Monroe

Chapter Three Hundred and Four. Not ok.

"That's a lot of green," Amanda murmured.

The decision to continue on to the planet had been made, and they'd spent six weeks delving. During that time, the groups had melded together. While they were still working with rebuilt paths and affinities that weren't always perfectly ideal, they'd started to work together.

Everyone had agreed to join Bob on the thirty-eighth floor, where they'd started off holding three spawn points, one with each group, and the another with Jake. Each group would clear their monsters, then focus down the ones that Jake was holding off. The process of both groups of damage dealers working together had taken a week or so to come together, but once it had, the entire dynamic shifted. When a beacon pulled a group of monsters off their spawn point, the entire group of damage dealers would obliterate the monsters in two seconds. They would then shift to the other beacon, and then to Jake. They were clearing the spawns quickly enough that both Elli and Wayna, acting as off beacons, started holding another, allowing them clear four spawn points. After another week, they became confident enough to hold a spawn point each, and the combined groups found themselves clearing five spawn points every ten seconds, which was precisely how long it took for the monsters to respawn.

Doubling their efficiency had doubled the amount of mana crystals they found, which eased some of the stress they'd all been feeling. Working so closely together, relying on each other, had brought them together as a group. Bailli, Erick, and Wayna hadn't been close to any of the others from Earth, but as the fought together, barriers started to come down. Dave had mentioned that delving was a fantastic team building exercise, and that it was something they should lean on in their future endeavors. Bob was not sure what those future endeavors would be, but he had to acknowledge how effective it had been.

They were only a few hours away from the planet now, and the Freedom's sensors had put together a much more detailed image of the planet.

It was Earth-like in that over sixty-percent of the planet was covered in water. There were very small ice caps at the poles, and four continents, three of which stradled the equator, with a fourth barely breaching it, the majority of it's landmass twenty to thirty degrees south. There were snow capped mountains on all four continents, although the fourth had the largest concentration of them. The remainder of the landmasses were a veritable ocean of green, ranging in shade from the lightest turquoise, to the deepest emerald.

Bob tapped his armband and the view shifted, showing a the fourth landmass more closely. "I don't see any indicators that there is a civilization down there, although it's hard to tell at this distance."

"Definitely no large cities," Jack agreed, tapping his own armband, causing the image to zoom in either further, focusing in on a large river and moving along it from it's source in the mountains at the center of the continent as they flowed to the north. "Or at least none that follow the human pattern of building civilizations along waterways."

"We'll get a better view once we're in orbit," Dave added, looking an image hovering above his own armband.

"Once we're in orbit, we'll deploy drones," Mike replied.

Bob had been surprised when Mike and oddly, Harv, had brought a couple of pallets loaded with tiny, palm sized drones.

He'd been even more surprised when he found out just how capable the little things were. They could fly at up to thirteen thousand feet above sea level, moving at twenty-five miles an hour, all while recording four-k video with a forty-eight mega-pixel camera. Scouting the landmass was going to be a lot easier than he'd thought.

Harv had apparently found an electronics store while he'd been taking Carson for walkies during Elli's time spent visiting the various schools for martial arts around L.A., and had become interested in the drone on display. Not lacking in wealth, he'd picked one up out of curiosity, and it had developed into a hobby, one that he'd found he shared with Mike.

"Just a couple more hours," Bob told Monroe, scratching behind the big cat's ears.

Monroe had settled on a tiger sized form for the time spent on the Freedom, which meant Bob could still pick him up and carry him across his shoulders, at least when he was in his tier seven form. Sure, there was a bit of kitty overhang on each side, but Monroe was willing to graciously overlook his human's failings in exchange for not having to suffer the indignity of walking.

"We'll need to the atmosphere," Amanda sighed. "I still think we should have picked up some better equipment."

"Babe, our apartment was pretty full already," Dave said, reaching out to squeeze her hand. "While it would be nice to have the gear to measure everything down to tiniest amount, we really just need know if the atmosphere has anything harmful in it, and if we'll be able to breathe."

