Ashton practically swept through the entirety of the botanical gardens, trying to find something, anything, that looked like another pixie. But all he found were more myconids and magical plants. Useful, sure, but not what Ashton was looking for at the moment.

  He really took a lot longer in here than he was intending at all, to the point where it was definitely already pitch black out. He couldn't read his normal watch anymore, but the pocket watch's hands were infused with tons of magic, so it was easy enough to read.

  "I'm sorry... I don't think we'll be able to find much else here," Ashton said to the pixie, hiding out in one of the cloak's pockets together with Poppy. They were still clutching that coin that Ashton gave them earlier. They weren't like Poppy. She trusted Ashton almost immediately, and was open enough that Ashton could feel confident to ask her for a contract. She was brave, and ever since the contract, she was generally brave enough that Ashton didn't have to worry much about her. But this little fellow? They were clearly scared to even be sitting in his cloak, so Ashton really wasn't sure if they were the right fit for Ashton, even if the abilities of a treasure pixie were extremely useful.

  But well, even if Ashton didn't plan on contracting them, he could still find them a good place to stay. His first hope was for him to find a 'fairy sanctuary'. Essentially, a place where multiple fairies lived together. Generally, all fairies had a sort of concealment around them. That was why people without a sixth sense weren't able to see them. If multiple fairies lived together, that power got stronger, and created that effect around their home. The more fairies, and the more powerful those fairies, the stronger the 'barrier' that surrounded the sanctuary.

  Pixies weren't exactly powerful, but a group of four of five of them should be able to stay safe from most monsters if they were careful. It was probably the best option to find a spot like that for the pixie.

  By now, Ashton was convinced that there had to be at least some kind of sanctuary in Drakewood. Preferably, if it was large enough, he would even leave Poppy there and just summon her normally like other summons, instead of putting her in danger by having her real body be around all the time. Finding that sanctuary was the hard part, though. You never knew where that kind of place could be, though. Frankly, these gardens would have been the perfect place. Stock-full of mana because of the well that was here before and tons of nature. Clearly, there were a lot of pixies here originally, too. But the myconids and carnivorous plants disrupted them before they could come together and properly settle down.

  There were a few other places that Ashton could imagine, though. The forest surrounding most of town would be his next best guess, but who knew what kinds of monsters were in there? Plus, it was a pretty large area, so finding a magically hidden sanctuary that he didn't even know for sure existed might be a little hard.

  And until then, or if he couldn't find anything, maybe it was fine to just have them set up somewhere in Calibur. He hoped. Ashton would probably have to make them a bed of coins or something so that they could feel safe there. Pixies had to be at least somewhat close to the sort of thing they were born from. Flower pixies had to be close to flowers, and treasure pixies to treasure in some form. Either that, or they could live with other fairies whose magic would come to support them a little. The only reason why Poppy was fine was because Ashton was supplying her with his own mana to replace what she needed. But he couldn't do that with the other pixie, not without a contract. Ashton didn't want to use that fact to force a contract, either.

  And so, with the Backpacker's bag filled with tons of new plants and dead myconids, they left the botanical gardens. The next time Ashton came here, this might already be an official dungeon.

  Once outside the gardens, Ashton checked the time again. It was half past ten, now. "Well, I should have time to go to the shoe and fabric stores before heading back... Sorry you two, I'll have to run for a bit. I'll try not to shake you around too much."

  Even though he apologised to the pixies, Ashton still felt a little bad. It must be pretty scary in that dark pocket, but the pixie was refusing to come out at all. Poppy peeked her head out a couple times, but the other one was just huddled up in there.

  But that didn't mean that Ashton could just drop everything and walk around slowly. He still had a lot that he had to do. After staying up for as long as possible through potions, he would sleep for two or three days' worth, so around a full day. He wanted to do everything he really had to do before then, including checking up on Clementine's parents for her.

  At least, if he got started making the dyes the moment he got back to Calibur, he should be able to finish dyeing the fabrics he would be grabbing in a bit by the time he woke up, and could then start working on his new clothes.

  Ashton ran through the streets, heading toward the closer of the two stores he wanted to go to. The first was a shoe store. It had been ransacked quite a bit, probably by monsters that were trying to eat the leather shoes. Most of the others were left untouched, at least, or were simply thrown around. Ashton picked out a couple of pairs that would fit Clementine and were already good for running.

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  He wasn't able to enchant these normally, since it would require Clementine to be able to channel that enchantment properly, but there were some ways that Ashton could improve these to not only help her with running, but also make sure that they would last a lot longer than normal.

  While he was here, Ashton also picked out something that looked good for himself. Making shoes for himself was still a bit too complicated with the tools that he had access to.

