Monroe-Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-One. Deliveries and cautions.

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Bob idly summoned a fresh UtahRaptor, his mind on other matters. His barbarian had died a heroic death, holding the gates of the town against a horde of kobolds, and he needed to roll up a new character. He was considering playing an artificer.

He was also mulling over the time he'd spent in Lake Tahoe. It really had been beautiful, and he sort of wished he'd had more time to spend. He was contemplating switching his schedule a bit. If he worked all week, for four weeks, he could take four days off. That would give him a day to check up on his friends, deliver the taxes to the King, or more ideally, the seneschal, and leave him three days to spend at whatever destination he had in mind.

If he could wrangle the right group of friends to join him, they could even play D&D in the evenings.

Collecting the crystals he needed to level up was his main priority, but he'd learned that he also needed to allocate time to decompress. He was thinking of dragging Baili, Erick, Dave, Amanda, Eddi, and Wayna along for his next vacation. Erick and Eddi had both expressed an interest in playing D&D, and with Dave and Amanda, they'd be able to have a game. If Baili and Wayna were there, with nothing else to do, surely they'd join in, if only in solidarity.

Bob shifted Monroe on his lap, trying to move the overly warm kitty a bit, as his legs were getting overly toasty. The super-size floofer had taken advantage of Bob's mistake in leaving the stasis box open. At least, Bob thought he must have left open. The alternative was that Monroe was developing some sort of magical version of thumbs, which was a bit terrifying. Regardless, the feline of mass consumption and plowed through a week's worth of Bob's meals, chowing down steak, pork chops, and stealing all the meat from his sandwiches. Now the big Maine-coon was sleeping off his food coma.

His lap somewhat cooler, Bob let his mind drift back to the list of places he wanted to visit. There were a bunch of places to visit in Utah, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Zion, and a few others. If they went in five weeks or so, given that his next tax day was in a week, it would be the end of May so that the parks wouldn't be that crowded. Hopefully.

The fact that Utah had several sites dedicated to dinosaurs was just an added bonus. A side note, really, something that he thought Eddi would enjoy.

"What do you think, buddy?" Bob asked the sleepy Monroe. "Shall we vacation in Utah? I bet there will be lots of nice warm sunny spots for a kitty."

Monroe didn't object, which Bob chose to view as approval. He dismissed Jake and then brought him back out again to continue the grind. He then pulled out his laptop and started looking at one of the maps he'd downloaded, plotting his vacation.

"Nora, Mike, Jason, Jessica," Bob nodded toward them as they approached his table. He'd made it a habit to eat breakfast with Mike once a week.

"Good morning!" Nora replied cheerfully, dropping a pouch on the table in front of him before taking a seat next to him. Jessica did the same, sitting on the other side, while Mike sat across from him, and Jason stood, looking somewhat nervous.

Jason was the next to speak, pulling out a pouch and a tablet from his satchel. "Could you sign to confirm you've accepted delivery of the King of Greenwold's Tithe and Lease from Her Majesty's Dungeons?" He asked.

Bob blinked. He hadn't known that England had moved people over and begun building Dungeons. He'd known that they were going to, but he'd missed the actual event. "Alright, if I'm signing, I should probably make sure they are all there," Bob replied with a sigh. He stood up, swept up the pouches, and opened a portal to his inventory. "Follow me," he said, then dropped through.

Bob hadn't ever done anything with the room he'd mentally labeled as his study, so it was effectively a featureless ten by twelve room. Once everyone had arrived, he summoned out a scale with a large box atop it. He dropped a single mana crystal into the box and confirmed that it weighed one gram.

"Alright, scales are working, let's confirm my receipt of the Queen's crystals," Bob said, then upended the pouch Jason had given him. A stream of mana crystals flowed out of the pouch and down into the box. It took only a few seconds to empty the pouch. "Two point one three eight kilograms, or two thousand one hundred and thirty-eight crystals," Bob said, taking the tablet from Jason. "Which matches exactly the number listed here, so," with a flourish, Bob signed on the tablet.

He repeated the procedure with Jessica, who grinned and winked at him when a photograph of her in a bikini at Lake Tahoe fluttered out of the bag to land atop the pile of crystals. "Just something to remember our little vacation by," she added.

"Yes, well," Bob took the photograph off of the pile of crystals, "one hundred eighteen point one nine six kilograms, so one hundred and eighteen thousand, one hundred and ninety-six mana crystals."

