Monroe

Chapter Four Hundred and Forty. Alex?

There were a great many things that Bob loved about magic. It was a source of endless fascination, half science and half art, especially when it came to ritual magic.

That was not to say that he particularly enjoyed the aches and pains that came from sitting still for hours while casting a systemless fivefold ritual.

With a groan, he stood up and stretched, rolling his neck.

"That was very impressive," Lily said from behind him.

He turned to face the Shallihs, noting that her ears were perked forward and her tail was gently swishing from side to side. Most of the adorable anthropomorphic cat person wasn't visible, hidden behind the mountain of fluff that was Monroe.

She'd asked to watch while he created the Dungeon, and he'd agreed on the condition that she entertain his divine feline overlord.

"While the System only defines two types of magic, Sorcery, which is the type that costs mana to cast, and Ritual, which requires mana crystals, I feel like there is a third, which I've sort of labeled in my head as True magic," Bob replied absently as he began inspecting the array Jessica had built for charging mana crystals, which he had integrated into his ritual. "Ritual magic requires one hundred seconds to cast before taking into consideration any bonuses you might have that increase the efficiency," he continued. "True magic, on the other hand, requires much more time to cast, regardless of whether you are using rituals that, when cast separately, would only require one hundred seconds each. In a lot of ways, it's almost a precursor to casting without the System, as you are shaping and maintaining the weaves yourself, using the System as a guide."

"I am looking forward to learning how to do all of these things," Lily sighed. "Although it seems that I'll be waiting for quite some time."

Bob rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that. The System indicated that I could get everyone out of here and settled on a habitable planet, but it was annoyingly nonspecific as to how," He shook his head. "The consensus is that we'll just need to follow the flow of mana, as it has to be going somewhere, but keeping the monsters from appearing randomly throughout the ship is the first priority, although it does tie in neatly with the second, which is making sure that everyone is fed."

"Unless something comes up," he agreed. "Considering that we're traveling through a veritable ocean of mana, I'm rather expecting that we'll be faced with more than a few unexpected events, although I'd be happy to be proven wrong."

"Hunts rarely go exactly as planned," Lily said. "Can you tell me more about Thayland?"

"It's a colder planet," Bob mused idly as he traced the mana flowing into the crystals set onto the array. It looked good. "Glaciers descend from the poles to the sixtieth parallel, or somewhere thereabout, and Greenwold, the smallest continent, and the one where I've spent almost all my time was rugged, filled with forests, hills, and mountains."

"What does the sixtieth parallel mean?" Lily asked.

Bob turned away from the array to face the Shallihs. Holding out his hand, he summoned a globe, complete with stand. Gesturing her forward, he indicated the lines on the globe.

"We divided up the globe by latitude and longitude," he explained. "This," he pointed at a line that bisected Canada, "is the sixtieth parallel, and above that, the land and sea are both covered in a layer of ice, a mile thick or more."

Lily nodded her understanding, and Bob released the spell.

"Will we be closer to the ice or closer to the middle?" Lily asked.

"I'm honestly not sure," Bob confessed. "We'd been away for two years, and only just arrived back on Earth when I received the System request to come help. I'm not sure what sort of arrangement the Emperor of Thayland has at the moment, although I'm sure he has his world under control in terms of making sure his Dungeons aren't overflowing and his people are safe."

"Where would we fit in, though? If all the Dungeons are used up, how will we earn crystals?" Lily pressed.

"I don't know," Bob admitted. "I have a good relationship with Kellan, and I have no doubt he'll be willing to help us." Bob sat down again, cross-legged so that he could look the Shallihs in the eye. He didn't like having her peer up at him.

Part of his tier nine advancement had been his choice to remove the compulsion to see lower tier beings as lesser, and with it had come several unsettling revelations regarding his behavior towards others as he'd climbed to tier six, then seven, then eight. None of it had been particularly egregious, but he could call one incident when he'd idly thought that by rewarding the behavior he wanted to see a lower-tier person repeat, he was training them.

