Monroe

Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Eight. Living Arrangements.

Time until System Integration: 604 Days, 6 Hours, 21 Minutes, 58 seconds.

Bob glanced at the timer at the upper left-hand corner of his vision as he washed the shaving cream off his face. He tried not to dwell on the countdown. He had right around twenty months, give or take, before Earth was integrated into the System.

The first batch of Curators he'd trained had been hard at work for the past two days, and he'd been asked to inspect the first ten floors of the Dungeon they'd built. He'd advised Mike to have them leave the Dungeon under the Adventurers Guild alone, as he'd use that to train the next batch of Curators, so the decision had been made to build out the Dungeon under the first skyscraper.

He turned off the water and turned off the light as he exited the bathroom. The fact that he had working electricity in his inventory was a relief, as it brought a sense of normalcy that he could lean on. He was definitely going to use the same arrangement in his house at murmuring falls. He grabbed his phone and checked his schedule. He was supposed to inspect it at nine am, and it was currently eight, which gave him just enough time for breakfast, assuming no one was waiting to ambush him about anything.

He pulled on his trousers and then staggered as Monroe nuzzled his leg, knocking him off balance.

"Hey, Buddy," Bob gave up on his shirt for a moment, reaching down to scratch the big cat's ears. "You're ready for breakfast, huh?"

Monroe ratcheted up the volume of his purr, indicating that he was indeed ready for breakfast. Or that he enjoyed the ear scritches. Bob, as always, chose to believe that Monroe understood exactly what he was saying. "Kitty cat is sohungry," he murmured, "just wasting away."

He pulled a shirt over his head and tucked it in. Monroe was sitting down, tail gently swishing, as he watched his human-servant dress for the day, well aware that the next step involved going to the tavern for breakfast.

Bob pushed his mana through the pattern for a portal and fell through it as it appeared at his feet. He landed in the far corner of the tavern near what he mentally claimed as 'his' table and glanced around furtively. He knew that he was a creature of habit. He liked his life to be ordered and organized, with his meals at regular intervals, a set time for exercise, and a good night's sleep.

Thayland hadn't been good to him in that regard, as events constantly pulled him in different directions.

Still, people had recognized that Bob liked to eat breakfast at the same table, and the same time, every day, which meant that they knew when and where to find him. Fortunately, no one seemed to be waiting to ambush him this morning, so he headed to the counter and retrieved a bowl of raisin bran, a glass of orange juice for himself, and a serving bowl filled with fish for Monroe.

He returned to his table and placed the bowls on the table, then pulled Monroe out of his inventory. Monroe was working his way through his bowl of fish before Bob had managed to sit down, and he smiled as Monroe's purr rumbled through the table.

He was almost done with his breakfast when Mike sat down in the chair next to him.

"Morning, Bob," Mike grunted as he tapped away at his tablet, not looking up.

Bob sighed. Mike being engrossed in his tablet never bode well. It meant the man was refreshing himself on a problem that he was going to dump on Bob.

"Aren't you forgetting someone?" Bob asked peevishly.

Mike looked up, confused, as he glanced around the table. His expression shifted almost immediately. "Good morning to you as well," he reached over and scrunched his hand through Monroe's ruff, the big Maine-Coone leaning into his hand without pausing his feast.

"So," Mike looked back down to his tablet, but leaving one hand engaged in kitty adoration, "I've got a couple of things I wanted to go over with you before the inspection of the new Dungeon, designated..." he trailed off as he awkwardly scrolled down the screen one-handed. "D-1MEF-5D-7E-GV-SS1," Mike read out, "or just GVSS1 for short." He shook his head, "Anyway, Nora mentioned something a week or so ago, and it's been sort of weighing on my mind," Mike began, "she pulled a couple of crates out of thin air and said she had carried them around in a video-game style inventory, and that said inventory could be created by for people by a dimensionalist."

Bob nodded. Trebor had explained the process of creating one while Bob was enlarging his own. Apparently, they were largely employed by the Nobility due to the needed proficiency of the Dimensionalist, which explained why Harv and Eli hadn't understood how he'd kept making the ropes they'd tied him up with disappear.

