Monroe

Chapter Three Hundred and Thirteen. Cold.

Bob had never been one to dismiss the work of others. While he'd never struggled to learn, he wasn't gifted, so like everything else he'd had to work hard to learn.

That said, the only time he'd considered just what went into building a house was when he'd been building his cabin above Murmuring Falls, and he'd relied on magic for a lot of it.

Jack had spent years as a project manager, and he hadn't wasted that time. He'd become familiar with every aspect of building, and while he wasn't good at framing, hanging sheetrock, punchout, or applying stucco, it was because he didn't have any practice. He knew how it was supposed to be done as well as anyone, and he'd surprised everyone by insisting that they build everything to code.

"The building codes exist for a reason," Jack explained. "Yeah, there's a lot of beaurocratic bullshit behind some of them, but by and large they were written because they represent the safest way to build."

The discussion had arisen when Bob complied with Dave's request to include a conduit for wiring inside the stone blocks he was providing for constructing their house, including outlet points.

"At some point, you may need to replace or repair the cables," Jack continued. "Maybe we'll come up with some sort of new mana-powered replacement for electricity, and it will need a new transport. Who knows. Having ready access to the wiring just makes everything easier."

"We were hoping to just be able to paint the walls," Dave replied, "if we run conduit, we'll have to have something covering them." He shook his head, "Amanda would go nuts if we had a conduit bolted to the wall. She's not into the industrial aesthetic."

Jack looked at him flatly for a moment. "Do you know why we have studs and drywall on exterior facing walls?"

"So it looks nice?" Dave replied.

Jack shook his head. "I love you, I really do," he grinned, "but sometimes I forget that you've never needed to know, well, anything outside of IT. Stone is actually a very poor insulator. It absorbs heat and cold really well, which means that while it makes a great building material, being strong, hard, and heavy, without insulation you'll freeze in the winter. Remember, we're trying to build these with an eye towards using traditional methods, without relying too heavily on magic."

Bob nodded. While Harv had spent days finishing the foundations of the village, he'd been working with the rest of the group to dig out a small lake on the far side of the river. Once Harv had finished, he'd been redirected to the new reservoir.

He was pretty sure that Harv was sick and tired of transmuting dirt to stone.

The end result was that they had a scalable hydroelectric dam, and while they could have used some industrial grade equipment, they'd managed to get everything working. It wasn't anywhere near as efficient as it could have been, but one of the downsides of magic was that it was only as precise as your mana manipulation.

The System helped, but it appeared to correlate with the users ability to manipulate mana. If you didn't have mana manipulation, the tolerances on a set of pipes you summoned, for example, were barely water tight. It wasn't something he'd considered before, but it meant that while converting mana crystals in raw materials was possible, micro circuitry wasn't in the cards.

That discovery had made the repair spell even more important than he'd thought. Much like healing, it worked by returning the object to optimal condition, although unlike with healing it wasn't based off the users matrix. His current theory was that with dark matter permeating everything, the System had an imprint of the object that it could use to reconstruct it. Regardless of the exact method, which Bob had told Trebor to remind him to investigate later, keeping their devices working was critical, as they wouldn't be able to make any new ones.

He was pulled from his thoughts as Jack finished explaining to Dave the changes that needed to be made to his new house.

"Assuming Bob can do his crazy bullshit thing and ritual cast for the whole day, we can everything built by tomorrow night," Jack said.

"I can," Bob replied.

"Again, crazy bullshit," Jack grumbled. "Finishing everything out will take another two days, at which point we can maybe think about traveling to check out another Dungeon."

Everyone wanted to try another Dungeon. The working theory was that picking up quest rewards from as many Dungeons as possible should be their goal before they reincarnated, as travel would be more difficult, and more dangerous.

It was one of the reasons he would have preferred to hold off on building their new home, but his protests that it was inefficient had fallen on the deaf ears of his friends who wanted to live in houses again.

Given that they'd be living out of tents on their whirlwind tour of the planet, he'd had a hard time understanding, but hadn't wanted to argue the point. It didn't really matter, in the long run, so he'd rolled with it.

