And just like those two had told him, he found himself on Market Street. Shops on the left and right of the pedestrian zone which stretched out along the street, branching off and splitting here and there. Clothes, food, books, trinkets, whatever the heart desired. At least, usually. Right now, it was littered with corpses. The windows were smashed, the small stalls by the side of the road were tipped over and broken. There were a few monster corpses as well, but they were few and far between.
Here, Ashton should be able to find whatever he needs. Quite literally, actually. As he looked down at the compass still hanging from his neck, he could see that it was pointing forward. There was another mana well here. The rules for how they appeared were hard to grasp sometimes. He knew that they could often be seen in nature, but it wasn't like they were never around in urban settings. Though for the other world, Ashton thought it was more so the case that towns were simply built on top of these wells, since mana was already a thing there from the very beginning anyway.
Maybe these 'artificial' wells used to feed mana into the world worked by different rules in the first place. Not that it mattered too much right now. By trying to get to the well, he should be able to collect a few more items he needed.
Ashton's first stop was a nearby clothing store. The automatic doors were blocked open by an attempted barricade that clearly didn't quite work.
"Some monsters must have pushed through," he muttered, climbing over the shelf. Almost immediately beyond it were some dead bodies that had been torn apart, stabbed, and partially eaten. Their blood was covering the ground in a thick puddle, with footsteps spreading throughout the shop.
Ashton was used to death, probably more so than most others on earth, but this was hard to look at even for him. But right now, he didn't have a way to properly put these people to rest, so the only thing he could do was keep living. And most importantly - Kill the fuckers that did this to Earth.
He walked over the corpses and through the puddle of blood, trying to figure out the specifics of the enemies potentially hiding in here. The wisp still had a about twenty more minutes left for being actively summoned, though it was 'dismissed' at the moment. Basically, it was staying within Ashton's vessel, just like the Backpacker during the term of his contract, and the consciousness of the Pen of Insight.
Not only did this make it much easier to be inconspicuous, but for active summons like elementals, it helped extend the contract for a while. Basically, when inside of his vessel, the wisp was consuming the offering at half the rate as normal.
Ashton walked through the rows of clothing, trying to see anything that could come in useful. All of this just seemed impractical, though. And most importantly... sort of boring. He was never the kind of guy that really cared about how he looked when he was on earth before, but after meeting a certain few spirits and fey that were particularly interested in good looks, he learned that he was actually quite good-looking. After that, his Summoner had basically forced him to take care of his looks to some degree to keep those fellow summons in a good mood.
Which meant that he learned a few rules of fashion here and there, and most importantly, how to balance looks and practicality whenever necessary. As he kept looking around, he found a few things that seemed good enough. Some wide, black cargo shorts and a strong, blood-red paracord belt. There was a matching red jacket on a mannequin on the other side of the room. It didn't look too thick or heavy to move in, and had plenty of pockets all over it. Now he just needed a proper shirt and then find some boots in another store, and he'd be wearing something decent enough.
As he picked everything up to bring them over to the changing rooms, since he couldn't remember his sizes for the life of him, a goblin jumped out from between one of the clothes-racks. It stabbed forward an old, rusty spear with a rotten staff. Ashton stopped walking instantly, which was enough to barely dodge the weapon, and grabbed the spear right between the goblin's two hands right before kicking the monster in the stomach. When it released its grip, Ashton spun the spear around with one hand and threw it to the side in the monster's face.
[You have killed a [Goblin]. For your valiant effort, you are awarded 10 Coins]
"Oh, that looks perfect!" Ashton smiled as he approached a few clothes in the corner of the space. There was a pretty well-cut, sleeveless high-neck shirt. This was perfect. Since his stats were going to grow quite a bit over the net while, he would put on some bulk muscles pretty fast and didn't want to deal with the tightness around his sleeves and shoulders when that happened. Plus, it just looked good in combination with the clothes he had already picked out.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Ashton smiled and picked out a few sizes to try it on right away, and then stepped into the changing area. He could hear some goblins snickering to each other in a few of the stalls, so as he walked to the end of the line, he called on the wisp to smash their heads in, quickly getting himself another 50 coins. With a happy whistle, Ashton tried on the clothes, soon finding the perfect fit.
"Nice to move in, nice to look at, nice to have in a fight... The perfect outfit for the time being," Ashton walked back out of the stall, leaving his old, boring- and bad-looking clothes behind. He then went around the store and picked out two or three spares of each piece, as well as some more small clothing pieces like some more spare underwear. Could never have enough of that in the apocalypse.
