Monroe-Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Eight. Time to grind.

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"Baby pull me closer in the backseat of your rover, that I know you can't afford like that tattoo on your shoulder," Jessica sang, "Pull the sheets right off the corner of the mattress that you stole from your roommate back in boulder, we ain't ever getting older!"

"Really, Jessi?" Amanda asked as she stretched carefully.

"I'm just celebrating being eighteen again," Jessica replied with a brilliant smile. "I mean, we were still young, but I wasn't super keen on getting older, yeah?"

"It's just weird to be this tall," Amanda complained.

The entire group had reincarnated, choosing to become tier seven pinnacles, with Harv, Eli, Wayna, and Eddi all opting for the Earth sub-type. Everyone had converted their primary specialization into a natural Affinity, and almost everyone had an Affinity Crystal to double down on it.

"Hard to believe that I went from working as a veterinarian's assistant to this," Jessica said, admiring her reflection in the mirror.

"I know, it's like, Dave and I went to meet this old acquaintance from freshman year, and all of the sudden here we are," Amanda tugged on a pair of slacks and grimaced.

She'd expected her proportions to remain the same, just scaling up, but she'd picked up an inch or so around the hips that she hadn't expected. Or her estimates had been a bit off.

Either way, her slacks were rather tight.

"Now it's time to 'put in the work,'" Jessica said as she adjusted the straps on her armor.

"I don't know how you can wear that with just underwear on," Amanda grumbled.

"I talked to Nikki, and she put in a bit of lining where it was pinching," Jessica explained. "I love the Floodvine infusion, but it's really only good for keeping the armor clean. Whenever I wore clothes beneath it, they would end up just trapping some of the grime."

"That's a good idea, which you ought to have shared," Amanda said as she began to pull on her own armor.

"This is a lot heavier than it was a few hours ago," Jessica gasped as she finished buckling everything in place and stood up.

"Bob did warn us about that," Amanda replied.

"I wonder how long it will take us to catch him?" Jessica mused.

"Not long, even at the rate he's going, it takes him three times the resources," Amanda reassured her friend.

"I'm more than a little excited," Jessica admitted, smiling mischievously. "I mean, I liked being a munchkin, not as much as you, but I liked it. I wonder what the System is going to offer us, though."

"It'll be fine, and if it's not perfect, we just have to kill enough monsters to trigger the ability to build our own when we tier up to eight," Amanda replied.

"That would mean reincarnating again though," Jessica shook her head. "I mean, we might, but we can just evolve."

"We'll probably reincarnate," Amanda said gently. "The bonuses from becoming a Wayfarer fit really well most our kits, so it makes sense to take advantage of them."

She finished adjusting her armor and stood up, staggering for a moment. She stretched carefully, and nodded.

"Let's go gather the team, the sooner we put away some levels, the sooner this armor starts to feel a bit lighter."

The threshold options for his Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell hadn't been surprising. It appeared that they only took into account the other skills he had, not his achievements or actions.

You have allocated a skill point to increase the Threshold of your Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell. Please select from one of the following bonuses.

Skill increased by one level.

Resource requirements for this skill are reduced by one percent for each threshold this skill reaches. This bonus is cumulative.

He certainly didn't need the spell to reach a higher level than it already could, so he selected the option to reduce the cost. While he didn't think he'd level it all the way up, it represented a potential twenty-four percent discount. Even if he only took the spell to level eighty, it was still ten percent.

"Yay, level two," he said quietly.

He'd be delving against level six monsters now, and with his spell pushing past the first threshold, the experience requirements had doubled, which meant he was looking at a bit more than a single delve to push it up a level.

It was tempting to just take his levels as soon as he could, but he needed his spell at it's cap. He'd spend his level three skill point on pushing it past the next threshold, giving him a maximum level of twenty-eight for the spell. That would be important, as at level four he was going to spend his skill point on barrage. He'd have just enough mana regeneration to keep the spell up, giving him three level twelve UtahRaptors.

As much as Bob liked being part of the group, there was something about soloing that sang to his soul. He was hoping that by keeping his spell as high as possible, and focusing on the modifying skills, that he'd be offered something akin to the Endless Swarm path.

Bob reached up and slung an arm over Monroe, using the super-sized chonk to pull himself to his feet. "Are you ready to hunt some more of those nasty Gwarli?"

The volume of Monroe's purr increased, and the ball of emotions in the back of Bob's mind shifted to sunshine-warm-hunt.

