Ashton swung his staff at the ratman. The weight, and the force added by those beautiful steel endcaps was enough to crack open the monster's skull with the first attack as it was thrown to the ground. Plus, like this, he was able to keep up much more momentum than before.

  He began to spin the staff around faster and faster, and the moment a monster came into his range, he would strike it precisely where it would do the most possible damage. After the first three or four were taken down, the other monsters realised it wasn't a good idea to just attack straight on, instead splitting up to try and surround Ashton. The two remaining ratmen jumped at him simultaneously from opposing sides.

  As soon as they were close enough, Ashton spun his staff around perfectly vertically, striking one of the two in the lower jaw and one on the top of the head. The first twisted around in the air and dropped onto its back, while the second slammed snout-first into the stone ground. Without even looking, Ashton slammed one end of his staff onto that second ratman's skull, killing it, and then stabbed forward into the side of the first rat to keep it stunned for another moment.

  From there, he swung the staff to the side, letting it slip slightly out of his tight grasp so that he was holding it on one end and not the middle, suddenly extending his range enough to kill another goblin. With the momentum from that, he swung the staff back around and over and slammed down on the second closest goblin.

  Though at that moment, the three remaining tried to run forward to attack him at the same time, clutching their daggers tightly. Ashton pushed his staff into the ground and pressed himself up. Though it wasn't a lot, his physical stats were boosted a bit, so he was able to move a tiny bit more like what he was used to.

  He pushed up and kicked one of the goblins in the face to throw it backward, and then dropped down and used the momentum to twist the staff over and down, completely shattering one of the goblins' skulls and slamming it to the ground. He swept the staff over the ground to trip up the last goblin. It fell down and actually stabbed itself in the stomach with its own dagger. Ashton stood back up and stomped down on its back to make the dagger dig deeper, and then slammed his staff down straight onto that last ratman from before.

  While looking over at the party, as they were in the middle of taking down their last two monsters, Ashton finished off the last goblin as well. A few small cuts, some scratches... but nothing too major. They might need to clean their wounds again for a minute, but they should get the point and leave soon enough.

  The five of them were breathing heavily and were exhausted as they finished up. Almost instantly, they turned toward Ashton, thinking that they had to help him out, just to see him standing there, with his staff leaning against his chest, surrounded by nearly a dozen new monster corpses.

  Rather casually, Ashton walked back over to the nearby bench that he was sitting on earlier, not even paying all too much attention to the party.

  "You... how did you..." Oliver stared at Ashton confused. All five of them knew that it wasn't easy to kill these monsters, but Ashton was able to take down 11 of them faster than five people could kill half that many.

  "If I give you some tips, will you get out of here?" Ashton asked, sighing loudly. He didn't want these guys to stick to him after this, so maybe this was the easiest way to get rid of them. Plus... Ashton actually figured that these guys could be useful somewhere down the line. There were some quests that Ashton wouldn't be able to complete on his own. Plus... Ashton couldn't be everywhere on his own. Even though he wanted to try and help as many people as he could down the line, in the end, he was just a single person. He needed to find people that could take on part of that job.

  The five of them looked at each other as if trying to gauge each other's opinion, and then stared back at Ashton.

  "Please, tell us anything you can," Jacky asked, clutching her bow tightly in her hand.

  Ashton looked back at them for a few moments, and then started, "Okay. I will tell you three things. First," he pointed at his chest, "The monsters have crystals in their hearts. They'll come in useful in the future, so whenever you have the chance to, grab them. They're called 'Magic Stones'."

  "Wait, is that why you-"

  "Cut the monsters' bodies up? Yes. That's exactly why," Ashton pushed his hand into his backpack and pulled out the small plastic bag filled with magic stones. He grabbed a small one and held it forward. Jacky came over and took it from him, "That's what the smallest ones look like. They get a lot bigger, though, and when monsters start getting stronger, they'll change nature as well. People will figure out ways to use them in time, so stock up as early as you can to get an advantage. Same with coins, don't waste those."

  "Coins? Are they actually useful for anything?" Paul wondered, looking at his friends, and Ashton shrugged.

  "As useful as any currency. Just hold onto them as long as you can. Anyway, moving on. Second. Once you have the opportunity to get a class, take it. For you, whichever the first one you get is, is probably the best way to survive right now. You can get more down the line, and even remove ones that you think were a wrong choice, so don't stress out about it too much."

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Oliver laughed, though not because he found this funny. He was just in complete disbelief, "Classes? Seriously? Fuck, man, is this world really turning into a game?"

  "Essentially, I guess," Ashton scoffed. He remembered how ridiculous he found it the first time, too. Right now, he could also see in their eyes that they were genuinely curious how Ashton knew any of this.

  "And third, maybe the most important one. Never, and I mean never, get complacent. You're already doing it, but strive to exceed the bare minimum that the quests tell you. Try to find whatever way you can to get stronger, no matter the cost."

  The five of them stared at Ashton while they were trying to make sure they could remember these three tips as well as they could.

