Monroe

Chapter Two Hundred and Eighty-Nine. Less of a party, more of a raid.

Tier five Monroe had been huge. Just over four feet tall at the shoulders, and almost nine feet long, not counting the tail, which nearly doubled his length.

Tier six Monroe was ridiculous. Seven feet tall at the shoulders, and fifteen feet long, his chin rested on the table when he was laying down. Which he currently was.

"Bob, he's just too big," Theo protested. "He's knocked over two tables and half a dozen chairs, and as much as we all like the sound of a purring cat, he's vibrating the pans off the walls in the kitchen!"

Bob looked at Monroe. The unfathomably large Maine-coon was curled up next to the table, tail wrapped up around himself, purring loudly as he eagerly awaited his breakfast.

If Monroe had liked being bigger when he'd leveled up, it was nothing compared to the joy the big cat had projected when he'd reached the peak of his pinnacle advancement.

Advancing Monroe had been easy, with the System allowing him to choose his apotheosis. Bob had kept it simple and went for paragon and pinnacle.

"Also, how am I supposed to fix his breakfast?" Theo demanded. "Just bring him an entire bear and let him devour it on the floor?"

Bob winced. Theo had a lot of awfully good points.

It took a few minutes, but Bob eventually convinced Monroe that being smaller wasn't the worst thing in the world. The clincher had been when Theo had presented his normal breakfast, and Monroe had been reduced to trying to lick it out of the bowl.

Now that he was back to normal, and Theo had returned with another bowl of bear chunks, Monroe was happily eating as Bob's friends entered the tavern, pulling another table over to his and arraying themselves around it.

"So Bailli wasn't having us on," Jessica smiled as she sat down next to Bob. "Thought you'd gone walkabout."

"Seventy-eight days to go," Bob replied.

"Yeah, not going to lie, not super keen about the whole integration bit," Jessica mused.

"How has the evacuation gone?" Bob asked.

"Better than anyone had any right to expect," Dave replied. "The current consensus is that we've evacuated ninety-nine percent of the planet. There are just over seven point eight billion people in stasis, with a hundred million or so delving to for crystals to keep the whole project running."

Bob blinked, then shook his head. "The numbers are too big to be real for me. We had what, a hundred and fifty thousand people delving in Glacier Valley?"

"Yeah, GV is still up and running, twenty-four seven," Mike replied. "The Redoubt has nearly a million people, although the rate of delving has dropped to a couple hours a day, a couple of days a week for almost everyone. We spread out into the surrounding area, and we've got about a hundred square miles occupied in total. Some of our guys need open spaces with no neighbors," he finished softly.

"The Empire picked up about twenty-million people off their campaign," Amanda said. "Beyond one of the nobles almost killing you, the whole Pleasure Palace thing really turned a lot of people off. Well, that and the danger of ending up an indenture under a noble house."

Bob nodded. His indentures had, to the last person, asked to keep delving in Glacier Valley. He'd sort of forgot that he'd left them with instructions on delving that Dungeon, relying on Talima to make sure they were fed each day. He wasn't sure what the protocol was for apologizing to someone for dumping hundreds of people in their dining room and then disappearing for three months, but it was probably going to take more than a fruit basket.

"Yeah," Dave agreed. "I get the whole consenting adults thing, but that was a big old Nope."

"The Church of the Light isn't happy with you, but I think Bailli said that she'd already told you that," Elli said. "But I'll reiterate. They're really not happy with you. I mean most of us just kind of shrugged, but all the people from Earth went nuts. They started cataloging possible personality changes and publishing a bunch of spreadsheets detailing what they'd found."

"The result was that people from Earth are choosing either Logos or Gaia if they want access to Divine magic," Harv added. "The desire to discover knowledge and share it, or to preserve and nurture nature are a lot more palatable than some of the ways that people suspect they've been influenced by the Church of the Light."

"No one is admitting to taking any blessings from the Seven Gods of Darkness either," Dave said.

