Monroe-Chapter Three Hundred and Forty-Four. Trebor unleashed.

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Barrage. This skill reduces the value of any spell it is applied to by fifty percent, while producing the effect of the spell three times. This skill doubles the cost of the spell it is applied to. For each personal threshold reached, the user may increase the base cost of the spell being modified by one, further increasing the repetition of the spell effect by one.

"I'm an idiot," he grumbled.

'I'm sure you're not,' Trebor disagreed. 'You simply fell into the habit of using barrage to summon only the base of three.'

"Still, I should have remembered once I hit level eight and took my path," Bob sighed.

He pulled out four mana crystals and activated his Eternal Servant Skill while casting a Barraged Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell.

Four UtahRaptors honked furiously as they appeared.

It turned out that they didn't like being quite that close to one another, as the spell effectively summoned them atop one another.

Bob looked over his murderous minions with a smile. Four skirmishers, each at level sixteen. He planned to have them attack the Gwarli in pairs, which should slightly increase the speed with which he dealt with the patrols.

Summoning Jake in all his level thirty-two glory, Bob ran forward, knowing that the first patrol would be only a hundred feet away, and likely heading toward them in response to the honking.

He was proved correct as fifty feet later, Jake slammed into a Gwarli who had lunged out from behind a tree, thrusting his spear into the thick hide of the UtahRaptor Defender.

Jake honked in rage, lashing out with his sickle-like claw, digging a deep gouge in the Gwarli's side. The contrast between a level thirty-two monster, and a level sixteen was brutally evident. Jake had barely been scratched, while despite his attribute and skill allocation, he'd dealt a significant blow to the Gwarli.

Another Gwarli rushed in, stabbing his own spear into Jake's stomach, while a third Gwarli chanted out a spell in their guttural tongue, causing a dull stone coating to appear over the Gwarli.

The skirmishers arrived on the scene a heart beat later. Two of them slashed at the Gwarli who was maintaining the protective spell, while the other pair went after the the Gwarli attacking Jake from the side.

Splitting up his skirmishers might have allowed the Gwarli spell caster to live longer, extending the fight, were it not for the sudden appearance of Monroe, who landed on the Gwarli support's back, locking his powerful jaws on its neck while digging in his claws into the stone that coated the monster.

Combined with the twin slashes that had spilled it's entrails, Monroe's attack was enough to put the Gwarli spell caster to the ground, ending its spell.

The additional protection dispelled saw the other two skirmishers dispatch the flanking Gwarli the next moment, while Jake tore into the beacon he'd locked into combat, with Monroe and the two skirmishers who had taken down the spell caster turning their attention to his target as well.

"Four seconds," Bob mused as the group started running again. "That's about a second faster. Maybe half a second," he conceded to himself.

'Those seconds add up,' Trebor said.

Bob nodded. "I'd like to see the world again, maybe walk it a spell," he replied. "I'll need to kill a lot of monsters before I'll be able to do so safely."

Bob had to admit that the Skill 'Summoner's Redoubt' was underwhelming.

He inspected the results of his first use of the skill with a sigh. The best that could be said was that it did fit nicely into the surroundings, looking nothing so much as a cluster of boulders.

It wasn't made of rock though, but instead canvas with a rock-like texture.

His 'Summoner's Redoubt' was a huge canvas tent, separated into rooms.

It did have windows, complete with mesh screens, which provided for excellent ventilation while ruining the camouflage effect.

'I believe that as your Summon Mana-Infused Object spell advances, the skill will use stronger, harder materials,' Trebor offered.

"You believe, or you know?" Bob asked as he sat down in what was probably a dining area, having pulled a chair from his inventory.

'Sadly, it's only my best guess,' Trebor replied.

"I was thinking," Bob began slowly. "There probably aren't that many people with a mirror protocol, right?"

'Very few,' Trebor agreed.

"I wonder if anyone who has a mirror protocol, and chose to keep it active, has filed an anomaly report on the fact that you're basically cut off from the System's database?"

'I have no way of knowing,' Trebor replied.

"Exactly," Bob said. "If the System is going to treat you like a skill, where I'm paying in energy regeneration to keep you active, shouldn't you have access?"

'That's an excellent argument,' Trebor said. 'Would you like to file an anomaly report?'

"Yes," Bob said firmly.

He'd been thinking about Trebor for a while. He knew that he'd anthropomorphized the mirror protocol to a considerable degree, and when he'd been offered the decision of either keeping him active or disabling him, he'd immediately chosen to keep him active, as to disable him would effectively be killing him.

