Monroe

Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-seven. Splish splash.

Dungeon 4578G8249N98ISS2PM47D.

Capacity 100%

User tier eight, evolved, level forty-two. User grouped with eleven other sapient beings, tier eight, level forty-two.

Dungeon level has been set to tier ten, level fifty-two.

Bob blinked as he floated to the side to allow the rest of the team to enter the Dungeon.

New Quest!

Yvansk has been overrun by monsters! The Urlinad have barricaded themselves in their temples, praying to their gods to save them. Unfortunately, their gods are not real, but the monsters are. It falls on you to save them.

Kill the monsters, 0/50,028

Locate the Temples, 0/38

Protect the Urlinad.

"Stars and stones, that's a relief," Bailli said, her voice transmitting over their comms.

The collars they wore covered them in a thin layer of air, which not only allowed them to breathe but also avoided stressing the water resistance of their armbands and earpieces.

"We're definitely going to be relying on portals," Jack grumbled. "I'm a decent swimmer, but shields make it slow and awkward.

Bob nodded. "My flight spell seems to be working fairly well, Bailli, can you check your Elemental Body skill?"

As he waited, he pulled a drone out of his satchel and released it into the water. The propellers spun up, and it moved up and over the nearby buildings.

"Ugh, that was unpleasant. It definitely doesn't work underwater unless you want to feel an immense amount of pressure and start to rise rapidly," Bailli reported.

"It can't ever be too easy," Bob mumbled, his eyes focused on the image projected by his armband. They'd been enough Urlinad cities that he could make an excellent guess as to where the temples were likely to be, although there were some distinct differences between Yvansk and the cities he'd encountered on land.

The houses didn't have solid roofs or walls. Instead, they were made of latticework, finer for the walls and broader for the roofs, both of which allowed for currents to pass through them. The ever-present gardens remained, although the plants were aquatic.

The entire city seemed to be perched on a massive coral reef, and it was clear that it was designed with swimming in mind. There were no streets, although the buildings were arranged in a grid, with coral appearing between the rows of buildings where a road would normally stretch. The entire city had been built with not only the traditional x and y axis but also the z axis being taken into consideration.

It only took the drone a few moments to come into visual range of the first temple.

"Well, I found our first target," Bob announced, expanding the image as the others crowded around.

"I bet that would be pretty if it wasn't covered in tentacle horror crabs," Amanda observed.

"Thoughts on the entrance?" Bob asked.

"I don't like it," Mike shook his head. "I'd almost rather we carved a hole in the side and fought through that. Strike that, I would rather we did that."

Bob studied the image. It was different from the temples they'd encountered before in more ways than one. It shared the latticework construction of the houses, but the entrance was at the top of the pyramid. Designed with swimmers in mind, it was clear that the Urlinad swam down into the temple. That wasn't going to work as a choke point, as once Erick had created his air bubble, they'd be stuck at the bottom of a narrow shaft with monsters falling down on top of them. Not the choke point they needed.

"What do you think, Harv? Can you crack open a door for us?" Bob asked.

"Probably?" Harv paused to think for a moment. "I won't know until I try, but what I can say with some certainty is that it won't be as big of a door as we're used to. Once we're inside, I can cast a few more rituals to open it up, but it's going to take time."

"I sure as hell can't tank them if we're stacked up in a twenty by twenty space, and they're falling on us," Jack interjected. "This is definitely one of those scenarios where we need to play it safe."

"Alright, so I'll open a portal to the side of the temple, Harv and Erick, have your rituals held and ready, Harv will open the door, Erick will get rid of the water, and we'll start fighting," Bob offered, looking around. Seeing no disagreement, he started casting his ritual portal spell.

The only flaw in their plan was immediately evident when they entered the temple through the ten-foot by ten-foot square that Harv had removed the wall.

They didn't find themselves in a hallway but rather in a large room, sixty feet to a side and twenty feet tall, and worse, absolutely packed with Urlinad refugees.

"Get back," Bob shouted, "we going to be killing the monsters, but it's going to be dangerous."

