With all of the organised materials in tow, Ashton made his way downstairs. Everyone beside Clementine decided to split off and do some training on their own, so that they may reach level 10 as soon as they could, with their skills or their classes. Especially Oliver was determined to catch up to the others.

  Ashton had seen a little bit of what his class's abilities were on the way here, and he was doing a pretty good job by buffing his party members and de-buffing any monsters they encountered. At least at the moment, that was his main role in combat, but Ashton couldn't wait to see how earth's magic would continue to develop in the future.

  "... This is Sam's office?" Clementine asked confused. "Are you sure you didn't pick the wrong door? This looks more like a storage room."

  "Hah, yeah, but don't say that in front of Sam, please. I convinced him that this was necessary right now," Ashton grinned, putting the materials down on the table that was part of the potion-making setup.

  "What's all this for?" Absentmindedly, Clementine walked around the room and looked at the piles of items and materials that Ashton kept stored here.

  "Mostly potion-making, some enchanting, and a bit of summoning. It all looks a bit messy right now, but in time, when I've got all the basic summons I need figured out, it will be nice and sorted-through."

  "Since when do you care about things being neat?"

  Ashton slowly turned around to her, and Clementine looked over at him, confused by the silence. She realised what she had just asked, and her face dropped. "Right... sorry, dumb question..." she stared at Ashton apologetically, and was clearly unsure what else to say. So, Ashton asked what he knew was on her mind.

  "Do you want to go and find your parents?"

  Clementine flinched and opened her mouth to respond immediately, but stopped herself.

  "I... I should, right?" she finally forced out. Ashton couldn't see the colour of her face, but he figured she was deathly pale right now.

  "If you want, I can go look for them for you."

  "No, you don't–"

  "Just because it's the apocalypse doesn't mean you have to forget what they did to you. If you're scared to see them yourself, I can go and have a look."

  "... You would do that? They weren't exactly all that nice to you, either..."

  "Hah, yeah, I know. You remember that time your father slapped me? My dad was so pissed he jumped out of bed right after his hip surgery."

  Clementine laughed and nodded. "Your dad was pretty awesome."

  Ashton smiled. "He was. I've been actually wanting to visit my parents' graves anyway, so the cathedral's been one of my stops anyway."

  Sitting down on the edge of Sam's desk, Clementine started fiddling with her thumbs. "Right, about that... someone said something about the cathedral earlier. What was that about?"

  While Ashton was setting up everything he needed to make his next ink, he slowly stopped. Should he just tell her outright?

  "... It looks like there are seven major camps of survivors in Drakewood. Here, at Market Street, the primary school, the university, the police station, at a farm at the edge of town, and at the cathedral. They've all got relatively different stances toward what's happening from what I've heard through the community," Ashton explained, turning around toward Clementine. Even if he couldn't see, it felt right to face her while talking. "The police is protecting the civilians, which means that they're the only ones getting stronger while the rest are doing the bare minimum. The primary school exists to protect kids. Here at Calibur, people are focused on exploring the system and growing stronger however they wish while protecting others as best they can. But the cathedral..."

  "What? Is it like an actual cult now?" Clementine joked, crossing her arms. Ashton stayed silent. "No fucking way, are you serious?"

  "That's what it sounds like, at least. Ask Sam for a phone in a bit, that way you can look at the posts for yourself. At the very least, it doesn't sound like they're Anglican anymore. This kind of stuff just... happens," Ashton said, smiling awkwardly. "A lot of people cling to their religion even harder, believing that if something like the council and magic and monsters exist, then it might not be too far off that their god is out there, too. And well, it's probably true in a lot of cases."

  "Hm?"

  "Don't worry about it. Just... there are those that see everything that's happening, and their faith is broken. But they don't immediately change. They're in a crisis of faith, and then they see these 'miracles' created by new gods, and they're quick to defect. Whether it's people treating the system itself as a new deity, or they become believers of the constellations and the council. And from the posts I've seen in the community, it seems that the leaders of the cathedral's camp belong to that second group."

  Clementine looked forward, and then slowly turned her head to stare out of the window. "Alright... Well, I wouldn't be surprised if my parents are part of that. My dad might be a priest, but he sure as hell was never a 'godly man' or whatever."

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  "Let's just see. Either way, if they stuck to the church, they're probably fine. I'll make sure to head over there soon. If you want, I'll head out right now."

  Clementine hesitated, but finally shook her head. "No, you've got a lot of things to do. It's fine... I don't think a day or two will really make a difference at this point."

  Ashton smiled lightly. He wasn't quite sure what to say. He was never great at comforting people or figuring out hidden subtleties in the things people said. Back then, he'd spend all his time racking his brains about what to do or what to say, and usually ended up making the wrong choice. It was amongst the reasons why Clementine and him stopped speaking, because he was just never able to have a proper conversation about the things that were hanging in the air between them.

  And now... "If you want me to go, I'll go. Just let me finish up the first few steps, the potion needs time to dissolve some coins anyway."

  "No, really, it's alright."