It was odd, in a way. Before he'd been blown to Thayland, he would have felt compelled to keep arguing, but now he was able to let it go. His friends comfort was more important that being technically right.

"Have you figured out if you'll even be able to wear that armor when you reincarnate?" Bob asked.

Jack's Magma Infused Heavy Platemail was aptly named. It was heavy, tipping the scales at almost three hundred pounds.

Jack grimaced. "Yes, but not comfortably until I'm back up to level ten or so," he replied.

Bob nodded. The rewards from the Dungeon Quests appeared to be based on tier. Jack was planning to allocate his attributes as a balanced warrior, evenly splitting them between Strength, Coordination, and Endurance. If he focused on Strength and Endurance, he'd be able to wear the armor before he took his path, but adding Coordination delayed that a bit.

"We should definitely head north," Dave said eagerly. "If we can find a glacier themed Dungeon, we can score some Ice themed weapons, which would make delving our Dungeon a lot easier."

It ended up taking six days to get everything finished up. Superhuman strength and magic went a long ways, as did megalithic construction with stone blocks, but inexperience required more than a few do-overs.

Still, they had their ten houses built.

Looking over the village, Bob could see what it could become. The broad streets were more like boulevards, with a median that would, eventually, offer shade trees. At the moment the entire area was bare stone, with plenty of grates leading down into the storm drains.

They'd gotten a bit of rain two nights before, and the system had worked as promised, with no standing water in the village when they awoke.

His armband pinged. It was Amanda, letting him know that everyone was ready to head out.

Bob looked over at what would become the Adventurers Guild, and saw that the entire crew had gathered.

As he drifted down, he considered the ramifications of the flight spell. His argument that it would be essential in space still held, although he hadn't needed to go outside the ship. Being able to move in three dimensions was just convenient. Granted, he missed being able to fly quickly, but even just the first few levels of the spell were worth it.

"Everyone have their cold weather gear?" Bob asked as he landed.

The group nodded, with the exception of Wayna, who responded by shifting into a polar bear.

"That works," Bob acknowledged. "I know where we're going from an arial perspective, so Erick is going to be responsible for keeping every aloft while we portal," he began, nodding to the priest of Slyph. "There is a Dungeon more or less at the pole, so I'd recommend everyone switch to the cold weather gear you said you had, because it's going to be twenty to forty below up there. It's going to take us fourteen hours to travel the ten thousand miles between here and there, so settle in for a long trip."

"Everyone stay steady," Erick said as he cast his spell, and the group rose a few inches off the ground. "I've got us in a thirty-six foot sphere. I'm going to have to effect over time the spell so it persists when I pass through the portal, which means we'll have ten seconds to get through each portal. I'll need a break every half hour or so."

"For how long?" Bob asked.

"Five, ten minutes," Erick replied. "I'll need about three to top off my mana pool, but I'll need a few more to relax and shake of the tension of continually casting and draining my mana pool."

"Call it seventeen hours then," Bob said, opening the first portal. "Let's get to work."

It took eighteen hours, and everyone was tired of hustling through portals. The reduction in the multipliers from the spell schools and the spells themselves meant that he was only covering a bit over a thousand feet per spell, which meant he'd had to cast the portal spell over fifty thousand times.

The overcharge skill, which would allow him to push more mana into a spell for a slightly increased effect, was an immediate priority. The cost reduction of his portal spell didn't really matter in this application, although it did take effect. The fact was that one unit of mana, or point fifty-one units of mana were effectively the same when he wasn't utilizing all of his mana regeneration. But if he could over charge, he could overcharge with thirty units of mana, the cost reduction bringing it down to fifteen. Going thirty percent further with each portal would significantly reduce transit times.

"Fuck its cold," Mike said. "I thought the glacier was bad."

"Strewth, I'm freezing," Jessica mumbled as she moved closer to Bob. "Clearly, we will need to huddle together to share body heat."

