Bob shifted, leaning forward to pour Monroe onto the table. He rubbed the big cat's cheeks as he considered his words.
Naomeh waited patiently across from him.
"How long do the Eire live?" Bob asked.
"If they choose not to advance, eight hundred years," Naomeh replied.
Bob nodded. "Over the course of the past two hundred years, humanity on Earth has gone from travelling across the country on horseback, a journey that took years, to soaring above it, travers...
2023-02-06 08:28:52 +0000 UTC
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It had taken Steven fourteen hours to get to his uncle's cabin. Under normal circumstances, it should have taken four, five at the most, but he wasn't the only one who had decided that Atlanta wasn't going to be safe.
He'd been grateful for his father's advice: "Always keep your tank topped off," he'd told Steven when he handed him the keys to the beat-up old truck they'd finished repairing. "You never know when you'll need to go somewhere, but you can almost always count on...
2023-01-22 08:58:58 +0000 UTC
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You're getting this one completely raw. I need to find a better solution than Grammarly, as it has become even more cumbersome. I'll take any suggestions in the comments, but in the meantime, beware of misspellings and my abuse of the common comma.
Bob closed his eyes and counted down from ten as he took slow, deliberate breaths.
Ten years. That was more than enough time to rebuild the Freedom with an eye towards efficiency. Hell, he'd bee...
2023-01-19 10:29:23 +0000 UTC
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"Hello," Bob said cautiously.
The Eire he'd found walking down the main boulevard of their town wasn't Ordast.
"Vorstach's blessing on you, human," the Eire replied, "Ordast will be pleased that you've returned. He is in the barracks."
As the rest of the group piled out of the portal, the Eire gestured for them to follow him, then strode towards the Adventurers Guild. Or what they had expected to be the Adventurers Guild one day.
Ordast exited the Adventure...
2023-01-16 09:06:14 +0000 UTC
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"I'm going to miss fast travel," Dave lamented as they stepped through the last portal.
"I'm not going to give up the Portal spell," Bob said, "we do sort of need it to fly the Freedom."
"But you won't be able to portal us very far after we reincarnate," Dave argued.
"That was the reason we built next to a Dungeon, so we wouldn't have to," Bob replied.
"It's got to be done, right?" Jessica asked.
Bob nodded. The System now offered Evolution alongsi...
2022-12-12 12:16:58 +0000 UTC
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Bob was self-aware enough to know that he missed social cues.
"The System is translating our words, but it doesn't provide any sort of guidance regarding etiquette," Bob said. "Where we come from, talking to you from the roof of a building might be considered rude or unfriendly. What exactly is your people's protocol for this situation?"
He felt rather proud of himself for thinking to ask that question.
"When groups of Eire meet, our custom is to sit around a tab...
2022-12-06 12:09:47 +0000 UTC
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The end of the world arrived on a Tuesday afternoon. It was hot and muggy, and for those poor souls unfortunate enough to be outside of an air-conditioned room, the smell of stale piss and fetid sewage wafted through the air, courtesy of a broken sewer main that had resulted from a catastrophic failure at the water treatment plant.
Steven was walking home from work. Under normal circumstances, he'd have taken the subway, but the line that ran near his apartment had been closed down due ...
2022-12-05 11:01:28 +0000 UTC
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"Let's see what those blessings are," Bob said as he focused on each in turn.
Blessing of Vorstach.
Grants the user the Divine Blessing of Vorstach, which mitigates eight percent of the damage dealt to the user by those who revere Baldarkurax.
Warning! Possessing a Blessing of Vorstach will negatively impact any interactions with those blessed by Baldarkurax.
"That bit at the end sounds a lot like the warnings th...
2022-11-17 12:48:34 +0000 UTC
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Bob had been happy, initially, with the new Dungeon. Sure, it was a bit warm, what with all the lava streaming down from the lip of the volcano, but it hadn't been nearly as hot as the tunnels in the Dungeon next to their settlement. The less said about the Dungeon at the pole, the better.
His enthusiasm had waned when it started raining flaming boulders.
Assuming their theory was correct, the appearance of the Irth as antagonists started to fill in a few blanks. ...
2022-11-17 08:45:25 +0000 UTC
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Erick had been in love with Bailli since he was nine years old.
At nine, he hadn't known he was in love, but something deep inside him had seen the frightened, angry child, and yearned to see her smile.
They were fourteen when he'd admitted to himself that he was hopeless, irrevocably in love with her. By that time they were best friends, and it had taken him another year to muster the courage to confess his feelings. She'd always been the brave one, rushing into adven...
