With the decision to first contract the Salesman made, Ashton had to prepare as much as he could.

  Frankly, the Salesman's offering was one of the most straightforward. Money. Or well, valuables. Gold, silver, copper. Even certain pieces of art seemed to do the job for them. But that was much more unreliable and more akin to bartering, so the best way to go about it was simply money. And the Salesman was always more than just happy to accept the system's currency for trades.

  However, for the first initial summon and establishment of the contract, Ashton needed to offer up at least 10 thousand coins. Though, he was at least lucky that a low grade contract was even an option for Salesman spirits. If you wanted to form a middle grade contract right of the bat, you had to pay at least 250 thousand coins. For Ashton, upgrading the contract from low to middle grade would cost around 100 thousand, obviously not including the money he would have spent to level the contract up enough for that in the first place.

  But either way, that meant that Ashton was going to need roughly another 7000 coins as fast as he could. That meant, with how strong monsters were at the moment, he would need to kill around... 400-450 monsters.

  Or he could just hope that Sabrina was going to keep hitting jackpot after jackpot so that he could get himself the 7000 coins right away. Obviously, that wasn't going to happen, so Ashton should just get out and get to work.

  "Maybe there's another way I can make some money..." Ashton whispered, trying to think of some things that he could sell to others, or services that he could provide. He didn't exactly want to rob people.

  But for now, before Ashton headed back out, there was something else that he had to do. He looked at the slot machine in the middle of the three. Because he was unsure what this could be, he had been pretty anxious about trying it out.

  A lot of the ways that the system synchronised with the physical world were extremely useful, but sometimes, these things could be called a trap. This black obelisk in particular was incredibly suspicious.

  Using this was, in itself, a gamble. Clearly, rather than coins or magic stones, it took mana, and that could mean a number of things. One, it might have random magical effects. Two, it might interface with the system somehow more directly and mess with one's class or stats or anything like that.

  Ashton took a deep breath, and pressed his hand onto the glass orb sticking out of the obelisk. He poured in just a little bit of his mana, and watched as all the grooves on the surface of the black structure lit up with a soft white light.

  It was extraordinary enough to even get Sabrina to look away from her own slot machine and stare with awe.

  The light seemed to flow away from the edges toward a single spot on the rectangular black slab. It got together into a circle in the middle of the slab, reaching further inside and forming a single symbol. Now this was something Ashton knew. It was a rune, specifically the same type of runic language that was used when communing with elementals for contracts.

  There were a number of runic languages, basically like interpretations of the natural patterns of mana in the world through the eyes of different sorts of beings. And this was the way that elementals interpreted it and was generally used in a lot of element-based systems of magic as well.

  This rune specifically meant 'Light'. But it was just there on the slab for a while, and nothing else happened. And then, Ashton got a hunch. He grabbed himself a coin from his status screen and tapped it against the symbol. Almost immediately, the light from the obelisk jumped over onto the coin, and the small piece of metal started to glow on its own.

  "It's a random enchantment machine." Ashton smiled broadly. "This is great! There might be some detrimental ones, but this is absolutely amazing!"

  Of course, just as he was saying this, the soft, magical glow disappeared from the coin. The enchantment wasn't permanent. Or at least, it wasn't permanent with the small amount of mana that Ashton placed into the glass orb.

  "What was that just now?" Sabrina asked curiously, and Ashton couldn't help himself but continue grinning like an idiot.

  "Put easily, it was magic. And it's a way to help people discover magical aptitudes," he explained. Sabrina was confused for a moment, but Ashton just turned back to the magical slot machine and smiled. This time, he poured in a little bit more mana. Actually, it was a good, solid chunk of the mana he had right now, probably a quarter.

  Light filled the grooves in the obelisk again, but a different symbol appeared on the obelisk this time. That one meant... 'Heavy'. Specifically, it was a rune referring to the 'weight of the world', a term that was created by elementals to refer to matters like gravity and mass. In this case, though, the 'heavy' enchantment basically made an object act like it was heavier than it was in effectively every single way, beside changing the actual density or volume of the object it was placed on, as if another number was snuck in while calculating the mass of something.

  However, Ashton was unsure exactly how heavy an item with this effect would actually be and took his staff. If it was too much, then he could just forcibly expel the enchantment. It was easy enough to do for him, at least.

  He pushed the middle of his staff against the symbol, and immediately interfered with the magic going into his weapon to direct it equally to his weapon's two ends to make the magic latch onto the steel caps.

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  After a moment, the enchantment settled in place. It was about... ten kilos heavier than before overall. Pretty rough to keep swinging around all the time, but after a few more level-ups, it shouldn't be a big issue.

  But it was definitely great to build wonderful momentum with this weapon. Since the weight was now concentrated on the weapon's far ends even more, the doors for a few more new moves were now opened for Ashton.

  He stepped out into a relatively open area and started spinning his staff around. It was a slightly awkward sensation going from the staff before now to this, but it felt nice. It was about an inch closer to the weapon that he used to carry, waiting a few miles away.

  Ashton glanced at the magic pattern of the enchantment. It was relatively stable, but if he was right, this effect would wear off in a few hours. That was far longer than the light enchantment just now. Disproportionally longer, considering the amount of mana that he had put in.

