Monroe

Chapter Two Hundred and Seven. Introspection, and the ramifications of an out-of-control barbie.

Bob took a deep breath and smiled. He'd spent the better part of his day off just flying south from the Hidden Dungeon, following the coast, and after a few hours, he'd found a beautiful cove. Or maybe it was an inlet? He wasn't sure, but there was only a very narrow passage to the ocean, and the entire thing was surrounded by high cliffs and a plateau above.

The cove itself had a sand beach and a dozen or so acres of forest. Bob was sitting on the sand, well above the tide line, while Monroe frolicked through the forest. The big Maine-coon had seen a squirrel and was determined to catch it.

He leaned back, letting the sun fall fully onto his face, basking in the warmth. He could hear the crash of the waves against the cliffs outside the cove, but it was faint, barely any louder than the gentle sound of the water lapping at the beach and the breeze rustling through the leaves and needles of the forest behind him. The sounds came together as a relaxing harmony as if nature itself were telling him to relax.

Bob needed to relax. He'd gotten a bit of grief from Mike for dropping the politicians on him without any warning, but it had been good-natured. Mike had agreed that Bob shouldn't have been dragged into that meeting in the first place. He may have just been saying that, but he did say it, which was good enough for Bob.

He'd spent the next two days gathering crystals and trying to discover why the coalescence rate seemed to be so low.

Trebor had provided the answer, explaining that the mana density required to coalesce higher level crystals resulted in them forming less frequently, and yes, that meant that as you progressed, it took longer and longer to gather the necessary crystals to advance. Conversely, you also possessed a much longer life span, so time wasn't an issue, generally speaking.

That did answer a question that had been nagging at the back of Bob's mind. The Noble Houses had hoarded the knowledge of Affinity Crystals and likely paths that would take advantage of them, so the Nobles really ought to have been much higher level. Nora had mentioned that her grandfather was still alive and had recently reached tier eight, which marked the first time anyone from House Wallenstair had accomplished that feat. Her father had been elevated to the head of the house so that her grandfather could reincarnate.

The second part of the equation that explained the lack of high-level Nobles were the Tides. When a tide rolled in, the tasks of fighting the monsters fell to those who had reached the tier six cap or had progressed beyond it. There simply wasn't much someone below level thirty-six could do against a level sixty monster. To be fair, people at level thirty-six without Affinity Crystals weren't that useful. Unlike Waves, which could be handled without losses, Tides never failed to claim lives, and the first to fall were those who stood at the forefront against them.

His musing was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Monroe, who flopped down across his lap in a bid for attention.

Bob struggled for a moment as he wiggled backward a bit before finally leveraging himself into a position where he no longer had to rely on his arms to support himself. He dug his fingers into Monroe's ruff and started combing them through the big cat's long, silky coat. "What do you think, buddy? Would this make a nice place to take a vacation?" Bob asked.

Monroe responded to the question by increasing the volume of his purr.

Or he was responding to the scritches. Bob chose to believe the former.

He'd decided that once he pushed into tier seven or managed to recreate his Arcane Depths without the system, whichever came first, he'd take a week-long vacation.

Today was just his mandatory weekly day off, so he'd decided to do a little hiking and then a little exploring. Nora had passed along a message from the Aussies that morning, asking if he'd be available tomorrow to help them get started with building out a Dungeon, as they'd managed to make it back to Australia, where they'd recruited some people and brought them back over.

He could take a day to help them. Monroe had liked all of the Australians, none of whom had been shy about petting the economy-sized cat, proving what he'd always heard about Australians, which was that they were easy-going animal lovers.

Jessica looked around the valley with a sigh. One of the Endless had found it while she was exploring the far coast of the continent for whatever reason, and when they'd mentioned their search for a good place to build, she'd volunteered the location.

She wasn't even sure if it could be considered a valley. There were mountains on three sides and the coast on another, but it was fifty miles from the coast to the mountains in the west, with ten miles at the coast between cliffs and over a hundred miles between the north and south mountains at the far end of the valley. It was shaped very much like a slice of pie, with the coast at the center.

It was an ideal location, really. No, what had her letting out a sigh was the veritable horde of men, women, children, sheep, and cattle that occupied the small corner of it where they'd decided to start building.

That was the problem with a barbie, she mused. It started off with the family and a few mates, but then word spread, and the family called the rest of the family, and mates called mates, and before you knew it, you had six or seven smokers going, forty or fifty kegs flowing, and a couple hundred happy drunks gathered around a couple of footy games. Inevitably there were a couple of guitars, and their owners would get together and start playing the old favorites, and everyone would sing along.

Under normal circumstances, an out-of-control barbie was one of those awesome spontaneous occurrences that you'd end up telling stories about, and you'd pray that the pictures never came to light. But when you started showing off magic and telling everyone about a brand new world, unsettled, unspoiled, where you could gain magic powers just for beating up the local wildlife...

Well, they were Australians. How much worse could the bloody wildlife get?

When family included quite a few ranchers and opal miners, she really ought to have been able to see it coming.

Agreeing to have the barbie in conjunction with the rest of her group had been the nail in the coffin. It was like having six clans of unruly dwarves, she mused. Once one of them had gotten the idea in their heads to go carve themselves out a place in a brand new land, the others hadn't been able to resist the challenge.

Jessica rubbed her temples and looked around at her group, all of whom looked both hungover and sheepish.

"I'm responsible for two hundred and eighty-six family members, eighteen mates, and four hundred and sixty-two veterans," she looked down at her tablet. "Oh, and something like sixteen hundred sheep and six sheepdogs," she added.

"Six hundred and eighteen family members," Shiela sighed, "once word started to get out that there as a barbie with free beer, cousins started rolling in, and once they heard what was happening, they called the entire extended family."

