Chapter Forty-Six. A spark of enlightenment.

Chapter Forty-Six. A spark of enlightenment.

Bob walked up the stairs towards Thidwell's office, his mind going over possible ideas for pathing with the Affinity Crystals.

Clearly, the Path of the Endless Swarm was a no-brainer for using the Summoning Affinity Crystals.

And Bob couldn't help but think that if you were going to be a Dimensionalist, taking the cost reduction on the portal spell would be a solid win. The thirty mana cost per second when the spell was level twenty-five was very prohibitive. With a cost reduction though, a few dedicated retrieval specialists could hop from farmstead to farmstead and make sure everyone was behind Holmstead's walls when a wave rose.

As for Conjuration, the savant path seemed tailor-made for an affinity crystal.

The desk in front of Thidwell's office door was empty, so Bob went around it and knocked on the door.

"Come in," Thidwell's rough voice called out.

Bob opened the door, walked inside Thidwell's office, then closed it before turning to face the giant man.

Thidwell was sitting at his desk, his enormous hand holding a charpine as he leafed through some paperwork. He gestured with the charpine for Bob to take a seat.

Bob sat and then reached up to pet Monroe, who was lounging across Bob's shoulders, held in place by the Makres.

Thidwell signed at the bottom of a page, shuffled them into a folder, slid the folder into a desk drawer, and then raised his head to look at Bob.

"I've got seven fresher's following your outline for using a Summoning Affinity Crystal in conjunction with the Path of the Endless Swarm," Thidwell said, "and by all reports they are doing well."

Bob nodded and said, "Based on the bonus I received when I reached level five in the Summoning School, I expect they'll have a real impact."

Thidwell grunted and pulled a blank sheet of paper from his desk drawer, and he asked "Do you have any ideas or suggestions for the Conjuration or Dimension Affinity Crystals?"

Bob took a deep breath. This was it. Time to lay it out.

"Thidwell, I owe you a debt that I can't ever repay," Bob started, "you could have just left me to flounder, or even just killed me, but instead you spent time and resources to not only give me a way to live but also to show me a way to save Monroe."

Thidwell just looked at him steadily.

"So, with that in mind, I'm going to share some things with you," Bob continued, "first and foremost, is the fact that as idyllic as it seems, your world is one bad week away from ending."

Thidwell cocked his head questioningly.

"The number of people on this planet is dangerously close to what we call an extinction threshold," Bob said, "you just don't have the numbers to recover from a serious catastrophe. In fact, I'm guessing that you've witnessed a few instances where everyone was holding on by their fingertips, one bad wave or tide from being wiped out, am I right?"

Thidwell nodded slowly and said, "Three times that I can recall, once when I was eight, again when the tide claimed my father, and a decade ago when the last tide rose."

"It's the tides that do it, you know," Thidwell rumbled, "there are just too many monsters, and they are too powerful."

"It isn't the tides," Bob said quietly but forcefully, "it's the people."

Thidwell started to speak but Bob raised a hand and said, "Just let me finish, please."

"If everyone used an affinity crystal before they took their path," Bob said with a touch of bitterness and frustration, "you wouldn't have to worry about people not being powerful enough for the wave, the Dungeon, or the tide."

"And here it is, the cold hard truth," Bob stated levely, "the knowledge of how to do this, it isn't new. The Fucking Royals and Nobles, they fucking know Thidwell, they know how this works. It's the secret to their path's being so good."

Bob shook his head and went on, "Either they are greedy, amoral bastards or they just can't see the big picture."

"You think that the Path of the Endless Swarm is impressive?" Bob asked.

"Imagine a Fire Savant with an Affinity Crystal on Fire Blast," he said, "On the wall at level six, splitting his cast three ways with Fire Blast with Barrage, against a monster wave, he's dropping nine monsters every second," Bob waved his hand in a circle, "forty savants, put them in groups of five at your eight points on the wall, and watch each group clear forty-five monsters a second, or two thousand seven hundred monsters a minute."

"All eight groups combined, that is twenty-one thousand six hundred monsters that never reach the walls, every minute," Bob finished.

"Give me forty freshers, forty Conjuration Affinity Crystals, and four months, and you'll never have to worry about a wave again," Bob said with a sigh.

Thidwell had started taking notes during Bob's speech, and paused to motion to him to go on.

"If you had just five people willing to be arcanists or something else that went with the Dimension School," Bob said, "you could have them level their Portal spell up and, you could sweep and clear every farmstead around Holmstead within a minute of the alarm bell for a wave ringing. No one would be caught unaware or left behind."

"There is no reason for people to die in the Dungeon or during a monster wave," Bob said evenly, "all that needs to happen is for people who are high enough level to find them, to pass the crystals and instructions to level zero people."

He sighed and reached up to rub Monroe's chin.

"And it only gets easier the more people know," Bob said.

"Do you think I'm going to have a problem, even as weak as I am without a path, and as fucked as I am with my matrix damage?" Bob asked rhetorically, "No, no my level thirty-fucking-eight UtahRaptor is going to chew through those tier six, level twenty-six monsters when I'm level twenty-three."

