Chapter Fifty-eight. Return to Baconville.

Chapter Fifty-eight. Return to Baconville.

Bob walked quickly out of the Adventurers Guild towards the Dungeon.

He'd done a little napkin math in his head, and he'd realized that at one mana crystal per one hundred sheets of paper, he was going to need two thousand and ten mana crystals to print out sixty-seven thousand copies of his three-page leaflet.

The ritual had taken a full four hundred mana crystals, and after giving Amber a hundred and ten to get her started, he was sitting at six hundred and sixteen.

Bob frowned as he passed into the mausoleum.

He could have given her three hundred and ten, which would have covered her room and board for a month, and given her the crystals needed to take level five.

He shook his head. She probably wasn't going to take a level today, or even tomorrow.

In the meantime, he had boars to kill.

Pressing his token to the Gateway, he walked through the pool and onto the sixth floor of the Dungeon.

Bob took a deep breath and smiled.

Thanks to his enchanted armor, his endurance was currently at fifteen, which was enough to prevent the anxiety from the mana density.

Also, he had mostly fond memories of the sixth level of the Dungeon.

He followed his familiar path through the brush and arrived at his little clearing.

Bob pushed his mana into the familiar matrix of his summon UtahRaptor spell, and smiled as he felt how easily it flowed.

He was startled to receive a System prompt.

Magical School of Summoning Skill: Summon Mana-Infused Creature has reached a tier threshold. Please select one of the following skills for the Summoned creature by Verbally Stating or Mentally Projecting your choice from the following:

Natural Weaponry (Primary Skill)

Dodge (Primary Skill)

Fleetness (Primary Skill)

Natural Armor (Primary Skill)

Toughness (Primary Skill)

'Natural Weaponry,' Bob mentally projected.

Another System Prompt appeared.

Welcome to the Path of the Arcane Depths! You may select one of the following schools to which an increase of five levels to all sub skills will be applied, please Verbally State or Mentally Project your choice from the following:

Magical School of Summoning

Magical School of Dimension

'Magical School of Summoning,' Bob mentally projected firmly.

Welcome to the Path of the Arcane Depths! Please select one skill from the Magical School of Summoning or one Skill from the Magical School of Dimension.

Bob leaned back against a tree and thought for a moment.

He'd get his portal spell back at level six, and his other two dimension spells back at level eighteen and nineteen respectively.

So he didn't need anything from Dimension.

As for summoning, his UtahRaptor was just going to get better and better, so he needed to look at summoning something else.

At some point, he was going to want to build something. A shack, a house, something.

Having the ability to summon up prefabricated construction materials...

Bob mentally projected the image of a five-foot square panel, with tenons and mortises to allow them to dovetail together, further lined and crossed with a beam already punched out to be bolted together.

You have selected the skill: Summon Mana-infused Object

"That'll do," Bob said to himself as the next window appeared.

Welcome to the Path of the Arcane Depths!

System Error! User does not currently have access to a Divine School of Magic.

Attempting to Reconcile.

Please select a Divine School by Verbally Stating or Mentally Projecting the name of the School.

"Well," Bob muttered, "that's not good."

Bob thought for a moment. He knew that Thidwell had said he'd need Shadowmancy eventually.

'Divine School of Shadowmancy,' Bob projected.

You have selected the Divine School of Shadowmancy.

Bob smiled. No terrible, rending pain.

He could live with an error like that.

Jake appeared, and while he was smaller and his feathers duller, he was still quick and eager.

Bob laid a hand on his back and pulled up his status.Follow current novels at novelhall.comon: UtahRaptor(Jake) Tier: 5 Size: 5 Level: 5 Weapon Hardness: 23.1 Hide hardness: 15.4 Strength: 27 Mana: 15 Armor: 67 Coordination: 27 Stamina: 41 Claw Damage: 360 Endurance: 15 Health: 154 Bite Damage: 330 Intelligence: 10 Movement: 52 Wisdom: 10 Dodge 49 Beauty: 15 Summoning Mastery 1.54 Caster Value / 2 67 Arcane Familiar Bonus 0.04 Natural Attack 1.5

Bob considered that between his affinity crystal raising his UtahRaptor's level by ten, his path bonus raising it by five, and Monroe adding four, combined with his threshold bonus from of his School as a twenty-five percent bonus...

Bob would need to grind his Summon UtahRaptor to level thirty to have it capped.

Bob shrugged off the knowledge that he'd need to earn a hundred and twenty-three thousand experience to raise the spell back to its previous level.

That was only sixty-one thousand five hundred boars after all.

Bob stepped forward, and as he heard the familiar squeal of anger coming from the brush, he smiled.

Time to put in the work.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amber listened to Kelli for a full five minutes before their breakfast arrived.

"So," Amber said, "to recap, you have some sort of mystical energy that settles in low spots and causes fully formed creatures to leap out and eat the nearest person they can find."