2022-11-17 05:10:32 +0000 UTC
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Bob woke up to darkness. The entire group had agreed that no one wanted to run that Dungeon again, so they'd headed home. The hours spent in the Dungeon, plus the trip home had put everyone at close to twenty-four hours on the hoof. Bob had hoped that exhaustion would have allowed him to sleep until dawn, but dawn was still a couple of hours away.
He found Mike relaxing in a chair, a cup of coffee in his hand as he looked up at the stars.
"Morning," Bob greeted t...
2022-11-10 13:46:52 +0000 UTC
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The thing about people from Earth, Bob mused, was that they expected nature to be more or less symmetrical. Things that weren't symmetrical set off a sort of warning bell in their heads, a sense of wrongness that was hard to define.
The Dungeons they'd built and those they'd delved into before the System update had monsters that were unnatural amalgamations of creatures that should never be, but they more or less held to that trend of symmetry.
It wasn't really the ...
2022-11-08 13:10:09 +0000 UTC
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It had quickly become apparent that the Dungeon was not the same as the one to which they'd become accustomed.
Bob had led the group down the canyon of ice for a hundred yards before the floor began to rise at a gradual incline, while the walls began to shorten. Another hundred yards saw the group arrive in a sort of valley. The walls of the valley were ice and snow with more than a dozen cracks that could be entrances to canyons like the one they'd come from. ...
2022-11-07 09:07:40 +0000 UTC
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Bob had never been one to dismiss the work of others. While he'd never struggled to learn, he wasn't gifted, so like everything else he'd had to work hard to learn.
That said, the only time he'd considered just what went into building a house was when he'd been building his cabin above Murmuring Falls, and he'd relied on magic for a lot of it.
Jack had spent years as a project manager, and he hadn't wasted that time. He'd become familiar with every aspect of c...
2022-10-24 16:06:54 +0000 UTC
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Dungeon 801972G610N497ISS6PM18D.
Capacity 27%
Estimated time until overflow 182 solar cycles.
User tier seven, semi-evolved. User grouped with eleven other sapient beings, tier six.
Dungeon set to Tier Eight, Level Thirty-Eight.
The System notification appeared in his vision.
New Quest!
The tunnels beneath the great city of Krestor have ...
2022-10-24 12:35:21 +0000 UTC
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It was a testament to the group's cohesion that everyone stopped reading their notifications immediately and rushed for the portal.
Or possibly their survival instincts, but regardless, they were back through the portal in less than two seconds, with Eddi grumbling about not being able to pick up the Mad Eire's staff.
As they emerged back into the cavern, they faced another portal, one which hadn't been there previously.
"I'm guessing that is the portal out," Dave said.
<...
2022-10-17 15:00:17 +0000 UTC
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"Alright, so we'll rotate beacons, Jack, then Mike, cycle as you accumulate damage or whatever nasty tricks the boss is likely to have," Dave began. "Wayna, Elli, be ready to pick up any adds that spawn. Given that the boss has been bringing them in through that portal, it's safe to assume he's going to get reinforcements. Jessi, you're the off healer, Erick, you're main heals for whatever beacon the boss is on. Bob, you're job is to plug any gaps with a quick applicat...
2022-10-13 11:11:44 +0000 UTC
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Magma Elemental Fleck. Collect eight flecks to form a Magma Elemental Fragment.
Magma Elemental Fleck may be consumed for a temporary bonus to Fire and Earth skills.
Consuming the Magma Elemental Fleck will provide an 8% bonus to Fire skills and a 4% bonus to Earth skills for 64 seconds.
"So, monsters drop loot now," Dave muttered.
"It said that he was able to loot because of his Harvesting skill," Amanda shook her head, "which ...
2022-10-13 09:10:33 +0000 UTC
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It was late spring, or so the NASA software said, which meant that days were about seventeen hours long, while the nights were about fourteen hours long.
While Bob had woken up a bit earlier than everyone else, it was clear that it would take some adjustment to get used to the longer days and nights. By the time everyone was up, dressed, and fed, they were still facing another four hours of darkness.
"Well, I don't see any reason to wait for daylight," Bob said once the grou...
2022-10-11 12:31:41 +0000 UTC
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The thing about trees was that they are supposed to have branches, twigs, and leaves. Or pine needles, but the general concept remained.
The tree in front of Bob had apparently disagreed with that rule.
