Chapter One Hundred and Ninety. Adventures and Introspection.

Chapter One Hundred and Ninety. Adventures and Introspection.

Jessica looked over the edge of the sinkhole. As promised, it was almost twenty meters down into a forested glen. The best place to drop down was right next to the waterfall. With a mental push, she summoned out a persistent effect bundle of rope. It wasn't as strong as what she could summon with concentration or even an effect over time, but she didn't want to worry about keeping the spell going, and thanks to having ground her summon monster spell all the way up, her Summoning School made quite a difference.

"I'll tie it off for you," Danny offered, grabbing one end of the rope and moving back through the trees a bit.

In just a few more levels, they'd be able to fly, or portal down there, Jessica mused. This whole world was beyond belief. And it was coming to Earth.

"Got it," Danny came back a few moments later, "Give it a yank, yeah?"

Jessica tugged, and the rope snapped tight. She leaned back, pulling hard, but it didn't slip. "Right, I'll drop down first and bring out Brutus, Danny, you'll follow, then Bruce, Blue, Shiela, and Jake, you'll bring up the rear, yeah?"

Seeing nods all around, Jessica dropped the rope down into the sinkhole, where it landed on the shore of the small pond formed by the waterfall. With a deep breath, she slowly began to lower herself down.

She marveled at the new strength in her arms. Climbing the rope had always been difficult for her, so she'd stuck with it at the gym, figuring that if it was hard, it was helping her build and tone muscle. Eight levels had vastly increased her strength, and she lowered herself down the rope easily. Reaching the bottom, she immediately summoned out Brutus. The huge smilodon yawned as he appeared, his dagger-like fangs showing proudly and his tail idly swishing. Moving with her thoughts, the saber-toothed tiger padded forward a few feet before a furry brown shape dove out of the trees towards Brutus' back.

The big cat rolled to the side, receiving a deep furrow along his side as he avoided the blow. Lunging to his feet, Brutus squared off against his opponent. The Owlacoon, as Jessica decided to call it, was four feet long and three feet high, with an impressive wingspan that it used to make itself appear larger as it hissed and beat its wings.

Brutus was having none of that. The huge cat lunged forward, accepting a gash to the chest as he sank his massive fangs into the neck of the monster. He was buffeted by the huge wings that beat frantically against him and took two more gashes to his chest before he jerked his head left, then right, and the monster went limp.

Jessica called him back with a thought, looking around surrounding trees carefully. Brutus was level twenty-two, and he could take a lot more damage than she could. The smilodon moved along the edge of the trees, but no more attacks were coming.

"Come on down, just get your summons out as soon as you land," Jessica called up to the group.

One by one, the group dropped down. A badger, a dingo, a komodo dragon, and a wolf joined Brutus, making the pond's shore rather crowded.

The blue-green pine trees stood only seven or eight meters tall, leaving quite a bit of room between their tips and the top of the sinkhole. Glancing around, she considered that this would be an idyllic place, perfect for a picnic or even to camp in overnight, were it not for the monsters.

"Let's send our summons in ahead of us and make sure to check the branches - the Owlacoon pulled a drop bear on Brutus," she warned.

The summoned monsters moved into the copse of trees, their summoners following, shivering slightly in the cool, damp air as they left the light behind.

Bob was carefully studying the diagram in the high school biology textbook he'd loaded on his laptop. He'd never been particularly interested in Botany, but as it turned out, summoning a plant without the use of the System required the same detailed understanding that summoning his UtahRaptor had.

Trebor had explained that the Arcane Depths represented an actual ecosystem, as understood by the creators of the ritual, which meant real plants and animals were intended to be present alongside the monsters. So, he needed to practice summoning plants.

He'd asked why all of that couldn't be accomplished just been with summoning, and the answer had been that due to all of the plant and animal life that was needed to create an ecosystem, the creators of the ritual had preferred to rely on divine magic, which provided perfect specimens, as opposed to relying on the knowledge of the ritual caster, who may or may not know exactly how a vole was put together.

As he studied the cottonwood on the screen, he had to agree.

After completing the eighteenth floor, he'd decided that he really was working too hard and had restricted himself to ten hours a day. That left a few hours a day for practicing his system-less magic. Or studying for practicing his system-less magic.

He'd invite Eddi and Bailli, he decided. With the Dungeon being packed with the Endless, Bailli might welcome the ability to delve without being crowded.

Having worked through his thoughts, he turned his attention back to the diagram of the cottonwood. Another half an hour or so, and he might be ready to try it.

"Mike!"

A high clear voice called out his name, and he turned to find Nora running up to him, her irrepressible curls bouncing with each step.

"I can't find Bob," Nora frowned, "so I thought he'd want me to bring them to you."

"Bring what to me?" Mike asked carefully. Bob had begun to master the art of sliding problems off his own shoulders and onto other people.

"I've got a crate with a thousand suits of armor," Nora smiled, "I need somewhere to put the crate."

Mike breathed a sigh of relief. This was going to allow him to mark an item off his list that had continually crept higher and higher over the past few days.

"Where's the crate?" He asked.

Nora giggled and shook her head, "My family decided that as I am a sitting Lady, I deserved all the trappings attendant to my station. So in addition to some really awful dresses, they were able to have the King's Dimensionalist create an Inventory for me, which is where I have the crate."

"When you say Inventory, you mean like an extradimensional space that's just sort of part of you that you can access with a thought?" Mike said slowly, thinking about the video games he'd played as a kid.

"Yep," Nora said, popping the 'P' at the end. "Shiny, right?"

"So you don't even need a bag of holding?" Mike asked as he felt a sudden headache coming on.

"Nope," Nora replied happily, "Didn't Bob explain how an Inventory works? I'm sure he has one, that satchel he wears isn't enchanted at all."

"Bob is probably keeping it a secret for some reason," Mike muttered as he gave in and rubbed his temples. "So anyone can have an inventory, they just need the King's Dimensionalist to cast it on them?"

"Oh no," Nora shook her head, "any dimensionalist with Matrix Manipulation, Spatial Reinforcement, and Spatial Expansion can do it, but the King's Dimensionalist can make it the biggest ones. He only works at the King's request, though, so his skills are pretty much limited to the higher ranks of the Church and the Nobles. I bet Bob could make one for you if you asked him."

"And there is no way to tell what people have in them, or even if they have them?" Mike asked, his eyes closed.

"Well, you could probably use mana sight or detect magic to tell that they had them, but you wouldn't be able tell what was inside," Nora lightly touched his shoulder in the way that Thaylanders did. "Are you ok?"

"Just shifting my mental paradigm without a clutch, again," Mike sighed and looked down at Nora's concerned, innocent face.

She might understand the concept of smuggling to avoid taxes, contraband, and maybe even illicit goods, but not in the context of his experience. No point in burdening the kid with that.

"Well, I'm glad your family recognized how great of a kid you really are," Mike smiled down at her as she huffed at being referred to as a kid. "Let's go get that crate unpacked, there are a lot of Marines taking what are now unnecessary injuries."