Monroe-Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Three. Felines of Mass Consumption. Also, deification.

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Bob wasn't entirely sure what Monroe was up to, but he was becoming suspicious.

The ball of emotions in the back of his mind that represented the super-sized floofers state of mind.

Full-happy-play.

It was the full feeling that had triggered his suspicions. It was a feeling that expressed complete and utter satiation, which wasn't something that the world's biggest and most handsome kitty should be feeling if he'd just cleaned out his trough.

The question was, had Monroe once again managed to bypass Bob's attempts at kitty-proofing his walk-in refrigerator, or had the feline of mass consumption located another source of sustenance?

With a sigh, Bob concentrated on one of the tags dangling from Monroe's collar, one which he had summoned using a persistent effect, before activating his Summoning Switch skill.

This skill allows the user to expend an amount of mana equal to the maximum number of Thresholds reached in the Summoning School, and the spells withing it, to switch places with a summoned object or creature. This skill will fail if there is not sufficient space available for either the user or the object at their destination.

When he found himself standing next to Monroe, in what could only be described as an industrial kitchen, he wasn't terribly surprised. What he didn't expect to see was that Monroe had brought Red Fang, Icy Death, and another unknown accomplice into his mischievous dining adventure.

The presence of more than a dozen people in chef's coats glaring at the pride of gargantuan house cats, all of whom were lounging indolently, the remains of what had likely been dinner for the United Nations Delegates surrounding them, might have been surprising had Bob not had years of experience with an economy-sized Monroe going after food he wasn't supposed to have.

"Sorry about this," Bob began awkwardly. "I'll wrangle the pride out of here." He glanced at the destruction with a wince. "Would a hundred mana crystals cover the damages?"

Amanda waved as Vera walked into the cafe, catching her friend's attention.

They hadn't fallen apart so much as they'd fallen out of touch. When the System Integration had completed, Vera had come back to Earth, while Amanda had already been pulled into Bob's orbit. IT had been a few years at this point.

"Well, I see that getting crazy tall didn't help you gain any weight," Vera said as she slumped into the chair across from Amanda.

"It's good to see you as well," Amanda replied with a smile.

"Yeah, you too," Vera grinned. "It's been a while."

"That's the adventuring life," Amanda sighed. "We sort of got caught up in it, you know?"

"Not really," Vera shrugged. "I mean, back on Thayland I was delving forty or fifty hours a week, but it was just the Dungeon beneath the Dungeons and Dragons Guild. I didn't really get into the madness that Bob dragged you into." Her smile widened. "I was pretty happy just to get my magic powers, you know?"

Amanda nodded. "Yeah, Bob has a way of pulling you into his pace, and the next thing you know, you're in another universe, being tasked by the System with saving an entire planet full of dinosaur people."

"Ok, now I've got to hear about that," Vera leaned forward.

"That's not important," Amanda shook her head.

"How is that not important?" Vera asked incredulously. "You saved an entire planet? That's freaking amazing!"

"Well, it was kind of awesome," Amanda agreed reluctantly. "But, it takes second place to the real news."

"What trumps that?"

"Dave proposed," Amanda replied.

"Finally!" Vera shouted.

In other circumstances, this would have drawn a few looks in the cafe, but the vast majority of the people there were already sneaking surreptitious glances at Amanda, who very nearly failed to fit given her height.

"What took him so long?" Vera demanded. "We all figured that once we immigrated to Thayland, that the 'taxes' excuse wasn't going to fly."

"He wanted to recreate our first date," Amanda explained. "And he did," she sighed happily. "He got everything just right, from our clothes to the food, to the music."

Vera wriggled excitedly in her seat. "So, do you have anyone catering yet? Because you can't get married without my lasagna."

"We're still working on the details, like the date," Amanda replied. "But I wanted to make sure you were at the top of the invite list. We'll be tier nine, so we'll probably do an outdoor venue, or we'll have someone knock together something for us."

"Wow, yeah," Vera shook her head as she leaned back and looked up at Amanda. "You'll be even taller then," she muttered.

"I know," Amanda grumbled. "I like new clothes as much as the next girl, but not being able to wear my favorite comfortable clothing sucks."

