MonroeByJahx

Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven. The rising Tide.

Five days earlier...

Kellan frowned.  "I've endeavored to enlighten you, but it appears that I've failed," he began.  "While this is a middling tide, it is still incredibly dangerous.  Level fifty monsters, tier eights, are going to appear rapidly.  Under normal circumstances, a well-trained team of tier six people, with affinity crystals, are able to hold back the constant influx of monsters along a fifty-foot section of wall."  He leaned forward and t...

Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Six. Girls' day.

"Nora!" Bailli hissed in shock.  "We can't go in there!  That's worse than the swimsuits!"

Nora shook her head sadly.  "It's what all the girls wear," she said, "I'm wearing it now, and you wouldn't believe how comfortable they really are."

They were standing outside of a Victoria's Secret in Houston.  While Bailli had made a few trips over to Earth, they'd been vacations with Bob, and the only shopping she'd done was a shop at the resort in Hawaii where she'd ...

Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Five. GTFO.

"You said the Tide is going to last five days, right?" Mike asked Eddi.

"Yep," Eddi nodded.  "The Endless can guard twenty-eight towns, but that's stretching us awfully thin," he shook his head.  "We're looking at level fifty monsters, so early tier eight, and there aren't enough of us, even with our Affinity Crystals, to delve that deep.  When you consider that we'll need probably twenty-five of us on top of the Guild at all times, with another twenty-five in reserve so ...

Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Four. Those sound like nerfs.

"There is one more thing," Bob continued, pulling out the Endurance Affinity Crystal from his satchel and passing it around the table.

"It looks like an economy size Affinity Crystal," Dave observed.

"It's an Endurance Affinity Crystal," Bob explained.  "It doubles your base Endurance.  So if you're tier five, at level twenty-five, instead of your base endurance being thirty, it would be sixty."

"Where can I get a full set of these?" Harv asked before passing the c...

Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Three. Revelations.

Bob looked around the table.  Bailli, Harv, Elli, and Eddi represented his closest friends from Thayland.  Dave, Amanda, Jessica, and Mike represented his closest friends from Earth.  He'd been on the fence about including Jessica, but she was a friend, and she occupied a position of, if not authority, influence with the Australian ex-pats who had made Thayland their home.

He wove his magic, casting a control air spell to prevent sound from leaving their table, a transmut...

Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Two. Come on over to the Dark Side. We have cookies!

I fucking love writing Yorrick.  

"Hello, my name is Yorrick Wrathsbane," Yorrick smiled.  "I know that's not going to be a common name or one that's familiar to you, but you'll have to blame my parents for that."  Yorrick shrugged self-deprecatingly.  "I'm one of the people in charge of the Karcerian Empire.  We are the folks who inhabit the other two continents on Thayland.  Our friend, the King of Greenwold, has stepped up to ...

Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-One. Discoveries and the satisfaction of a Job finished.

Bob was staring at the crystal in his hands.

Over the past few months, he'd gradually built out the rest of his Arcane Depths, and he would spend an hour or so a day fighting on the deeper floors.  He'd seeded this floor, fifty-six, with Dimensional Affinity Crystals, which made what he held in his hand all the more surprising.

It was an Affinity Crystal, but it was half again the size of a normal one.

"Trebor, what is this?" Bob asked as he turned it over in his hands....

Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty. Crashing the Vacation.

"Yorrick?" Bob asked, both surprised and confused by sudden appearance of the Warlock at his campsite along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

"Good afternoon!" Yorrick replied enthusiastically.  "I heard you were on vacation, and I'm sort of waiting for the next wave, so I thought I'd find you and take a look at whatever is so interesting to you."

"How did you find me?" Bob asked.

"Bob," Yorrick shook his head sadly, "you're the second most powerful person on this planet right no...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Nine. Evil be thou my good.

So, allow me to preface this chapter with the following disclaimer:  I'm a sucker for a charismatic, reasonable bad guy.  I have derailed numerous campaigns over the years by looking around at the gaming table after the evil cult leader has given his spiel, and saying 'Well, he's not wrong.'  

I'm also encouraged to not play evil characters in a campaign with varied alignments, as I will absolutely lead my party to temptation.

"Good afternoon," ...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Eight. A recommendation of caution.

"Madam President, Mr. Whitman has arrived and is asking to speak with you."