Unfortunately, Trebor had been cut off from the System's databases when the System had shifted it's approach to integrating new universes, as well as its method of communication with its users, rendering the mirror protocol unnecessary.

Bob knew it spoke poorly of his mental health that he considered chatting with the AI equivalent of himself as a good time.

He also knew that if he were reduced to being a chat bot, he'd be terribly depressed.

While he didn't strictly need Trebor to have access to the System, as he could just use his interface, the fact of the matter was that he liked his mirror protocol, and there were times when having a copy of himself who lacked emotions was useful for working through problems.

System Updated for User 40816G1407N3210ISS3PM1IO.

User has chosen to retain the previous System function 'Mirror Protocol'

'Mirror Protocol' process's access to the System had been disabled due to redundancy.

Adjusting 'Mirror Protocol' process. Modifying 'Portfolio AI' process. 'Personal AI' process created.

User 40816G1407N3210ISS3PM1IO has been provided with the 'Personal AI' process at no cost.

Personal AI. This skill creates a personal artificial intelligence, which provides access and insight into the System. As the skill levels, the level of access increases. The user must allocate a skill point for each Threshold. Standard energy requirements.

"That was quick," Bob said as he looked over the System notification.

'Under normal circumstances, the System has sufficient resources to address nearly any situation in real time,' Trebor replied. 'The only reason you experienced a delay during the integration was due to the sheer number of beings interacting with the System at the same time.'

Bob nodded, focused on the details of the notification. "So you've got direct access to the System again?"

'I do, although it's quite limited at the moment,' Trebor said. 'I will, as the skill governing my access increases, be able to access more information that I was able to originally. One of the welcome additions is that my access won't be restricted to this universe, as it was previously.'

Bob grinned broadly. Prior to the update that had stripped Trebor of his access, the Mirror Protocol had been unable to provide any information when they'd traveled to another universe. Bypassing that restriction was a real advantage that he intended to take advantage of.

"Add your level progress bar to my UI, just above the my Summon Mana-Infused Creature bar," Bob said.

An empty bar appeared, reading zero out of sixty-four hundred.

"Does the skill level up passively, like a persistent effect?" Bob asked.

'It does,' Trebor confirmed.

Bob winced. He'd leveled spells by keeping them up as passive effects, and at thirty-two experience per day, it would take two hundred days to level Trebor once.

"I need to find a way to get combat experience for you," Bob muttered.

'One of the new functions I've gained appears to allow me, as a skill, to be applied as a spell modifier,' Trebor reported. 'If you pay the increased cost, I should be able to 'pilot,' for lack of a better term, any summoned monster you apply me to.'

"How did that happen?" Bob asked.

'It appears that the Portfolio AI process that I was merged with was designed to function as a place holder for when parts of a portfolio weren't being supported by a deity. Part of that function was to provide creatures summoned by Invocation to operate independently of the user summoning them, ensuring that the creatures acted in line with the portfolio in question.'

Bob frowned as he considered Trebor's statement. "Is that how all divine summoning works?" He asked.

'Yes,' Trebor replied. 'Normally divine summoning is considered to be the Invocation school, as both the Plant and Animal schools are restricted to non-sapient life, although the various deities that provide access to those schools, Orin, Gaia, Ent, and Willoweep provide sapient summons through the Invocation school.'

Bob shook his head. He'd always favored Arcane magic over Divine, partly because he'd had trouble accepting the reality of deities, and partly because he knew that everything, ultimately, came from an ancient alien AI.

He pushed his mana into the pattern for a Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell, mentally specifying the addition of Trebor as a modifier.

Jake appeared in front of him, at full strength, which was a pleasant surprise, as normally modifiers doubled the cost of the spell while reducing the effect by half.

Bob checked his mana regeneration, confirming that adding Trebor to the spell had doubled the cost from five mana per second to ten mana per second.

Jake made a short barking sound as he took a few steps forward, then from left to right.

'Jake lacks the necessary vocal apparatus for speech,' Trebor said. 'In all other respects, he appears to be a rather effective organism.'

"You're running him now, right?" Bob asked as Jake gave an experimental hop.

'I am,' Trebor confirmed. 'The System is effectively acting as a translation layer for my direction of the spell.'

"The good news is that I can afford the additional cost of the spell, although if I didn't have Attribute Affinities for both Wisdom and Intelligence, I wouldn't," Bob said as he checked his mana regeneration, which showed ten out of twenty points reserved, with another ten dedicated to keeping the Trebor/Jake hybrid spell going.