"She said that you have one?" Mike asked.

"I do," Bob confirmed, "when I was blown into this universe, the System integration was obviously messy, and the System provided me with an Inventory."

"So, what you're telling me is that every single person has the capacity to have an extradimensional inventory space where they can store things without anyone being able to tell what they have?" Mike asked, setting down his tablet and using his now free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"Yes?" Bob replied hesitantly, "Although I don't think that many people have one," he continued thoughtfully, "most Dimensionalists have the skills you'd need, Matrix Manipulation, Spatial Reinforcement, and Spatial Expansion, but why would you risk having that ritual cast on you when you can just use a bag."

"What risk?" Mike asked.

"Well, it's not common, as long as you know your limits," Bob hedged, "but if you push a ritual too far, or if you somehow mess up the pattern, it's possible for the ritual to fail. I mean, it's possible for any spell to fail if you mess up the pattern, but with non-ritual spells, which are much less complicated, it almost never happens, and even if you did, you'd just lose the mana you pumped into the spell." He paused, and seeing that Mike appeared to be following, continued. "When a ritual spell fails, you're not dealing with one mana or even ten mana, you're dealing with thousands of mana, so instead of a little pop or flash and losing mana, you're looking at a real backlash. From what I understand, failed rituals can damage or even kill the caster, as well as the target."

"But that's like, bigfoot sighting rare, right?" Mike asked. "You cast like two thousand regeneration rituals, and everything went fine, even when you were tired."

"I have a few advantages that most ritual casters don't, which I'd rather not discuss," Bob offered weakly, "so the chances of my fucking up are almost non-existent. The slender chance of fucking up and blowing up the caster and the target are probably a part of the reason why more people don't have an inventory. You'd only want the most competent, high leveled person to cast that ritual on you."

Mike opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. "Alright, I'll take that at face value. Can you show me your inventory?" He asked.

"Kind of?" Bob replied hesitantly, "We can portal into it if you'd like, but there's really not much to see."

"Alright," Mike agreed, "I need to see what I'm dealing with."

Bob shrugged and opened a portal to his inventory in the corner, gesturing for Mike to go first.

"At some point, you'll have to explain why you always open them so that I have to fall through rather than just walk through," Mike muttered as he stepped onto the portal and fell down through it.

Bob followed, nearly landing on Mike as the man hadn't stepped away. Mike was staring at the bed to his right. It was neatly made, save for the end where a kitty had clearly kneaded the mattress into a comfortable napping spot. Monroe didn't join Bob on his morning run and calisthenics, preferring to nap instead.

Bob reached over and flipped the switch, turning on the lights and revealing his inventory. He'd opened his portal into his bedroom, as that was where he tended to portal to.

Mike opened the door into the kitchen/living area, flicked the light switch, and walked over to the kitchen table, where he sat down with a sigh.

"You're living in here, aren't you?" Mike muttered. "Of course you are," he rubbed his temples. "This is taking introverted to an entirely new level."

Bob leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. "What's wrong with that?" Bob asked defensively. "It took a lot of work to get this place set up with an atmosphere, running water, temperature controls, etc. I basically had to treat it like a Dungeon floor."

"It's very nice," Mike said slowly, "and I have to admit I'm curious about how you managed to get electricity in here, but Bob, you do know that living in an extradimensional pocket attached to your magical matrix is a little extreme right?"

"I needed someplace to stay when I was on Earth," Bob replied. "I didn't have very much money, and I didn't want to waste it trying to get an apartment, one where I wouldn't spend any time, really." His shoulders slumped. "It just seemed easier to spend some crystals, which, unlike money, I had plenty of, to make my inventory into a liveable space. And once I did that, I realized how useful it was to have a home with me all the time."

Mike looked at him for several minutes, the silence stretching out, before he said, "The fact that no one can find you here didn't have anything to do with that decision?"

Bob shrugged. He knew the answer was yes, but it was a lot more complicated than that.

