Monroe

Chapter Two Hundred and Two. A lot can happen in two weeks.

Bob shook his head as he looked out over Glacier Valley. All forty skyscrapers were completed, and while he hadn't talked to Mike yet, he suspected that the Dungeons were complete as well. The entire valley seemed to seethe with uniformed men and women.

It had been two weeks since he'd last visited. He'd managed to drive the Hidden Dungeon down to the thirty-second floor, and Eddi and the Endless Council were already in residence. They had reincarnated in Holmstead the day before, each of them choosing to become a paragon, citing a need for rapid advancement. Now, they were firmly ensconced in the Hidden Dungeon, delving long hours to level back up.

As it turned out, they'd simply used existing mana crystals to rush to level one, where they took the Summoning School, and then to level two, where they took the Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell, using an Affinity Crystal to boost the maximum level of the spell. Eddi had said that they expected to have to remain level two as they leveled their spell up, which might take a week. He'd been ecstatic as he reported that the Affinity Crystal had worked as expected at tier six, boosting the maximum level of the spell by twelve.

Bob's stumbling block was the sixty-four thousand mana crystals he'd need to push from level thirty-six to level thirty-seven. He didn't have enough data to drill down the exact coalescence rate for his Arcane Depths, but from what little he did have, it looked like it was going to take five hundred and fifty days of delving, eight hours a day, to come up with crystals. He might need to dedicate a few extra hours here and there in order to make sure he made it.

He wouldn't call it a compulsion, but given Trebor's explanation of the looming System update, he wanted to be tier seven before it landed. He had a feeling that when the System integrated Earth, he was going to be blamed. It was that same sinking feeling he'd had so often on Earth when he was about to get fucked over, and he'd learned through painful experience to trust his instincts. So, he was headed for tier seven.

He was also headed to space. With his Arcane Depths, the safest place in the universe to be was in hard vacuum, where the lack of gravity made it difficult for mana to pool and condense to the point where monsters could spawn. Magic fixed every problem when it came to space travel, and Bob had spent half an hour each night sketching out ideas for his future ship. The specific details would have to wait until he had the requisite Mana Manipulation and Mana Tracing skills. Ultimately, switching to a space-based existence was the panacea solution to avoiding people, and likely governments, who were interested in him for reasons that could be construed as less than friendly. He already knew how to create Gateways, and Trebor had confirmed that he could specify which matrices could enter his gate. This would allow him to have his friends visit without worrying about anyone else catching a ride.

Bob opened a portal at his feet and fell through it. He wanted to talk to Mike for a few minutes, and breakfast seemed to be the right time to catch him.

"Could you repeat the number, please?" Kellan's voice was smooth, almost lazy.

"One million nine-hundred and sixty-eight thousand, four hundred and twelve, Your Majesty," Nora repeated her voice only quavering once.

"And to confirm, this number represents ten percent of the total mana crystals harvested from Glacier Valley this month?" Kellan asked languidly.

He was not, in point of fact, feeling languid at all. The taxes gathered from the Dungeon in Harbordeep, taken as an average over the year, rarely broke one million crystals each month, although you could track how near you were to a tide by the degree of activity. Nora had reported that the Dungeon beneath the Adventurers Guild in Glacier Valley was responsible for the vast majority of the crystals gathered so far. In addition, forty other Dungeons had been constructed, and though they weren't as deep, they were full.

The refugees were nothing, apparently, if not industrious.

If he were to extrapolate the taxes from all forty of those Dungeons once they were completed, he would receive upwards of seventy million mana crystals each month. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a long, deep breath, then released it slowly. Kellan fought down the urge to do... something. His draconic nature was screaming at him to lay claim to the valley and its inhabitants.

He opened his eyes again. "Lovely," he murmured, drawing the word out. "How many crystals has House Wallenstair claimed for their stewardship?"

"None?" Nora replied hesitantly. "I haven't done anything," she confessed, "They didn't need my help with the monster wave, and I don't know enough about construction to be of any use with their skyscrapers."

