Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Three. The gathering storm.

Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty-Three. The gathering storm.

"We were starting to get worried about you, yeah?" Jessica said as Bob emerged from the Hidden Dungeon.

"I'm fine," Bob replied, reaching over to rub Monroe's cheek. The super sized floofer was so tall that there wasn't much reaching down involved.

"I knew it would take longer because of the reduced killing speed, but what I didn't anticipate was how much slower I was moving, both because of my attributes, and because I kept having to rest to let my mana regenerate." he explained.

"I'm guessing the reward didn't reset?" Amanda asked.

"I'm afraid not, although six hundred crystals is a pretty solid reward, even though it took twelve hours," Bob said as he guided Monroe over to the table.

Jessica walked over to the entrance to the Hidden Dungeon and tapped it. "Still ninety-nine percent," she reported.

"I don't think we'll have to worry about depleting it too quickly, at least not when we're low level," Amanda mused.

"Everyone else still off visiting?" Bob asked.

They'd decided that while Bob knocked out his first delve, everyone else would take the time to go visit friends and family while they were still high enough level to make getting around easy.

"They're holding a get together at Glacier Valley, but the visit with my parents didn't go as well as I'd hoped, so I begged off," Amanda replied.

"New Ausland is doing great," Jessica reported happily, "there ended up being a touch over a hundred thousand folks who decided to stay over here, mostly to flip off the pillocks back in Canberra." She shook her head. "Bloody wankers made the mistake of announcing their plans to register and restrict powers before going back to Earth."

"I don't think they'll actually be able to do that," Bob replied.

"Apparently they're going to try," Jessica retorted.

"Any word from Earth?" Bob asked.

"No," Amanda shook her head with a sigh. "It takes a tier seven dimensional specialist to punch through from Thayland to Earth, or vice versa, and we suspect that Earth doesn't have any of those quite yet."

"That's good news, I suppose," Bob muttered as he leaned back into his chair. "At least the government agencies don't have an easy pipeline to keep sending people after me."

President Elania Hartford sat in the oval office, reviewing the reports on the Dungeons under the control of the government.

It had come as a bit of surprise to find the White House still standing, but apparently some of the Old Guard had snuck in during the last few hours before the System integration, and had warded the living hell out of it. The Capitol Building, as well as the Tomb, had received the same treatment. With no matrices present for the monsters to chase, most of the damage to the countries buildings and infrastructure had been incidental, however a giant guinea pig/cock roach hybrid topping a hundred feet in length and twenty-five tons tended to level buildings and knock down transmission lines without even noticing.

The larger surprise, beyond her office still standing was that she was still in it. Elania had been certain that she was presiding over the last days of, if not the union, then certainly her presidency. While the opposition party had a lot of nasty things to say about how she'd handled the System integration, some of which were true, the American people had taken a look at the damage, and it seemed the majority agreed that she'd made the decision, despite the difficulties they now faced.

Elania knew that America wasn't alone, as most of the first world had developed a distant relationship with food. Second and third world countries had adapted much more easily, as they had not developed the infrastructure that allowed the population to concentrate in a single city. The middle east in particular had shifted gears rather quickly, and were, from all reports, performing more in line with the American midwest.

She shook herself out of her thoughts. Governing the country had never been an easy task, but System integration had changed the landscape completely, and she was still struggling to understand how the new pieces fit together. One thing she knew for certain was that the previous and, sadly, current demographics would have to change. People would need to move from the coasts to the center middle of the country, and even then there wouldn't be enough capacity in the Dungeons to allow everyone who wanted to delve to do so.

In other places around the globe, the populations were dispersing naturally, with locales that ordinarily wouldn't boast any population at all experiencing a boom as people flocked to the Dungeons found there. There were half a dozen cities in parts of the Sahara that had previously been considered uninhabitable.