"I know, I just want to geek out," Amanda looked up, "it's a whole new planet in another dimension! Imagine the papers we can write."

"Oh no," Jessica said in mock dismay. "Crikey! She's gone full research mode," the aussie lowered her voice to a mock whisper, "it's a rare treat to see this beauty in her natural environment," she intoned, depending her voice. "let's see if we can't get a bit closer."

"Man, can you imagine how much Steve Irwin would have just loved all of this?" Mike mused.

"Strewth," Jessica nodded. "We make fun of him a bit, but he was probably the best bloke we could have asked for to represent Australia to the world."

"Did his kids stay awake?" Dave asked. "I know they were working on making sure all of the Australian wild life they could find made it over, but I hadn't heard if they went into stasis or kept delving."

"Still delving, I reckon," Jessica replied. "I know they hit the tier cap and were running around Earth grabbing everything they could their system enhanced hands on. There's a youtube video out there where his daughter is tossing great whites into a tank like they were minnows."

"That does circle around nicely to the point that we're going to need to be very careful down there," Bob interjected. "Assuming we can breathe, we can't take anything for granted. Just because something looks similar to what we have on Earth doesn't mean it will be. We've all had over twenty years to get used to our natural environments so we're going to need to fight against becoming complacent."

"I agree, although I think it'll be a lot closer to Earth than not," Amanda said. "If this universe was integrated at the same time that Thayland was, then the course for the evolution of various species has been set. Much like Thayland, I expect we'll find variations, but I think we'll find that trees are still trees."

"Get if off me!" Dave yelled as he strained ineffectually to dislodge the vine that wrapped around his leg.

The first hint that something wasn't right was Monroe's utter refusal to leave his perch on Bob's shoulders.

The second had been when the grassland they'd chosen to appear upon had suddenly shifted, the long grass twisting together to form thick vines had moved much more quickly than vegetation had any right to, wrapping itself around what Dave had insisted was the 'Away Team.'

Bob had immediately taken flight, which had resulted in only a small vine tethering him to the ground a few feet beneath him, but the others weren't so lucky.

"Dave, blast the damn thing off!" He shouted.

Dave blinked, and then pointed a hand at the vine, a brilliant beam of flame struck the vine, but it only charred it.

"It's not working!" Dave replied.

Bob took in the scene with a quick glance. All six of them were entagled, and he didn't want to see what would happen once they were completely disabled.

"Lizard time!" he yelled, and gritted his teeth in anticipation.

He didn't have to wait very long, as Dave directed his fire blast at him, targeting the spot just above where the vine had grasped his calf.

Bob did not enjoy the feeling of having his leg burned off. As soon as the lower half of his leg came loose, he shot into the air, casting a quick Anima Blast on his leg, rushing over to Jack who had taken two seconds to pull out his machete, and hack off his leg just above the knee. Grabbing him before he could fall to the ground, where he'd no doubt be re-entangled, Bob flew up, splitting his casting by summoning out a huge pterodactyl, upon which he dumped the injured man, and hitting him with an Anima Blast.

Wayna and Eddi ended up being the worst off, Eddi having summoned his T-Rex to bite his leg off, and Wayna shifting to her the form of a massive eagle, biting off both of her own feet to free herself. Dave had hesistated a moment before blowing Amanda's leg off, but hadn't paused at all in burning off his own.

"Up, up, get us up!" Dave shouted.

"I was wrong!" Amanda mumbled, "the grass is not like the grass on Earth or Thayland."

"Eddi, can you summon out a bird of your own?" Bob asked through clenched teeth. "I can't keep this up while I'm opening a portal."

"On it," Eddi replied grimly, and a much larger copy of Bob's pterrodactyl appeared next to them. Using his flight spell, Bob ferried everyone over, dismissed his mana-infused creature, let go of his flight spell, and began casting the Portal that would take them back to the safety of the Freedom.

