By the time night fell, the walls were finished. There was still the matter of the 'gate', but that was something that could be solved relatively easily. Plenty of options were available to him.

  There were a lot of garages around here, and he could just take the garage door out of one of them and loosen up the bricks. Though, there was the problem of that overhead section with most of them, but it was easy enough to build a frame like that, if he had to. Ashton had also seen a ton of large trucks, where he could try and somehow take the back off. Then again, getting through a truck's metal frame might be a bit hard.

  But he wanted to put a proper gate into this, and not just block it up with something random.

  "You have an idea?" Ashton looked over at Sam, who was sitting on the curb and looked up at his friend.

  "Huh?"

  Sam was clearly exhausted from working throughout the past few hours.

  "What do we do about a gate? It needs to be big enough to fit anything we need through it. I'd like to fill up the entire hole here," Ashton said, standing in front of the gap left in the wall. It was pretty big. If he could, then he would make a custom gate that fit in here perfectly, but that didn't exactly seem like an option.

  "There's, uh... I think there's some down in the basement. Those heavy metal doors? I'm not down there a lot, but we scoured through it the other day to see if we could find anything useful. I think one of the basement units had a double-door that could fit in there pretty well," Sam explained, glancing toward the building entrance. With a smile, Ashton patted his friend's shoulder.

  "Awesome, I'll go get it right now. Keep an eye out for any possible monsters while I'm gone."

  "Yeah, sure. Oh, and uh, we didn't actually have a key for that door, so we might need to figure out something with the lock? Haven't seen what's actually in that room yet, either."

  Ashton thought for a moment. "We'll figure something out."

  Briefly calling the Drunken Bear back into his vessel, Ashton headed inside. He hadn't been in the basement before, but it shouldn't be hard to find the door he was looking for. The basement was really just one long hallway, and as he turned around the corner, he saw the doors in question right at the end of the hallway. It really was the perfect size. They were two heavy-duty, oversized doors. So tall and wide that you could probably fit a car through here.

  Ashton placed his hand onto the cold concrete wall and called the gnome out of his vessel. "Thanks for the help, bud."

  He put his hand onto the wall around the door, pulling away the stone from the frame. With the help of the Drunken Bear, he slowly let the door onto the ground before it fell over because of its own weight. Sam said that this door was locked, so they didn't see what was behind here.

  Ashton called the wisp out of his vessel as well to give himself some light as he started looking around. Though, it just seemed to be some kind of storage space that was stuffed with random crap. Cups, glasses, old drink crates. There were old chairs and desks in here, too. So, there were raw materials, but nothing all too interesting or useful.

  Well, there was an old grill in here and some coals, though it was clear that both had been down here for a few years. Since electricity had gone out, all cooking was being done through small campfires, so this would at least make that a bit easier. But beside that, this was almost a little disappointing.

  Then again, it wasn't like Ashton cared enough to look through all the boxes, so he would just leave that to Sam. It was a pretty big room, so there might be something under all the piles of stuff.

  "Well, time to get started." Ashton shrugged as he walked back out over the door on the ground. Him and the Drunken Bear carried the door back upstairs together, though the bear was the one doing most of the actual carrying. All that Ashton did was make sure that it was properly aligned and didn't hit any walls.

  Once the door was back outside, Ashton and the bear put it back down on the ground. They had to somehow unlock it for now, and the way they figured they could do that was by pulling the frame away from the doors directly. The hinges weren't accessible through the closed door, but it was possible to unscrew the hinges from within the frame itself.

  After someone got Ashton the tools he needed, he quickly got that done and managed to pull the frame off the heavy double doors. However, one of the doors, the one that didn't have the actual lock, could apparently bolt into the floor and frame so that it was solidly locked in place. That bolt could be pulled it with a simple lever within the door itself. Ashton just used the gnome's magic to add a small hole in the asphalt that the bolt should fit into, and then placed the frame into the gap in the wall.

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  It didn't fit quite perfectly, so Ashton had to add a few more rocks around the frame to put it in there solidly. Once the wall was overgrown and each stone wouldn't budge, neither would the frame. Plus, if the door was opened regularly enough, the castle ivy would basically 'notice' and stop trying to grow onto the door after a few days to stop itself from getting hurt.

  Ashton and the bear already hooked one of the doors back onto its hinges, specifically the one that could bolt into the ground. The troublesome part was the lock on the other half of the door. Since they didn't have they key, Ashton just removed the lock from the door altogether. It would open up into the camp, rather than outside, so Ashton built two stone pillars, one on each side of the door, and looked through the parts that made up the old barricade that could be used to block the door from opening up.

