He grabbed a couple of them while he was at it, so that he could sort his cigarettes a little.
To start out with, Ashton poured all the ink into an empty bottle and crushed up some magic stones to put in there with it, reaching the minimum threshold for it to count as an offering for the Pen of Insight. And then, he linked the pen with the ink and some paper, and then described what he wanted the pen to write down.
"I'm going to individually 'tag' all of the colours. I want you to write down the overall grade and extra information at the top, and then for each individual colour, write down the name and what the pigment has been gathered from."
The pen seemed to be happy to do just that. Of course, it couldn't talk or make any sort of expressions, but from the way that it was moving, Ashton figured it was pretty excited.
Immediately, the pen dipped its own crystal nib into the ink, and then quickly started writing. This was a process that would probably take a while for all 120 colours, so Ashton would check in later.
For now, he grabbed the shirt that he took. It was one that had gotten damaged, presumably because of a goblin swinging around its weapon. So, Ashton picked it out to re-use it as something else. A dress for Poppy.
Usually, they fashioned their own clothes out of flowers or leaves, but the dress made of red Poppy petals wasn't looking all too hot anymore. And even if it hadn't been damaged, these things had to be either kept up with magic, or remade once the petals wilted too much.
It was actually something that fairies were pretty annoyed about, so once Ashton learned how to sew, he started making clothes for some fairies whenever they asked. They were so happy whenever they got a new dress, shirt, suit, or skirt, so he just couldn't say 'no' anymore at some point.
It was pretty easy. At this point, Ashton had been doing this regularly for about seventy years. He cut into the thin, red fabric, basically just eyeing what pieces he needed. With a matching red thread, Ashton then quickly stitched those pieces together into a small, wavy summer dress. He tried to make it match as closely to what the petal-dress used to look like as he could, and soon presented the small dress to Poppy.
She had been sitting there, watching the Pen of Insight scribble away with a big smile on her face, and hadn't even noticed what Ashton was doing. And when he got her attention, she turned around and looked at the dress confused.
Poppy tilted her head to the side, looking at the dress before pointing at herself.
"Yeah, I made it for you," Ashton said with a smile, carefully handing the dress to her. She stared at it and held it in her hands, tearing up slightly.
Ashton smiled and quickly made a small hut for her with some of his notebooks so that she could get changed. Poppy excitedly ran inside, and Ashton looked over at the people staring at him from beside the fountain.
"What?" he asked, not sure why they were looking at him like that
"Are you... playing dress-up with a fairy right now?"
Ashton raised a brow, "I made clothes for a friend whose dress was literally wilting off her body. Also, what's wrong with wanting to at least look nice when the world is ending?"
A moment later, while the people were awkwardly glancing away, clearly not sure how to deal with Ashton's bluntness in a situation like this, Poppy stepped back out, now wearing her new dress. She twirled around a bit and happily grinned up at Ashton, "Do you like it?"
The pixie nodded her head without hesitation, hugging the side of Ashton's leg, "I'm very happy."
At that point, the Pen of Insight stopped writing, and Ashton looked over at the notification that popped up, which he had ignored a bit.
[Contract | Pen of Insight - Level 3 -> Pen of Insight - Level 4]
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
"Thank you very much," Ashton said, holding his hand out to the pen. It floated on top of his palm and spun in place. It already looked a lot more solid than it did before. Every summon changed a little as they levelled up. In the case of the Pen of Insight, it became a bit more 'ornate'. It could hold more ink, its writing became nicer, the pen nib changed more to fit what it needed... those sorts of things. By now, the crystal nib that Ashton so roughly attached was fully a part of it and there was no threat of it falling off anymore.
Now, Ashton quickly took a look at the list. The order of the list was based on the order of the colours in the kit. The pen quickly showed Ashton which one belonged to which so that he could make sure he was right about the way that the pen ordered the list.