"The thing to keep in mind," he continued, "is that all of this is temporary. It's just to have a place for you to stay until we can find you a new world to settle."

"I know," Lily shook her head. "I'm anxious. We had only known our world, although the Lovar taught us of the worlds they'd settled. The reality of being cast adrift, without a home..." She trailed off, her tail swishing back and forth violently.

"It's unsettling," Bob agreed. "But we have the tools to find your new home once we get out of here."

"Well shit," Jack cursed, rereading the message and checking the timestamp.

"That's what we get for letting him out of our sight," Eli grumbled. "Now he's off on some weird quest, and he'll likely show back up in a year at tier ten with some sort of new achievement."

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"We'll just have to keep up a Bob standard of delving until he gets back," Eddi said, determination evident in his voice. "That, and I'll make sure Ani lets me know if a new veneration for Bob or Monroe pops up."

"Wish the System had given him more time," Harv sighed. "But ten minutes wouldn't have been anywhere near enough to get all of us together. We still don't have cellular service at my family's home."

"That'll be fixed shortly," Jack muttered distractedly. "The transceivers that the government developed are available commercially now. It's going to cost a mint, but we're upgrading the satellite network, shouldn't take more than three months." He shook his head, looking up from his screen. "It looks like the Freedom is still up there," he continued. "So we can guess that the System just teleported Bob and the rest of them."

"That's a good idea," Eddi grinned excitedly.

"That wasn't an idea," Jack said.

"Sure it was," Eddi nodded vigorously. "While we're here, grinding out our levels, we're going to end up with a mountain of crystals. We should dedicate some of them, and a little bit of our time, to jumping around, looking for our own planet. We have the Freedom, I have the spell, and I have the power to cast it. I don't have the same discount as Bob, so it'll take eighty mana crystals instead of forty-nine or whatever Bob uses, but we can still do it."

"That's a brilliant idea, sweetie," Wayna beamed as she pulled him into a quick kiss. "It will give us a goal besides leveling up our skills, which is slow going."

"We're going to be a bit lopsided," Jack warned. "Eli and Wayna, we'll have to rely on the two of you as beacons a lot more heavily without Mike. We're still going to get the big groups, and we're down a tank, a healer, and two dps. Unfortunately, we can't just head over to the Adventurer's Guild or," he waved a hand to forestall Eddi, "the Endless Tower to pick up replacements. There aren't a lot of tier nine people floating around, let alone people who've just tiered up to tier nine."

"We may actually need to roll back the tier and levels over that we fight," Harv said dryly.

"I'm not so sure about that," Eddi disagreed. "We were sailing through those monsters on Url, toward the end. Our skills are still twice our level. I'm not saying we don't take it easy, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we can still delve quite a bit more deeply than you'd think."

"If we can, we will, and if it's not feasible, we won't," Eli offered. "We'll start lower regardless. The question is, where? The whole reason we're looking for a new planet is because we'll exhaust any Dungeon we have access to."

"Url," Eddi replied confidently. "Wayna and I talked to Lara and Laura a few days ago when we brought them over to visit, and they said that some of the cities were barely keeping their Dungeons in check. I was planning on dragging everyone back there for a visit anyway because I promised them an Endless Tower."

"Two birds, one spell," Harv mused. "I really didn't like the way they tried to fit us into their pantheon, but if they legitimately need our help, I could put up with it."

"Not to mention further exposure might tone down those tendencies," Jack added wryly.

"It only costs a fistful of crystals to explore the possibilities," Eddi said.

"Not until we restock," Wayna shook her head. "I know that the rest of the group was supposed to be taking care of it, but we need to check and see how far they managed to get. I'm not going to get stuck somewhere without curry again."

Alex winced as his finger slipped, and he struck the wrong cord.

With a sigh, he placed the guitar back on its stand, shaking his hand.