The trunk appeared to be a mass of vines, twisted together. They had a bark-like appearance, so it hadn't been apparent that the trunks were abnormal until they'd gotten rather close. The branches were formed by vines intertwined together, with some ending before ...
2022-10-11 09:32:58 +0000 UTC
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As much as Bob liked his quiet time, alone in his Arcane Depths, lost in his thoughts as Jake tore through monster after monster, he had to admit that he also enjoyed working together with the crew.
They'd been working together for nearly two months now, and they'd become incredibly efficient. Each person knew what the others were going to do without having to ask.
He watched as Bailli, regular as a metronome, cast her lightning as a barrage, nearly killing the monster in a ...
2022-10-06 09:59:27 +0000 UTC
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Sorry folks, I had a bit of a breakdown earlier this week. Writing furiously now.
It probably said something that he was able to pivot back to the idea of fighting monsters immediately after having lost, and then regrown, his leg.
That something might not have been positive either. He'd been spending most of his time in his tier seven form, and while he hadn't felt any sort of condescension creeping in towards his lower tier friends, he had to wonder if the d...
2022-10-06 07:04:31 +0000 UTC
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"That's a lot of green," Amanda murmured.
The decision to continue on to the planet had been made, and they'd spent six weeks delving. During that time, the groups had melded together. While they were still working with rebuilt paths and affinities that weren't always perfectly ideal, they'd started to work together.
Everyone had agreed to join Bob on the thirty-eighth floor, where they'd started off holding three spawn points, one with each group, and the ano...
2022-09-29 13:47:13 +0000 UTC
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Bob watched as Jake clawed and bit, digging deep wounds in the horrific amalgamation of alligator and brown bear. The monster wasn't just taking the abuse, it had a firm grip on one of the UtahRaptor's legs, and was using its powerful body to try and rip it off.
Despite both a shield and a healing spell worked into the summons, the fight was a lot closer than he would have liked.
Jake was level sixty-four and an absolute unit. The problem was that the monster ...
2022-09-29 08:27:57 +0000 UTC
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"You get lost in there?" Mike asked as Bob suddenly found himself returned to reality.
"What?" Bob asked.
"You've been gone for like ten minutes longer than Dave, and he was in there for ten minutes longer than I was," Mike replied.
"Yeah, I had a lot of choices to make," Bob said.
The rest of the group were seated at the table, each with either a laptop or a tablet in front of them.
"So," Amanda grinned, "what did you get?"
"Well, I went all in on...
2022-09-26 14:04:09 +0000 UTC
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So, I've recently started using images to show Bob's character sheet and skills, because Patreon hates us and doesn't think we deserve to have tables.
It is much easier to snip and paste the image than it is to basically build a secondary character sheet that's laid out in a list rather than a grid. Ultimately, I'll do that if more people prefer it, so here's the poll.
2022-09-26 08:19:38 +0000 UTC
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"Fuck," Bob muttered.
He'd been finishing off his path, working through his threshold bonuses. He'd applied the threshold bonuses for Anima Blast to his Summon Mana-Infused Creature, netting a thirty-five percent strength healing effect, which when combined with his Eldritch Shield would make allow him to keep Jake out indefinitely, even against higher level monsters where the UtahRaptor normally accumulated damage quickly enough that he'd needed to resummon him every sec...
2022-09-26 08:14:55 +0000 UTC
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Word on the street is you like it crunchy. If not, this might be a bit of a slog, as we're getting into the guts of it all. How long has it been since we've seen Bob's status? I tried to insert an image rather than fiddling around trying to format the text into readability.
User has utilized a larger number of Affinity Crystals than is permitted by the user's tier. Please select seven Affinities to retain, the remainder will be strippe...
2022-09-22 10:13:48 +0000 UTC
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Alternative chapter title - It took 300 chapters for Bob to become OP.
You know you want the blue boxes. I want to give them to you. Patreon does not do blue boxes, despite two separate emails begging them to please consider updating their text editor.
Again, sans Grammarly.
8. Dungeons
Previously the System allowed energies to gather on Planetary Masses without interference, bey...
2022-09-22 05:09:16 +0000 UTC
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Word on the street is you want some of those hot patch notes.
System Updating to revision 3.0197
Certain species are unaware of the System. This portion of the notification has been written to correct certain misunderstandings, ensuring increased user efficiency.
This System controls the energies of the multiverse. Your species refers to these energies as mana, with a recently arrived species understanding ...
2022-09-20 11:13:07 +0000 UTC
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