Monroe-Chapter Three Hundred and Sixty-Four. Space race.

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Alex tried to stand still as Bob began casting the ritual that would bring them up to the freaking spaceship they had in orbit.

It was really hard. He was bouncing on his heels and twisting his hands.

"Jack said it's called the Freedom, right?" He asked.

"It is," Bob agreed.

"I can't believe you've been exploring other dimensions," Alex said. "That's just so awesome, I mean sure, space is mostly empty, or more accurately almost totally empty, but still, I bet you've seen at least a few cool things, although Jack did say you didn't have an actual telescope, which sucks, because I bet if you're in like, deep space, ya know, outside of a solar system, you'd be able to see nebulae so clearly."

"It was an oversight," Bob acknowledged. "We're going to spend a couple of days working with the manufacturer. Dave has a few ideas about how magic could be used to improve it."

A portal twisted open beneath their feet, blue-black energy roiling within.

Bob dropped through first, while Alex followed a moment later.

"That's kinda weird, most people open portals that you walk through," Alex said as he landed in a crouch on the floor, looking around at the room he'd fallen into.

"I always thought that it was more efficient to fall through them," Bob replied. "I fell into the habit when I first started using the portal spell and never really stopped."

"I guess I can see it," Alex agreed as he stepped over to examine one of the two racks offset slightly from the wall. "Dude, are these fucking dells?"

"We weren't in a position to build our own, and honestly, we figured that we could stack enough of them to get the performance we needed, and reliability was the most important consideration," Bob shrugged. "They were easy to get our hands on."

"Man, I can't believe humanity's first interdimensional spaceship is powered by off the shelf dells," Alex shook his head. "Jack should have said something, we've got better units than these collecting dust because they're outdated. You should see the new stuff we've been working on," he continued enthusiastically. "Did you know that stable mana exhibits a quantum entanglement effect, but they don't suffer from wave function collapse?"

Bob looked surprised. "That makes sense," he said slowly. "I'd wondered how the System managed to activate all the energy in an universe in such a short period of time. I knew it had to have a way of transmitting a signal faster than light, and I assumed it was mana, but I never had the chance to investigate it."

Alex grinned. "Exactly! So much cool stuff you can do with it," he muttered as he inspected the rack further. "I guess it works," Alex said. "I think you'd be better off with fiber over copper, but it's not like you have a run long enough to need a repeater anyway."

"It's also a lot easier to repair copper pairs," Bob added.

"That's so true," Alex nodded. "This one time we were playing around with mag-lev, for funsies you know? So we each modified our chairs and had a mag-lev chair race, which was so awesome, but Gina's chair had a bit of a malfunction, probably a bad solder job, and it went off the rails, and through a couple of walls and a floor." Alex shook his head. "So glad healing magic is a thing, she took a piece of a rebar through the chest, but what really sucked was that she went through a conduit that housed two hundred fiber strands. We fixed her in just a few seconds, but it took almost two days fix the fiber." He sighed. "She woulda won that race, too."

He slid a terminal from out of the rack and flipped up the screen, revealing the keyboard. "Let me see what you've got going on here, and I'll see if there are any real upgrade paths."

Bob watched Alex as he tapped away at the terminal. "If you don't mind me asking, what do you do as an Adventurer?"

"I'm a healer," Alex said absently. "It seemed like the best path for me, I mean I'm not into pain, and tanks always end up taking hits, and blasting away seemed a little mundane, plus the danger of friendly fire, I don't want to hurt anyone, plus healers are always in demand. Was also the easiest way to sneak in some Shadowmancy, as being a healer actually doesn't require that much. Animancy, Anima Blast, Regeneration, Effect Over Time, Barrage, Chain, Ritual. At tier six, that's eighteen points of thirty-six, which left me more than enough to get Shadowmancy going."

Bob wasn't sure he'd want someone quite as distractable as Alex in charge of keeping his friends alive, but the man had made it to the tier six cap, so clearly he was doing well enough.