Monroe had always been more or less able to understand what he was trying to get across, but the jump to tier seven had amplified that ability to the point that Bob was pretty sure Monroe could understand English.

He began the process of strapping Monroe's armor onto the big Maine coon. It wouldn't do for a kitty to get hurt, after all.

It had taken four solid days of delving, two delves a day, six hours each, to push his Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell to level sixteen. He'd taken level three, spending his skill point to advance his spell again.

The options for the threshold bonus hadn't changed, and he selected the bonus to reduce the cost. Once his spell was at level eighty, he'd now enjoy a twenty percent reduction in the cost, in addition to the ten percent bonus from his fragmented achievement.

Fragmented.

You have suffered damage to your matrix that increased your energy costs by more than fifty percent. While the initial damage was minor, you accrued the remainder deliberately as you worked toward a goal. You were the first user to operate with a matrix damaged to this degree. This has increased the value of this Achievement.

Reward: Decreases energy costs by ten percent.

Sadly, pushing the spell to the next threshold would require two delves per level, which meant eight days. He expected to reach his next goal towards the end of that, allowing him to increase the level of the monsters he was fighting to six levels over his own, but the math still stayed the same as that accomplishment would occur during the last delve.

It would help during the next push. Once he took level four, he'd have barrage, and he expected his clear time to drastically decrease.

"Oh no you don't!" Jessica said as she grabbed his arm. "You've been delving like mad, and we haven't seen you for a week!"

Bob had stopped when Jessica had grabbed him. It had been over a week.

"Yeah," Jessica said victoriously, "you owe us all some Bob time." She let go of his arm, only to insert her own under his. "Come on, everyone is in the common room," she urged.

"Are you higher level than me?" Bob asked as she guided him to the common room.

"What level are you?" Jessica asked impishly.

"Level three," Bob replied.

"Yep," she replied cheerfully as they entered the room. "We're all level five."

"Benefits of not requiring three times the experience to level our skills," Dave added with a grin. "Grab a seat, Jack has some lasagna in the oven, it'll be done in a bit."

Jessica continued to guide him over to a couch, where he sat down, sandwiched between Jessica and Mike.

"Level five, huh?" Bob asked with a sigh.

"Yeah, but we're slowing down a bit," Amanda shook her head. "It turns out that the System is splitting the kills amongst the party for determining our advancement when it comes to unlocking higher level monsters."

"Yeah, we've unlocked the third tier of it, and we're closing in on the fourth, but the fifth," Dave shook his head. "Over seven hundred thousand monsters with us fighting as a six person group."

Bob winced. "That's a lot of monsters," he agreed. "I'm slogging through the fifth now, but it'll take a while. That exponential increase is brutal," he shook his head. "My unlock comes at two hundred and sixty-two thousand, which is eighty-four delves, all of which is nothing compared to the almost two point one million for the one after that."

"Yeah, ours is under a million for that unlock," Dave said sympathetically.

"I think it's the System trying to help the lower tier species," Amanda said. "When you think about it, what's more important, some big old tier eight species getting a leg up, or a struggling tier five species?"

"Or it could just be that tier fives don't live as long, and thus need it to take less time," Dave offered.

"That's also a possibility," Amanda agreed.

"Or," Bob began, "and hear me out, the System just assigned convenient values. The more I learn about the System the more I'm convinced that a lot of it's decisions are arbitrary. It's an AI of some sort, and it wasn't created by humans. From what I understand, humans do represent a significant portion of users, or at least a variety of different types of humans. It seems to be continually surprised when we work against our own best interests. I think it just assigned values high enough that in order to really put yourself in danger, you'd need to have quite a bit of experience."

"The System does seem very big on people circulating mana," Jack said as he walked into the room and slumped down in an easy chair. "Just put the garlic bread in the oven, dinner will be ready in about ten minutes."

"I'm still wondering if Huron is right about Vi'Radia, Mor'Noctum, and Logos predating the System," Erick said.

"Huron said what?" Bob asked.

"He said that the reason there aren't any Animancy, Necromancy, or Shadowmancy Affinity Crystals is because those three gods are sort of primordial beings that predate the System," Erick explained.

'Any truth to that?' Bob mentally projected.

'It is possible,' Trebor admitted. 'Keeping in mind my limited access, what I had seen when processing your requests indicated that Divine Magic was available through those three deities before any others.'

"He made some solid arguments," Bailli agreed.