"This orange one is made from... Hallow's Eye, good addition for mimicry ink... the blue one would be made from hedgehog quill, has a pretty high energy-alignment... Oh, crap, this brown one is made from Bat-Wyvern Eggs? Wow," Ashton looked through the list and looked at the colours. He knew most of these materials already. A bunch of them were actually from Lumia, others were only introduced with the system.
Though, the Summoner had used their magic in ways that Ashton still couldn't quite grasp. They kept placing chunks of other 'worlds' into their own so that they could gather new materials and expand their collections more and more. They were absolutely ecstatic when the second phase started and did that automatically.
Ashton kept going through the list, trying to see which ones he could remember and which ones he wasn't quite sure of. There were only three or four of the 120 colours whose source he couldn't quite place.
Even so, he had a rough idea of how he could use them, especially since the pen managed to describe the pigments' affinities pretty well.
With that, for now, Ashton had the Backpacker put the paints away. He would get them back out when it was time to actually make some new ink.
And then, since he had nothing else to do, Ashton decided to work out a bit. He couldn't quite sit still, and there wasn't a lot else that he could do right now, so he positioned himself on the edge of the fountain, so that he could stay near the random box that was still being filled up with mana, took off his jacket, and started doing some push-ups.
Levelling up wasn't the only way to increase your stats. You could increase it through training as well, though it took quite a lot to do. For now, Ashton just had to get started and get used to working out in this body.
While he had already shed a good bit of bodyfat with his stats increasing so much, and with all the physical activity that he was doing, he had really just been fighting and running around. His muscles needed some more... guided growth.
Since his 'power' stat was already at 14, he moved on to one-handed push-ups pretty fast, moving up and down slowly and stopping mid-motion sometimes to hold in place for a few seconds.
It was painful and his muscles were screaming after just a few minutes of this, but that was fine. It meant that it was working!
Maybe he should get himself some weights to work out. The backpacker's storage ability wasn't defined by weight, but just by volume, so he could put basically anything in there without issue as long as the backpacker could lift it. So if he just packed a lot of individual metal plates, he might be able to get some good workouts going.
[[Daughter of the Scarlet Heart] approves of your physical training]
[[Daughter of the Scarlet Heart] cheers you on!]
That was a bit surprising. The Daughter did seem more interested whenever Ashton showed physical feats, rather than the magical feats that the Observer raved on and on about. Though, it was still a bit unclear what exactly the Executor found interesting about him.
Either way, this continued on for another while, even beyond Ashton's guess of 6 o'clock for the second quest. However, at exactly 7, to the second, a few new messages appeared.
[You have a New Quest! [Main Quest 2 - Class Selection]]
[Main Quest 2 - Class Selection]
[With the baseline dedication now proven, you are ready to truly adjust to the new world. But the way most of you currently are, you will not survive any further. You wouldn't give up now, would you? So - Live.]
[Goal - Attain a Class within 7 Days]
[Reward - Beginner Gear]
[Failure - Death]
Ashton smiled as he looked at the message. It took a few moments for it to process, however, almost immediately...
[You have completed [Main Quest 2 - Class Selection]!]
[Constellations may now offer Sponsorships to you!]
[You have a New Quest! [Sub Quest - Path of Power]]
[Sub Quest - Path of Power]
[You have done well in choosing your class. Now, show how well you can master your new abilities.]
[Goal - Reach Level 10 by the end of Quest 2's Period (7/10)]
[Reward - Scales with level of completion]
Ashton stretched lightly, and sat down on the edge of the fountain. Everyone was nervously looking at the quest information in front of them. They had basically abandoned everything that they were doing, and just focused on that as they moved over to the grocery store to talk to the people in charge.
Once they were all gone, Ashton smiled a bit and leaned back a bit, putting weight onto his hands.
"What are you guys waiting for? I know you've been anxious about this part."
[[Observer of the Veil] has offered to become your Sponsoring Constellation]
[[Daughter of the Scarlet Heart] has offered to become your Sponsoring Constellation]
[[Executor of the End] has offered to become your Sponsoring Constellation]
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