"Rifugio is stuffed to the brim," Jack interjected. "I mean absolutely stuffed. I've got twenty thousand people camping outside the walls." He shook his head. "I've started work on another city in a valley fifty miles to the south, and with the lessons I learned from the Rifugio, I expect to have it done in two, maybe three months from now."

"The Endless hasn't grown as much as we'd hoped," Eddi said sadly. "I guess I sort of expected that everyone from Earth would be like you, or like the Old Guard." He shook his head. "I think we got the best of Earth early on, because most of the people who aren't going into stasis only seem to be interested in either setting up a comfortable life, or earning as many crystals as they can. There is almost no interest in delving so that they can help other people."

"Most people are just trying to get by," Bob offered.

"No, Eddi is right on this one," Amanda shook her head. "The people who opted to stay out of stasis have been demonstrably mercenary."

"Shit," Bob muttered.

"There was one incident where a group of people decided that they weren't going to pay their taxes," Dave grinned. "They declared themselves a sovereign state, said the King of Greenwold hadn't done anything to deserve their hard earned crystals."

"Oh, I bet that ended well," Bob grinned.

"About the way you'd expect," Dave agreed. "There were a couple of hundred of them, and they'd built a little town on top of a eight floor Dungeon. The King of Greenwold flew over, and announced that anyone who didn't want to be associated with their refusal should leave, immediately. Thirty minutes later, he burned the place to the ground with everyone inside."

"Morons," Bob muttered. "The King of Greenwold is a fucking Dragon. It's not like it's a secret or anything."

"Yeah, there was a bit of outrage, but they were first class assholes. There was a tendency for anyone who went there to turn around and come right back the next day, if not sooner," Amanda said.

"You should check your emails and texts," Mike advised. "Or better yet, hire someone to do that for you. I've had a lot of people trying to get to you through the Old Guard."

"I posted on Monroe's facebook that you and he were taking a break to delve and get stronger after the events in the Empire," Amanda explained. "All of Monroe's followers were pissed when that video came out."

"Anything else happen while I was delving? Anything monumental?" Bob asked.

Dave and Amanda exchanged glances before Dave spoke. "Three months is a long time. It's an even longer time when you're evacuating an entire planet because of the apocalypse. There is probably a bunch of events we haven't mentioned, but honestly, Mike is right. Hire a personal assistant, have them work through your emails and give you a summary."

"We're here this morning to talk about the future," Amanda said firmly.

"You said that with the update, we're all going to have specialize, yeah?" Jessica asked.

"Yeah," Bob agreed, edging a bit away from the vivacious Aussie, who had scooted a bit closer to him. "At tier seven, you're realistically looking at having three skills maxed out, so while you can still solo with the right skillset, it'll be much more difficult."

"Any luck finding more of those Attribute Crystals?" Jessica asked.

"Just one more," Bob shook his head. "The drop rate on those is insanely low. Millions to one."

"So, our line of thought went something like this," Amanda began. "The most effective and efficient use of our delving time is going to be going after those crystals. With the upcoming changes forcing us to specialize, we're trying to work out some party dynamics."

Bob looked around the tables. Eddi, Wayna, Harv, Elli, Dave, Amanda, Mike, and Jack were looking back at him.

"Do you need advice?" Bob asked hesitantly. "Because you all probably know more than I do when it comes to fighting as a group."

"About fighting as a group, absolutely," Mike replied, "about the best way to build a party under the System? You're still the man with the plan."

"Also," Jessica glared at Mike, "we'd like you to be part of the party."

"That too," Mike agreed with a crooked smile.

"I thought we were going to wait for Bailli and Erick?" Wayna asked.

"They're up to speed," Dave said.

"I think I'm missing some context here," Bob said slowly. "All of you have groups already."

"Yeah, not so much," Jessica shook her head. "All of my mates have fallen off, yeah? They'll delve for a couple of hours a week, but they're not pushing. They capped at twenty-five, and are pretty happy there."

"We're all basically in the same situation," Amanda explained. "We kept going while everyone else took a breather, and they never really started back up, so here we are, looking at the jump from tier six to tier seven, and realizing this whole process would be safer, easier, and ultimately, faster, if we all worked together."