  In the end, he decided to improvise a bit and used a metal ladder. Something better would present itself at some point, but this should do the job for the time being.

  And with that, Ashton was done. People had already gathered outside, happy that they were able to take a bit of a breather. They were bringing out chairs and tables, trying to do what they could to make use of their newfound space.

  [[Observer in the Veil] is impressed by your magical skill]

  With a scoff, Ashton shook his head. "What kind of skill did I show?"

  [[Observer in the Veil] points out your magical endurance]

  "... Okay, I guess you've got a point there," Ashton replied. For someone with Ashton's stats, being able to make this many bricks with earth magic was on the impressive side, that was true. But that was mostly because people with lower stats tended to be less experienced, and as such made more mistakes.

  Once Ashton actually adjusted to his lacking mana, he was able to make use of his experience at mana manipulation. His head hurt like a bitch, but it was fine.

  At least Ashton got something out of this entire process, and he looked at the message that had been floating next to him for a while.

  [Class | Summoner - Level 8 -> Summoner - Level 9]

  Ashton just had to level up just one more time to not only clear the bonus quest, get a new skill, and enter the next stage of the Summoner class.

  Starting at level 10, a class really became yours, because your actions up until that point determined the options you had going forward.

  Before he sat down to do his own thing, Ashton helped people bring the van from before over to the wall, so that they could use it as a platform to look up and over the wall whenever they needed to. Ashton would probably build a small platform in front of it at some point, but right now, this was fine.

  Just as he was about to go and sit down, he heard a knock on the metal door.

  "Hello? What's going on?" It was Jacky, nervously knocking. Someone looked over the gate from atop the van, and someone else quickly pulled aside the ladder to let the group inside.

  Frankly, they were looking pretty rough. Paul specifically was covered head to toe in mud, and everyone else was muddy up to their knees.

  "We built a wall, what else?" Ashton replied, letting them inside. They flinched when they saw the Drunken Bear next to Ashton, finishing up the bottle that he was drinking at the moment, but he quickly calmed them down. Maybe he should find some clothes for the bear, that way they would look a lot less threatening.

  Once they finished their drink, Ashton unsummoned them for now, and then led the others further inside.

  They seemed happy to see that there was a bit more space outside, but at the same time, they didn't pay too much attention to it. That clearly wasn't their focus right now, after all.

  "Seriously, building walls like this in day?" Jacky laughed a bit, and Nicole quickly nodded in agreement.

  "Right, didn't you say you were going to deal with the spiders today?"

  Ashton shrugged. "I did that, too, obviously. Oh, that reminds me. Backpacker?"

  The small spirit appeared after a moment, already taking out the piece of the spider queen's carapace, which Ashton quickly showed to Paul. It was a little larger than the size of the shield that he was currently carrying around. "I took this from the spider queen. It's not super flexible and a bit annoying to work into more complex pieces, but I think this could be made into a pretty decent shield. What do you think?"

  Paul, almost forgetting that he was extremely dirty, took the piece with a broad smile on his face and nearly gave Ashton a hug, though he realised that this was a bad idea at the last moment.

  "Thank you, this is so cool! I'll try to make this work somehow. I think there was someone in the game studio that said she liked making cosplay, so maybe she can help with this." Paul smiled happily, holding onto the large chitin plate.

  The others looked at Ashton curiously, as if they were waiting for something.

  "What are you gawking at? I don't have something for all of you," he scoffed, though seeing their slight disappointment, Ashton let out a long sigh. "Okay, fine. Uhm... Jacky, I've got spider silk that can be turned into a bowstring, they're usually the main thing that's used as a conduit to imbue arrows with extra mana. For Nicole... if you want, I can give you some spider venom that you can use to coat your knives. Hm, for John... Uhhh..."

  John laughed, shaking his head. "Don't worry, man, I'm good. I mean, if you can do some magic mumbo jumbo on my hammer, that'd be sick, but if not, that's okay."

  "I mean, I can do that, technically. It would just take a little bit for me to gather all the tools that I need," Ashton explained. Of course, if he had everything that he needed for a complex enchantment like that, he would have done so with his staff already. "But I'll show you guys something I found later, maybe you can get something out of using it. And as for you, Oliver..."

  Ashton asked the Backpacker to give him the coin that he got from Sabrina. Frankly, this single coin wasn't exactly powerful. He felt it when he got the boost from her skill before. He would be fine without that single-coin boost, especially if Sabrina was around to use the skill on him anyway.

  Instead, he wanted to try something else out with this. Maybe he could use it to help Oliver awaken his spiritual sense.