  The fabric store was in a similar state, but it was a little more annoying. Tons of the fabrics had been unrolled and were either ripped up or completely dirty. The latter was something that Ashton could fix at least, but some of the fabrics were torn up in a way that he couldn't stitch that up without the right magic. Luckily, he was able to salvage enough fabrics, threads, and wools in either white or other light colours that he could use. By the time that Ashton had done collecting all this, it was getting pretty close to midnight. And so, with a specific goal in mind, he grabbed the pocket watch. Since the charge reset at midnight every day, he might as well give it a try now. But for that, he needed something to actually observe.

  Ashton started walking around, trying to find something through the wisp-sight. But really, the only thing that seemed even remotely interesting were the bodies of some monsters nearby that had been killed recently. A lot of them seemed to come from fights amongst the monsters themselves, but a few had wounds that looked more like they came from people.

  As Ashton continued looking, he did find something that seemed a little interesting, at least. A body that looked particularly brutalised. It was an orc, so whoever took this guy down must be pretty skilled. And, well, a little crazy to then go and stab the body multiple times even after death. But what surprised Ashton the most was the fact that the magic stones were taken out of these bodies.

  It was likely they were just taken out by folk from Calibur, then. But as far as he knew, the strong ones were trying to clear out and secure the nearby buildings to expand the camp, now that there were more and more people joining up.

  Well, either Ashton would learn about some new strong survivors, or he would actually be able to see folk from Calibur in action. It was better than not using the pocket watch at all, since it was basically free to test it right now anyway.

  Ashton found a good spot central to where the fight seemed to have been, and started to twist the dial. If he understood the description given by the Pen of Insight right, then he'd have up to thirty minutes to watch everything that happened in the past 24 hours in this location, so he twisted the dial back to exactly 24 hours beforehand. As the dial clicked into place, Ashton pushed it down.

  The moment he did, the watch became filled with mana, sending out numerous small pulses of magic. There was so much that Ashton was momentarily blinded again, since everything in a fifteen metre radius was filled with mana for that brief moment.

  But once that stopped and settled, the area around Ashton was just that much brighter. It was like another layer of magic overlaid the world. Others could probably see this as well, but most likely not as intricately as he did.

  There were a few spots that didn't have that overlap, though. Mostly, the places where the corpses of the monsters were at the moment, since they weren't there a day ago yet.

  And so, Ashton slowly twisted the dial forward. A few monsters came passing through. A few people. It was weird to see this, since it was actually a little hard to differentiate between the things that the pocket watch was showing him compared to the real world that he was supposed to sense. The main difference was that the world seen through the pocket watch was a little hazy, like everything was surrounded by a very fine mist.

  Either way, even if there were monsters and people coming through, there wasn't any sort of fighting, until around five in the afternoon.

  A few monsters were fighting each other. An orc leading a group of goblins and red wolves, fighting against a few lizardmen. The former won, and pretty fast, too.

  And then, one of the goblins had a knife embedded in its forehead. It was thrown from outside the range of what the watch showed, but Ashton quickly turned toward the source. He twisted the dial a little more to fast-forward through the fight.

  A lot of it was actually fought at a distance with knives being thrown at the monsters, but before long, a figure stepped into the range of the watch. It was a person wearing a... full suit of armour. For some reason. Sure, those were useful in specific scenarios, but this wasn't one of them.

  Suits of armour weren't actually that sturdy, especially when you were dealing with monsters that possessed superhuman strength. They were heavy, though that could be counteracted by stat growth, but most importantly, they were bulky and hard to move in. Though, you could tell that this guy was moving around in it pretty well.

  "Did they get a class for this? Huh..." Ashton stopped the watch for a moment, trying to get a closer look at the armour by compressing his channelling range a little around it. He couldn't sense the inside of the armour, though. The watch didn't seem to show things that precisely, then. Either way, he could swear he saw this before.

  Wasn't this a suit of armour on display at the university? Was this someone from the university camp?

  Whatever it was, they clearly weren't alone. Ashton decompressed his channelling range and tried to continue watching as much as he could. The person in the armour was pretty skilled and was using an old sword. A skill must be helping them. Ashton could see the overall clumsiness hidden underneath the fine-tuned and precise movements.

  He was pretty interested in who this person was. They might be a good asset in the future if they really learned how to use their sword independently from their skills.

  But then, the second person came into the channelling range, and the third. Those were familiar faces, ones that Ashton had just seen not too long ago.

  "No..." Ashton grimaced slightly, watching as the shortest of the trio kept on throwing as many knives as he could, while the last, a tall and heavyset guy, was staying relatively far away from the monsters with a large travel-bag on his back.

  Already annoyed, Ashton fast-forwarded through the fight until the orc was killed, at which point the man in the armour took off the helmet. He was covered in sweat underneath, obviously.

  "Why did it have to be these guys?" Ashton looked at the three of them, Chris, Mickey, and Bart. The dickhead trio that Ashton had just briefly met when all of this started.