Elania paused.  Normally that man didn't want anything to do with the government, and if he did need to interact with it, he approached the Secretary of Defense.  Despite that, she'd left clear instructions that if he ever arrived at the White House, she was to be notified immediately.

"Tell him it'll be five minutes," she replied, looking at Taylor, who was running the briefing.  Her chief ...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Seven. Why Yes, Yorrick is Evil.

Bob looked at the King of Greenwold, and then at the Seneschal, and then at Yorrick.

"The Karcerian Empire," Bob began slowly, "that's the empire that occupies the two main equatorial continents, right?"

"We do indeed," Yorrick agreed, still smiling.  "Until a few months ago, we included the majority of sapient life on this planet."

The King and the Seneschal were standing by but remaining quiet, which Bob found to be deeply troubling.

"You see, Bob," Yorrick bega...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Six. C-C-Changes.

It wasn't that a summons from the King of Greenwold resulted in a minor anxiety attack.  It was just that he was, and Bob was guessing a little here, a faux tier nine Dragon, who could easily destroy all life on Earth if he decided it was his best course of action.

Bob didn't want to ever be in the position where he was the one who inadvertently convinced the King that it was a good idea to just wipe Earth clean.

He had been hoping to deliver the King's crystals to h...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Five. Dangers of Travel, and Spring in Paris.

"Honestly, with the stock market as unstable as it is, there wasn't anything we could've done, even if we had wanted to," Elania explained.

"Still, the fallout," Taylor shook her head.  "I can't believe Colbert let that woman on his show in the first place."

"To be fair, she went off script, but the topic was too juicy for him to reign her in," Elania sighed.

Johnson and Johnson had tanked the next day, the stock going into freefall.  With Pfizer being identified a...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-four. Not a Demon, rather a Saint.

"What are you doing with Bob?" Bailli had placed a hand on Jessica's shoulder, holding her back as the group broke up for the evening.

"I like him, and I'm trying to get him used to the idea that affection isn't abhorent," Jessica replied.

Bailli shook her head.  She had spent a lot of time with Bob, although not as much recently, and she felt she knew him pretty well.  To be candid, Jessica was almost as beautiful, although their personalities deferred wildly.

She...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Three. Hawaii.

Authors Note - So, I'm both late and behind on chapters.  I slept for two and a half days, waking only to make sure that Mom took her meds, and to help her with a variety of minor tasks before passing right back out.  It took me wwwwaaayyyy to long to finish this chapter, when it should have been quick and easy.  I'll punish myself and get some writing done after work this week to get caught up.  

Scuba diving, while fun for Bob, had no...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Two. Surfs up!

There were definitely advantages to having superhuman dexterity, Bob mused as he crouched a bit lower on the surfboard.

Monroe was perched towards the front of the board, the big Maine-Coon sitting primly, the only signs of his excitement being a swishing tail.

Bob had been right, Monroe loved surfing.  As long as he didn't get dumped in the water, and even then, he didn't mind swimming if the waves weren't too tall.

Fortunately, Bob had the foresight to practi...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-One. Snowflakes and long-term storage.

"I'm sure you're all excited to find out why we've gathered everyone here today," Dave's voice boomed out of the PA system.

Bob was watching from the side of the stage that had been erected for the event, and he had to admit that Dave had quite the presence.

"Less than a year ago, an old friend of ours from our UCLA D&D days showed up out of the blue and made us the same offer we're about to make you," Dave continued.

Amanda had walked up to join him and gave the crowd a...

Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty. This is why we hide.

"Good morning!" Bob said cheerfully as he walked into the D&D players' tavern.

"Good morning, Bob," Amanda greeted him with a smile, "you should really pop your head out of whatever Dungeon you're hiding in more often."

Bob blinked, instantly wary.  "What happened?" He asked carefully.

"The King of Greenwold basically kidnapped the United Nations and told them how he was going to be saving all of their people," Dave replied, appearing from the kitchen with a platter...

Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Nine. I'm not telling him.

It had taken Bob three weeks to successfully cast Mana-Sight without the aid of the System.

He took solace in the fact that he'd only been able to spend thirty minutes a day practicing, although the hours he'd spent each day puzzling over the successes and failures of that practice was best left unmentioned.  He preferred to think that he'd only need eleven hours of practice.

"I know," Bob told Monroe, "Kitty is so hungry," he shook his head woefully.  "How coul...

Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Eight. The illusion of choice.