  "So... So this really isn't ending anytime soon?"

  Ashton shook his head, "It's not."

  Nicole stared at Ashton, finally asking the big question, "How do you know?"

  He smiled in response, crossing his legs, "Not telling."

  "Then how are we supposed to trust you?" Jacky asked, and Ashton sighed.

  "Then don't. Whether or not you trust me doesn't make the slightest difference. You'll see that things will continue, you'll see that what I'm saying is the right thing to do," Ashton got up from the bench, "Now, lick your wounds and then scram before more monsters come by here. If you need a safe place, go to malls, subway stations, wherever you see people gathering. By now, those places should be fortified enough to stop monsters from getting in too easily."

  The party realised that Ashton was right. Whether or not he was telling the truth, the things he said didn't seem unreasonable. They decided to turn around and take care of their wounds for now. Of course, they were anxious, but once Ashton promised he would at least be able to keep watch while they bandaged up, they relaxed a little.

  But more importantly, now that they were focused on something else, Ashton actually had a pretty good opportunity to continue his summoning. There were two more contracts he felt like he needed to form immediately, and the rest could wait.

  First, he needed something to carry his stuff. Fighting while carrying around a heavy backpack would basically be a death-sentence soon. Plus, his backpack was already completely stuffed, and considering that he needed tons of materials and items that he could use as contract offerings, it was almost impossible to carry that all on his own.

  And second, and most importantly, he needed a way to actually figure out what he was dealing with. What sort of items he got, what the nature of certain materials was... He needed an 'inspection' ability. There were a few beings with this ability, but there was one that he had in mind that was by far the simplest, even if it wasn't quite as 'omniscient' as others. Plus, due to its physical nature, it came in useful in another way.

  What Ashton was going to summon next was the 'Pen of Insight'.

  But for that, he needed to make some preparations, grabbing the magic stone from the orc. It still wasn't huge, but it was a lot larger than the others he had gotten, around the size of his pinky's fingertip. Using the base of his knife, he tried to slightly shave away at the edges of the stone. These weak magic stones were fairly brittle, so it was easier than you would think.

  He just carved it into an incredibly rough, spiralling cone shape. And then, though it hurt him a lot, Ashton grabbed his fountain pen and tore off the nib. It didn't hurt physically, obviously, but emotionally. He was pretty attached to this. It was a memento of his dad, after all. But that was just another reason why Ashton had to use this pen. The emotional attachment would make it easier to form the contract.

  After the nib was off, Ashton continued to carve the small magic stone into a shape where he could attach it to the pen's feed, which was quite literally 'feeding' ink from the cartridge into the nib.

  Once he managed to make the magic stone fit into place properly, Ashton took a deep breath. He grabbed a few more magic stones and began to crush them into dust using the base of his staff, mixing it into the kobold blood. When he felt like there was enough, Ashton pulled some pages out of his notebook and placed them on the ground next to each other. This one had to be a bit larger.

  He began to paint a new magic circle, but this time, it wasn't of the elemental system, but of the 'construct' system. While the former was rounded and had natural shapes within it, this one was mathematical and calculated. He actually had to do a bit of math and measure the distances between some of the points to make sure he got everything exactly, perfectly right as he drew the magic circle with the slightly loose, crooked magic stone nib.

  The shapes that made up this magic circle were simple. For example, the five-pointed pentagon meant that he was dealing with a 'tool', or the seven-pointed star within that pentagon meant that it was something within the domain of truth. There were also things like the smaller mathematical variables written in each of the split sections describing the exact form that this 'tool of truth' was taking, and most importantly, the details of the actual contract. The three cornerstones that this summoning circle had were, in the case of the construct system, meant to stabilise the physical form of the summon. Because constructs were never truly 'unsummoned'.

  Once he was done, Ashton placed the pen into the middle of the summoning circle, placing the small magic stones he had onto very specific runic symbols representing the variables of this process. He also had to make sure that each variable got the right amount of mana.

  Seriously, if Ashton hadn't been turned into his summoner's 'assistant' and told how all of this worked, then he would be totally fucked in this new world. Either way, he cleared his throat and took control of the magic flowing through the mana well. By now, he had gotten the attention of that party again, who were watching curiously as Ashton did something they couldn't even begin to understand, as Ashton spoke the summoning chant.

  "To scribble or scrawl, to jot it all down. To see through what is true or false, to lay it all out. Settle in this vessel that I offer to you, and inspect the world that's in your view."

  The words flowed out of his mouth and he could feel his mana draining away to activate his 'summoning' skill. The magic stones fell apart, but not into those small wisps of glistening light, but instead almost pixel-like, geometric shapes that continued to fall apart before seeping into the pen in the centre of the circle.

  It just took a few more moments until the contract was complete, and a message appeared before him.

  [[Construct Summoning] Category is being created under the [Summoning] Skill]

  [[Pen of Insight] is being registered in the [Construct Summoning] Category]

  [Skill | Summoning - Level 1 -> Summoning - Level 2]