"I'm a little surprised that you are tier six, I thought the government was going all in on police and ems?"

"They are," Alex assured him, "but most of us researcher geeks went over to Thayland with the final wave of the military, and when the King said the military had to go on ice, we got to keep delving. We weren't hauling in the crystals because, well, there aren't that many of us, but we had all the delves we could ask for, and we were getting magic fucking powers, so we just ground it out. It's been like two months since I've been in a Dungeon, they say we're already high enough level, and it costs too much capacity to let us delve. It's sort of fucked up, but I kinda miss it, you know? Like, I've never been a violent person or anything, but delving a Dungeon is different, when we finish, I feel a real sense of accomplishment. I know that we don't have to worry about overflows, just the opposite, but still, I feel like I'm part the reason that people are safe. Sometimes I wish I'd snuck off and stayed on Thayland, but I've got another nine months at DARPA, and chances are good they aren't going to let me go anyway."

"They can't make you stay, can they?" Bob asked.

He'd heard horror stories, always a dozen degrees removed, of scientists that had been deemed to valuable to be allowed to leave government service, but hadn't ever given them any weight.

"Oh, they have their ways," Alex mumbled. "If your parents are on social security, suddenly some sort of glitch cuts off their payments. If not, a surprise audit from the IRS finds a discrepancy. Everyone has a lever, and they've figured out how to pull them all. If you don't have anyone you care about, you'll find that after you separate, you can't find work, that you've been black balled. Good luck find work outside of your field, no sane person wants to hire someone with two doctorate degrees to do anything menial, because they assume you'll be out the door the second you find other work. Then are the other inconveniences, like a red light ticket you never knew about from five years ago landing you a suspended license, or the police finding drugs in your car during a routine traffic stop." Alex shook his head. "If they want you in, it's hard to get out, and if you do, they have ways of making you want back in."

Bob didn't have a response to that. He wanted to believe that the government wouldn't do anything like that, but he could imagine that the people in the government would, if the person in question was valuable enough.

Thidwell nodded in satisfaction as the pressure on his shield ceased.

The System Update had effectively put him out of a job. Sure, he was still the leader of the Adventurer's Guild in Holmstead, but he was no longer the curator, as the Dungeon no longer required one. He had the school, but he'd created it with the intention of it being self sufficient enough to run without his input.

His true passion had always been to see the commoners rise above the corrupt nobility, tearing away their power. He'd planned on making that happen by spreading Bob's paths and his own method for Dungeon construction and the shield to prevent mana density sickness, and for a while, he'd succeeded. His father's name was cleared, his legacy restored, and the Orstang methods were given the recognition they deserved. 𝗳r𝚎e𝘄𝐞b𝚗𝗼ve𝚕.co𝗺

The System Update had taken that away from him as well, providing multiple ways to access Affinities, as well as providing optimal paths.

He'd been forced to find a new purpose in life. When Bob had cleverly suggested handling the oncoming Tide on his world by simply removing the people from it, Thidwell had been inspired. While waves held no danger to the people of Holmstead, tides were still something to be feared.

It had taken him over a year, but he'd built his Ark.

He'd built it out of stone, summoning the blocks and then fusing them together. The Ark was shaped like a rod, stretching a thousand feet in length, and a hundred feet in diameter.

Thidwell had originally intended to build a block, but after seeing Bob's ship, had changed his mind. The ability to move the Ark through a portal could be invaluable, and offered additional, critical even, utility beyond simply sheltering his people in place.

He'd fused the last block in place earlier in the day, but had just now completed the last ritual to create and maintain an atmosphere. Creating the atmosphere had been the most expensive portion of the ritual, maintaining breathability wouldn't require more than a hundred mana crystals each day for the entire Ark.

Of course, it was currently an empty shell. He still needed to add floors, seating, and toilets.

