Monroe

Chapter Three Hundred and Eighty-Seven. Kitty worship and cautious plans.

His human-servant needed to rest.

Monroe had not been well pleased when his servant went out to fight the monsters without him, but he'd felt the auras coming from them and instinctively knew that he would be overmatched.

He hadn't hit his growth spurt, after all, and once he was bigger, they would prove to be prey.

So he had waited.

One of the prey-not-prey, a mere kitten, had recognized his divine nature and had devoted herself to attending to his needs.

The prey-not-prey were confusing. They were clearly servants, but they weren't predators like his human servant and his pack. Instead, they smelled of prey, and they ate what prey ate. Still, they behaved like servants, so he allowed them to attend to the needs of his personal human-servant, as well as his own.

He swished his tail.

The other prey-servants had left his home, leaving the prey-servant-kitten with him.

He swished his tail again and then twisted, appearing outside of his home.

The prey-servant-kitten woke up as his paws touched down on the hard, warm stone. It made a series of noises, none of which Monroe recognized, before looking around and then trying to pull him along with her.

Monroe stared at her with disdain, causing her to release his fur.

She took a hesitant step back, and he followed her, indicating he would be willing to allow her to lead him to entertainment, but he would not be pulled like prey.

As he followed the prey-servant-kitten, they encountered many prey-servants, some of whom had kittens of their own. Some of them began following him, at a respectful distance, of course.

Soon, the prey-servant-kittens became bold, and they approached the one accompanying him. They made their noises at each other, before forming up around him, no doubt casting themselves at his mercy, begging for his protection.

He was benevolent and allowed them to show their devotion.

Soon they arrived at a large stone home, one with broad steps that faced the sun. At the top of the steps was a broad space, perfect for sunbathing.

With a languid stretch, Monroe sprawled out on the warm stone, feeling the warmth of the sun slowly spreading through his fur.

The prey-servant-kittens had found brushes somewhere, and they began to attend to his fur.

It didn't need it. It hadn't for quite some time, remaining clean and untangled without any effort. This was simply another sign of his divine nature.

Still, he knew the joy that servants took from being allowed to experience the raw magnificence of his coat, so he allowed them to worship.

Bob dropped out of his portal, landing on the cobblestone streets. He looked around, eyeing Kulaod.

The city was rather nice. He wasn't any sort of student of architecture, but with its broad paved streets and aqueducts, it sort of reminded him of some of the pictures he had seen of Rome. The frequent use of columns might have added to that impression.

Regardless, the city was pleasant, with most buildings having two stories or less, and the majority of them boasting well-tended gardens.

The only buildings without gardens were alongside the squares in front of the temples. While he hadn't had enough time to explore as they raced from temple to temple, he'd seen enough to feel confident that these were businesses or shops.

He strolled along the street, heading toward a temple. Monroe was in that direction, and it made sense that he'd be with the others.

He tapped his armband, activating his comlink.

"Hey, sorry, everyone, I wound up passing out for a while," he broadcast.

"No worries, I just woke up myself. Figure it doesn't much matter at this point, with the Dungeons taking so long, we'll have to do the quest for all but one, then clear everything, then wrap it up, yeah?" Jessica replied.

"Pretty much," Bob agreed. "Are you at the temple? Or one of the temples, I should say?" Bob asked.

"We are," Jessica said. "Gualla and Lara are describing the System to the High Priest here, and a bunch of scribes are scribbling it all down."

"I take it you have my wayward kitty with you?" Bob asked.

"I haven't seen Monroe," Jessica replied. "He did his escape artist thing, yeah?"

"Must have," Bob agreed. "I'm headed toward a temple, and I can tell he's there, so maybe he just followed all of you and got distracted by a warm sunny spot."

"Kitty gonna kitty," Jessica responded sagely.

"I'll see everyone shortly, out," Bob finished, thumbing his comlink off.

It wasn't really off, as it would alert him if someone was trying to reach him, but it wasn't broadcasting. Mike had sat down with everyone years ago and went over proper radio protocols.

As Bob approached the temple, he considered the situation. They'd all agreed that the first clear rewards they'd received on the Eire planet had dwarfed those they'd earned on Thayland, by an order of magnitude.

Amanda, Dave, and Jessica had agreed that the reward for a planetary first clear, not one, but two tiers up, would be worth the extra time. Amanda had further argued that as tier ten was the first step into the next rank, the rewards would be improved even further.

