With the magical coin in his hand, Ashton looked at Oliver, who was nervously glancing back. It was clear from how exhausted he was, that he was trying his best to help his friends out during combat. But everyone else must have levelled up at least a couple times by now, while Oliver was still classless.

  Now, was there a specific reason why he wanted to help Oliver awaken? Not particularly. He was just curious about the magical talent of someone born on earth that didn't go through literal torture in order to learn it.

  Then again, it wasn't like this situation wasn't torturous in its own way. Either way, knowing that Sabrina's coins could potentially speed up the process would be good to know. Most people would unlock their spiritual sense sooner or later. Those with talent, sooner, but only those with the most bottom of the barrel talent wouldn't unlock it. It took Ashton about a day or so of being in Lumia. Most children that grew up with mana would usually unlock it when they were around 9 or 10 years old, because that's when they developed the necessary level of general awareness of their surrounding.

  Then again, the people from Lumia weren't humans, so it wasn't a perfect 1:1 comparison.

  "Let's go somewhere, where you guys can get cleaned up. I'll prepare some warm water for you guys," Ashton suggested with a smile. "I also have some detergent, so I can actually just properly clean your clothes, if you'll let me."

  Everyone looked at each other with furrowed brows. At this point, it felt like maybe he was doing too much for them. Sure, they were interested in getting some gifts, but that was mostly in jest. They were actually pretty surprised that Ashton had something to offer each of them.

  "And why would you...?" Nicole asked meekly, and Ashton just smiled.

  "Because I'm going to be washing my own clothes as well, and the process is actually a bit more complicated than you'd think. It's good practice for using water magic," Ashton explained. "A summoner is versatile, their summons and magics can be used in numerous different manners. But in turn, if you then don't use those summons while you're actively trying to grow stronger and more experienced, it's a little bit of a waste not to use every opportunity you can. So... you just end up trying to find any way you can, which is what I'm doing right now."

  Yes, he was exhausted and his head hurt, but a bit of a headache wasn't anything to worry about. If you used too much of your mana, you would pass out, but after a bit of sleep, you were fine. It wasn't healthy, obviously. It was comparable to overworking yourself physically. If you weren't careful, you could 'injure' yourself and hurt your ability to use magic, sometimes even permanently.

  Those were limits that people had to find for themselves, though. They know their mind and body best, after all. Ashton knew his limits better than most, so he knew when he was comfortable slightly stepping over the edge. This was one of those times. The faster he got there, the better.

  The group made their way inside, heading to one of the restrooms. Since most of them had a change of clothes with them, they got into that as Ashton got to work.

  Ashton asked the Backpacker for a bottle of water, one of the bigger ones that he had, as well as for the laundry detergent. He put a stopper onto the drain and poured water and some detergent into the drain, before using some specially mixed together water, with a bit of mana stone powder mixed into it, and called on the undine.

  By now, the elemental was level 7, so it wasn't as picky as before. Ashton was able to not only control more water, but also dirtier water. He wouldn't be able to control the water from a muddy puddle as perfectly as purified water, but that was fine. Plus, he could make use of other elementals to help him with that as well.

  Ashton also called on the salamander and gnome, using the fire elemental to heat up the water, and the gnome to help pull the mud out of everyone's clothes.

  Combining the multiple magics in the process was actually rather easy. When Ashton was focusing on something specific, it was pretty easy to use magic at any place within his channelling range. It was also a lot easier to use more complex magics, which is why it was even possible for Ashton to fuse those bricks together.

  However, there was something else that he should do with the elementals.

  "Okay, undine, could you keep moving the water around like that? Gnome, whenever you can, just pull out the mud and put it here into the other sink. Salamander, just keep the temperature of the water exactly here."

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  A real summoner didn't always channel their summon. Ashton channelled them to show them what they had to do, but after that, he left them on their own. They couldn't do complex tasks by themselves yet; they were still quite young, after all. But something like this was great practice.

  At some point, Ashton could probably ask the gnome to make bricks like before completely on their own. He still had to provide all the mana for the process, and his concentration still took a hit, but he could actually go and do other things.

  Plus, if a summon did work completely on their own, they tended to level up faster. But since there were limits to what such magical beings could do completely on their own, Ashton had to stay nearby and make sure that he could intervene if something went wrong.