"Not," she sighed, "that they needed any help. It only took them three days to build all forty of them."

"They certainly seem driven," Kellan noted, leading the girl to say more.

"Every single one of them," Nora agreed. "I don't know if I'd have the patience to sit at level zero, hitting level one monsters with a stick for eight hours a day, every day, but they do."

"Aren't they advancing?" Kellan asked.

"As they open up more slots on the lower levels, they are," Nora replied, "but it takes time to build out the Dungeons, even with all those curators, so there are thousands of men rotating through the first floor, every hour of the day, every day of the week."

Kellan nodded. He'd long ago left the management of the Dungeon to the Guild, but it was perhaps time to either change that or, better yet, claw a few new requirements in the Guild's charter.

The rapid exodus of the common citizens from Harbordeep had been a bell tolling out its warning that something was deeply wrong in not only Harbordeep but Greenwold itself. He'd investigated and found that it wasn't only his Noble houses that were beggaring his citizens, but that the Guild in Harbordeep, which ought to have been the envy of the Kingdom, was anything but. Over the past few decades, fees had risen on all fronts for those wishing to delve the Dungeon in Harbordeep, reaching the point where the common citizen couldn't hope to advance more than a level every few years, and that was if they were part of a large, supportive family.

"Very well, I expect to see magnificent things from Glacier Valley," Kellan said after his moment of consideration. "Moving forward, I would like you to collect an additional tax of one-tenth of one percent for the coffers of House Wallenstair."

Nora nodded, her eyes wide.

"Before you return to your duties, Ericka has a letter for you to deliver to Robert Whitman. Please see her on your way out," Kellan waved a hand dismissively, watching as the girl bowed deeply, with perfect form, before backing out of the audience chamber.

Between Rogard, who was as self-effacing as he was diligent, and Nora, House Wallenstair was in its ascendancy.

Mike nodded to Bob as the man sat, producing Monroe and pouring the big cat onto the table, resulting in a sulking pool of fluff.

"Good morning, Bob," he said cheerfully, "and good morning to you too, Monroe," he reached out and delivered a careful chin rub.

"Mike," Bob replied with a nod, waving towards Talima, who caught sight of them and waved back.

Mike caught sight of the blackened crater on Bob's armor.

"What the hell happened there?" he asked, pointing at the arm.

Bob shrugged awkwardly and managed to look sheepish. "I was wiring up a generator to an electrical panel," he grimaced, "it turns out that despite reading the instructions very carefully, I am not a good electrician."

Mike grinned. "I bet that stung," he chuckled.

Bob sighed and discreetly gestured towards Monroe. "It wasn't so much that it hurt that badly, but rather that I had Monroe on my shoulders at the time," Bob shook his head. "All of his fur was standing straight out," he grumbled, "which did not make for a happy kitty cat. He's still sulking."

Mike formed a mental image of the very dignified Monroe with his fluffy coat poofed out and fought back a laugh. The big cat was looking at him through slitted eyes, and Mike wasn't entirely sure that Monroe wouldn't be aware that he was being laughed at.

"That's," Mike coughed, "unfortunate."

"Lesson learned," Bob reached out and started petting his cat.

"So I wanted to go over the progress we've made in the past couple of weeks," Mike pulled out his tablet and glanced at the number to confirm them. "We reached one hundred thousand active duty service personnel in Glacier Valley as of yesterday evening. That's not quite a third of the total operating capacity of the Dungeons underneath the skyscrapers once they're finished, but it's keeping us at capacity for the moment. Going forward, I've been informed that reservists are being called up, allowing us to keep our active-duty forces deployed for a while longer."

Bob nodded his eyes on Monroe, who had begun to purr begrudgingly

"The President and Vice President will be meeting with the leadership of Canada, Mexico, The United Kingdom, and Australia this week," Mike continued, "your presence has been requested."