The promise of epic loot was as strong as it had ever been, perhaps even stronger, given the modifications Bob had selected for his species.

Completing the Quest wasn't going to be a problem. It was hard work, and they needed to be careful, but it was something he was confident they could accomplish.

The problem was going to be the Urlinad. They didn't exactly have a global census, but apparently, Kuload wasn't the largest city, although it was the largest in this area. He hoped the High Priest in this city would have a better idea of what the actual numbers were, but regardless, the Urlinad wouldn't be ready.

He needed a way to get the Urlinad delving while they were still working to complete the quest, to give them a headstart.

Bob had an idea, but it meant giving up a safety net.

His Arcane Depths.

It was currently set for levels thirty through sixty, and provided almost no real benefit, given the adjusted coalescence rate of Mana Crystals. What it did offer was a source of food, as several floors offered monsters with palatable meat, or vegetables.

Bob preferred to grow his vegetables. He'd embraced the adventurer lifestyle, accepting that he would wade through literal oceans of monster blood. He had his reservations about plant monsters, though.

Ultimately, his Arcane Depths was a pantry, for if something went terribly, terribly wrong. It remained as it had when he initially cast it almost four years ago.

It was no longer part of his path, but he'd learned to cast the ritual without the aid of the System.

The question that lurked around the edges of his mind was if he could cast the ritual inside this Dungeon, specifying the tier and levels, and use it to prepare the Urlinad.

Also, if his friends would be willing to wait that long.

He was pulled from his thoughts as he reached the temple and a veritable horde of Urlinad.

Bob didn't know what the etiquette was for moving through a crowd of Urlinad, so he pushed his mana into the pattern for a flight spell, relishing in the sense of freedom as gravity lost its hold on him.

Rising above the crowd, he heard hisses of amazement, but his attention was fixed on the sight of Monroe, who was sprawled indolently at the top of the steps, with a dozen Urlinad children running brushes through his coat. There was a crowd of other children, who appeared to be waiting their turn to attend to their feline overlord's needs, and the horde below must have been their parents.

Bob shook his head as he moved over and then drifted down to stand next to the economy-sized kitty.

"Hey, buddy," Bob said as he scratched behind Monroe's ears. "You found some new friends, huh?"

He was distracted as one of the kids whispered to another. "That's the Lord of Blight!"

"No," Bob shook his head. "Not the Lord of Blight, not a god, just a different species at a slightly higher tier."

"He's got a cloak made out of them, and they don't bother him at all," a little girl whispered to a little boy.

"The Priest never said anything about the Lord of Blight and Kessen, but they're acting just like a cat and its person do," the little boy replied.

"Fuck," Bob muttered as he flushed.

The thing about the Eternal Servant skill was that it didn't require any upkeep once you cast it. It was just sort of there.

When they didn't move at all, made no noise, and didn't really weigh anything, it was easy to forget the four thousand mosquitoes.

"It's just a spell," Bob explained.

There was no change in the stares from both the children and the adults.

The Urlinad didn't blink as often as humans did, and it inevitably led to his eyes watering on their behalf.

"Ok," Bob muttered. "Come on, buddy, we have to go find the others, and they're at a different temple."

He deposited an unresisting Monroe into his inventory, doing his best not to recoil from the sudden disappointed looks from the children.

He spotted Laura and extended his hand. "Come with me, I'll take you back to your mom," he said.

Laura hesitantly put her hand in his. Bob cast his flight spell again, this time extending the pattern to include Laura, and they moved into the sky as Laura let out an excited squeal.

Bob stepped into the center of the temple, Monroe at his side, with Laura clinging to the huge cat's ruff.

Laura let go and slid off Monroe's back as she scampered over to her mother, giving her a hug as she began to ramble about her day.

Dave, Amanda, Jack, and Mike were arranged around a table, looking at a map.

"Bob," Mike acknowledged.

"What have we here?" Bob asked as he walked over to look down.

"It's a not completely inaccurate map," Mike grumbled.

"While we don't exactly need it, as our satellites have given us much better imagery, it does have information about the cities," Jack said. "Not a lot of information, but considering we didn't have any before, it's a step up."

"These numbers," Amanda pointed to the side of the map where a ledger ran its length, "represent the population of the cities, although some of them are decades out of date. But if we assume they're accurate, we know that there are about eight million Urlinad on the planet."

"According to Tyolad, the High Priest, the population of Kulaod has risen steadily, going from two hundred thousand to two hundred and ten thousand in the past decade," Dave added.

