Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty-Nine. Failures.

Chapter Three Hundred and Fifty-Nine. Failures.

"Mr. Whitman! Mr. Whitman!"

Bob blinked and shook his head as he looked up from the man he'd just finished reincarnating.

He wasn't entirely sure how long he'd been at it, but day had turned to night, and at some point the sun had risen again. Not for the first time he considered adding a clock to his interface.

There was a well dressed woman with a microphone and a camera crew standing in front of him where he would have expected his next patient to be. He stood up and looked over them, something which was easily accomplished due to his height in his tier eight form. There wasn't anyone lined up behind them.

"What?" Bob asked curtly. He was tired down to his bones, and he had a headache.

"I'm Amanda Vasquez with ABC 7 news," she said, "We've been waiting for everyone to be helped so we could ask you a few questions." She smiled winningly up at him.

Bob closed his eyes for a moment and rolled his head. His first instinct was drop through a portal into his inventory. He was tired, and dirty, and his capacity for human interaction was so far in the red that he knew he'd need a few days with minimal contact to recover.

The reporter had waited, though. That was the sort of behavior you wanted to reward.

He opened his eyes. "Let's make it very few questions," Bob said. "As you can imagine, I'm exhausted and in desperate need of sleep. To be perfectly frank, the only reason I'm giving you that much is because you waited until the work was done."

"I'll be as brief as possible," Amanda promised, moving alongside him and nodding to her cameraman, who had to take a few steps back, presumably to fit Bob into the shot.

"This is Amanda Vasquez with ABC 7 news, here today with Robert Whitman, the man credited by many with having saved humanity from being wiped out by monsters. He hasn't been seen since before the integration, but reappeared yesterday at LAD7, where he met a young woman and her brother who asked him to help carry their grandparents home. Their story can be found on our website, and will be aired again after this segment." She turned to Bob. "Mr. Whitman, I understand you were incognito and only stopping by Earth for a vacation," she delivered a brilliant smile at the camera. "What made you decide to break your cover?"

"I hadn't realized that the situation was this bad," Bob replied. "I knew that there wouldn't be enough capacity in the Dungeons for everyone to delve, but the reality was so much worse than I had expected," Bob shook his head. "It's been over a year, why are you all still here?" He demanded, gesturing broadly.

Amanda opened her mouth, but Bob kept going. "There are ten million people here. In an area served by ten Dungeons. Realistically, if you didn't have to rebuild the entire city and you only needed to concern yourself with the maintenance costs of living, the absolute maximum number of people ten Dungeons could support is one point two five million, and that's assuming the average for your delvers was tier five, level fifteen. There is no way that someone hasn't done the math, and realized that ninety percent of the people here in LA need to get the fuck out."

"There have been initiatives by the federal government to relocate people to more rural areas, but people are reluctant to leave their homes for an uncertain future," Amanda replied.

"The uncertain future is here," Bob said, pointing to the ground. "I don't believe for a moment that all of the people here want to stay. Not with what I've heard from some of them who tried to leave and were forcibly returned by the police."

"Could you tell us a little bit about the offer from the Dragon King of Greenwold?" Amanda said, trying to reclaim control of the conversation.

"He's the King of Thayland now," Bob said. "He owns the entire planet. It might be a bit pedantic, but he is a Dragon so it's in everyone's best interest to be precise when it comes to his property." Bob gave the camera a crooked grin. "The King has a simple offer. Come to Thayland and delve to your heart's content. He has more Dungeons than he needs, so he's generously allowing Earth to fill them. In return, he's claiming fifty percent of the crystals carried out of his Dungeons. He has stated that the maximum tax that other governments can collect is twenty-five percent, meaning that at worst, you're keeping twenty-five percent of the crystals you pull out."

"How will people even get to Thayland?" Amanda asked, shaking her head.

Bob blinked as the delicate scent of vanilla drifted up to him. He shook his head to clear it. "At the moment I'll be opening portals to move people over," he replied. "I've heard that Earth is working on leveling Dimensionalists as quickly as they can, but it takes time."