"All our tents are enchanted," Bob replied, raising his voice to be heard over the wind that was whipping across the ice, "while it isn't pleasant out here, we should be fine."

"Let's get some sleep before we delve the Dungeon," Amanda suggested. "I'm tired, and cold. Better to tackle it in the morning when we're fresh and rested."

Camping on the ice should have been challenging, but magic made it trivial. Bob setup his cot, or rather his stretcher, as Jessica insisted that if he was sleeping in a swag, he needed to use the proper terminology for the whole package, with the swag on top, and climbed in. He would have struggled to get out of his cold weather gear in the small space had he not had the ability to move the outfit directly to his inventory. Instead, he had to struggle with Monroe, who took up more than his fair share of the limited space.

While the enormous Maine-coon loved the snow, he was not interested in sleeping outside, not when he had a warm, comfortable servant to nap on.

It took some wiggling, but eventually they were both comfortable, and Bob fell asleep to the soothing rumble of Monroe's purr.

Upon waking, Bob decided to portal into his inventory for his morning ablutions. He was not interested in exposing any more of his skin than necessary to the icy cold winds.

He knew he could have simply stayed in his inventory through the night, but that would have cut him from the group. He had a few ideas about establishing a pair of portals using persistent effect to allow for two way communication, but he hadn't tested it yet.

Climbing out of his swag, he returned it to his inventory and began the process of portaling people into his inventory for their own morning rituals. While everyone shits, no one wanted to do so outside when it was twenty-three below with a twenty degree windchill.

It took an hour and a half for everyone to get ready, but finally they marched forward and Bob touched the glowing arch.

Dungeon 801972G610N497ISS6PM4D.

Capacity 31%

Estimated time until overflow 169 solar cycles.

User tier seven, semi-evolved. User grouped with eleven other sapient beings, tier six.

Dungeon set to Tier Eight, Level Thirty-Eight.

New Quest!

An Eire monitoring station has been over run by Feral Winter Minks! If left unchecked they will destroy the station with its valuable equipment, leaving the Eire blind to conditions at the pole!

Destroy ten of these minks to receive a reward!

Discover where the minks are coming from to receive a reward!

Discover why the minks are attacking the station to receive a reward!

Stop the minks from over running the station to receive a reward!

New Quest!

You are the first user to enter this Dungeon!

Clear this Dungeon to receive a reward!

(All Quest goals must be completed during the user's first entry)

Bob dismissed the notifications and stepped forward to allow the others room to enter, taking in his surroundings.

He was in a canyon made of ice. He assumed it was a canyon, as there was light coming from up above, although the way the ice was angled prevented him from seeing the sky.

It was also cold. There wasn't any wind, but it still felt even colder than it had been outside the Dungeon.

The canyon was thirty feet wide, and the walls stretched up to fifty feet or so before angling over.

"Feral Winter Minks, eh?" Mike said as he moved in front of Bob, taking his place in the formation.

"I'm guessing they're going to be a bit larger than what we'd normally expect," Jack said dryly.

"Reckon they're going to be doing the ambush thing, like the Magma Elementals?" Jessica asked.

"I'd rather not get jumped by anything," Amanda shuddered. She'd become much more cautious after having been enveloped by an Magma Elemental during their first trip through the Dungeon back at their base.

"If they're attuned to cold aspected mana, I'll need to rework my mana sight spell, again," Bob warned his friends. "It'll take me a few minutes, I think."

"You should put together some rules for delving an unknown Dungeon for the first time," Eddi suggested.

"Pretty sure this falls under rule two," Bob muttered as he began to weave the threads of mana. He'd altered the spell with fire aspected mana often enough, but cold aspected mana behaved a bit differently. It took almost ten minutes for him to alter the spell, and while it was a third of the time it had taken him to initially modify the spell to detect fire aspected mana, it was twice what it took him to do so now.

Looking around, Bob could see that the Dungeon was rich in cold aspected mana. He couldn't see any particularly cold spots, so he summoned Jake in his Magma-Raptor form, and the group headed deeper into the Dungeon.