"That's a lot of Urlinad," Bob observed.

Amanda moved to stand next to him. "They're not going to be ready," she said softly. "I've talked to Tyolad and some of the others here in the temple, and out of two hundred and ten thousand people, they have two thousand guards, whose job it is to chase off any predators that get close to the city. They have almost no crime, and what little they have is non-violent. They're not just going to lie down and die, but it's going to take some real work for them to survive living under the System."

Bob nodded. "I know," he replied. "I have an idea, but it's something I have to test first, and then we'll all need to have a long talk about if we want to go that route."

"What's your idea?" Dave asked.

Bob hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. "The Arcane Depths."

"That's a little high for them, isn't it?" Dave asked, frowning.

Amanda's eyes went wide. "He's talking about recasting the ritual, right?"

"I am," Bob agreed. "I'll have to do without the System, but I've practiced, and I'm pretty sure I can do it."

"You'll lose your current setup, though, won't you?" Dave asked.

"I will, but we don't use it for much anyway," Bob replied.

"You haven't cast the ritual since the update," Amanda mused. "Given the drastic change in Dungeons, will it even work? I know I sort of expected you to get an option to convert the Arcane Depths to a regular Dungeon after the update, but it never changed."

"I'm not sure, which is why I said I need to test it before we go down the rabbit hole," Bob said.

"If it works, and you can create a Dungeon for them to use, we could run the Urlinad through it, some of them anyway, get them leveled up, and give them a solid foundation, enough that they could shepherd others and keep their Dungeon clear," Dave offered.

"It all comes down to time," Bob shook his head. "Once we leave this Dungeon, these Urlinad go back into stasis. That means we'd have to burn a lot of time in each Dungeon, preparing the Urlinad for what comes next." He shrugged. "I think it's worth it, but I also know that this is a huge ask from everyone. We could probably get sixty, maybe eighty, Urlinad leveled up past their first threshold on a path over the course of a week. If those people then helped others, we could probably get twenty-five hundred people pathed in a month. But that's a month, and we have eighty-one Dungeons to go. If we spent a month in each, we'd be looking at six years."

"It would be really nice if we could go back home and get reinforcements," Mike sighed.

Bob nodded. They'd considered exactly that, but attempting to leave the atmosphere had generated a System warning advising that leaving the planet was considered abandoning the planetary quest, which would result in sanctions.

"We just need to bring a couple hundred of the Urlinad from Dungeon to Dungeon," Amanda said. "I'm guessing your math was for each of us to shepherd a group of six, and then for each of those people to shepherd a group of six, right?"

"Yeah," Bob nodded. "I think it'll play out differently in practice because not everyone is going to have the capability to either heal, shield, or have enough of an immediate impact to make them good shepherds."

"So we need to have five hundred Urlinad, each one with the right spells to shepherd," Dave agreed.

"How are we supposed to get them out of the Dungeon, though?" Bob asked.

"If you completely gutted your inventory, how many could you fit?" Amanda asked.

"Well, I have three thousand square feet, with twenty-foot ceilings," he replied thoughtfully. "If I ripped out everything and made it two floors, I'd have six thousand square feet. Figure Urlinads take up five square feet if they wrap their tails around themselves, that would be about two hundred and forty very uncomfortable Urlinad."

"That's half of what we need right there," Dave said. "And while none of us have turned it into living space, and we don't have the same amount of room, you did the rituals for all of us to have inventory spaces. You'd need to do the rituals for temperature control and breathable air, but we can bring some along as well."

Bob nodded slowly. When he'd cast the rituals, he'd given them each five hundred square feet with ten-foot ceilings. "You could carry another twenty each," he mused.

"You need to enlarge our inventory spaces at some point," Amanda muttered. "Should have had you do it before the update." She shook her head. "So that's another two hundred and twenty to add to your two hundred and forty, which puts us at four hundred and sixty. If each of them shepherds a group of six, that's twenty-seven hundred and sixty. If we spend one week at each Dungeon, that's two hundred and twenty-some odd thousand across eighty-two Dungeons. It's not a lot, but if they're putting in the work, it should let them keep the Dungeons under control."

"I like it, but we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves," Bob shook his head. "First, we have to see if the ritual will even work. Because the sad truth is, we don't have, and won't have, the one hundred and sixty million mana crystals to get all those Urlinad to level six. They're going to need the rewards for completing a Dungeon, and right now, my Arcane Depths doesn't offer that."

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