Chapter Four Hundred and Sixteen. Time to put in the work. (Patreon)

Bob sat in the ritual circle, wrapping the two rituals into a single pattern.

He could feel the mana flowing from the mana crystals, moving through his matrix and into the pattern, loops and whorls working together to tie the two effects together.

It took less than two minutes to complete, at which point the ritually summoned Jake, piloted by Trebor, let loose an earsplitting honk of fury.

Bob inspected the outcome of his ritual.

Jake was pushing eighteen feet at his shoulders and was twenty-two from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail.  His magnificent plumage was almost completely hidden by the barding Bob had summoned with him, thick plates of steel covering his more vulnerable areas, with bands and chain covering the rest.

"You good in there?" Bob asked.

Jake honked again, nodding his head.

"Alright, let's see if we can cheese this," Bob muttered, pressing his hand to the beam of light that represented the Dungeon's entrance.

Warning!  Quests are incomplete!

Defeat ten monsters to receive a reward!

Defeat five groups of miners to receive a reward!

Defeat five overseers to receive a reward!

Defeat the management team to receive a reward!

Are you certain you want to exit the Dungeon?

"Yes," Bob said, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the brighter lights in the antechamber that housed the entrance to the Dungeon.  He stepped aside from the entrance to let the next person enter.

When Kellan had tasked Bob with reaching tier ten, he hadn't said anything about how exactly Bob was supposed to accomplish that feat.

It turned out that he'd given Bob priority for delving the Dungeons under his control, which meant the entire planet.

That worked out nicely, or at least Bob hoped it would.

He had a theory.

Ritually casting a Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell produced a UtahRaptor that was completely outside of his control and thus generated no experience for his Summon Mana-Infused Creature spell.  He knew from experience that Trebor gained experience when he was driving Jake, which led to his hypothesis that if he turned a ritually summoned Jake loose in a Dungeon with Trebor at the helm, Trebor would gain full experience for every monster killed.

While he didn't have an Affinity for Trebor, which meant the AI was capped at level sixty-four, it was going to take better than two million experience for him to reach the level cap.

Luckily, at level one hundred and twenty-eight, Jake was an absolute unit.

Fighting tier eight, level seventy-four monsters was doable, or at least he thought it should be.

Nodding to the woman who was in charge of the delving schedule, he walked up the broad stairs and entered the atrium on the ground floor of tower seventeen in Glacier Valley.

His plan wouldn't work without the ability to quickly enter another Dungeon while Trebor worked his way through the one Bob had left him inside.

He hurried out of the tower and took flight for the quick flight to tower nineteen, his wings flaring to life behind him, helping to proel him to speeds he couldn't reach with his flight spell alone.

He'd had to accept that he'd be stuck with a single threshold in his flight spell.  There just weren't enough skill points to spare, or at least he wasn't willing to pull them from other areas.

It took him less than a minute to arrive at tower nineteen, where he dismissed his wings as he dropped to the ground, hurrying into the tower itself and heading down the stairs.

There was something to be said for standardized construction.

He was able to enter the Dungeon immediately, the Adventurers Guild representative nodding to him as he passed, checking his name off of his tablet.

New Quest!

Glacier Valley Nineteen was once a hunting camp for a group of refugees, struggling to build new lives for not only themselves, but those yet to come. While they succeeded, it has since been abandoned and over run by monsters who have seized control for themselves. They will not relinquish their prize easily.

Defeat ten monsters to receive a reward!

Defeat five groups of hunters to receive a reward!

Defeat five trackers to receive a reward!

Defeat the leaders of the hunters to receive a reward!

He took a deep breath as he appeared next to a huge pine tree, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the gloom in the ancient forest.

Bob rolled his shoulders.

He'd gotten used to delving with his friends.

At first, he'd been concerned that they didn't need him, because they honestly didn't  Both teams already had dedicated arcane summoners, and Eddi and Amanda filled that role well.  He'd felt like thirteenth wheel, if that was a thing, and he'd wondered why they'd bothered to add him at all.

Putting that feeling behind him had taken quite a bit of effort, and he still fought it on occasion.

Hell, he sometimes wondered when the other shoe was going to drop.  They were certainly playing the long con, but he'd been taken in before by people pretending to be his friends until they got what they wanted from him, then dropping the pretense.

Bob shook his head.  They were his friends.  They didn't need him for anything besides his friendship.

He didn't have time for that shit.

Summoning Jake, he commanded his Eternal Servant swarms of mosquitoes to surround the UtahRaptor.

It had been a long time since he ran solo, and he didn't mind admitting that he missed it.  He enjoyed his time with his friends, but there was something pure about delving a Dungeon alone.

"Time to put in the work," he murmured as he directed Jake to rush down the trail.

---------------------------------------------

Mohinder sat between his sister, Shanti, and her best friend, Samira.

It had been two years since the American, Bob, and his friends had answered their plea for help.