The plan was to simply add floors beginning from the bottom and leading to the top. The first forty floors would be ten feet tall, with a foot thick ceiling that would serve as the floor for the next level. Each floor would start with roughly five thousand square feet, although a thousand of that would be lost to the central pillar he planed to use to as both a support, and a ladder leading from one level to the next, as well as a few toilets. He expected he'd be able to accommodate a hundred and fifty people on each floor. That would provide space for six thousand people, or roughly twice the number of tier five individuals in Holmstead.

The next twenty floors would have fifteen foot ceilings, and would house the tier six, seven, and even eight individuals. He estimated that, conservatively, he could house two thousand people there, unless they were all tier eight, at which point things would get a little close.

That left him with around two hundred feet at the front of the Ark to add additional floors, or other amenities.

He considered how best to begin the next phase of the project as he drifted in the vast cavern of the Ark. He'd explained, roughly, his plan to the citizens of Holmstead, asking them to contribute to the project by way of a five percent tax on proceeds from the Dungeon.

Until the update that reduced the rewards from the Dungeon, he'd been quite literally swimming in mana crystals. He was fortunate that he'd had a surplus, because the torrent of crystals had slowed, significantly. Still, this was a major milestone. If they had to, the people of Holmstead could seek refuge in the Ark immediately, although it would be a shit show. Better alive and uncomfortable than facing a tide.

Another three months, and it would be completely ready.

"Madam President, we have one," Taylor said excitedly as she rushed into the office.

"Really?" Elania asked, her pulse beginning to race.

"They confirmed it four times, doubling on second, third and fourth, so we have seven people able to get there," Taylor beamed.

"What's it like?" Elania asked.

"Take a look," Taylor said, placing her tablet on the President's desk.

Elania stared at the screen. It showed a solar system that looked quite a bit like Earth's. There were only seven planets in total, but it had three gas giants, an asteroid belt, four rocky planets.

"The fourth planet," Taylor said, tapping it. "It's roughly the same size as Earth, although it lacks an atmosphere." She tapped it and a series of ariel photographs appeared. "As you can see, it doesn't appear to have any vegetation, what life there is appears to be monsters spawned from Dungeon overflows."

Elania zoomed into one of the pictures. Hundreds of what appeared to be lizard like creatures were moving across the rocky landscape.

"They're still doing a survey, but from what they're able to tell, the monsters spread out from the Dungeon that overflowed in a circular pattern. When they come into contact with monsters from another Dungeon overflow, they fight each other. Current theory is that the best tactic would be to drop down on top of a Dungeon, sending in a team to clear it, while at the same time constructing fortifications for a base of operations," Taylor said.

Elania winced.

The dream had been to find a habitable planet. Terraforming was still a theory, not something they could practically accomplish. Building habitats, on the other hand, was something they could accomplish much more easily than would have been able to before the System. There was also a project at NASA to create a magical collar that would provide not only a thin layer of breathable atmosphere across the user's entire body, but would also provide a shield against radiation. Her last briefing from that agency had included overwhelmingly positive results from their latest tests.

"Do we know what tier the monsters are?" Elania asked.

"No, we haven't actually landed on the planet yet," Taylor shook her head.

"We'll have to go in as heavily as possible," Elania muttered as she swiped through the photographs, eventually cycling back to the one of the solar system.

"What about this planet?" She tapped the screen, indicating the third planet.

"It's a little bit smaller than Earth, but its proximity to the sun makes it quite a bit warmer. We think it's more like Venus than Earth or Mars, but we only have very basic information at this point, although from the emails I've been copied on, there are a lot of people at NASA who are very excited."

"What's our time frame looking like?" Elania asked.

"Two months, maybe three," Taylor replied. "We need to build capsules along the same dimensions as Bob's ship," she explained. "Small enough in diameter to make it through the portal, and long enough to transport a sizeable number of personnel and materials, although spacial expansion certainly helps in that regard. Occupying this planet isn't going to be easy, or cheap, but it could provide the Dungeons that Earth so desperately needs."