MonroeByJahx

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Nine. Advancements and Audiences.

Amber sighed happily as she popped another tiny piece of dark chocolate into her mouth.

It was the little things she'd missed about Earth. She'd already secured a dozen cocoa seedlings, as well as half a dozen mango and papaya as well.

She'd had to google just exactly what sort of environment the trees liked and had been surprised to discover they grew under the shade of mangos and papayas, which would be welcome additions to her greenhouse.

It would probably take a bit of e...

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Eight. Disagreements, Deductions and hopeful delusions.

My butchery of the Australian dialect continues, as well as a bit more of the USMC lovefest.  I apologize for the former.  

"He can come back over here; I don't want to go over there," Bob said as he leaned back in his chair.

"He's the Secretary of Defence, Bob," Mike sighed, "it's just a meet and greet so that you can answer a few questions that I'm not really equipped to."

"So bring him back over here; you do know I'm working like eighteen hours a day to...

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Seven. Dungeon Design, getting pissed.

I apologize in advance to the Aussies in my audience.  I'm butchering your lingo, using only conversations with friends over the years where I had to puzzle out what the fuck they were saying.  I'll never forget the whole 'Brolly' conversation.

~-------------------------~

Jason watched Bob cast the first of two rituals that would shape the mana flows and maintain the environment. Bob had warned that he'd be bored out of his mind while Bob sat silently, ...

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Six. Morality and Inevitability.

Amber looked up at the bright blue sky as she stepped out of the Portal and into the Mojave.  She was back.

"Here," Jack passed a cheap flip-style phone to her.  "One of the prepaid burners we use to keep in touch when we're on supply runs," he explained, "it has hundreds of minutes we'll never use, so knock yourself out."

He moved over to a four-door truck with some sort of contractors camper on the back.  He started the truck, presumably turning on the A/C before ...

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Five. It's Time.

Secretary of Defense Edward Heller was used to people demanding just a minute of his time.  It came with the job, and one out of ten actually had something valid to bring to his attention.  So when Brigadier General Thompson flew in from Pendleton, he cleared his schedule for half an hour.  The medical report that had been pulled out of a bag of holding and the velociraptor that was pacing across his office caused him to reach for his phone and tell his aide to push his appoint...

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Four. Flirtations and Sacrifices.

Amber's eyes opened wide as she heard an unfamiliar voice speaking English.

"You'll need to charge it every day, but you can do that at the Movie Theater, it should go from zero to full over the course of the movie, and then you'll have music again," A tall, handsome man was talking to Eddi, who has closely examining something that looked very much like an mp3 player.

"Awesome," Eddi enthused, placing an earbud in his right ear and fiddling with the device before beginning to nod ...

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Three. Acceleration

Bob was smiling as he followed the group of freshers from Holmstead up the stairs.  They'd pushed themselves hard, twelve hours a day for three days, but they'd managed to reach level seven.  He fought back a yawn as he dropped through a portal into his inventory.  He desperately needed a few hours of sleep and a hot meal, both of which could be found there.  Sliding Monroe off the Makres, he laid his feline overlord down on the bed, where, with a twitch of his tail, Monro...

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Two. First Recruitment.

"You're all probably wondering why I've gathered you here today," Dave's voice boomed out over the crowd.

"We're not all named Josh!" A voice called out from the crowd.

"No," Dave laughed, "but every single one of you has either played Dungeons and Dragons at our table, or you play with someone who has."

He was standing on the bed of one of the military trucks.  Talima was running the grill parked next to it, and the heavenly smell of Bar-B-Que was drifting over the ent...

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-One. Convincing Arguments.

Bob looked around the tenth floor of the Dungeon sadly. He was feeling conflicted. It was going to require another five-fold ritual to complete, as it was just too large for him to create the entire thing in one sitting. However, by splitting it up, his matrix wasn't screaming nearly as loudly.

He'd decided to have the cooks and butchers take the Endless Swarm path. It would ultimately benefit them, and if he ran into the situation where he had open slots, he'd have people ready to fill...

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy. Compassion.

Bob watched as the weary freshers staggered upstairs, eagerly seeking their bunks.

They'd been determined to succeed, and he had to wonder if things weren't getting a little bit desperate for the new arrivals in Holmstead.  Maybe something to check on.

He was at an impasse regarding them.  On the one hand, they really wouldn't be able to delve once the recruits from Earth started rolling back in.  On the other hand, it wasn't inconceivable for them to push down to t...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Nine. Revelations.

Bob stepped through the Gateway and was immediately ambushed by Mike.

"Ninth floor is finished?" Mike asked.

"Done, monsters should be spawning within the hour," Bob confirmed.  He looked past Mike and could see that the tavern had quite a few people in it.

"I'll keep the same rotation going," Mike tapped at his tablet, "It turns out that scrapyards don't care how the copper is delivered, so I've got a pair of trucks outside, if you could summon a couple of tons of copp...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Eight. The Ever Victorious Legion of the Light.