"Not like you can shop off the rack either," Vera nodded thoughtfully. "I have a rough enough time at tier six, but there are enough of us that there a couple of shops that carry clothes in our sizes. Of course, that does mean you get to see Dave in tailored slacks." Vera licked her lips. "Rawr."

"He does have the cutest butt," Amanda agreed smugly.

"You were supposed to find me my own personal Dave," Vera pouted. "I haven't seen any progress on that front."

"I'm pretty sure he's one of a kind," Amanda replied. "And he's all mine."

Eddi looked up at the Endless Tower, a ghost of a smile on his face as the wind tugged at his clothing. He didn't feel the cold, thanks to the NASA collar he wore.

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"We wanted to ensure that in the future, even those of us who reached the greatest heights would have a home," Ani said.

"How tall is it?" Eddi asked.

"Three thousand feet, ten floors," Ani replied. "Above ground, at least. Below ground, we've driven it another six thousand feet. We have those floors intermixed, with tier ten through tier five appropriate floors."

Eddi shook his head in surprise. He'd known that the tower they were building in Antarctica was going to be huge, but this was something else.

Ani had offered to open a portal to it for him.

"It's impressive," Wayna murmured from beside him.

"We have an apartment reserved for you," Ani continued, "although there are a few other features I'd like to show you before giving you a tour of it?"

What Eddi had mentally dubbed his 'Ani did something that is going to be a problem' sense immediately twinged.

"Yeah, let's do a full tour," Eddi began, "if this is going to be the only Endless Tower on Earth, I'd like to see all of it."

Ani smiled broadly and walked toward the tower, where a set of double doors, large even to his tier-eight sensibilities, awaited them. f𝐫𝗲eweb𝗻o𝐯el.𝚌o𝗺

"We wanted to make sure that the tower would provide admittance to anyone, even those who have chosen a larger form," Ani explained. "We sized the doors with someone like the King of Greenwold in mind."

She placed her hand on the door, and there was a loud, reverberating *clunk* as it swung open slightly. "We have the doors keyed to the matrix signatures of our current membership." A frown flashed across her face. "We're still working on how to link our membership records across dimensions."

Eddi followed her through the doors, with Wayna at his side.

On first inspection, the tower didn't look like it differed from the standard pattern, although the ceiling was significantly taller. The entryway boasted a statue of Bob and Monroe, as was customary, scaled to dominate the space.

"We've basically kept the layout the same," Ani reported, "Although, you might have noticed that we added alcoves for the rest of you."

Eddi had been staring at the statue of Bob, Monroe, and Jake and had not noticed the alcoves. Turning his attention toward them, his blood ran cold.

The first alcove he approached held a statue of Harv, looking imperious as he stood tall, with indistinct forms swirling around his lower body, the hint of a face twisted in pain and terror visible on a few of them.

He looked down at the plaque on the pedestal in front of the statue.

In large, bold font, the title simply read "THE KEEPER."

Beneath it was more text.

"Harvest Eilodon, Scion of the lost Eighth House of the Karcerian Empire, Keeper of the Gate, Heir to the Well of Souls"

"One of the first allies of the Endless, revering Harv will allow you to invest in his 'Necros Blast' spell."

"Oh, Harv is going to love this," Wayna breathed.

Eddi nodded wordlessly, as he robotically moved to the next alcove, then the next, until finally he arrived at the statue he'd been dreading.

His own face looked down at him, expression stern and unyielding.

"No," he whispered.

"The Beast Master" The plaque read.

"Eddi Galyon, Founder of the Endless Tower, First Disciple of He Who Walks Before, Forebearer of the Endless Swarm, One of the Saviours of Earth, Consort to the Devourer."

"Eddi chose to sacrifice his own personal power to allow those who revere him to access his 'Portal' spell, ensuring that the Endless are always where they are most needed."

"Oh, no, no, no," he muttered.

"I think it's nice," Wayna said cheerfully. "You look very determined."

She looked over at the next statue and frowned. "I don't like my bangs, though."

Bob sat down with a sigh.

He'd effectively escaped Monroe's rampage by pouring a hundred mana crystals on a countertop and opening a portal for himself and the herd of well-satiated felines to flee through.