The water system they'd built was still in place, and was still working, providing Dharavi with clean water every day.

"He didn't seem like that," Shanti said slowly, looking up at him.

Mohinder had finally hit his growth spurt and was hoping to reach that mythical one hundred and eighty-three centimeters, although he was currently one hundred and seventy-two, while Shanti was still striving to reach the one hundred and fifty-five mark.

"I wish I'd been able to meet them," Samira sighed.  She'd been taking care of her mother, who had come down with a nasty stomach virus when the Americans had come.

"I thought he'd grown up like an American, but it sounded like he grew up more like us," Shanti continued.

"Do you remember what he said to us?" Mohinder asked his sister.

"He said, 'That's what Adventurers do,'" Shanti replied immediately.

Mohinder nodded.  He'd talked about the Americans with her quite often.  She'd been enamored with Monroe and even harbored a bit of a crush on Bob, but mostly, their talks had been about what the Americans had done and why they had done it.

They'd gone down the rabbit hole, digging for information about the people who had rushed to their aid, asking for nothing in return.  They'd found out that Bob had been a scientist and that his work had been stolen, but they hadn't seen that hinted at what the video had revealed.

"I want to be an Adventurer," Samira said firmly.

"I do, too," Shanti agreed, widening her warm brown eyes as she looked up at him.  "I know you want us to go to university, but I think we should become adventurers first.  Once we reach level twenty-five, we can take a few years to go to school."

Mohinder shook his head.  "You saw the way he teaches," he argued.  "I don't want you to go through that."

"It's better than waiting around here," Shanti replied heatedly.  "We couldn't get on the list to go to Thayland, and it'll be years until we get higher level delving slots."

Mohinder grimaced.  He was all too well aware of the truth of that statement.  He was ready to level up and take a path, as were Shanti and Samira, but in Dharavi, slots to delve above level one had wait times that measured in months, not days.  Their lives had changed for the better once he'd been able to spend the crystals he earned on improving their situation rather than on preparing them to level up.

"We'd have a better start than he did," Samira said quietly.

"Exactly," Shanti agreed.  "And don't we owe it to him to become strong enough to help other people?"

Mohinder shook his head.  Bob's recent interview had gone viral, and his final words had become more than just a meme.  It had become a sort of touchstone.

"Be kinder, be better," he murmured.

"Be an Adventurer," Shanti finished.

"Because that's what Adventurers do," Samira added.

"Fine," Mohinder sighed, pulling the laptop closer.  "I'll go to the website and see if we can sign up, but," he said sternly, "we don't know what the requirements are, and you two might still be too young."

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Yorrick smiled as he watched one of the Endless open the portal.

While he was certain that over time, the Endless would fall prey to the corruption that hid in every soul, thus far, they'd managed to remain remarkably focused.

He expected it would take a few generations before any of its members forgot just how and why the Endless had been founded.

For now, they remained fanatical in their drive to not only safeguard but improve the lives of every single person they met.

The same couldn't be said for the Church of the System.  That group was so disorganized and aimless that if it weren't for a small faction pushing them, they would never have accomplished anything.  They talked a good game, but the Church was comprised of dozens of different pre-integration faiths, all struggling to find a new identity in the new reality they found themselves.  Fortunately, their original message folded rather nicely around Bob and the Endless.

The Church was still deeply suspicious of the former Karcerian Empire, but Yorrick was able to use the Endless as a buffer, which kept the zealots in the Church at bay for the most part.

There was a veritable cornucopia of reasons for which Yorrick was grateful that Bob had arrived on Thayland, but today he was feeling especially grateful for the Endless.

Children were so easy to manipula- guide.

It had been obvious, he'd told them, that Bob was actively searching for new worlds that would allow the population of Earth to do more than just survive.  The Terran Confederation was working tirelessly to address the issues they had found on their newly adopted home, but while the land they'd chosen was inhospitable enough that they didn't have the same issues with population density, their numbers were small.  Two million souls had fled the impending religious prosecution from Parceus, but they were so few.

He'd suggested that they dedicate several teams to seek out habitable worlds, a task that would be eased by Bob's Solar Exploration spell.

Yorrick was prepared to make the argument that the very existence of that spell was proof of what Bob would want them to do, but he hadn't needed to.  They'd latched onto the idea eagerly and had been sending a small number of teams into the multiverse, seeking opportunities for humanity.

Three months earlier, they'd found it.  A tier six planet, slightly larger and denser than Earth, it boasted a seventy-five percent water, twenty-five percent land ratio, with four habitable continents, as well as numerous archipelagos that were large enough to support nations of their own.  Slightly closer to the G-type star than Earth, it was warmer and had only a small ice cap at its southern pole.

Yorrick had spearheaded the team that had cleared the Dungeons, correcting the state of overflow.  At the same time, he had taken the responsibility for relocating the Dungeons that were underwater, which had been sixty-three of them, to land.  He had made certain to place a Dungeon on the largest island of each of the archipelagos before distributing the remaining thirty-eight between the four continents.