Bob's response was pretty well in line with what Mike had expected. He'd tried to explain that this was not a good idea, but while SecDef was a powerful voice, he was only one, and he'd been drowned out.

"Why?" Bob asked with a frown. "There's nothing I can do to prove that Magic exists that they can't get from someone else."

Mike fought back a sigh. He'd known this was going to be a bit of a battle. "They want to hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were," Mike explained. "You were the person that arrived here first, and you remain our primary source of intelligence about not only the System but the upcoming integration of Earth. Their line of thinking is that having you present will allow everyone to ask questions and receive answers in real-time without having to wait. These are very important men and women, with schedules that dictate every aspect of their day down to the minute, including how long they normally spend on the shitter, and to be honest, they value their time more than they value yours."

Bob closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as he continued to pet Monroe. Mike knew this was part of the man's coping mechanism, so he waited patiently.

"When?" Bob asked quietly, his eyes still closed.

"Three days from now, they're trying to keep the meeting quiet, so of course they're meeting in the White House because no one ever notices who is coming and going at that place," Mike grumbled.

"Are we going to bring them back to Thayland so they can see their status screens?" Bob asked, his eyes still closed as he scratched Monroe's ruff.

"While the possibility was raised, we don't have a yes or no answer on that question yet," Mike sighed, "honestly, I'd say plan for it. It would be a giant pain in the ass, so of course, they're going to end up wanting to do that."

"Maybe I should take them to Harbordeep," Bob grumbled, opening his eyes, "let them see some of those tier six folks walking around."

Mike winced. "From what I've heard, that's likely to cause an interdimensional incident," he cautioned, "maybe take them to Holmstead?"

"I like Holmstead, though," Bob scowled, "they don't deserve to be exposed to our politicians."

Mike grinned. "No one deserves that, Bob, which is why we try to keep them busy fighting each other, far away from the rest of humanity."

"Might I suggest bags of holding?" Bob offered as he lost his therapy cat to the aroma of diced Oxcipine wafting from the tray that Talima was bringing out to the table.

"Already prepped and ready to go," Mike agreed, "trust me, I tried just about everything I could to keep you out of this."

Bob smiled at Talima and thanked her for delivering their breakfast. Talima responded with a smile of her own and a quick ear scritch for Monroe.

"I know you did," Bob sighed as he started cutting up his steak into bite-size pieces. "It's just a pain in the ass, and I'm not good at it. I had thought that by now, there would be enough people who are good at that kind of thing that I wouldn't need to be involved."

"If it's any consolation, this is likely to be close to the last time," Mike said. "Scuttlebutt says that we are absolutely not going to be telling people the truth about the System or the upcoming System Integration. There is some sort of cover story in the works, although no one has heard the details yet."

Bob snorted as he dipped his toast into his egg yolk. "They probably don't know the details yet. I can understand why they might choose to take another path, though."

"I think they'll disguise the portals as some sort of wormhole technology," Mike grinned, "build some sort of stargate prop, and people will believe it. Then they just have to make up an excuse to get people off the planet. The U.S. leaving first, with Canada, the U.K., and Australia on our heels will add a lot of credibility to whatever they cook up."

"Then once they cross through it, poof ritual completion, and they're in stasis," Bob nodded. "I think it's the wrong play, though. Once the System integrates Earth, they're going to realize that there was something else going on, and their government lied to them about it. That's not going to go over very well, and it's going to happen when the government is going to need the full faith of the people more than it ever has before."

Mike could only nod. Bob wasn't wrong. People would take any excuse to bitch about the government, and they were often justified. Being effectively kidnapped by the government was not going to play well, and with real, actionable power at their fingertips, how many people would realize that they could get along just fine on their own?

"I would hope that it has been brought up already, but if you see a chance to raise that issue, do the world another favor, and raise it?" Mike asked.

"I can see both sides, though," Bob sighed. "Rock and a hard place. How many people will flee the supervolcano or death tsunami, as opposed to how many people will run through the magic portal to a fairytale land where magic is real?"