Jake snorted, "Bloody Catholics, the lot of you," he grinned, "thirty-two family members, twenty-seven mates, and a hundred and fifty cattle give or take." He shook his head, "I didn't even know Darren was rancher, but it turns out his da left it to him when he passed, and he couldn't give it up, so he runs it part-time while he tends to the pub in the evenings."

"Two hundred and eighteen guildies, although a hundred and nine of them are all camped out in the Mojave right now, waiting for someone to pop open a portal to Thayland," Danny shrugged guiltily. "Couple people uploaded some videos to our forums, and everyone went nuts, although they promised to keep it quiet. There may be a few of them who bring their significant others, but it won't be too many more."

Jessica nodded. No one talked about it, but Danny had been orphaned at a young age and placed into the foster system. She'd come out alright and gotten a full ride to college, but she tended to duck out or avoid the family events she was invited to. She was part of a guild called 'The Orphans' that spanned several MMOs and acted as a combination safe space and support group. It wasn't surprising that she'd invited some of her guildmates, in some ways, she was even closer to them than she was to the D&D group.

"Sixty-eight family members, nine mates, and a veritable shed full of semi-feral barn cats that uncle Billy just couldn't leave behind," Bruce offered.

"One hundred and four family members, six mates, and twenty-eight hundred sheep give or take a dozen," Blue finished the tally.

Jessica looked at him skeptically for a moment.

"I was one of the only kids to finish school and the first one to ever to go college," he grumbled defensively, "we're ranchers and bushman. I only went to school so that I could become a veterinarian, the bloody federal bastards won't let us buy some of the meds without a license, and the prats in town are so up themselves that they charge us a fortune for shite that ought to be dirt cheap."

Jessica nodded, raising a hand in peaceful surrender. The whole group had been subjected to Derrick's occasional rants about the way his family and bushmen, in general, were treated.

"So I've got eighteen hundred and forty-eight people, likely a few more due to show when the rest of The Orphans arrive, with seventeen hundred and thirty-nine currently present, about forty-four hundred sheep, a dozen sheepdogs, and a couple of dozen cats," Jessica began. "Out of that, I have four hundred and sixty-two veterans who need a good solid reincarnation, and from what I saw as they came through the portal, I'd say probably another hundred and fifty grandparents who aren't looking too sprightly."

"Probably want to figure for six hundred reincarnations just to be safe," Blue offered, "figure there are probably a few old-timers who look alright but are just hiding the fact that they're more than a little crook, yeah?"

Jessica winced but nodded. "That's a solid sixty thousand mana crystals right there," she sighed. "Figure on giving everyone enough crystals to hit level five, so they can fool around with magic."

"Won't that hurt more than help?" Blue asked, "I mean, it'll be harder for them to kill monsters for crystals if their skills are lower than their levels, rule three, right?"

"We have to balance the tedium of grinding out skill levels on lower level monsters against the fact that we brought nearly two thousand people to a place without a Dungeon for them to delve," Jessica argued, looking around the group.

"Bob's over today, though, right? He can knock out at least the first level of the Dungeon, and we can start cycling everyone through, getting them to farm up enough crystals to take level one, maybe a few extra to help grow some food, which will become an issue the day after tomorrow," Bruce said.

"Yeah, but I'm not sure how big of a floor he can do in one day," Blue said doubtfully, "I know he's tier six and all, but I don't think I could carve out enough for more than fifteen people, give or take a few."

"Also, no one talked about it, but what are we going to do with the kids?" Danny asked.

Jessica frowned. Danny had a point; there were a couple of dozen babies and toddlers, and then another fifty or sixty kids between four and twelve, with another fifty or so teenagers who hadn't quite hit adulthood yet, not that their age had stopped them from drinking at the barbie.

"We never really asked, but there has to be some sort of age requirement for the System to kick in, right?" Sheila shook her head, "I can't imagine you'd want six-year-olds tossing fireballs around."

"Let's put the issue of the kids aside for now," Jessica suggested, "we aren't going to send them into the Dungeon we haven't built yet to beat up monsters with sticks, and we don't have spare crystals laying around for them to use to level up with, so it's a bit of a moot point, yeah?"

"Instead, let's focus on what we need going forward now that we've relocated a small town to Thayland. How many crystals do we have after we kept that portal open last night?" She asked.

After a few moments of digging and counting, the total came to what would have been a respectable eight thousand. If it were just the six of them and a few dozen mates, that would have been fine, but with nearly two thousand people, it wasn't anywhere near enough.

"Derrick, how many crystals would you need to get a couple of fields planted, grown, and harvested?"

Blue let out a breath thoughtfully. "Figure fresh veg is the right choice," he muttered to himself, "a pound per person, so call it a ton..." He shook his head. "Two thousand crystals should do, and while it won't take me long to cast the rituals, it takes the plants about an hour mature, and then you're going to need everyone to help harvest it all."

"That'll get us two thousand pounds of veg?" Jessica asked in surprise.

"Probably more?" Blue hedged, "I haven't ever used that ritual, although I have the spells."

"Soonest started then," Jessica started counting out the crystals, "I'm sure you'll get a quite a crowd when you cast the ritual."

"More than you know," he replied with a grin. "I think almost half my family want to become druids of some flavor or another. We're all pretty proud of being bushmen, and raising our animals and crops is part of our heritage, yeah?"

Sheila hugged him, leaving her arm around him.

Jessica grinned, not missing the casual intimacy of the gesture. She was glad they'd gotten together.

"Sounds like we have a plan," she said as she stood up and dusted off her pants. "Now we're just waiting for Bob."