  Generally, as long as the elementals were within Ashton's channelling range, their physical forms were fairly stable and they could act independently to some degree, but outside of it, their bodies would start breaking down. At least, that was the case with lesser elementals and at Ashton's current skill levels.

  Before long, everyone's clothes had been washed, and in the meantime, they had cleaned themselves with some towels and sponges. It wasn't a perfect setup, but it was better than nothing.

  Well, the others were a bit surprised that Ashton just started taking his clothes off at some point, but he really didn't care about nudity. He had bigger issues to worry about. He did decide to keep on his underwear after a very intense talking-to from Sam, but Ashton couldn't see any issues with taking his clothes off otherwise.

  Sabrina also ended up joining in on the cleaning session, putting on her regular clothes instead of her gambler's outfit for a bit.

  Since Ashton had even picked up some shampoo and bodywash, everyone actually felt pretty clean afterward.

  "What now? Should we hang them up on the railing upstairs on the roof?" Jacky suggested, but Ashton quickly shook his head.

  "No, I'm going to dry them here real quick," Ashton explained. He hadn't done it yet for these clothes, but pulling water out of things was pretty easy. He had done so with a ton of the materials he used for potion-making, and drying clothes was actually a lot easier than that.

  Within twenty or so minutes, everyone's clothes and bodies had been cleaned, and they were able to chat about a few things. For one, Oliver had started to explain how far he got with his mana manipulation practice. The magic stone that Ashton had given him was now a relatively smooth oval. There were some bumps here and there, but you could definitely tell that Oliver was close.

  He apparently had been clutching the magic stone constantly, and barely noticed the changes himself because it was a pretty slow process. Apparently, he only realised what happened when one of the others pointed it out to him.

  As they walked back out of the hallway, Ashton explained his plan.

  "You're basically going to be a bit of a... well, test-subject. I'm not a good baseline to see what sort of talents people here can have, so I'd rather figure it out with you," Ashton said, holding up the coin from before again. "This is a coin from one of Sabrina's skills. Actually, Sabrina, this is good for you to know as well, so listen up."

  Curiously, the gambler came over and took a look. Her leg felt a lot better than before, so she could move around without issue.

  The group sat down outside, and Ashton had the salamander provide light from within the lantern as he started up.

  "Okay, so, this coin has a fifty-fifty chance to land on either heads or tails. Baseline, you can mentally assign a small thing to be boosted. It can be a concept, but it needs to be relatively precise in the effect. Boosts to stats or skills are the easiest to conceptualize. On heads, it gives you a boost, on tails, that boost is reversed into a de-buff. But, in certain cases, you can sort of trick the rules a bit to get what you want either way. For example..." Ashton smiled, and flipped the coin. As it was in the air, he could feel a zap of mana connect to him, taking the information for the coin-flip's results from him.

  The coin landed on tails, and both Oliver and Sabrina seemed a bit disappointed. Though, Ashton kept smiling.

  "The effect that I chose was your 'awareness of mana'. On heads, you would have gotten a boost to that, which could have helped mana. But on tails..."

  "On tails, you would take away that awareness? Wait, am I not going to get my spiritual sense at all now?" Oliver asked with a panicked expression, looking at his friends. But Ashton calmed him down with a laugh.

  "No, just look inward. Just like with the magic stone, your general awareness has increased bit by bit, and just needs a bit of pointing out now until you get that moment of realisation. Both a sudden presence of what wasn't there before and an absence of something that should have been there are easy to notice."

  Sabrina widened her eyes, realising what Ashton did, "Right, so by using the skill in the right way, you were able to make it work out for you either way. You were... hedging your bets."

  "Mhm. Being creative with your skills is the best way to grow." Ashton grinned before turning back to Oliver. "So? Do you feel anything?"

  Oliver's eyes were closed and he was still clutching the magic stone. "No I... I don't think so... But I think that's the point? Like, there was something before, but it's gone now... I just don't have the foggiest what that is."

  "You got it, don't worry. Just... grab it. You've got everything you need," Ashton said, encouraging Oliver.

  Though, as he did, Ashton slightly glanced up. The window wasn't there right now, but it was the place where they would pop up. The messages from the Observer in the Veil.

  They must be watching closely, and this probably wasn't a common sight even for them. Watching the exact moment someone unlocked their spiritual sense,