So it turns out that mousing is worse than typing, in terms of wrist pain.  As a result, this chapter has not been pushed through the word chipper of Grammarly.  My abuse of the common coma is laid bare for all to see.

It was odd, Ed reflected, that he'd gone through hundreds of portals between Earth and Thayland, and after the first he hadn't had any qualms, but now that he was creating the portal, his nerves were on edge.

He'd had the capability for...

Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Seven. Putting the children in timeout

"President Hartford, do you take us for fools?"

Kellan couldn't be bothered to read the man's nameplate.

"Alternate dimensions, magic, an apocalypse, evacuating our citizens?"  He scoffed, "You wish us to believe in this fiction?"

He wasn't saying anything that others hadn't already said.

Documents detailing the upcoming awakening of mana in their universe and its ancillary consequences had been delivered to all members of the General Assembly as soon as they had ...

Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Six. Cultural differences.

Bob smiled as he summoned out Jake, sending the UtahRaptor into battle.

The vacation had been nice, but the truth was that after a couple of days off, he started to feel anxious.  He liked the free time, he needed to work.  There was probably something unhealthy there.

Best not to dwell.  He stretched, his mind only half occupied with Jake's battle.  After limbering up, he strapped on his ankle weights.  He'd slacked off for a week, and n...

Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Five. Beautiful Vistas.

Watching the sunrise over the crags and canyons was remarkably peaceful.  Bob had woken up as soon as the sky had begun to lighten, and he'd quietly climbed out of his swag, a sleepy Monroe over his shoulders.  He'd walked through an empty campsite opposite their own, this one facing east, and had settled down on the picnic table, enjoying the cool morning air, a light breeze flowing over him, promising to provide some relief from the inevitable heat of the day.

They'd agreed ...

Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Four. Dinner and metaphysics.

Elania forced herself to smile politely at the King of Greenwold.  Honestly, she'd shared meals with despots and dictators, and he was none of those things, at least not the negative connotations.  He was, however, overbearing, condescending, and incredibly entitled.  He'd told her what they were having for dinner.

She struggled to reign in her temper.  She was normally an even-keeled person, but she had to admit that the King of Greenwold just irritated her.  I...

Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Three. Vacations.

The reddish cliffs and boulders, dotted with dull green scrub brush, was a drastic change from the evergreens and granite of Thayland.  It was also significantly warmer, ninety-one degrees as opposed to the sixty-eight it had been when they'd departed Thayland that morning.

Bob reached up a hand to shade his eyes as he looked around the campsite.  They'd gone down a side road at the entrance to the park, and after twenty miles, that had changed to dirt, or more accurately, san...

Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Two. Prepping for a well earned vacation.

Bob woke up to the plaintive cries of a heartbroken kitty.  He sat up and swung his legs out of bed, planting his feet on the floor as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"Monroe?" Bob called, not seeing him in the bedroom.  Staggering to his feet, he headed to the kitchen, where he found Monroe sitting in front of his tragically empty food bowl.

"How could I starve a kitty like that?" Bob commiserated, "I should be ashamed of myself."  Opening the stasis box that ...

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

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 wor...

Chapter Two Hundred and Forty. Catching up.

"I guess I can see that," Bob said thoughtfully.  "There are much worse ways to use that power."

"It turns out that the vast majority of the country hated the Cartels," Dave grinned.

"Anything else crazy going on back on Earth that I haven't heard about?" Bob asked.

"There's a video of Harv ripping the souls out of like half a dozen people," Amanda offered.

"Saw that one already," Bob shrugged.  "He might have overreacted, but to be fair, they were p...

Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Nine. Someone to blame.

"Do you know how irritating it is not to be able to get ahold of you?" Mike asked before Bob could even sit down.

"I've been busy," Bob replied defensively, pouring Monroe onto the empty chair next to him before sitting down.  "I'm delving long days, and today is the time I take off."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you," Mike said, raising his hands, "it's just that there are important people looking for you, and they're leaning on pretty much everyone to find you."

"...

Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Eight. Harvest.

The meeting concluded quickly once it was made clear that all the people who had stolen his weren't in a position to be a danger to themselves or others.  Only one of them was still involved in the field at all, and she was teaching.

Bob had signed in a few dozen places and had walked out of the room with Carl, having received confirmation from Bank of America that a deposit for two million dollars had been received and that he should talk to one of their financial advisors, as the...