System User Kelli Armel has attempted to contact you via Telepathy. To consent either Mentally project or Verbally articulate, "I accept" or to resist, Mentally project or Verbally articulate "No"

The battles between UtahRaptor and boar lasted all of three seconds.

In eight hours, Bob and Jake and slaughtered nine thousand, five hundred and eight boars, for a total of two hundred and ninety-four crystals.

This was lovely, but the biggest gain was definitely his Summon UtahRaptor spell hitting level twelve.

He'd seen the lovely System screen once Jake had reached level ten.

Magical School of Summoning Skill: Summon Mana-Infused Creature has reached a tier threshold. Please select one of the following skills for the Summoned creature by Verbally Stating or Mentally Projecting your choice from the following:

Dodge (Primary Skill)

Fleetness (Primary Skill)

Natural Armor (Primary Skill)

Toughness (Primary Skill)

Bob had chosen Natural Armor, hoping that when faced with the cockroaches again, his UtahRaptor would be able to stand up to the damage.

He wouldn't be able to test that for a while, as Jake was killing the boars in a single bite.

Bob slumped into the chair next between Harv and Elli, slid Monroe off the Makres and then poured the big Maine-coon onto the table.

"Good evening," Bob said cheerfully.

"You seem happier," Harv said with a smile of his own.

"I love the sixth level of the Dungeon," Bob confided happily.

Elli shot him a smile as he reached over to scratch Monroe's ears, which appeared to be the necessary impetus to start the purr motor.

"No ambushes or poison or swarms or any of that nonsense," Bob said with a smile, "Just endless, straight forward boars."

Harv shook his head although his smile remained as he said, "Still, eight hours after what Kelli described as... well," he lowered his voice, "he said you sort of exploded, from the inside."

Bob nodded and waved to Theo.

"So I gather, I think I'd lost consciousness at that point," Bob confessed.

"But that's all behind me now, and I can focus on the important things, like leveling up and squaring myself with Thidwell," he finished.

"True enough," Harv said, then asked, "When are you going to want those wooden plates done?"

"I'll need a few more days," Bob said, "I know where to source the paper, and I know the cost, but I need to check on the ink."

"You plan to pull an all-day Delve tomorrow?" Elli asked as he carefully played with Monroe's toe tufts.

"I am," Bob admitted.

"Maybe give it a late start," Elli suggested, "Eddi has been looking for you for the past couple of days, although he's out at his parent's farm tonight."

Bob shrugged and replied, "I can do that."

He leaned back in his chair and smiled as Harv and Elli started arguing over which element they should each specialize in.

Bob couldn't help but think that despite all the pain, and the blood, and the setbacks, it was still a great day.

~ ~ ~ ~

Amber lay in bed, her thoughts racing.

There was no way she was dreaming or hallucinating. The details were too much, and several of the things she'd seen she just didn't have any reference for.

'Occam's Razor,' she muttered.

She was in another world, or an alternate dimension.

One where the man whose work she'd stolen, and had thought she'd accidentally killed, was not only alive but also a local hero.

'Think, Amber,' she mentally reprimanded herself.

She wasn't in jail anymore.

She was in a room that was slightly larger than her cell, with a much more comfortable bed, and shower that wasn't public.

Perhaps the most important part was that she was free.

She could open the door to this room, and walk out.

Of course, this world was also incredibly backward.

They didn't even have a map of the area. She'd asked.

Oh, and she was stuck here.

She'd asked about that too.

It seemed that you had to have been someplace in order to magic yourself there.

Which meant that the only two people who could send her home were Bob and herself.

And Amber didn't have any magic to do that, although Kelli had seemed to think that it wouldn't be too terribly difficult for her to obtain it.

If she went back home, she'd have to answer some fairly pointed questions about just how she'd left her cell.

The truth might help her with an insanity plea, but she wanted to be locked away in a mental ward even less than she wanted to be locked away in prison.

No, she couldn't go home.

She sniffled as a few tears rolled down her cheeks.

Everything since the accelerator explosion had just been an unending nightmare.

Once she'd accepted that Bob was still alive somehow, she'd been surprised that he wasn't angrier with her.

He'd even given her enough money to rent a room and eat three meals a day, although she had a feeling that she'd be eating a lot of salads. Hopefully, they had beans of some sort for protein...

She shook her head. Dietary issues aside, she was at least free.

According to Kelli, who was really her only source of information at this point, Bob was not only a hero, but he was also some sort of Guru when it came to figuring out the best way for people to use their magic spells, despite only having been here for like, two months.

Kelli had gone so far as to show her a rough piece of paper, on which Bob had written out a guideline for utilizing some kind of crystals to be better at blowing things up, and had mathematically shown how it would more than double their output.

So, with that in mind, she was going to see if she could sit down and apologize to Bob for what she'd done, and see if he'd be willing to answer a few questions.