Chapter Three Hundred and Four. Not ok.

Chapter Three Hundred and Four. Not ok.

"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 another with Jake. Each group would clear their monsters, then focus down the ones that Jake was holding off. The process of both groups of damage dealers working together had taken a week or so to come together, but once it had, the entire dynamic shifted. When a beacon pulled a group of monsters off their spawn point, the entire group of damage dealers would obliterate the monsters in two seconds. They would then shift to the other beacon, and then to Jake. They were clearing the spawns quickly enough that both Elli and Wayna, acting as off beacons, started holding another, allowing them clear four spawn points. After another week, they became confident enough to hold a spawn point each, and the combined groups found themselves clearing five spawn points every ten seconds, which was precisely how long it took for the monsters to respawn.

Doubling their efficiency had doubled the amount of mana crystals they found, which eased some of the stress they'd all been feeling. Working so closely together, relying on each other, had brought them together as a group. Bailli, Erick, and Wayna hadn't been close to any of the others from Earth, but as the fought together, barriers started to come down. Dave had mentioned that delving was a fantastic team building exercise, and that it was something they should lean on in their future endeavors. Bob was not sure what those future endeavors would be, but he had to acknowledge how effective it had been.

They were only a few hours away from the planet now, and the Freedom's sensors had put together a much more detailed image of the planet.

It was Earth-like in that over sixty-percent of the planet was covered in water. There were very small ice caps at the poles, and four continents, three of which stradled the equator, with a fourth barely breaching it, the majority of it's landmass twenty to thirty degrees south. There were snow capped mountains on all four continents, although the fourth had the largest concentration of them. The remainder of the landmasses were a veritable ocean of green, ranging in shade from the lightest turquoise, to the deepest emerald.Updated from novelbIn.(c)om

Bob tapped his armband and the view shifted, showing a the fourth landmass more closely. "I don't see any indicators that there is a civilization down there, although it's hard to tell at this distance."

"Definitely no large cities," Jack agreed, tapping his own armband, causing the image to zoom in either further, focusing in on a large river and moving along it from it's source in the mountains at the center of the continent as they flowed to the north. "Or at least none that follow the human pattern of building civilizations along waterways."

"We'll get a better view once we're in orbit," Dave added, looking an image hovering above his own armband.

"Once we're in orbit, we'll deploy drones," Mike replied.

Bob had been surprised when Mike and oddly, Harv, had brought a couple of pallets loaded with tiny, palm sized drones.

He'd been even more surprised when he found out just how capable the little things were. They could fly at up to thirteen thousand feet above sea level, moving at twenty-five miles an hour, all while recording four-k video with a forty-eight mega-pixel camera. Scouting the landmass was going to be a lot easier than he'd thought.

Harv had apparently found an electronics store while he'd been taking Carson for walkies during Elli's time spent visiting the various schools for martial arts around L.A., and had become interested in the drone on display. Not lacking in wealth, he'd picked one up out of curiosity, and it had developed into a hobby, one that he'd found he shared with Mike.

"Just a couple more hours," Bob told Monroe, scratching behind the big cat's ears.

Monroe had settled on a tiger sized form for the time spent on the Freedom, which meant Bob could still pick him up and carry him across his shoulders, at least when he was in his tier seven form. Sure, there was a bit of kitty overhang on each side, but Monroe was willing to graciously overlook his human's failings in exchange for not having to suffer the indignity of walking.

"We'll need to the atmosphere," Amanda sighed. "I still think we should have picked up some better equipment."

"Babe, our apartment was pretty full already," Dave said, reaching out to squeeze her hand. "While it would be nice to have the gear to measure everything down to tiniest amount, we really just need know if the atmosphere has anything harmful in it, and if we'll be able to breathe."

"I know, I just want to geek out," Amanda looked up, "it's a whole new planet in another dimension! Imagine the papers we can write."

"Oh no," Jessica said in mock dismay. "Crikey! She's gone full research mode," the aussie lowered her voice to a mock whisper, "it's a rare treat to see this beauty in her natural environment," she intoned, depending her voice. "let's see if we can't get a bit closer."

