With a broad smile, the Drunken Bear let down the slot machine in front of the barricade. There were some people out here, working on fortifying the wall with some scrap metal, but they dropped everything they could the moment they saw the massive beast standing in front of them.

  "Someone, go get Sam! We'll-" One of the Calibur developers yelled out. He was a young-looking guy, and was actually part of the group that led Ashton here.

  "Calm down, that's another one of my summons," he quickly stepped in front of the Drunken Bear, holding out his hands. The moment the people here spotted Ashton, they calmed down.

  "Seriously? So you're controlling that thing?" another member of the group asked. This time, it was someone from one of the other offices. It looked like one of the guys from some kind of insurance company. The rest of the offices in the building were either vacant or belonged to some kind of coworking space.

  Ashton ignored the question. It felt weird to put it that way, like he was 'controlling' the summons. The only one that he controlled sometimes was the Wisp, but that was only because the magic elemental gave up that control to him voluntarily. If there was something the wisp really didn't want to do, they could pull back and take that control away again.

  That was the case with any of the summons. They could interrupt his channelling whenever they wanted to.

  "What are you guys doing?" Ashton asked, and one of the guys from Calibur quickly came and explained everything to him.

  Apparently, Sam had suggested to reinforce the walls a bit so that they could use that as a basis to expand outward from there. Right now, they were basically completely stuck inside, and when they weren't, they were in active danger. People did spend some time on the roof, but it just really wasn't the same thing.

  "Hm. We'll come back out and help later. For now, we'll go in," Ashton said, climbing through the back of the van. The Drunken Bear, too large to stand upright in the back, decided to crawl through while still safely carrying the slot machine. Sabrina was struggling a bit more because of her leg, but Ashton helped her in and led her to a place in the lobby where she could take a seat and rest her leg a little longer, while Ashton went upstairs on his own for now.

  Of course, everyone else was also pretty worried about the Drunken Bear. At this point, Ashton figured he should give the spirit a big sign that read, 'I'm harmless', or something.

  Most people stayed out of the way and realised that the bear was just part of Ashton's entourage. There really wasn't anyone left in the building that didn't know about Ashton being a summoner, mostly so that people didn't get startled or worried when they saw something weird like that.

  When Ashton got to Calibur's floor, he immediately headed toward Sam's office. Everyone here was completely silent, despite seeing a literal bear trotting down the hallway together with Ashton. When he stood in front of the office door, he understood why. Somebody was yelling beyond this door, and it wasn't Sam.

  "Hm." Ashton grumbled and pushed open the door, and quickly saw the one who the voice belonged to. It was a 40-something, lanky, skinny guy that was at least one to two heads shorter than Sam.

  Ashton hadn't spoken to him yet, but this was the company's CEO, Sam's boss and supposed friend. If he remembered right, his name was Patrick... something.

  "And who the hell are-" Patrick started, staring at Ashton before he spotted the wall of fur standing behind him.

  "Oh, sorry, I just got something to deposit here." Ashton stepped inside, helping the Drunken Bear squeeze through the door. The spirit quickly set the magical slot machine down onto the ground in the corner of the office, and then took another big sip of the bottle of whiskey that they were now holding.

  As they did, starting from their feet, a wave of shivers seemed to course through the bear. Their fur stood up on its end as if it was puffing up, and then immediately settled back down. Simultaneously, a message popped up in front of Ashton.

  [Contract | Drunken Bear - Level 1 -> Drunken Bear - Level 2]

  "Neat." Ashton waved the message away and looked up at the bear, patting their arm, "You can just relax for a bit, we'll head back outside in a second."

  Without hesitation, the Drunken Bear plopped down onto the ground and continued sipping on the bottle of whiskey.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Ashton looked over at Sam, who could barely contain a laugh, and smiled. "Yo, I was told that you're trying to fortify the wall a bit more, yeah? I'll help out in a bit, I need to take a little bit of a break from fighting, I think."

  Sam grinned back, "That would be great, man, thank you. Ashton, I don't think you've been properly introduced yet. This is Patrick, the owner of Calibur."

  "Ah, got it. Nice to meet you. Anyway, Sam-"

  "Anyway? Excuse me? Sorry, but did you not hear that we're in the middle of a discussion here?" Patrick scoffed, and Ashton shook his head.

  "No, actually, I just heard you yelling at my best friend."

  "Yeah, well, I did that for a good reason. Your 'best friend' here is actively undermining my authority. I told him to make plans on how to get everyone in the building a class, but he went out to hunt some monsters instead."

  Ashton raised a brow. "Getting a class is a pretty personal thing, that's not something you should let other people decide for you. And from my understanding, Sam went out to help some combatants get classes, right? So what's the issue, then?"