Bob shook his head, "When Eddi hits level twenty-three, he's going to be a goddamn juggernaut," he said, "even with the bad math, he's going to have, and I swear I checked this twice, thirty-two summoned monsters, each at level twenty-one, and each one respawning five seconds after it dies. On top of his level thirty-eight T-Rex."

"Maybe send a message to Calder, explaining what you've found, as well as my suggestions for using the Affinity Crystals with the Savant paths, and offer to trade Conjuration crystals for whatever he's currently pulling in," Bob suggested.

Thidwell let out a huge sigh and relaxed his stance, then began to pace behind his desk.

"You're our proof that Affinity Crystals make a difference," Thidwell said in his gravely voice as he paced.

He paused and turned to point a finger at Bob, "You'll need to keep leading the way on this. How are you allocating your attributes?" Thidwell asked.

Bob blinked and paused his ruff scratching before replying, "Split evenly between Intelligence and Wisdom."

Thidwell shook his head and resumed his pacing, "Kelli's influence no doubt. While he's a fine researcher, and that Akashic path of his has real potential, he's never spent enough time in the Dungeon, you'd be better served by following Harv," Thidwell said.

"Did you know," he rumbled, "that if you exceed the Dungeons level by twice in Endurance, you don't suffer from the anxiety and fear that the mana density induces?"

Bob shook his head.

"Harv and Elli do," Thidwell grunted, "so what you need to do is look at an attribute distribution of one each level in endurance, and two each level in intelligence and wisdom, at least once you get your endurance up to par."

"In fact," He continued to pace, "just dump the next two levels worth into endurance, you'll need it when you're looking at level twenty-seven when you're level twenty-four."

Bob grimaced. He was never going to get anywhere with his mana situation.

Thidwell stopped pacing and stood behind his desk, leaning on the back of his chair, his rugged face set in a scowl.

"If we're going to do this, and it seems like we are, what with your cheering squad already having started," Thidwell said, "we have to move quickly."

"I know you're working to gather crystals for your gear, and normally I'd encourage that, but now I'm going to tell you to stop, level seven is an awful place to do that anyway, the wolves coalescence rate into crystals is abysmal, somewhere around three percent," Thidwell said.

"Get enchantments for your wisdom, intelligence, endurance, and mana, then take level seven," Thidwell ordered gruffly, "allocate all your attributes to endurance, that should see you at fourteen after the enchantment, which is close to where you should be."

Thidwell reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out an intricately etched bronze sword, which he laid on the desk with the hilt facing Bob.

"That sword is also a one-handed casting implement," Thidwell said, "I had it made for Elli when he reaches fifteen, but Stars and Stones he and Harv just won't move forward."

"It'll serve you better than Harv's old staff," Thidwell said as he pulled out his chair and sat down again.

"I've got twenty-five freshers with their crystals ready, and no shepherds," Thidwell said disgustedly, "and after what happened with Bailli's team, I'm reluctant to trust any shepherds but Elli and Harv to do the job right."

He paused in his grumbling and pointed a huge finger at Bob and said, "Thank you for that, by the way. Bailli deserved to have her arm regrown quickly, but I'd already given out all the crystals, and I've been delving hard to make the tithe for the month. You went out of your way to slow yourself down to help her."

He lowered his hand and pulled out a piece of paper and started writing on it.

"Tomorrow morning," Thidwell said, "I'm having the remaining twenty-five freshers gather up in the tavern, and I want you to lay it out for them."

"Lay what out?" Bob asked.

He was reminded that while normally short in his speech, Thidwell was almost terrifyingly decisive.

"Do the same thing with the Savant and Conjuration Affinity Crystal that you did with the Summoning Crystal and Endless Swarm," Thidwell grumbled, "Layout a plan for the skills, their attributes, their levels, and what they can expect."

He finished writing and shoved the paper across the desk to Bob.

"Sell them on it the way you sold it to the freshers who heard you before," He said with a quiet force in his rough voice, "make them believe it the way you made me believe it."

"Go see Gary and Nikki about getting the enchantments done on your gear," Thidwell said as he stood, "And make sure to get a light from Austan, you'll need it on level eight."

Thidwell came around his desk and gestured for Bob to stand up.

Bob slid Monroe back onto the Makres and stood up, pausing as Thidwell laid a hand on his shoulder.

Bob idly noted that Thidwell's hand was nearly a foot wide.

"I want you at level ten by end of next week," Thidwell instructed, "And level fifteen two weeks after that."

Bob swallowed, his throat constricting.

"You hit twenty-four, then twenty-five, and gather me up a hundred summoning and dimension affinity crystals, and you can not only consider us square, but I'll be in your debt," Thidwell said as he gently squeezed Bob's shoulder.

"Now get to it," the big man ordered, and guided Bob out the door.

Bob stood outside of Thidwell's office and gave in to the temptation to close his eyes as he took several deep, calming breaths.

"Fuck," he muttered.