In hindsight they should have known something was wrong. They'd flown their drones over the continent, following the rivers, but they hadn't seen anything to suggest that there were any intelligent species. What they should have noticed was the lack of wildlife.

They'd been able to spot the entrance to a Dungeon from the air, and after confirming the air was breathable, although with a bit more co than they were used to, they'd headed to down to check it out.

That's when the grass had attacked them.

While Bob was arguably a master of the regeneration ritual given the number of times he'd cast it, Erick wasn't quite as practiced. Still it only took twenty minutes before they were seated around the table in the Garden, glaring at the image of the planet beneath them.

"So, that happened," Dave said sheepishly.

"How strong is your fire blast?" Bob asked.

"Not quite as strong as Bailli's lightning blast," Dave admitted, "right around twelve fifty with another hundred vicious."

"I don't think the vines took any damage," Wayna volunteered.

"Let's think about that for a moment," Amanda said. "We know we can kill level sixty monsters. What level is the monster those vines are attached to that it didn't take damage?"

"Stupidly high," Bob replied as he tapped his armband. He had a suspicion he wanted to confirm. The image of the planet shifted, moving back to the continent they'd just fled, and then the visual image disappeared, shifting to a flat green glow.

"I had thought," he began grimly, "that this was just how the sensors were displaying the mana on the planet. A mostly even coating, with a few hot spots." He shook his head. "I think I was wrong. I think that what we're seeing is the mana signature of a single, massive being."

"You think all the plants are part of the same creature?" Dave asked.

"There's precedent," Jessica replied. "We've got seagrass that spreads over a hundred miles, all technically part of the same plant."

"That forest in Fishlake National Park," Dave snapped his fingers. "Thousands of trees, but they're all actually the same tree growing out of one root structure."

"Exactly," Bob nodded. "We know that the System encourages the leap from sentience to sapience. And it's part of natural plant growth to absorb materials."

"You're thinking a carnivorous plant killed a monster and ate it's mana crystal," Eddi said.

"I'm thinking something like that happened quite a lot. Enough for the plant to level up, tier up, and make the jump to sapience," Bob replied. "Give it a few million years of eating monsters, and how big would it be? Big enough to cover a mountain? A continent? Maybe an entire planet?"

"Fuck," Elli said eloquently.

"We're not parking the Freedom down there, that's for sure," Jack added.

"The next planet out, it's still in the goldilocks zone, right?" Mike asked.

"It is, although it's likely to be quite a bit colder than Thayland," Bob replied.

"I'm good with cold," Wayna said. "Plants don't like cold."

"Well, the good news is that in the process of catching up to this planet, we're now a lot closer to the other one. Maybe two and a half weeks?" Amanda said, shifting the image over the table to that of the solar system.

What the could see of the fifth planet indicated that there was definitely a lot of ice or snow. There might have been a thin band of green along the equator, but it was hard to tell. There was definitely blue and white, which suggested liquid water, which meant the temperature was likely above freezing somewhere on the planet.

"About that," Bob agreed. "Call it another seventy-five thousand crystals to get there. Hopefully we'll be able to set down there, even if it isn't our final destination."

"I kind of feel like we should leave some sort of warning here, yeah?" Jessica said. "Something to let anyone else who shows up know that unless you super keen to be eaten by a tentacle monster, keep on moving."

"We could leave a slab of rock with a story board carved into it," Jack mused. "Sort of a warning mural that we can leave in orbit."

"Low tech, but it has the advantage of not running out of power," Dave nodded.

"Warning label it is," Bob agreed. "Hopefully that next species that visits not only notices it, but also employs either sight or touch to read the label, and is able to understand it."

"Hope they don't get confused because they have tentacles of their own, and mistake it for a diner," Mike added.

Bob shook his head. "I'm going to go grind some nice, easy to kill monsters. We'll plan to head out in four hours, and if there's a sign you need me to portal into orbit, I'll do that before we leave."