The Endless had been eager to work with him, and they'd been more than happy to run the Dungeons at tier nine, ten levels over his own.

The reward for the planetary first clear had been amazing.

Planetary First Clear for 6710G2317N45ISS3PM Complete!

New Achievement!

Planetary Aegis.

User has corrected the overflow of all eighty-four Dungeons.

All Dungeons cleared ten levels over the users.  Reward increased.

Reward:  User receives a bonus equal to their tier² to a single skill.

It was simple but powerful.  It effectively replicated the bonus of a skill fully leveled to the level cap, without the threshold bonuses but also without the need to allocate any skill points.

Yorrick was an Abjuration specialist.  He'd spent centuries protecting the cities and citizens of the Karcerian Empire, and he wasn't so free of the sin of Pride that he would protest the fact that he was absolutely the most powerful Abjurer on the planet.  His role in a Dungeon was actually that of a beacon.  So strong were his shields that it was a waste to have anyone else attempting to soak the damage.

This reward boosted his shields by eighty-one percent.

He hadn't walked away from eighty-four first clears with nothing to show for it either.  He'd combined his rewards, stacking each one.

Contained Plasma Powered Armor.

This suit of Heavy Armor is Matrix-Bound to Yorrick Wrathsbane. This allows the user to store the Armor in the user's matrix, where if needed, it will repair itself of any damage at the rate of 1% per second, at the cost of one mana per second.  User has applied multiple first clear rewards to customize this reward.

When worn, the Contained Plasma Powered Armor provides the following benefits.

Made of compressed, contained Plasma, this Armor is both dense and resilient.  The user has applied multiple first clear rewards to this effect.  Material Hardness 405.  Resistance to Vicious Damage 90.  Increases applied Strength by 81.

Reactionary Abjuration Attunement.  Allows the user to store a single Abjuration spell in the Armor's matrix.  This spell will deploy when the Armor is struck by a damaging effect.  The user has applied multiple first clear rewards to this effect.  Up to five modifiers may be applied to the spell being stored.

Environmental Sustainment.  Allows the user to determine the conditions inside the Armor.  Requires the user to reserve 89 points of energy regeneration.  The user has applied multiple first clear rewards to this effect.  User may determine temperature, humidity, luminosity, and pressure.  User may reduce the effects of gravitational forces by up to 8.1 ms².  User may choose to have the Armor create fluid and solid nutrition.  User may choose to activate an effect that will remove all biological waste.

Monitored Stasis.  Allows the user to enter Stasis.  The user has applied multiple first clear rewards to this effect.  Requires the user to reserve 89 points of energy regeneration.  User may define up to nine conditions that will remove the user from Stasis.  These conditions may be defined with a range of up to 8,100 kilometers.

Growth.  The user has applied multiple first clear rewards to this effect, allowing the Armor to evolve when the user advances to the next tier.

Yorrick wasn't a Divination specialist, but he didn't need to be in order to see what was coming.  The multiverse was an unfathomably large place, and he fully intended to spend the next few hundred millennia exploring it.  To that end, he needed to be able to survive whatever he encountered.

He was confident in his skills, but there were several weak points that the System's new fascination with specialization had created, and his new armor would go a long way toward covering them.

It also looked fantastic, the slowly swirling plasma that covered him glowing ever so slightly with the Bael-fire green of his own magic.

Ani moved in front of him and bowed, drawing him from his thoughts.

"We have the first group of supplicants ready to transfer," she reported.

Yorrick refrained from wincing.  He wasn't particularly enamored with zealots of any flavor, even one so innocuous as the revelation of Bob.

Still, she'd been a driving force behind the Endless' participation in the project.

He looked over her head and took in the neatly ordered rows of people.  They formed a long rectangle, fifty people wide by two hundred long.  The outer rows on the sides and the front were comprised of Endless, Church of the System, and even the Old Guard.  There were fifty members of the Terran Confederation bringing up the rear, each one a devout, if not outspoken, member of the Mor'Noctum clergy.

The remaining people were level zero, all of whom had eagerly registered on the website as soon as the project had been announced.  It had been advertised as a first come, first serve registry, but part of the screening process had included intended skills and desired path.  It wouldn't do to bring over two thousand people to a new world and have none of them interested in growing food.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Yorrick's voice boomed out over the crowd.  "You are about to take your first steps onto a brand new world!  Thanks to the incredible dedication of the Endless, the Church of the System, and the Old Guard, a way has been cleared for you to advance!  While it won't be easy, your hard work will pave the path for others to join you, and together, you will be able to gather your strength and become the Adventurers that we know you can be!"

A few cheers broke out, and Yorrick smiled.  "That said, let's get moving.  As my friend Bob likes to say, it's time to put in the work!"