"Our line of thinking," Dave smiled at Amanda, "is that we have people who want to fill the roles a party needs, so we just need to polish the edges to have the whole puzzle click into place."

"I've come to the realization that I prefer being on the front lines," Mike admitted. "The Corps trained me to be situationally aware and adaptable. The Corps also taught me to push through the pain, and that blood makes the grass grow green." He smiled. "I'm a perfect fit for a beacon."

"While I don't have Mike's training or background, I've always liked playing the tank," Jack said. "Magic is fun, but honestly it's a little frustrating sometimes. I've got enough complicated shit on my plate already, when it's time to kill monsters I just want to brawl."

It was Wayna's turn. "I love exploring in my animal forms, and I've learned to fight in them quite well. I'm not a natural beacon, but I can either assume a damage dealing form, or one to soak damage instead."

"I'm what is considered an off-beacon," Elli explained. "I'm not an ideal beacon, as I tend to avoid hits rather than absorb them, which can be a problem for projectiles. I can, however, distract monsters and pull them off the beacon if they need a breather, or even tank them for a bit if we have an additional monster that shows up unexpectedly. Update or no, I've dedicated a lot of time to learning swordsmanship, and I'm not going to change my path now."

"I've been corresponding with the Black Cathedral," Harv said with a sigh. "I guess the curse has a few hidden benefits, one of which is that Necromancy comes naturally to me. When the time comes, I'll be switching my focus to Necromancy, which will give me the ability to decrease a monsters attributes. I've traded a few Affinity Crystals for a Necromancy Affinity Crystal."

"I'm going to stick to the Endless Swarm path, or whatever it turns into for tier seven," Eddi grinned. "Kind of hard to lead the Endless if I'm not leading by example."

"As am I," Amanda added.

"I'll be joining Bailli in the role of the nuker," Dave continued. "Amanda and I discovered that when fighting against higher level monsters, our primary summons is our best bet, and sometimes there just isn't room for us both to have the big ones out, so I've sort of fallen into the role of nuking."

"I've sort of slid into the role of the healer," Jessica finished, "for the same reasons as Dave and Amanda. Alongside Erick, I'll be keeping everyone healthy."

"Well, with two tanks, two off tanks, two healers, two summoners, two nukers, and a debuffer, you've basically got two full parties," Bob said.

"Pretty much," Dave agreed. "We will have to wait until after the update to get a feel for how to work together, as some of us are going to be taking up different roles and using different skills, but what we were thinking is that with two full parties, we can pretty keep one going every day. We all have lives outside of the Dungeon," he grinned, "or at least most of us do. And if we're only missing two people, we can shuffle things around and delve anyway."

"Everyone here has already proven that they're committed to tiering up," Amanda added. "My hope is that we can keep each other going to tier ten."

"Or beyond!" Jack smiled.

"I'm not planning to be a debuffer though," Bob murmured.

It certainly sounded like a good idea. It'd be like working with his friends. He'd get to see them everyday, and it would be a lot less lonely.

"We wouldn't expect you to be," Mike replied. "You can bring basically anything to the table. Damage, heals, shields, debuffs, crowd control, you name it."

"Also, I just hit tier seven yesterday," Bob admitted.

"Bloody hell, I thought we'd finally caught up!" Jessica complained.

"He has come out of hiding," Huron reported. "Apparently he was earning the crystals to push to tier seven, and having succeeded, he's resumed his routine."

"You're certain that he has the ability to directly divine the will of mana?"

"Completely," Huron replied. "Although, it's entirely possible that he might offer the knowledge you seek freely."

"He has been tainted by the Shadow. He visited the Dark Empire, partook of it's poison and promoted it. He cannot be trusted. Who knows what revelations he has shared with the Shadow? No, we cannot take that risk, not after his allegiance has been called into question."

"He's going to expect a visit from me," Huron said. "I was rather vocal in my disappointment."

"Send an underling. This will be simplified by having his blessing of Veritas remain in place, and I suspect that should you see him, he will request that you remove it."

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