He'd known that playing an instrument was mostly muscle memory, but he'd focused rather heavily on the second of those two words, forgetting the first. It turned out that typing didn't build the necessary muscles needed to hold the strings of a guitar for extended periods of time.

Not that he was going to let that stop him, he'd just start again tomorrow. Afterall, he had plenty of time.

He wheeled his chair across the room, spinning to face his screens.

The sad truth was that he was unbelievably bored. Yes, DARPA had, in many ways, been a giant pain in the ass to work for, but at least he'd been able to stay busy.

They hadn't offered to renew his contract, and he hadn't asked, being surprised that they let him keep his security clearance. Nearly two years later, he'd come to the realization that he needed something to do. He'd already either finished every project he'd had in the back of his mind or he'd tabled them until additional data was available.

He'd spent month after month trawling through white papers, message boards, and finally even reddit, looking for something to work on.

He hated to admit it, but he was seriously considering asking for his job back.

Scanning his screens, he paused in the middle of reaching for a bottle of Mountain Dew. There was a notification blinking at the top right-hand corner of his top right-hand monitor. A dot, blinking purple.

He felt the beginnings of a smile stretch across his face. He'd set up that alert two years ago.

Sure, he hadn't told them he was setting it up, but they were very busy people who sometimes had very important lives, and besides, they were his friends.

Clicking on the notification, his smile broadened. Jack was back alright and in town no less. Another click, and he had the address. Grabbing the bottle of Mountain Dew, he spun his chair and stood up, moving to the door of his room, where he suddenly stopped.

Years and years ago, he'd hung a full-length mirror on the back of his door with an LED stop sign just above it. Below the stop sign, in neon orange letters, was written: "DO YOU LOOK LIKE AN UNEMPLOYED HOMELESS MAN?"

Looking in the mirror, he had to admit that to the casual observer who didn't know him, he might easily be mistaken for someone who'd been down on their luck for a rather long time.

He ran his hands through his beard, which was missing a large chunk, the legacy of a soldering accident.

Wincing, he turned around and headed for the bathroom instead. He wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd left his home, but he'd been clean-shaven at the time.

Jack was inspecting the proferred bite of steak dubiously.

First and foremost, it was a sample. By definition, you didn't offer samples of quality steak. Second, the A1 bottle had the phrase, "New recipe, same great taste!"

"Why would they change the recipe?" He asked the smiling Costco employee.

"Turns out that they found a cheaper way to make the vinegar," the young woman, whose name tag helpfully stated that her name was Helena and that she was happy to help, explained. "Or the vinegar flavor and chemical effect?" She shrugged. "Some sort of System shenanigans, but it dropped the price by over ten percent, and I can't taste the difference," Helena smiled.

Jack smiled back. She did have a nice smile. Also, he wasn't going to eat monster steaks again without sauce.

He popped the steak in his mouth, and chewed slowly, rolling the morsel across his tongue.

The meat was mediocre at best, but it had at least been cooked properly. The A1 sauce tasted... exactly like A1 sauce.

He swallowed, and leveled a brilliant grin at Helena. "I can't tell the difference either, and between you and me, and honestly, anyone else who will listen, after a couple of years of monster steaks with only salt and pepper, I'd take it even if it was a little off. I'm in for two pallets."

Helena's smile froze for a moment as she blinked. "I'm sorry, two pallets?" She repeated.

"Yep," Jack chuckled. "I wasn't kidding about eating monster steaks for two years. I'm restocking my spaceship, and this time, I'm making sure I don't run out of the essentials."

The wattage of her smile increased by a solid fifty percent. "I can do that," she assured him. "Do you want it delivered on the pallets, or do you want to pay for a dimensional storage container? We'll be happy to load it into the container for you, and we have quite a few options," she continued, no doubt smelling another sale.

"Jack!" A familiar voice called out as Jack was suddenly subject to something between a rugby tackle and a warm hug.

Twisting and turning, he managed to catch a glimpse of flaming red hair.

"Alex," he said warmly, "it's good to see you too."