The crowd of Urlinad began swimming backward frantically, only to suddenly find themselves falling into a heap as Erick unleashed his ritual, creating an air bubble that conformed to the edges of the room.

"Jessica, toss a few heals that way," Bob ordered as he turned back to the entrance, where a tentacrab was already pulling itself inside.

Bailli unleashed her Lightning Blast as Jack expertly parried a massive claw.

The fight was easier than he'd expected, owing to the inability of more than one of the tentacrabs to pass through the hole at a time.

He was about to ask Harv to enlarge the whole when he noticed something odd.

"Bailli, ignore the monster, blast the water!"

Bailli complied, and as her lightning blast struck the sheet of water, it exploded into a half-sphere beyond it.

"Dave, same thing!" Bob shouted, "Mike and Jack, keep it busy!"

Dave's Acid Blast crashed into the water, where it expanded slightly, then popped, tinting the water around it a slight green before dissipating completely.

"Alright, well, that was a bust, but Bailli, stay on the water, everyone else, let's start clearing them one by one," Bob began summoning another swarm.

"I fucking hated underwater levels in games, and guess what?" Dave asked. "I hate them even more in real life."

"If anything, this makes me want to finish the next thirty-two Dungeons even more quickly," Amanda agreed. "Not that delving should be fun, but it shouldn't suck quite this badly."

"This was a true blue hoover," Jessica agreed.

Bob could only nod. They'd finished the Dungeon in sixteen hours, but it had cost them seven thousand six hundred mana crystals to do so. They could more than recoup that loss over the next five days, but it was still a financial hit.

He finished another Summon Mana-Infused Object ritual, and another batch of staves appeared on the floor.

Tyolad was already working with the local clergy, stuffing them full of mana crystals to get them up to level two so they could start casting spells. With four hundred and sixty clergy working to shepherd six each, they'd be leaving the city with the standard contingent of two thousand seven hundred and sixty level six Urlinad. Exponential growth was the name of the game, although Bob suspected that being underwater would actually be a benefit when it came to growing their food.

Unfortunately, being underwater significantly reduced the types of magic that were effective. It was hard to use a blast spell, or any other projectile, underwater

When Bob had created the Dungeon for the Urlinad to delve, he'd been pleasantly surprised to discover that it had created a land variant. He suspected it was because he wasn't able to breathe underwater, and as the caster of the ritual, it had taken his physiology into account.

Regardless, he'd suggested that the residents of the underwater cities consider leaning into the Summoning and Plant schools.

"So," Jessica tugged on his arm, pulling him from his thoughts. "How about we keep it to sixteen hours a day? The days off were good, but it really stressed the fact that we need a lot more rest than we are getting, yeah?"

Bob winced. "We can afford to take the time, but the Urlinad can't. Tyolad has to keep them grinding day and night," he replied.

"So let him," Amanda shrugged. "I've talked to the clergy we're hauling around, and going into stasis is basically going into the deepest sleep you could imagine. They're waking up feeling refreshed, mentally, after spending two days in stasis."

"I'm surprised their still holding out from a physical standpoint," Dave shook his head.

"They're not complaining," Bob shrugged.

"Well, we are," Jessica grinned. "Sixteen hours, an hour break at the start and end, with six hours of sleep."

"Alright," Bob nodded reluctantly.

They had made significant gains over the past eight months. The numbers were staggering, but each of them had earned over nine hundred million experience towards their primary skills.

His Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell was at level one hundred and twenty-four.

Sticking with the plan of keeping their spells at double their level, they were quickly reaching the point where they could level up to the tier cap, but Bob had talked it over with his friends, and they were holding back.

He had a sneaking suspicion that the rewards for the quest would be determined by the tier and level at which they'd completed them. The System liked its math just a little too much for it not to aggregate the completion conditions.

Also, they had developed strategies and tactics that worked against the power level of their opponents. Every level they gained in their spells and skills only improved that, while if they advanced, they'd have to adjust to their enemies' new power levels. The jump to facing tier ten monsters had already forced them to adjust to the auras the monsters now possessed, and he wasn't looking for any more surprises.

Once they finished the quest and collected their rewards, they would level up a bit.