"So, I was wondering about something," Eddi began. "With that whole Savior thing, new universes that are integrated into the System get sort of a magic pass now, right? I mean, everyone gets put into stasis until the huge tide is over. Is there any way you can make your portal spell jump to universes where the System isn't there yet?" Eddi shook his head. "Hear me out. The whole point of the System is to stop universes from spreading so far that they run out of mana and everything dies, right? Shouldn't we at least be considering popping over to those universes for long enough to kick start the integration process so that doesn't happen?"

The group was silent as they all stared at Eddi.

"What?" Eddi said defensively. "Ani and Sereh brought it up, kinda."

"No, Ani and Sereh suggested spreading the gospel of 'He Who Walks Before' to universes that haven't been, and I quote 'tainted by lesser deities.'" Wayna replied.

"My desire to escape to another dimension is being funded more and more by those two, as opposed to the various alphabet agencies that might be looking for me," Bob muttered.

"I don't know, that whole brooding olympian thing you've got going is pretty hot," Jessica grinned.

"I don't think they can actually make you a deity," Amanda said consolingly.

"I don't think they can, but I'm afraid that if I pick up another big achievement, it'll feed into it. I'm grateful that evolving my race didn't trigger anything," Bob grumbled.

"Dude, you custom designed the next step in our evolution to include three natural affinities that fit in with the prior choices you made for our paragon and pinnacle evolution," Dave shook his head. "Everyone is going to know who did that."

"It could have been someone else," Bob argued.

Dave shook his head. "Babe, tell him."

"Bob, aside from us, the person closest to hitting tier eight is probably Queen Elizabeth. Do you really think she's going to take credit for it?" Amanda asked.

"Fuck," Bob said after a moment of consideration.

He hadn't spent any time with the Queen, but he knew people who had, and none of them had suggested she'd been some sort of glory hound. The same could not be said for attention hungry horde of corgis. He'd seen a few videos, and he was pretty sure the Queen had done for summoning on Earth what the Endless had done for it on Thayland.

"All the more reason to fuck off for parts unknown," he sighed.

"Explain it to me again, and this time go slowly, and use smaller words," Elania said.

She wasn't in the mood for bad news, although that's all she seemed to get these days. She was tired, hungry, and covered in monster viscera. She would have liked to have said it was just monster blood, but it turned it out that if you hit a monster with white hot lava it could actually flash boil the liquid in the monsters blood and organs, causing it to pop like an over-pressurized balloon. If said ballon was made of meat.

"There are roughly two hundred thousand people protesting down Pennsylvania Ave," Taylor replied. "They're not all exactly on the same page, but the general complaints are that the government should provide the crystals necessary for each person to reach level five, and that government should be providing enough crystals to each person to ensure they're housed and fed."

"We're already feeding and housing everyone," Elania said after a moment.

"Yes," Taylor agreed, "but they seem to think they'd be able to do a better job of it themselves." 𝚏𝗿𝗲ew𝐞b𝐧o𝚟𝚎𝗹.com

"They're just trying to get their hands on mana crystals," Elania surmised.

"That's a fair assessment," Taylor replied.

Elania took a deep breath, immediately regretting it as she was treated to the stench she carried. She cleared her throat. "Fuck em'," she said. "Let them protest all they want. We aren't providing housing and food for them here, so once they get hungry and uncomfortable enough they'll pack it in."

"That would lead to the third concern they've raised, that being that they're essentially forced to stay at their homes," Taylor said.

"No one is forcing them to do anything," Elania snarled, "but we've got a limited number of druids working for us, and they're not roving the countryside."

"That ties back in to the demand for everyone to have the crystals to level up to five, so they can take a path," Taylor said.

"Because we've got a spare seventy-five billion mana crystals laying around," Elania shook her head and started moving toward the shower, unbuckling her armor as she went. "When you consider that the update reduced the mana crystals earned from clearing a Dungeon by eighty percent, we're lucky to be keeping everyone fed and housed as it is."

"I think they're aware of the math, but they don't seem to care," Taylor replied.

"Has anyone pointed out to them that there are Dungeons in the Midwest with available slots?" Elania asked as she peeled her breastplate off with a disturbing squelch.

"Repeatedly," Taylor said dryly.

"If they could get here, they could get there, right?"

"They arrived on buses, so I imagine they could."

"How fucked up is it that I'd rather be fighting monsters than dealing with my constituents?" Elania muttered as she headed into the shower.