  "W-well..." Patrick didn't seem to have a great response to that question. He looked over at Sam, as if trying to somehow get help from him, but Sam just leaned back in his chair and smiled.

  "Thought so. Uhm, Sam, so I cleared out that spider nest that was troubling some people. The individual spiders will start trying to look for their own hunting grounds now, but they'll be mostly alone, so nothing to worry about too much."

  "Oh, perfect!" Sam immediately looked down at his laptop. "There was a post about all the spiders earlier, I'll comment on it and let people know that it's been resolved for now."

  "Great. Do you know where Jacky's group went?"

  "They just went out to level up earlier, I think. They were gone when I came back."

  "Alright, they should be back sooner or later. I've got something that I think John would be into. Part of the Spider Queen's carapace."

  "Spiders have queens?"

  "Arachnids do. Technically it's just a specific variant that had the ability to control other arachnids. Instead of hunting and defending her territory, she just spends all her time trying to breed the most powerful arachnids possible."

  "Interesting, okay. Do you think you can write me up a note about it?"

  "Sure, I'll do that later. For now I'll go build a couple of walls to block off the surrounding streets."

  Sam smiled and nodded. "Thanks. Oh, and by the way, some of the people at Calibur wanted to their theories about classes with you, if you want to join them? Later today, in the evening when everyone is back."

  "Sounds like a plan."

  Frankly, the moment Ashton heard that some of the people working at Calibur were interested in potential 'synergies' between classes, he wanted to hear their thoughts. The system was something pretty game-like in a lot of ways, after all, so getting their input wasn't a bad idea.

  Of course, Ashton liked games back in the day, that was one of the bigger reasons why he kept bagging Sam to get him an interview at Calibur, but by the time the system came around in Lumia, Ashton spent close to a hundred years, give or take, living without anything remotely digital. Sure, even then, he was reminded of games, but he simply didn't have the sort of mindset back then to really think about games the way that some of the people here seemed to. And that didn't mean that they were taking things lightly, it was just that they were trying to figure out the rules behind the system. Ashton should be able to help them with that.

  "Excuse me? Are you seriously just ignoring me right now?" Patrick looked back and forth between Ashton and Sam in disbelief. "I'll let you know, but this is my company!"

  "Except that things like that don't matter anymore. What are you gonna do, call the cops?"

  "I, uh..." Trying to figure out how to respond to Ashton, Patrick looked over at Sam. "I guess he's right?"

  Letting out a loud groan, Patrick dropped down onto a chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  "Pat, are you okay?"

  "I don't know, Samuel. This whole situation is just so ridiculous..." Patrick placed his face into his hands, and Ashton didn't know what to say. It looked like Patrick was about to cry, and Sam slowly stood up, walking over to him.

  "I get it. You're under a lot of stress. I'm sure they're fine, just believe in Jack, okay?"

  Patrick let out a long sigh and nodded his head, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. "You're right... Thanks. Sorry for getting so loud just now, it's just... for some reason, everyone in the building is completely relying on Calibur. Even they can see that this all seems like a game, so obviously, the game devs would know the most about it, huh?"

  "We're doing pretty well, so I get it. Let's just... let's sit down with the others again tonight, okay? I've got a suggestion." Sam glanced over at Ashton. Clearly, the 'suggestion' was that Sam would take over as the leader during these times, something that Patrick didn't exactly seem made for. Being the head of a game development studio and the leader of a group of survivors during a magical apocalypse were two very different things, after all.

  "Yeah... Yeah, let's do that. I'll go and let people know that we're having another meeting later, then." Slowly, Patrick got up from the chair and walked toward the door. "Thank you for helping us, by the way. I don't really get a lot of what's happening right now, but it's good to know that someone seems to have things under control."

  Patrick trotted out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Ashton a bit surprised at that extremely hot and cold demeanour. But Sam quickly explained.

  "Don't be too harsh on him. Patrick's husband and daughter are in France right now. His daughter is planning on going to uni there, so the two of them went to take a look at some flats. Pat's been... well, 'on edge' is taking it lightly."

  "Okay, that sounds pretty fucked. Does he have an idea of what kind of class he wants to get, yet?"

  Sam shook his head, "Nope. I think he's trying to force himself to take on a leadership position, but to be honest... Pat's really, really good at business stuff, but he's really not a massive people-person."

  "Hm. Whatever, you got this. I'll go outside and build a wall," Ashton said, heading toward the door, though Sam quickly stopped him.

  "Uh, before then... do you want to talk to me about the bear that just deposited an ominous looking black slab in my office?"