sandwiched between two coin piles. If this were a digital display, that wouldn't be so weird, but these were physical wheels.

  Sure, these things were magical anyway, so it wasn't the most shocking thing in the world, but it made Ashton very curious. Especially because that symbol looked familiar.

  It was spinning fast, so Ashton wasn't able to get a proper look at it, but if he was right, then this was a 'Word' in the dragons' language.

  To dragons, at least to dragons with 'true' draconic blood, language was something special. Something binding. True dragons couldn't lie, similar to fairies, and their names held power, similar to spirits. The exact rules and mechanics worked differently, though.

  Now, the dragons' language was special in its own way. It wasn't a language in the same way that English was a language. It wasn't defined purely by the audible, but rather by the magic placed into the word. Two different words may be pronounced in the same exact way, but a slight difference in the magic in the speaker's voice could change the meaning.

  Though, it wasn't like non-dragons could produce or hear that same sort of specific magic within sound. Even then, the Summoner had always forbidden Ashton from learning anything about the draconic language. And while they never actively said it, it was likely because the draconic language was powerful enough to potentially let Ashton free himself. Again, he wouldn't have been able to even speak a single proper syllable in that language, but the Summoner got rather paranoid at times.

  Before long, the slots stopped spinning, and it landed on a small coin pile, a pile of ash, and a dragon's head... Nothing happened.

  "Ah, unlucky..." Sabrina let out, and Ashton turned around to her.

  "You said that you got the gambler class by playing this slot machine, right?"

  "Oh, yeah, it's the only one I could play, right?"

  "How does this work? Like, what do all the symbols do?"

  Sabrina looked at the slot machine and smiled, "It's pretty straightforward. Getting two small coin piles gives you back half what you put in, three give you what you put in back. Two middle coin piles give you what you put in, and three give you a 50% increase. Two large ones double you put in, and three give you three times. There are some special rules when you get only coin piles, even if they're different sizes, but I haven't quite figured that out. The ash doesn't really do anything, it's just an empty slot, basically. The dragon is like that mostly, but you hit the jackpot when you get three dragon heads, which is five times of what you put in! But, if you get a dragon head with two of the same coin piles, you only get half of what it would usually give you. I think there might actually be some more combos, I feel like-"

  Ashton listened to her ramble on for a bit. It was actually a bit much to take in, especially with how fast she was talking. It sounded like she played here for a while.

  "What about that blue symbol? The rune-looking thing?"

  Sabrina sighed. "I've seen that when it was spinning sometimes, but it never stopped on there."

  Thinking for a moment, Ashton opened his status window. "And you said you ran out of money, right?"

  Slowly, a bit embarrassed, Sabrina nodded her head. Ashton selected around 250 coins, making the system give them out 50 separate 5-coin coins that he quickly gave to Sabrina.

  "You can use these. Literally keep playing until you run out or I tell you to stop. The moment you get one of those other symbols, you stop and tell me, okay?"

  Confused, Sabrina looked at the coins, "You're just... giving me money?"

  "If there are any profits after this, I'll be taking that back obviously. I mostly just want to see that symbol. Also, playing on this thing might help you level up, so don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

  Without hesitation, Sabrina nodded and sat down on a stool in front of the slot machine. And then, Ashton turned his focus over to the magic-stone slot machine.

  He started with one of the smallest stones he had, the ones from the tutorial goblins that he had left over. There was a fist-sized slot on the right of the machine, shaped like a tipped-over minecart, which Ashton dropped one of the stones into.

  It dropped through the bottom of the minecart, and Ashton looked around at what he had to press or pull, and quickly spotted a small pickaxe at the side of the machine. He pushed down the handle, and the slots on the machine started spinning and spinning and spinning, until they finally came to a stop.

  Two of the slots depicted small gemstones, while the last showed what seemed to be just a drop of water. A moment later, a magic stone was pushed back out into that small minecart. It was maybe twice as big as before, but it wasn't the same kind of stone that Ashton had put in.

  The weight was definitely off, and as he moved it around, Ashton noticed something.

  The core of the stone was liquid.