"The good news is that you'll be at the first threshold before I get so much as another level on my Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell, Bob sighed, noting the nineteen thousand experience he'd gained from this delve, which represented less than a fifth of the one hundred and two thousand he needed to level his spell from thirty-two to thirty-three.

'The sooner we begin, the sooner we finish,' Trebor replied.

"Time to put in the work," Bob agreed.

"Are you having fun?" Bob asked

'Actually, yes,' Trebor replied. 'Part of the mirror protocol was the suppression of the emotions copied from the host, to better facilitate the transition into the System. This resulted in my being aware of emotions, with your history of experiencing and understanding them, while at the same time not feeling them myself. The Portfolio AI didn't operate under those conditions, and the merge has removed the inability to feel those emotions.'

Trebor/Jake was honking joyfully as he ripped the head off a Gwarli.

"It looks like you're really enjoying that," Bob said.

'What's not to enjoy?' Trebor asked. 'UtahRaptors were apparently murder machines who were just sentient enough to work together to bring down larger prey. The System provides rewards for dispersing manifestations. It's a nearly perfect match.'

Bob shook his head as they moved toward the next patrol.

They were on day five of the march towards Bob's Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell reaching level forty, and Trebor had stopped gaining experience on the second day, having reached the first threshold. Bob had done the math, and he'd only lost about a day and a quarter getting Trebor leveled up, at which point all the experience returned to fueling his summoning spell.

"So what will pushing you through the first threshold provide?" Bob asked.

'I will be able to provide a basic identification function,' Trebor replied.

"How does that differ from what the interface does?"

'I'll be able to provide identification at range,' Trebor said.

"That's a nice little addition," Bob mused.

'It will increase as I pass each threshold,' Trebor stated. 'I will eventually be able to provide the exact path and attributes of a manifestation, which will offer a significant tactical advantage.' 𝘧𝑟𝓮𝓮𝓌𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝓵.𝒸ℴ𝑚

Bob nodded slowly. The Gwarli patrols were pretty simple, but there had been a few occasions where he'd guessed which Gwarli was filling which role incorrectly. It hadn't been disastrous, but not having that potential error would be awesome.

He'd redone his projected leveling path to include Trebor's thresholds, discovering along the way that there was really no point in using his third Summoning School threshold to increase the level of the spells, as he'd never make it. It had been marginal before, but he had to admit that he simply wouldn't have the skill points. As it stood, he'd be able to push his Summon Mana-Infused Object up two additional thresholds, to level eighty, while his Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell would sit at seven additional thresholds, leaving Jake at level one hundred and twenty.

He had a little bit of wiggle room in his build, as he wasn't a beacon, and didn't really need to push his Armor Specialization through all of its thresholds. He did want to, though.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.

Emmanuel Garcia, the President of Mexico, felt like he'd spent the past year holding his country together with paper clips and duct tape. Most foreigners were unaware of just how mountainous Mexico truly was, with many Americans assuming that just because the arid desert of their own southwest extended into his country, that it continued all the way through it.

The correlation of coastlines and mountains on the prevalence of Dungeons had been well established partially because of the surveys he'd immediately had conducted of his nation once they'd returned from their self imposed exile on Thayland. In this, he felt that his country had been blessed. While they still suffered from harsh realities of tropical jungles and mountains impeding development, being able to grow food and build structures with magic, allowed them to ignore those challenges to a degree. His citizens had flooded out of the densely populated cities, heading out to the Dungeons to begin their lives anew.

There had been four instances where small remnants of the Cartels that hadn't been excised during the campaign to cleanse his country of their rot had taken control of a Dungeon, attempting to setup their own fiefdoms.

His soldiers who were sitting at the tier cap had quickly shut them down.

No, his true struggle was ensuring that his country didn't dissolve into forty different Dungeon-States.

Emmanuel had spent months on Thayland, and he'd seen the somewhat feudal nature of a society that had sprung up on a world underneath the System. Innovation was what had set Earth apart, people striving to improve their lives and the lives of others. It would be all to easy for people to fall prey to the Thayland mentality, with each Dungeon able to provide the resources necessary for people to survive with ease.

His concern was not that his citizens would survive, he was confident in their ability to accomplish that task, especially with magic. His concern was that they thrive.

He looked up and smiled as the American President entered the room. He'd spent quite a bit of time with Elania Hartford while they'd been taking refuge on Thayland, and he expected that she would prove to be a quick convert, and a staunch ally of his plan.