"Going back to what you said about the taxes, is keeping twenty-five percent enough? There have been protests and demonstrations regarding the twenty-percent tax imposed federally, and the thirty percent tax imposed locally," she looked up at him.Follow current novels at novelhall.com)

"You can always delve more often," Bob said slowly. "That's the whole point of going somewhere with enough Dungeon capacity. If you need more crystals, and if you're following the rules, you always need more crystals, then you just keep delving."

"He's not, but the blame doesn't land on him," Jessica countered. "None of us thought of it, and more importantly, neither did any of our governments. It's shitty, and I'm going to beat myself up over it a bit, but we need to make it clear that this isn't his fault. He carries enough shit around with him, he doesn't need this."

"We know, Jessi," Amanda agreed, pulling the Aussie into a three way hug with Dave on the other side.

"This was supposed to be a vacation, a chance for the bloke to relax, yeah?" Jessica said.

"We'll still have it," Bailli promised. "We'll probably lose a month or so helping clean up this mess, but we can add an hour a day for a couple of months to make up the time."

Mike let out a bark of laughter. "Never thought I'd hear you of all people advocating for more time spent in the Dungeon."

"We can spend a little more time, the trick is keeping Bob from doing the same, he delves too much as it is," Bailli replied.

"I'm going to reach out to him personally," Yorrick said.

"You have the Church's full support," Cascadia replied. "Although it would probably be for the best if we didn't send our clergy who have already tasted death."

"Yes, that would needlessly complicate what should be a purely humanitarian effort," Yorrick agreed. "If we delay building out Angola, we can use those funds, which according to last weeks financials was a bit over two billion crystals."

"We can also make an announcement, letting our citizens know what we're doing and soliciting donations," Cascadia suggested.

"We'll also need to leak the information that we have had a program in place to reincarnate our elderly from the very beginning," Yorrick sighed, shaking his head. "I honestly thought the other nations had matters in hand."

"That's precisely the tone you should be taking," Cascadia said approvingly.

"Never work on a lie when the truth will do it for you," Yorrick replied. "We can also use this opportunity to offer positions in our own Dungeons. While there are some people crossing the northern border of Angola into a Dungeon there, we have twenty-eight Dungeons that are being kept from overflowing by the efforts of the Warlocks Guild, the Church, and the Bulwark. If we're leasing those slots out to tier fives, they can easily accommodate fifteen thousand people each, more when they are low level."

"We'll need to provide some emergency infrastructure, at least for water and waste," Cascadia said.

"We'll tax them the same as our own citizens, twenty percent, and we'll allow their own governments to tax them up to ten percent," Yorrick said. "That should demonstrate the fairness and equality of the Terran Confederation while also ensuring we fill our Dungeons immediately."

He paused for a moment. Things had been progressing nicely as far as the Terran Confederation was concerned. Africa, despite being the largest landmass, had only contained twenty percent of the world's population. Of course, one point five billion people was nothing to sneeze at, as the addition of the Karcerian Empire hadn't been enough to move the meter by a percentage point. Still, the continent was under utilized, something that Yorrick was determined to change.

Although he didn't necessarily want that change to happen until after the Terran Confederation held dominion over the entire continent.

Sadly, there were still nations who looked at the former Karcerian Empire with distrust.

"This is an opportunity to generate a lot of good will, and further establish ourselves on the global stage as not just a player, but a leader," Yorrick mused. "I doubt the United States will need our help, despite Bob's insistence that he doesn't hold any obligations to Earth, it's the place he is most familiar with, and remains where he has the most connections. Our neighbors lost all of their most vulnerable straight away, so we can afford to reach out beyond the continent to offer aid to India, the Philippines, and Indonesia. We won't look good, not being aware of what was happening to our neighbors, but as all the other governments of the world were equally blind, we won't look any worse. It remains paramount that any aid we offer them is tied to annexation."

"Will you open a portal for the Church once you've spoken to Bob and made our offer to the world?" Cascadia asked.

"It'll end up being on Bob's timetable, but I'm guessing it'll be mid afternoon our time, tomorrow," Yorrick said. "Which gives us tonight and tomorrow morning to prepare."