The Backpacker's volume was filling up quite a bit, but the contract wasn't gaining a lot of experience. Of course, the more special the item it was allowed to handle, the easier it levelled up. But all of these mundane objects that it's handling right now would be barely enough to push it to level 3 by the time the bag is filled up.
Ashton yawned slightly as he walked around, killing a few more of the goblins hiding in the shop. He also just picked up a cross-body bag for himself to keep some quick essentials in.
The Backpacker stared at him, though you couldn't even see his face in that black shadowy void, and Ashton let out a sigh, "Stop that. You're still the one carrying most of my things, but it would take too long to grab things like potions or pills from you in the middle of a fight. I just need another bag and some pockets, that's all."
Though the spirit wasn't exactly convinced, it just disappeared back into Ashton's vessel for the time being.
Back on the street, Ashton found his way to the next store. It was this giant, three-story shoe store, so he was convinced he would be able to find what he was looking for. There were obviously some more dead bodies and monsters in here. Though, just like with the goblins from the clothing store, there was something off about these guys. Especially the tutorial monsters should just be 'copy pasted' into this world until the world was properly transmuted through the council within the first couple of quests. After that, a larger variety of them would appear, and especially, monsters unique to this world and culture would appear. Right now it was just as simple as:
Is it a town? Send in goblins, ratmen, kobolds - monsters that are known to live in groups and form something akin to towns or villages. Red slimes were clearly sent here because of the abundance of metal.
Forests would have more monsters that were like animals you could find there. Wolves, foxes, probably green slimes. But the case was simply that they were practically identical to each other at this point in time.
Every single goblin that Ashton encountered until getting here to Market Street had a 'dagger'. But now, they suddenly had spears, axes, bows, and most importantly, they weren't just wearing the most basic, simple clothes you could think of. Instead, some had jackets, hats, and even boots. And these weren't things they could have picked up from earth in the seven or so hours they've been here.
"So the next boss is a hobgoblin, huh?" Ashton yawned again as he looked through the shelf to look for his shoe size, picking up the box to try them out, "But it can't be that strong yet, right? Were they preparing to turn this area into a field dungeon?"
As that idea popped into his head, he really couldn't hold back the grin on his face. It wasn't anything huge, but if he could make those fuckers' day harder, then that was reason enough to kill that boss.
With a new pair of comfortable and sturdy black boots, Ashton left the shoe store again. If the hobgoblin acted like the orc, then it would probably be right on top of the well, too. With the magic compass, it should be easy enough to find.
The bigger issue was the way that hobgoblins worked. If there was a group of goblins, a hobgoblin would immediately take a leadership position, not because of their strength, but because of their higher intelligence. The mere presence of the hobgoblin seemed to change the way that the 'basic' goblins here were created. Instead of just having daggers, they had other weapons as well. Hobgoblins had some actual understanding of tactics, even if it still wasn't particularly grand, so with more varied weapons, the danger of the goblins increased to a ridiculous degree. And even more importantly, if Ashton didn't take down the hobgoblin, this place would turn into a massive encampment very fast, and the goblins would form a larger group and even a proto-society, and then spread beyond market street.
But... that was just if the hobgoblin was alive to do that. It wouldn't be. For now, Ashton continued down the road. Now that he had all the clothes he needed, the next stop was a nearby grocery store. He just had to follow the signs at the side of the road, and soon found himself standing in front of its entrance. It wasn't the biggest place in the world, but big enough to have a lot of what he needed. There was a new issue now, though. Most of the people in these shops seemed to have tried barricading themselves in, though they failed miserably basically each and every time.
The people here succeeded. The automatic doors didn't even open, so they were most likely shut off from inside. Shelves were put up right in front of those doors to block anyone from looking inside, and Ashton could hear some voices from inside. People were looking out of the windows on the upper floors above it. It was hard to see since it was pretty late and dark by now, though. Up there was some kind of office space, which might be used as a living area for the people that took shelter. Clever, anyway. Grocery stores were one of the better places to take shelter in the apocalypse, as long as those inside of it didn't go absolutely insane.
Ashton took a step back and waved at everyone up there, pointing at the entrance with a smile. They looked at each other, and one of them opened the window. Before Ashton needed to even say anything, they held out a cheap, old ladder. It was good enough, though, and he quickly climbed inside.
"Thanks for that!" Ashton looked at everyone inside. There were tons of people stuffed in here. Elderly folk, children, even a pair of police officers. Not that it really mattered, "I needed to get some shopping done, how can I get downstairs?"
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