"Man, can you imagine how much Steve Irwin would have just loved all of this?" Mike mused.

"Strewth," Jessica nodded. "We make fun of him a bit, but he was probably the best bloke we could have asked for to represent Australia to the world."

"Did his kids stay awake?" Dave asked. "I know they were working on making sure all of the Australian wild life they could find made it over, but I hadn't heard if they went into stasis or kept delving."

"Still delving, I reckon," Jessica replied. "I know they hit the tier cap and were running around Earth grabbing everything they could their system enhanced hands on. There's a youtube video out there where his daughter is tossing great whites into a tank like they were minnows."

"That does circle around nicely to the point that we're going to need to be very careful down there," Bob interjected. "Assuming we can breathe, we can't take anything for granted. Just because something looks similar to what we have on Earth doesn't mean it will be. We've all had over twenty years to get used to our natural environments so we're going to need to fight against becoming complacent."

"I don't think the vines took any damage," Wayna volunteered.

"Let's think about that for a moment," Amanda said. "We know we can kill level sixty monsters. What level is the monster those vines are attached to that it didn't take damage?"

"Stupidly high," Bob replied as he tapped his armband. He had a suspicion he wanted to confirm. The image of the planet shifted, moving back to the continent they'd just fled, and then the visual image disappeared, shifting to a flat green glow.

"I had thought," he began grimly, "that this was just how the sensors were displaying the mana on the planet. A mostly even coating, with a few hot spots." He shook his head. "I think I was wrong. I think that what we're seeing is the mana signature of a single, massive being."

"You think all the plants are part of the same creature?" Dave asked.

"There's precedent," Jessica replied. "We've got seagrass that spreads over a hundred miles, all technically part of the same plant."

"That forest in Fishlake National Park," Dave snapped his fingers. "Thousands of trees, but they're all actually the same tree growing out of one root structure."

"Exactly," Bob nodded. "We know that the System encourages the leap from sentience to sapience. And it's part of natural plant growth to absorb materials."

"You're thinking a carnivorous plant killed a monster and ate it's mana crystal," Eddi said.

"I'm thinking something like that happened quite a lot. Enough for the plant to level up, tier up, and make the jump to sapience," Bob replied. "Give it a few million years of eating monsters, and how big would it be? Big enough to cover a mountain? A continent? Maybe an entire planet?"

"Fuck," Elli said eloquently.

"We're not parking the Freedom down there, that's for sure," Jack added.

"The next planet out, it's still in the goldilocks zone, right?" Mike asked.

"It is, although it's likely to be quite a bit colder than Thayland," Bob replied.

"I'm good with cold," Wayna said. "Plants don't like cold."

"Well, the good news is that in the process of catching up to this planet, we're now a lot closer to the other one. Maybe two and a half weeks?" Amanda said, shifting the image over the table to that of the solar system.

What the could see of the fifth planet indicated that there was definitely a lot of ice or snow. There might have been a thin band of green along the equator, but it was hard to tell. There was definitely blue and white, which suggested liquid water, which meant the temperature was likely above freezing somewhere on the planet.

"About that," Bob agreed. "Call it another seventy-five thousand crystals to get there. Hopefully we'll be able to set down there, even if it isn't our final destination."

"I kind of feel like we should leave some sort of warning here, yeah?" Jessica said. "Something to let anyone else who shows up know that unless you super keen to be eaten by a tentacle monster, keep on moving."

"We could leave a slab of rock with a story board carved into it," Jack mused. "Sort of a warning mural that we can leave in orbit."

"Low tech, but it has the advantage of not running out of power," Dave nodded.

"Warning label it is," Bob agreed. "Hopefully that next species that visits not only notices it, but also employs either sight or touch to read the label, and is able to understand it."

"Hope they don't get confused because they have tentacles of their own, and mistake it for a diner," Mike added.

Bob shook his head. "I'm going to go grind some nice, easy to kill monsters. We'll plan to head out in four hours, and if there's a sign you need me to portal into orbit, I'll do that before we leave."