Chapter Three Hundred and Twelve. Urban planning.

Chapter Three Hundred and Twelve. Urban planning.

Dungeon 801972G610N497ISS6PM18D.

Capacity 27%

Estimated time until overflow 182 solar cycles.

User tier seven, semi-evolved. User grouped with eleven other sapient beings, tier six.

Dungeon set to Tier Eight, Level Thirty-Eight.

The System notification appeared in his vision.Updated from novelbIn.(c)om

New Quest!

The tunnels beneath the great city of Krestor have become infested with uncontrolled magma elementals! They threaten to destroy the foundations of the city, causing it to fall deep into the planetary mass!

Destroy ten of these elementals to receive a reward!

Discover where the elementals are coming from to receive a reward!

Discover why the elementals are attacking the city's foundations to receive a reward!

Stop the elementals from destroying the city's foundations to receive a reward!

"Well, at least we know what to expect," Bob sighed.

"The quest reset, including the counter for killing elementals," Dave grinned.

Bob checked the general monster eradication quest.

Quest Advanced!

"I bet you can't kill just one."

Disperse ten manifestations of equal or greater level than yourself. Complete.

Disperse one hundred manifestations of equal or greater level than yourself. Complete.

Disperse one thousand manifestations of equal or greater level than yourself. Complete.

Disperse ten thousand manifestations of equal or greater level than yourself.

Reward : One thousand energy crystals.

He hadn't expected it to reset, but it was worth the few seconds to check.

"Alright, we know what we're doing and more or less what to expect," Bob began. "We don't know if this will be exactly the same, so let's take it slow and careful."

"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast," Mike agreed. "I'm feeling more confident with this armor, but there's no need to rush things."

Bob nodded approvingly. "Let's get in formation, same as before, when I spot them Dave and Bailli can pull them in."

The Dungeon run had gone slightly quicker and quite a bit smoother than their first time through it. They'd fully cleared the elementals, and Bob had stabilized the portal, allowing them to kill the 'Mad Eire.'

There was no reward list, instead rewarding them with six hundred crystals each.

"Well, we can hypothesise that first clears are important," Bob mused.

Bob hadn't been about to slack off, so they'd delved the Dungeon four times each of those days. The scenario had remained consistent, and practice had pared down their time to just under two hours for a run. Those eight runs had generated almost seventy thousand mana crystals, and the entire groups was feeling a lot better about the reduced coalescence of crystals, as the rewards for clearing the Dungeon came very close to making up for it.

Harv was burning through their crystals rapidly, converting the earthern walls and floors into granite. Transmutation was an under appreciated school of magic, with most people only seeing the repair spell. While Bob would freely admit that the repair spell was cheat magic on par with summon mana-infused object or regeneration, his discussions with Trebor had revealed that Transmutation was the magic required to make golems.

He'd quietly filed that away as something to explore later. More specifically, he'd told Trebor to remind him to take him down that rabbit hole in six months.

His mirror protocol had become more useful with the System update. Trebor could, at his direction, manipulate his interface, which didn't sound like much more than a convenience, but Bob now had a minimap in the upper right corner of his vision which pulled data from his armband, which in turn pulled data from the other armbands.

Bob was not proud. He could freely admit that the people at DARPA who had designed the receivers to read mana patterns, and then feed mana back into them to weaken, strengthen, enable, or disable the patterns were absolutely brilliant. But what was the work of a genius, is soon the work of a tinsmith, and Bob had spent more than a few hours carefully inspecting just how they worked.

Ultimately, he'd been able to link a transciever to his matrix. For anyone else, this wouldn't have much, if any, benefit, but Bob had Trebor. The link allowed Trebor to access his armband, and with it, the rest of the limited network. Bob theorized that when they stopped back on Earth, assuming people had gotten together and repaired, rather than wrecked, the place, that Trebor should have access to the internet.

"Messing with your interface again?" Jessica asked as she walked up next to him, pushing a tendril of hair away from her face, the hard labor having caused a few strands to escape her ponytail.

"Just considering how many crystals we're burning on a sewer system," Bob replied dryly. "I know that ultimately, there isn't a good argument for spending crystals on sanitation, as this will be more effective in the long run."

"Especially considering that whoever is living here a couple of hundred years from now might not have someone with the skills to handle it magically, right?" Jessica said.

"Or not easily," Bob agreed. He'd thought of quite a few ways to handle the waste situation with magic.

"So, we're pretty much guessing on the climate, but once Harv has the leach field sorted, we're thinking you can use a few rituals to grow an orchard around the edge," she smiled. "Jack explained that we don't want trees on top of the field itself, but the edges are fine, and it would be nice to have some fruit trees from Earth growing."

Bob shrugged. He was fine with taking advantage of the Garden on the Freedom, but this was another example of the rest of the group preferring to spend more time on the ground.

"Sure," he agreed.

Further conversation was interrupted by the enthusiastic arrival of Monroe, who bounded up behind them and pounced on Bob.

Bob was prepared for the feline of mass destruction, having been warned by his mini-map of the big floofer's approach, but Jessica had been caught entirely by surprise and had been standing just a little too close to Bob to avoid Monroe's arrival.

With a yelp, she stumbled and fell into the pit.

"You ok?" Bob's question was muffled by Monroe's tail, which the big cat had wrapped around his face.

He couldn't hear her answer, as Monroe had turned on his purr motor, and in his newest incarnation, the economy-sized kitty was loud.

With a mental nudge, he convinced Monroe to return to his tier five tiger-sized form.

Now able to see again, he found that Jessica had hopped out of the pit and was shaking her head as she looked at him.

"You two are adorable, but he's one heckin' chonker," she said, dusting her hands off on her pants.

"Aw Lawd, he comin!" Dave said as he walked up, accompanied by Amanda, Bailli, and Erick.

"He's not a chonk!" Amanda disagreed, moving up next to Bob and digging her hands into Monroe's ruff. "You're a big, strong kitty, aren't you?" She cooed.

"I don't know that I want to tier Icy up," Bailli confessed, shifting her hair so that it fell over her left shoulder, revealing the blue-eyed white kitty sprawled around her neck and across her shoulder. "I mean, she sheds everywhere, and I can't imagine if she was his size."

"It's a challenge," Bob admitted. "Frequent brushing helps, but I do spend a bit of time working a control air spell to clean up all the spare fluff."

Monroe chuffed at the word 'Brushing' and tilted his head to look at Bob expectantly as he hopped off his shoulders, resumed his full form and sprawled out on the ground in front of him.

"He's looking for his rake," Dave chuckled.

Bob shook his head, and cast his summon mana-infused object spell, adding the threads to convert the pattern to a persistent effect. A blueish-black slicker brush, the size of a garden rake, appeared in his hands, and he began to apply it to his feline overlord, who purred happily, stretching and tearing furrows in the soil as he flexed his happy feet.

Erick winced. "Maybe keep Icy as she is," he agreed, watching as Monroe's claws, which were now six inches long, dug into the dirt.