America, and the Earth as a whole, needed more room. There was a working prototype of a colony ship in orbit, undergoing testing for it's planned journey to Mars. Two hundred thousand brave men and women would spend six months in stasis before the ship arrived at the red planet, where they would then build a structure capable of holding an atmosphere on top of a Dungeon, and establish a colony. The ship would then return for another group.

It was a wildly ambitious project, which wouldn't have been possible without the System.

Her country was not the only one planning to expand into the solar system, and Mars was not the only destination. Venus, Ganymede, and Titan were all targets for Earth's burgeoning colony fleet.

Even with mankind spreading out across the solar system, the numbers didn't work.

She could see the future. Delvers would become the societal elite, the ruling class. They would be powerful enough, in a real, palpable way, that they would control access to the Dungeon, which would ensure that only those they approved entered. People would get by, using a single mana crystal to contain their mana, pumping it full, then spending it over and over again to support a ritual to grow food, or to summon materials, but the vast majority of the population would effectively live in poverty.

She was determined to prevent that from happening, but beyond sending a massive colony ship to Alpha Centauri, she didn't have anywhere to send her people.

Yorrick scrolled through the report with a smile.

The reason for his good mood was two-fold. First and foremost, the waves on Earth were much less intense than they were on Thayland, even if they were monthly rather than biannual occurrences. The second reason was that computers made everything so much easier.

The current report also included confirmation that System sanctions could be lifted.

When they'd arrived on Earth, they'd discovered five Dungeons in their new nation. They'd been spaced out awkwardly, in terms of the cities they'd built, so Yorrick had asked Harper Kol'Geith to shoulder the burden of being the first to close a Dungeon, risking the sanctions mentioned in the System update. She'd closed one, then another, at which point the System had sanctioned her, imposing a nine percent penalty to all of her skills. She'd closed another three, and each time the sanction had increased by nine percent. It was only once she'd taken the Dungeon seeds and opened five new natural Dungeons with them that the sanctions had been lifted. In combination with the creation and then naturalization of three more Dungeons, they'd ensured that each city had a Dungeon beneath it, and that the mana pulled into them was balanced, with the seven outer cities pulling in slightly less than what they would have had they been System created, and the capitol pulling slightly more.

The project was an unmitigated success, as far as Yorrick was concerned. His little country was thriving, so much so that the government of Botswana had approached them. In keeping with the Empire's policies, there were no secrets when it came to the actions of the government. The nature of the Dark Pantheon made transparency paramount, so the details regarding the Empire's acquisition of their neighbor had been easy to discover and confirm. Botswana was currently negotiating, but would ultimately accept the same arrangement. They lacked people with high enough levels on the correct paths to construct the infrastructure they needed, and they'd already lost a significant number of their citizens to the waves.

As low level as they were, without a few levels and a path, the level three and four monsters could, and demonstrably would, overwhelm them.

He was also considering Angola. They hadn't approached yet, but the information he'd gathered indicated they were struggling just as badly, if not worse. Coastal cities had been the key to building nations, he'd learned from reading Earth's history. Trade had been conducted across the oceans, which meant that an open port was a mecca for all manner of goods and services, enriching not only those who braved the sea, but those who hosted them. It was a foreign concept that he'd needed time to wrap his mind around, as ocean travel was considered incredibly dangerous on Thayland. Under the System, those important coastal cities meant more Dungeons, which, for a country who hadn't had all the opportunities the major players had, was more hindrance than benefit.

If both those countries agreed, which he expected they would, there would be enough space in the country for not only the citizens of those former nations, but for the rest of the Karcerian Empire as well. More importantly, there would be enough capacity in the Dungeons for their country to function.

One of the reasons he'd chosen Africa was the population density, or lack thereof. He was aware of the difficulties the more populous nations were facing. He had a few ideas that might help them, but there were a few minor issues. The first was that no one had asked him to help, although an ambassador from the United Kingdom was due to arrive soon, as well as one from the United States, and Japan. The second was that Bob had disappeared.

Knowing Bob, he'd show up sooner rather than later, and Yorrick suspected that he might just have the answer to their problem.