People here have heard about the sort of things that Ashton has been bringing in, and essentially decided to do the same. They've been collecting their own magic stones, claws and fangs of monsters, and anything else that seemed even remotely useful. Even if they didn't yet know how most of those things could be useful. Though they would, in time.
After making his rounds, Ashton decided it was time to set some other things up as he made plans for the next 10 or so hours—the time that he would have left until crashing into sleep.
First things first, he prepared the dyes for his fabrics. A quick and easy job with access to magic. Some boiling water, some crushed magic stones, and enchantments to pull the colour from different plants.
Once the dyes themselves were ready, Ashton went into the restroom that he essentially 'reserved' through Sam, plugged up the drains, and filled them with the dyed water. Ashton also put in magic stones with weak heat enchantments to keep the water hot enough to effectively dye the fabric, without burning anything or making the water actually boil. He weighed the fabrics down with some regular, of course clean, stones, and then left some notes to make sure nobody would touch it.
Just in case, he added a line about the dyes being 'poisonous to the touch'. They weren't, Ashton just learned that it was easy to stop people from touching his stuff if there was an imminent threat of injury or death involved. And if he wasn't available to be that threat himself, this was good enough.
Those would be ready by the time Ashton woke up again. So now, he had to do something else; prepare the shoes for Clementine. He already had her try them on to see which ones felt the most comfortable for actually running; she knew way more about these sorts of modern shoes than Ashton did, so letting her choose was the best idea. He didn't have time to make multiple sets for her, so this would be enough.
Ashton also put a bit of mana-filled ink onto the underside of the shoes to see where exactly Clementine put her weight while running. It wasn't exact, but it helped.
There were a handful of things that Ashton could do to improve these for now. Since using actual, proper ability-enchantments required the user to attune to the item and be able to support the magic in that enchantment, that sadly wasn't an option. Instead, first, Ashton decided to change the material of the shoes themselves a little bit. Not by swapping them out, but by using enchantments to improve the material's springiness, hopefully helping Clementine run faster while using less energy. With the right arrays, it was possible to push these materials far beyond what should usually be possible for shoes like this, though it would run out over time. The more the soles were worn down, the more the integrity of the mana within the shoe would break down with them and potentially weaken any enchantments placed on them.
But then, there was something else that Ashton wanted to try out. Exactly in the area of the sole that Clementine pushed off with, he widened some of the grooves. Not enough to change the sole's integrity, but more than enough to add something else into it.
And, first things first, Ashton added the magic stone thread that he collected from the queen spider. It was thin and extremely flexible, and was the perfect material for something like a shoe that had to flex and bend all the time.
The thread was used to place a weak, simple 'push' enchantment into it. It wasn't much, when activated nothing but a small push that might not even make someone stumble if hit by it directly would appear. But it would, hopefully, boost Clementine's running just that much more.
This was the kind of enchantment that would be active for as long as mana was fed into it externally. If Clementine wanted to, she could do it manually, though there was no reason. Instead, Ashton would imbed another small magic stone into the sole that would react to the impact of Clementine running and release a tiny pulse of mana into the enchanted mana-stone threads. It was a bit hard to find the right size that wouldn't get annoying and feel like a pebble was stuck under Clementine's shoe the whole time, but he figured he found a good spot.
Ashton prepared a couple of these impact-activation stones so that Clementine could swap them out whenever they stopped working, which should be after around two to three hours of active running.
And that might seem like a long time, but for someone with the 'Runner' class, it shouldn't be that much. One of their basic skills essentially just boosted their endurance and reduced the impact of running on their body, allowing them to run for a considerably long period of time compared to others.
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"I should really learn that magic..." Ashton sighed slightly. A lot of skills were really just particular applications of magic and spells, or for classes like Ashton's, boosted, stabilised, and simplified existing magic, and Runner skills weren't an exception. If Ashton understood the principle behind it, he should be able to replicate it to some degree. It wouldn't be as effective as the system-boosted version, but every small bit helped.
Ashton put everything in place, and then made one more choice. He put the silent step shoelaces onto the running shoes.
Right now, Ashton had lost the leisure of stealth. He had an extremely limited range of sight, and the xantusi leather items were destroyed in the fight against the draconid. Plus... there was exactly one creature that he had to hide from in this town—the wyvern. And that wyvern wasn't a monster that he could hide from just with those shoelaces anyway.