"Mike, I thought the King wasn't charging you until the Old Guard were all healed up?" Bob asked as Mike pulled out a pouch and handed it to him.

"We're not going any taxes on the hundred Dungeons up on the glacier," Mike agreed, "but the King didn't say anything about the Dungeon on the Redoubt, so we're paying our Tithe and Lease there."

"Fair enough," Bob replied, and weighed out another two hundred and eight-six thousand mana crystals.

Nora grinned up at him as he looked at the pouch she'd given him, then at his scale. "You're going to need a bigger box," she said, drawing chuckles from the rest of the group.

"How many?" Bob asked, bouncing the bag in his palm.

"Thirty-six million, eight hundred and sixty-two thousand, four hundred and twelve," Nora replied happily.

"Stars and stones," Bob muttered, then dismissed his scales. He was definitely going to need a bigger box.

"Thirty-seven million, four hundred eighty-two thousand, seven hundred and eighty-two," Bob reported, eager to escape from Harbordeep without an encounter with the King.

Ericka smiled, once again creeping him out. It was the teeth, he'd decided. Draconians looked very much like they were going to eat you when they smiled.

"His Majesty requested your presence, I'm sure he'll be eager to receive the crystals directly," she said, gesturing for him to follow her down the massive hallway.

Having seen the King in all of his terrifying majesty, Bob had a better understanding of just why the hallways and doors were so very, very large.

He followed Ericka down the hallway, past the room where he'd met with the King previously, and then through a door at the end of the hall. He entered a massive chamber, easily a thousand feet across and half that in height. The King of Greenwold was lounging on a bed, which must have been thirty feet thick, curled up in a scaly ball, resembling nothing more than the world's largest cat.

"Your Majesty, Robert Whitman has arrived with your tithe and lease payments," Ericka announced. 𝐟re𝚎𝘄𝚎𝐛𝚗o𝚟el.c𝐨𝚖

One massive eye opened, and the King stretched languidly before sitting up. "Bob, it's a pleasure to see you again," the King's voice was almost painfully loud in the chamber.

"Your Majesty," Bob replied with a bow, "I have collected the taxes and leases from the Dungeons created by the refugees from Earth."

"How industrious have your people been?" The King asked languidly.

"I have over thirty-seven million mana crystals for you," Bob made to hand Ericka the bag, but she motioned toward the King.

Bob stiffened his jaw and slowly stepped forward. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to run like hell, that he was face to face with a predator so far beyond his capabilities that he could only hope that it was neither hungry nor bored.

He staggered when the unseen weight of terror suddenly disappeared.

"My apologies," The King rumbled, "I've only just awoken."

Bob stiffly walked up to the no longer quite so viscerally terrifying Dragon, which seemed incongruous, and deposited the pouch onto the King's massive paw.

The King used a claw to open the bag delicately. He brought it up to eye level and glanced into it before smiling a toothy grin. "How lovely," The King murmured. "How are the evacuation plans for your people progressing?" He asked.

"I'm not entirely certain," Bob replied, "I notified my former government, and I know they've notified others. I know that two of them have already built Dungeons, but as for the rest of Earth, I couldn't say."

"You're an astute and clever man," The King rumbled, leaning down closer, "tell me, do you think the governments of your world will save everyone?"

"I'm hoping they save half," Bob admitted.

"What are their plans?" The Dragon asked.

"Well, my thought was that feeding and housing billions of refugees just wasn't something we could accomplish in the time we have to prepare," Bob began carefully. "I suggested that we place people in easily stackable boxes and put them in stasis. It would be easier and less resource-intensive to keep everyone in stasis for the duration of the Tide. I believe that the governments of Earth are manufacturing an excuse to get everyone to go through a portal, which they will disguise as a previously secret and experimental technology."

"But you don't believe they will be able to move everyone through the portal," The King surmised.

"I think that the contentious nature of our world will cause some people to refuse to leave," Bob replied. "There are countries whose governments will distrust anything placed before them, and then there are regions of the world that lack the communications infrastructure to allow them to be aware of what is coming."

"I've read quite a bit about Earth," The King mused thoughtfully. "I'd like you to deliver a message for me to your former government. I want to meet with the governments leaders who are aware of the oncoming disaster to discuss other ways in which Greenwold might aid the evacuation. Two weeks from today should do nicely, ideally here, although if they're unable to travel to Thayland on such short notice, I'm willing to take a trip to Earth."