  It was likely that there were a few more random factors to the effect than just the rune itself. Duration, strength, permanency, things like that. The upper end of those factors was probably determined by how much mana was placed into the machine, just like with the other slot machines.

  Out of curiosity, Ashton decided to keep going a few more times. And just like he thought, there was a bust, which he got the next time around. Rather than forming a rune, the magic just fizzled away. However, a 'bust' wasn't the worst thing you could get.

  The next rune was a rune meaning 'destruction'. It was an incredibly dangerous enchantment, which could break apart literally everything and anything. In Lumia, it was often used for mining operations, taking on a similar role to dynamite. Except that the destruction rune left nothing behind, so it was usually fine-tuned toward specific materials.

  But whenever that enchantment came up, Ashton couldn't help himself but remember the time when some maniac let loose a ridiculous combination of enchantments. At the core of them were the 'Destruction' and 'Infection' effects. This specific magic caused an entire city to be devoured over the course of a day. After a while, the enchantment was so unstable that it collapsed in on itself, stopping right after wiping the city from all maps in the world.

  Luckily, that much was only possible because it was created by one of the greatest enchanters in the world. When the Summoner wanted Ashton to recreate the effect, the best he could do was make it devour a small house.

  Carefully, Ashton looked around and grabbed a broken-down chair. He tapped the rune with the chair's leg, and almost immediately, the object in his hands crumbled to dust. But... the rune was still glowing, it was just a little dimmer. It took seven whole chairs for the effect to disappear.

  So that was the risk of this, then. There were dangerous enchantments here. Frankly, the destruction enchantment in particular was one that Ashton wanted people to not learn about, if at all possible, but it wasn't the only one. But if he used this slot machine as it was, using it to give people enchanted items to make them grow used to handling magic, then ones like this made it all a lot more... worrisome.

  He should only let people that he trusted use this thing. But... was that right? It wasn't like Ashton was some kind of king or anyone in a position of power. At the end of the day, he was just a guy. He didn't really have the right to hide things like this from others.

  Ashton crossed his arms. Would he be able to move this machine somewhere else? Volume-wise it could be carried by the Backpacker, but it would be far too heavy for that.

  He tried to push against the machine, and it seemed to budge ever so slightly, but it would take at least a few people to carry this. Either that, or...

  Ashton turned around and looked at the bar with a smile on his face.

  It would take Ashton a while to gather the 10 thousand coins and the rest of the materials he needed to summon the Salesman anyway, and by then he should hopefully be level ten and his contract capacity would hopefully jump up a bit with that milestone. Using some of his capacity for the Drunken Bear should be fine.

  He grabbed a couple of bottles. Vodka, gin, whiskey. There was even some wine here, though it looked cheap as hell.

  "What now? Are you trying to get drunk all of a sudden?" Sabrina asked, but Ashton looked over at her and shook his head with a laugh.

  "No, no, of course not. Well, I am going to need to drink a bit, I guess," he explained. It wasn't a big deal, though. He could just undo how drunk he was with an antidotal potion.

  Since the Pen of Insight was still asleep, Ashton drew the magic circle with the beginner gear's feather pen. For most lowest grade spirit contracts, you didn't need particularly special ink, either. Starting at low grade, that was another matter, but the Drunken Bear was a relatively easy contract to form. After all, the spirit realm didn't really have a ton of alcohol on hand.

  He placed a bottle of gin onto the magic circle and started pouring some vodka down his own throat, waiting for a few minutes until he could feel himself grow intoxicated. Ashton also placed some magic stones around the gin bottle while waiting. He wouldn't have to do this if alcohol on earth had mana in it, which it didn't yet. In the future, it would, but that would take a while.

  Ashton took a deep breath once he felt himself get decently drunk and started the chant.

  "I call on you, bearer of burdens, constructor of castles, helper of the helpless. I ask of you, walk by my side and accompany me on this journey. I will pay the price you ask, so come and share a drink with me."

  The magic stones fell apart and flowed into the bottle of gin, twirling around for a few moments before gathering together in front of the bar into the shape of a three-metre tall bear cloaked in a thin layer of black shadows. Well, technically it was somewhere between the shape of a regular bear standing on its hind legs, and a more humanoid figure. Bit at first glance, it really just looked like a bear, towering over Ashton, to the point that Sabrina almost fell off her stool at the sight.

  Immediately, Ashton grabbed the bottle of gin and held it over to the bear, "What do you think? You want a drink?"

  The bear held forward its paw and grabbed the bottle. Its paw looked slightly more like a hand, so it was able to hold things properly. Without hesitation, it pulled the cork off the bottle and poured the gin into its mouth. After a moment, its tight, pulled-back shoulders relaxed, and the black smoke covering its body disappeared, instead showing a happy, somewhat smiling, light brown bear with dark brown lines covering its body, almost appearing like snippets of a magic circle. All Drunken Bears had them once they became adults. They weren't even close to as important as their true names, but within communities of Drunken Bears, they were a sign of pride.

  [You have formed a contract with a [Drunken Bear]!]

  [[Drunken Bear] is being registered in the [Spirit Summoning] Category]

  [Skill | Summoning - Level 8 -> Summoning - Level 9]