It was much more important for Clementine to be able to run around without drawing attention to herself.
Now, with these done, Ashton made his way to one of the offices that was being used by people to sleep in. It was really damn late by now, and most people tried their best to rest, though barely anyone was able to sleep well recently.
Just as Ashton tried to enter, though, Sam came walking out of it. For the first time in a while, his beard was well-kept, and he somehow looked completely re-energised.
"Oh! Were you finally thinking of sleeping?" Sam asked, eager to hear Ashton say 'yes', though he quickly shook his head.
"Sorry, not yet. Is Clementine in there?"
"Mm-hm. This is the sleeping area for, Jacky and the others, Sabrina, Clementine, me, and technically you, even though I'm starting to doubt you'll ever sleep again..."
With a scoff, Ashton shrugged. "I'll be doing a lot of that soon, don't worry. Is Clem sleeping yet?"
"Yeah. She's... well, exhausted. It's been an eventful day, plus, she's been running back and forth downstairs ever since she came back."
Ashton slowly nodded, "Alright, got it. In that case, give her these things when she wakes up." He quickly handed Sam the shoes that he prepared with the extra impact-activated magic stones, as well as the dagger he bought from the Salesman.
He quickly wrote down some information about the shoes on the sheet of paper, like how exactly these shoes worked and what she had to do if the enchanted effect stopped. And then, Ashton also gave Sam the piece of paper with the info on the dagger.
Particularly Sharp Dagger
Grade - Rare
Blade - Steel
Handle - Orum Oak
Sheath - Hardened Night Bull Leather
A simple dagger that was magically enhanced to to increase the sharpness beyond what it appears to be. It can still blunt as normal, and must be sharpened and taken care of well like any other blade.
The sharpness of this dagger is enhanced by 35% compared to the actual sharpness of the edge.
Sam quickly looked it over, and raised his brow surprised. "Where'd you get that?"
"Oh, I bought it from the Salesman."
Startled, Sam looked at his friend with a frown. "When did you summon them?"
"Like an hour ago? Roughly?" With a slightly smug grin, Ashton turned away, and Sam sighed lightly.
"Well, congrats, I guess? You said something about this being a big step for summoners, right?"
"I wouldn't say 'big', but sort of. Summoner are rated by the highest grade of contract they have, and then within that rating, how many of those contracts they have. So yeah, until now I was a 'lowest-tier' summoner, and now I'm a 'low-tier' summoner. Neat, right?" Ashton said, not able to help himself but feel a little proud. He didn't exactly love the idea of being a summoner at the start of all of this, but by now, it just felt right.
"Awesome. But, uhm... you're heading out again? Don't you think you've got time to take a break now?" Sam asked, and Ashton quickly shook his head.
"Not yet. I've still got a few places to stop by. I want to see if I can find some more pixies or other fairies, check out the cathedral to maybe find out something about Clem's parents, and stop by the primary school like I promised to Millie."
"... But you're not going out looking for a fight anymore?"
"Not exactly, no. If I find a fight, I won't run away."
"Fine, just be careful."
Ashton nodded. "Of course." At this point, he was just trying to tie up some loose strings. He should be able to drop by the cathedral fast enough and then spend a few hours looking around places that might be decent fairy hotspots. When the sun came back up, he would stop by the school, meet Millie to make sure she was doing alright, and then he would come back here and rest. "Oh, and I'll try my best to come back before falling asleep, but I don't know if I'll be able to. So if you don't see me for a couple days... that's why."
"Can you at least let us know through the community?"
"I'll have the Backpacker leave a comment somewhere under your posts, if that happens," Ashton said. "Oh, that reminds me. I left some notes in your office for a couple new monsters and some other info that might be useful for people going forward. Make sure to keep writing those posts."
"Yeah, yeah, I'll get to it in the morning. And Ash... seriously, please try your best to come back here. It's one thing to be out there on your own when you're awake and ready to fight, but totally knocked out like that?"
While heading down the hallway, Ashton smiled. "I'll try my best to be back here when I fall asleep. But either way, I won't fall asleep in a random spot."
"Still, I'd prefer to be able to look after you here."
With a slight laugh, feeling a little happy that Sam was so worried about him, Ashton waved at his friend while leaving through the doors. "See you later."