Bob had a sudden vision of the King of Greenwold, in all his draconic glory, winging over L.A.

"I'll relay the message, your Majesty," Bob replied.

"Before you go, a warning," The King said. "You have become a symbol of hope for people from both our worlds. I have informed my Nobles that your life is sacrosanct, and should any harm befall you, they will answer to my claws and flame," The Dragon's smile was definitely predatory. "That said, I cannot imagine that the various governments of Earth, and their functionaries, are without agents of their own. Take care on your visits to your former home that you don't fall prey to them."

The Dragon moved to lie back down, and Ericka coughed, drawing Bob's attention to the blessedly open door that represented an escape from the scrutiny of the King of Greenwold.

Bob watched SecDef's face sag.

"The King of Greenwold wants to meet them here? And if they don't come, he'll come to Earth? Is that the long and short of it?" Ed asked.

"He also warned me that he thought it likely that foreign government agencies might be looking for me," Bob added.

"They probably are," Ed muttered as he started typing on his laptop.

"Really?" Bob asked doubtfully. "There are only a few people who know me who aren't Americans."

"I'm pretty confident in our security," Ed said absentmindedly as he continued typing, "but, for example, Mexico's security is less compartmentalization and more like a loosely tied net. Despite the clean-up the president recently undertook, there is a culture of corruption in their government that will take years to remove. I expect several governments are aware that there is a new project being undertaken by the five nations who met you, and I'm going to assume that your name is mentioned in those files."

Bob tried to digest that idea. The problem was that he had trouble swallowing it. "I'm not important, though, I was just the guy who brought the upcoming disaster to light. Why would anyone be interested in me?"

Ed stopped typing and looked at Bob with an expression of disbelief. "You once told me that you weren't that smart but that you were a hard worker," he shook his head. "Even if you were a genius, anyone with half a brain can look at what you've done and come to the conclusion that you have some sort of edge." He waved his hand, "I don't know what it is, and I don't want to know what it is. I haven't mentioned my suspicions in any of my correspondence or my files. I do know I'm far from the only one. You've done nothing but good here, and I respect that, so I'm going to try to figure it out, but if I know, you can bet others do as well. However you've come by your knowledge, it has value, and there are always those who'd rather take than ask."

Bob took a deep breath and closed his eyes, counting down from ten, then fifty. Trebor was a secret that he had long ago decided to keep, a decision made when Kelli had explained to him just how valuable direct access to the System was.

He opened his eyes again to find SecDef looking at him, waiting patiently.

"Just be careful," Ed advised, "honestly, I don't think there is much the people on Earth could do to you. You can just portal out of any place you don't want to be, and it's not like they can hurt you," he shook his head. "You may not know this, but at the tier cap for tier five, you're basically immune to small arms fire," he sighed, "as tested by the Old Guard."

"How much danger do you really think I'm in?" Bob asked.

"Enough to warn you," Ed shrugged, "which is more of an attempt to avoid another Harv incident than anything else. He seems pretty broken up over what happened, and I'd rather you didn't have to defend yourself, as I don't think those dinosaurs have a non-lethal setting."

"I could summon them out with pool noodles in place of their claws and teeth, I suppose," Bob muttered, conjuring up a mental image of a non-lethal UtahRaptor.

"Do you think the King was serious about coming to Earth?" Ed asked, shifting the subject.

"I think he was, although he offered it more as a concession than a threat?" Bob offered hesitantly, part of his mind still dwelling on the fact that at this very moment, shadowy covert agents might be looking for him back on Earth.

"I know you haven't talked to him too often, but your face time with him exceeds anyone else I could ask. What do you think his angle is?" Ed asked.

"I think he's trying to help us save as many people as possible," Bob replied, "although I'm also certain that he's doing so because he wants to keep as many as he can in Greenwold after the initialization is complete. The more people we save, the larger his percentage is. There's also a religious angle that I'm not really sure about," Bob finished with a shrug.

"Yeah, they're big on religion here," Ed agreed, "but being as gods are real here, I can sort of understand why. From what I've been told, the Queen of England is buying into the Church of the Light in a big, big way." He shook his head. "I'll get the request into the President's hands this afternoon, and I imagine we'll have a yay or nay within a day or so, can I count on being able to find you?"

"I'll stop by the tavern here in Glacier Valley every morning for the next couple of days," Bob promised.