Just six more months, give or take.

"Madam President, we have confirmation," Taylor announced with a brilliant smile.

Elania bolted upright, her headache forgotten. "Tier six?" She asked.

Taylor shook her head. "Even better, tier seven," she replied as she walked forward and placed her tablet in front of the President.

"G-class star?" Elania asked as she stared at the images on the screen.

"Only three percent warmer than the sun," Taylor confirmed. "The planet itself is another hundred thousand or so kilometers further from the star, and is twenty percent larger, give or take."

"Two moons, although one is too small to have any real impact, seventy-five percent water," Elania murmured.

"Axial tilt is nineteen degrees, and the rotation around the star is four hundred and eighteen days," Taylor chuckled. "Days are twenty-four hours and forty-two minutes long, which is going to cause some scheduling issues at some point, but that's a problem we'll be glad to have."

"This looks amazing," Elania breathed, looking up.

The planet had a single continent that straddled the equator, stretching slightly further south than it did north. There were dozens of archipelagos, but for that was future expansion.

"Eighty-four Dungeons?" Elania asked.

"Yep," Taylor popped the 'p' at the end. "It tracks with what we've been seeing. The System apparently just slaps them down as a grid if the planet isn't inhabited. "That does mean that we'll have to clear sixty underwater Dungeons, relocating them onto land."

"This is one of the moments where I'm glad that I don't lead from the front," Elania replied with a grin of her own. "I didn't see the final number in there, did I miss it?"

"Oh, it wasn't there," Taylor shook her head. "I noticed as well and was told that it was left out deliberately so that we could appreciate what they'd found before experiencing the sticker shock. Sixteen million mana crystals, plus or minus a couple of hundred thousand."

Elania winced. The exploration ships hadn't been that expensive, but the Dimensionalists had. They'd asked for twice the cost of each ritual. That had meant two hundred mana crystals for each jump. Unfortunately, it was a big damn multiverse, and the math for finding a habitable planet was intimidating.

"How many jumps?" Elania asked.

"Seventy-two thousand four hundred and thirty-seven," Taylor replied.

Elania winced.

The issue came down to the lack of dimensionalists. They'd started a campaign encouraging people to take that path, offering a Dimensional Affinity Crystals, as well as another Affinity Crystal, with shepherding all the way to level twenty-five, but there were just never enough people. Worse, the primary need was for ritual magic, and it turned out that while anyone with the skill could cast it, doing so over and over again, day in and day out, required having a knack for it.

It didn't help that the work was boring and repetitive, nor that the standard wages for it meant that the casters didn't actually need to work that often. For a fully leveled Dimensionalist, opening a single ritual portal paid out their living expenses for the week.

"What's our time frame?" Elania asked.

"Six months to have the Dungeons cleared, moved, and under control," Taylor said. "Figure another six months to a year to have the infrastructure fully built, although a lot of that is going to depend on the tier sevens we send over."

"So two years at the most, and we should have a clear pipeline to transition to tier seven," Elania nodded. "We'll have enough tier sevens who can't get a slot that it shouldn't be a hard sell."

Despite her best intentions, she'd had to face the brutal truth that one tier seven delving was the equivalent of six tier fives. Now that the population had spread out evenly across the country, the reality that there were more people who needed to delve than there was available Dungeon capacity was crystal clear.

The scientific community had embraced the System with an almost unholy glee and had published their results. One point five billion. That was the number of people, at mostly tier five, that the planet could support. Sadly that meant that the United States was overpopulated. The country could likely maintain ninety million, give or take.

There had been dozens of plans proposed by Congress to offer a sort of social security, where upon reaching level twenty-five, a citizen would receive a stipend of crystals each month for their living expenses. Those crystals would be provided by taxing the people delving the Dungeons who hadn't yet reached the level cap. None of the plans had survived the initial round of debate when it was pointed out that at level twenty-five, those people were likely to live two hundred years or more.

No, the only real solution was expansion, and while it had taken a small mountain of mana crystals and would likely cost ten times that many or more to complete the project, she'd found a way to do so without looking beyond her own borders on Earth.