Bob leaned forward as the ritual completed, his stomach spasming. He fought down the urge to vomit, forcing himself to take deep, calming breaths. The burning sensation was worse today, although he'd been able to push through the pain and complete the ritual.

"Trebor," Bob groaned, "Why the hell does it feel like my matrix is on fire?"

'You're performing a five-fold ritual, which is the maximum your channels are capable of, and you're doing so over a period of hours,' Tre...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Seven. Going Native.

Bob didn't like Lt. Colonel Smith. The man had a right to be angry about being reincarnated without having the process explained to him, but that didn't excuse him for being a dick. Bob hadn't started the process of saving the Earth to deal with the same bullshit that had plagued him before.

"And he's a kitty hater, buddy," Bob murmured as he scratched under Monroe's chin, "can't trust someone like that."

Monroe purred loudly in agreement with that statement. Bob was going to attr...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Six. Mistakes in the making and those already made.

Nora watched as over a hundred men thundered by, running in unison as they called out some sort of song in Bob's language.

Glacier Valley was eye-opening.  There were so many people, almost all of them middle-aged men, all wearing the same outfits.  None of them spoke Thayland.

She was waiting around with nothing to do.  She sighed.

She spotted one of the Endless Swarm girls exiting the tavern, and she hurried over.

"Hi!" Nora called out cheerfully, "I c...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Five. Logistics.

Leonard glared at the angel.  It wasn't easy.  Waves of kindness and peace quite literally poured off of her.

"What gives you the right to do this without asking me?" He growled.  "I don't know who Vi'Radia is, but I do know that here in America, you don't perform medical procedures without informed consent."

The Angel's serene expression faltered.

"I've lived a damn full life, and I was ready to finish it out as comfortably as I could," Leon...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Four. Responsibilities.

Lieutenant Colonel Leonard Smith, United States Marine Corps, Retired, had lived a long, full life.  He'd joined the Marines straight out of High School, and the Corps had become his touchstone.  He'd come of age fighting in one war, then bucked the system to become an officer, leading men in another.  He'd married a wonderful woman, and they'd had two great children.  His wife had passed several years ago, leaving him to wait out his time, enjoying his grandchildren when ...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Three. The Welcome Wagon.

Annisa stepped through the portal, winced as a wall of heat washed over her.

"Yeah, sorry about that, ought to have warned you, I guess," the man named Waters said, "we've been transferring out here in the Mojave, which as you can see is a desert."

He motioned for her to follow him to a long, low metal cart of some sort.  It was beautiful, lines flowing smoothly together, painted a deep lustrous blue that glowed in the sunlight.

Waters walked her to the cart and opened ...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Two. Headaches.

Bob stood up carefully.  Five-fold rituals were much more efficient, but they required him to remain seated and still while channeling the mana out of the crystals, through his matrix, and into the ritual.  The size of the ritual mattered as well, as increasing the size of the ritual also increased the number of crystals required, which increased the amount of time needed.

It had taken him six hours to excavate the space for the floor and then another eight hours to cast the r...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-one. Avoiding, Enjoying, and Building Relationships.

Bob wasn't hiding.  He was carefully excavating the seventh floor of his Dungeon.  It just happened to be inaccessible to anyone else.

The day before had been grueling.  It had started off slowly but had quickly snowballed.  He'd ended up in the Mojave desert, casting regenerate over and over again, as more and more Marines had poured in.

Someone had gotten their hands on a school bus.

Someone else had a bar-b-que grill so large they had to tow it with a ...

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty. Raising the Flag.

Huron gestured, and the Gateway activated, a rich golden sheet of light strewn with streaks of rose and amber.  A dozen novices preceded him through the event Horizon, and he smiled as he left Harbordeep behind.

He loved getting away from the endless paperwork and tedium that came with administration.  While introducing the novices he'd assigned to Glacier Valley could have been done by Austan, Clyde, Annisa, or Voren; he'd taken the task for himself.  He'd made the menta...

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Nine. Recruits.

"Oh, these are good," Eddi was eating his french fries one by one.

"You should try dipping them in ketchup," Eric advised, "but not in the car," he added.

Their trip through the drive-through had been painless, with Bob ordering a large order of fries for himself and a large vanilla milkshake for Monroe. That particular event, Bob knew from past experience, was best conducted in an environment where the floor was easy to mop up afterward.

"This looks interesting but a little...

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Eight. Horsepower.

Rogard opened the box with trepidation.  In his experience, it was a rare thing to receive good news via courier.  He ignored the smaller box inside, choosing to read the letter first.

Lord Rogard Wallenstair,

A new settlement has been built within Greenwold.  It lies just over two hundred miles to the Northwest and should be easily found at the edge of the glacial shelf.  Robert Whitman has built a Dungeon and begun sending Adventurers...