  Ashton turned to Clementine. He could see her expression through the wisp that was floating around through the room right now. He wated to talk about this more, but this wasn't the sort of situation where he had the leisure to drag things out of her. If she said that it was alright, then it was alright. There was no reason to dwell on it any longer.

  "Okay, then," Ashton turned back to his potion-making setup and started preparing everything that he needed. "For now, I think you should try and level up a bit, then. Just use you skills, get familiar with what you can do now. Maybe try and see if you can find a weapon that you can use to defend yourself when necessary. I'll make sure to get you some lightweight armour that doesn't restrict your movement, too."

  Clementine nodded. "Yeah, let's do that. Thanks. Do you need any help here?"

  "I should be okay now that all the ingredients are sorted. Ah, I might need some help later on, though," Ashton realised. "There's a step in the process where the ink will turn from a dark brown into a bright yellow golden colour, but I won't be able to see that myself. I might call someone to confirm it for me later."

  "Got it. I'll be around. Probably chatting with Sam a bit more to try and help out, and talk to the designers you introduced me to earlier."

  "Sounds like a plan."

  Ashton filled different vials with water, preparing for everything as well as he could. Now that the factors he could see were extremely limited, he had to be extra careful not to make a mistake, or he might not notice and ruin everything. Clementine slowly left. It seemed like she wanted to say something before she did, but ended up deciding not to. Ashton didn't quite know what that was about, but again, he had plenty of other things that he had to focus on right now.

  The process of making potions and making ink was similar in a lot of ways, but it also differed in quite a lot of other ways. The magic ink that Ashton was trying to make a step above the sort that he carried with him until now.

  At this point, he was at a stage where he could really start out forming Low-Grade contracts. The space for contracts in his vessel had expanded rapidly after reaching level 10, so now he should be able to form two or three of them, and far more Lowest-Grade than before. But if he was now at the stage where the Salesman was the same to Ashton as the Lesser Wisp was to him when he first summoned something, he needed an ink that was just that much more special as well.

  It needed to contain more mana than any other inks, and had to be to the taste of the being that he was trying to contract. There were parts of that before, too. Like using specifically ash to make the salamander's ink. Essentially, if he wanted this to work, then the ink itself was going to need to be that much more special compared to simple ink.

  First things first, Ashton had to make the ink's base. This was basically going to be a standard ingredient in most Low-Grade inks, so he wanted to make quite a lot. For this, the first step was to extract a mixture of effects from the herbs. This was relatively easy, all things considered. Some chopping, some grinding, boiling, evaporating, distilling, a lot of the things that he had done for potion-making already.

  But what Ashton made here wasn't actually something that would help the strength of the ink directly, but rather, it was a very particular type of acid. It was only effective against magic stones, and only when the mana pattern was kept precisely intact.

  The clear magic stones, while not holding any more mana than impure ones, were simply easier to break down with this method. As Ashton placed them into the mixture and watched as the crystals started melting into a sticky substance, he started applying some heat to it. Ashton used some of his tools to keep mixing the sticky magic stones. Before long, they took on a somewhat honey-like texture.

  Essentially, Ashton was turning the magic stones into something that could act as a binder for magic ink. This was stock-full of magic, and could take on the essence of any pigments that he ended up adding to this.

  The binder would need a little bit more time to really settle and stabilise, but that was just a few hours. And then, he would have a few litres worth.

  In the meantime, Ashton would start setting up the main ingredient that would make this ink for the Salesman. Since he had gotten a lot more coins, Ashton could afford to use more for this, and quickly grabbed himself one worth 1000 coins.

  In essence, these things were really just highly-compressed chunks of mana, but that wasn't all they were. There were some valuable materials mixed in to keep them stable. It was a minuscule amount, but with a coin this expensive, it should be possible to drag all of that out pretty easily. There were some other things, too.

  Every once in a while, when walking through the streets, he picked up things that looked valuable. Though, Ashton wasn't the only one that had that thought, and most bodies had already been looted. Other people must have thought they'd be able to trade with jewellery, but Ashton knew that things like that would lose their value after a while.

  However, he did find a few things that seemed valuable enough. Some earrings and necklaces, and just a single wedding ring made of gold. Ashton needed a lot more than just one to summon the Helping Hands, so he figured he might as well just use this one for this ink.

  He threw the coin and the golden jewellery into one of the glasses with engravings on their surface, and then took another valuable ingredient, though it was valuable in another sense to the ones already in there.

  This was the liquid magic stone that Ashton got from the slot machine when he met Sabrina. Carefully, Ashton cracked open the crystal shell and poured some of the liquid into the glass with everything else, before putting the rest into a small water bottle where it would hopefully be safe.

  Ashton took control of the etching on the glass, and began to enchant the liquid magic stone, making it something that could leech all the valuables out of the items sitting within it. The liquid inside the glass started fizzing and bubbling at some point, almost like it was boiling, so Ashton knew it was working.

  In a while, it would turn an extremely dark brown, and gradually change into a golden colour. At that point, Ashton just had to dry out the liquid magic stone and would be left with the pigment.

  Then, he would just need to mix the pigment with some of the binder, tweak the final mana pattern a tiny bit, and he would be good to go to summon the Salesman.