"Bob, I consider you a friend, so please take this in the spirit of friendship," Mike began slowly, "brother, you need to see a therapist. Not just for what's going on now, but for the shit you had to deal with before you got tossed here." Mike raised a hand to forestall Bob's response. "I won't push it, and there's no judgment here," he said, "I went through half a dozen therapists after my team got hit by that IED. Survivors guilt," he snorted. "Just, at some point, consider getting some help. Hiding away like this is a natural reaction given everything you've gone through and the pressures you're under, but while it might seem to help, it's not healthy." He shook his head. "That's all I have to say about that," he pulled out his tablet again and glanced at it before sighing heavily.

"Now, what can you tell me about the gods here? Some of the seventh engineers aren't particularly interested in worshipping Vi'Radia, and Huron and the acolytes at the temple are a little reluctant to offer any alternatives."

Bob left Mike mulling over a list of deities, although he warned that he only knew where to find the seven gods of light, Vi'Radia, Orin, the god of the hunt, Gaia, the goddess of the natural order, and Logos, the god of knowledge and magic.

He'd rather forgotten that the Curators would need a Divine Blessing in order to access Divine magic, as he'd gotten a free pass by virtue of his access to the System.

Walking through the portal he'd opened that led to the base of the sky scrapper, he wondered how that was going to play out. 'From what I've seen of Earth,' Trebor said, 'not terribly well amongst those who are devout in their faith. Ironically, the atheists and agnostics will have it the easiest, viewing it as a key to unlock the door to those magical schools.'

Bob didn't disagree. He'd been using Divine Magic for over a year, and he'd never really stopped to consider the Divine aspect, save for when he'd seen Huron consecrate the temple.

One of the engineers walked out of the entrance to the sky scrapper and waved a hand, beckoning him inside. "Good, you're here," the young woman was practically bouncing on her toes. "Although we've completed ten floors, only the first five are really ready," she explained as she walked alongside him to the Gateway set in the middle of the sky scrapper's ground floor. "We're still working on patching leaks and corrected the volumes being sent through the conduits on the others," she paused at the Gateway and took a ring out of her pocket. "Here you are, sir, this is the token we're using for all the Gateways in Glacier Valley."

Bob turned the ring over in his hand, inspecting it. It was gold, set with a red stone, the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor symbol of the United States Marine Corps set into the stone in gold as well. He reached out and held it to the Gateway, pushing mana into it. The Gateway opened, and Bob stepped through the aperture and onto the first floor of the Dungeon.

The young woman followed and quirked an eyebrow as he pocketed the ring. "Not going to wear it, sir?" She asked.

Bob shook his head. "I haven't earned it," he replied softly as he activated his mana sight, "now if it didn't carry the Corps emblem, I likely would, but I'm not a Marine, and I wouldn't want anyone to mistake my actions for those of a member of the Corps."

"When you reincarnate, you should enlist," she giggled, "you'd make a hell of a Marine, sir, from what the Old Guard have said about you."

"This is good work," Bob mused as he looked over the conduits carrying the mana throughout the first floor. He could see hundreds of places where the flows had been patched together and several conduits that were clearly late additions, likely attempts to even the flows. Overall, despite what must have been twice again the cost of the original rituals in modifications and repairs, the mana flowed evenly, feeding into the pools at a steady rate, while the pools themselves were consistent in-depth and density.

The pools were already producing monsters, although the aggro radius was very, very low thanks to the level differences. The monsters bore an uncanny resemblance to the giant grasshopper/praying mantis insects that he'd fought during his first wave at Holmstead. He pushed mana into the pattern of an Arcane Blast, wrapping a Barrage around it, and unleashed the bolts on a pair of unsuspecting monsters. They exploded as the blue-black bolts struck them. Another pair emerged, ten seconds later, from their respective pools.

"Good work indeed," he smiled, "keeping the respawn rate consistent can be one of the more difficult aspects of regulating the mana flowing into the pools."

"So the first floor has your approval?" She asked hopefully.

"Flying colors, Marine," Bob responded, "why don't we take a look at the others?"