That should have been the end of the matter, with him returning Red Fang the Mighty and Icy Death to their respective servants, but he'd also managed to pick up a bonus kitty, which was clearly someone's familiar and also clearly tier six and at the level cap. She had a collar, but the tag wasn't labeled in English.

Not for the first time, Bob wondered why the System had limited his Saviour achievement to spoken languages.

Still, he knew someone would be looking for the beautiful white floof-ball, so rather than retreating to his inventory space, he'd returned to the Freedom where he could work on some of the improvements he had planned for the ship while still being reachable via cell, when her owner inevitably discovered who rescued her from the furious chefs.

The pair had settled down on Monroe's bed to sleep off their ill-gotten feast, leaving Bob to his own devices and unwittingly setting themselves up to be volunteers for Bob's next project.

Channeling mana into a circuit to fill a bank of mana crystals was a great idea, but it required the user to do so deliberately. That was all well and good in a scenario like the restaurant, but it felt a little limited. He had experience with magical devices that pulled mana from the user without any willing interaction, specifically the magical light that the people who had kidnapped him had used to keep him drained of mana.

What he was working on was a circuit that would drain the user, unwitting or otherwise, of mana until they reached a certain threshold. The goal was to install them in the beds, allowing mana regeneration that would otherwise be wasted to be utilized, while at the same time, not leaving the user drained and helpless when they awoke.

It had turned out to be more complicated than he'd first thought. He'd read the paper that Aminah Amir had published, and while it had been quite brilliant, it revolved around the use of persistent effects, which required the user to enact consciously to provide the mana to fuel semi-permanent ritual effects. Her designs for handling the changes in volume as the influx of mana ebbed and flowed were inspired, and he fully intended to take advantage of them, but he needed something else to start.

Ultimately, he had needed to devise a circuit that would pull mana from the user and periodically send it back into their matrix as a spell effect to determine their mana capacity and regeneration.

It was something he'd been working on for a few days now, and he thought he might just have cracked it. Of course, it needed to be tested.

He had initially drawn out the circuit on paper but had quickly realized that while he could accomplish his goal that way, it would need to be rather large. His second attempt, now his prototype, resembled a mattress, albeit one with copper designs stitched into it. Unseen were the intricate circuits that lay beneath.

He laid the mattress out carefully and connected the leads that protruded from the bottom to a simple mana crystal charging station he'd been able to purchase in Los Angeles. He then turned to his test subject.

Monroe was curled up around their inadvertently abducted feline overlord in a show of protectiveness that was utterly adorable.

Bob paused to take a few pictures of the slumbering kitties before carefully sliding Monroe into his inventory and then carefully pulling him back out, this time atop the mattress.

He activated his mana sight as he did so.

A trickle of mana flowed from Monroe into the circuit, and then after three seconds, a bit of that mana flowed back out of the circuit and into Monroe. The trickle flowing from Monroe increased, and three seconds later, the process occurred again. This continued for just over a minute before the effect stabilized.

Bob checked Monroe's mana pool and was delighted to see that it was constantly dropping and refilling a moment later.

He was about to settle down to record his results when his armband vibrated.

It was a call from a number he didn't recognize. He moved out of the room, closing the door carefully so as not to disturb the feline overlords, and answered the call.

"Hello?"

"Good evening Senor Whitman," a warm voice with a trace of an English accent replied. "I understand my Bola de nieve was involved in a bit of mischief with your own kitty."

Bob blinked and slid open the door, peering at the white mound of fluff that was occupying a portion of Monroe's bed. He thought about the picture the President of Mexico had shown him years ago, of a fluffy, long-haired white cat claiming her place on his keyboard, and attempted to reconcile that image with the one in front of him.

He slid the door closed.

"She was," Bob said. "But," he sighed, "it probably wasn't her fault. Monroe also pulled in my friends' feline overlords, Red Fang and Icy Death, so there is plenty of blame to go around."

"I understand that you covered the damages to the evening meal, and if it was served slightly late and catered from one of London's better restaurants, then where was the harm? I was wondering where I should retrieve my wayward familiar," Emmanual asked.

"Well," Bob began, "I've got them aboard the Freedom now, which is in Texas, so maybe I should bring her to you?"