Monroe

Chapter Four Hundred and Thirty-Seven. Cow level.

Bob was a fan of beef. Hell, he liked dairy products in general. Milk, cheese, yogurt, steak, roast, ribs, burgers, he'd even had tongue before, and it was pretty damn good.

He was not, he told himself, going to change his mind about the joys of moo, regardless of the horrors in front of him.

"It's like an endless herd!" Amanda laughed as Auruffra tore out the throat of another monster.

Bob had to agree. They'd backed up to the door and were arrayed in front of it, with Mike in the center, flanked by Auruffra and Jake.

Amanda's ritually summoned cow had disappeared, and the new Dungeon had immediately begun spawning monsters, based on the hapless bovine. Loosely based.

The monsters were clearly bovine, but their heads and necks incorporated an almost triceratops-like aspect, with a short bony frill and two horns arranged vertically. Its torso remained more or less unchanged, although it was somewhat thicker and taller. Its tail had lengthened and now had what appeared to Bob's rather experienced eye, a venomous stinger.

Over the years prior to the update, he'd built hundreds of Dungeons, and he was intimately familiar with the process.

Monsters immediately spawning was not normal. Nor did they normally spawn this quickly.

He'd intended this to be a sort of training Dungeon, with plenty of room between the spawn points for people to move around without interfering with others or running the risk of pulling an unintended monster into their fight.

That wasn't going to work, as the monsters were spawning incredibly quickly. His group wasn't having any difficulties because he had set these monsters at tier five, level two.

Bob strongly suspected that his team could stand amongst them and take no damage, but the Lovar and the Shallihs were another matter entirely.

Still, they weren't lacking monsters, and that had a value all its own.

Jake tossed another corpse at his feet before turning to address the next monster.

Bob leaned down and tapped the corpse, mentally projecting 'Harvest.'

It was an odd skill and one that he'd almost never used. Amanda and Eddi had both sort of assumed that role in their groups, and when Bob was alone, he rarely bothered as he tended to focus on grinding out the Dungeons as quickly as possible.

He'd managed to level the skill up to the first threshold but hadn't ever assigned a point to break through.

A chunk of raw beef appeared in his hands as the monster dissolved away into silvery light. He dropped the meat into the plastic tote at his side, and a second later, repeated the process.

If nothing else, he suspected that the Shallihs would love this Dungeon, if only because it would provide some much-needed meat.

"I just wish they weren't moo'ing," he muttered to himself.

Kharvic watched as the four-legged horrors charged the doorway, a seemingly endless stampede.

"The good news," Bob said, "is that you're no longer going to be lacking meat in your diets. The better news is that you now have a veritable conveyor belt of experience and potential mana crystals. The bad news," he continued, "is that you're going to have to assign quite a few people to keep this under control."

"I had thought that the creatures were meant to only reappear after they had been slain?" Kharvic asked as calmly as he could.

The idea of a constant incursion wasn't terrible, especially if it prevented other incursions from appearing randomly. It wasn't that they couldn't handle an incursion; it was that they never knew when and where they would appear and that they did so all too frequently in the midst of unarmed civilians.

Bob rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Yeah, that's how it was supposed to work, but clearly something about this place has had unintended consequences," he sighed. "I didn't put a system in place to limit the flow of mana by shunting it into a charging array," he explained, shaking his head. "That was a mistake on my part and one I'll rectify when I create the next one."

"How many of these will we need to prevent the incursions entirely?" Kharvic asked.

"More than I thought," Bob replied with a frown. "I'll need to check the ambient mana levels to determine how much of an effect this Dungeon is having and how large of an area it is impacting."

"And you'll use a charging array to limit the appearance of the creatures?" Kharvic asked.

As Bob had originally explained how these Dungeons would work, Kharvic had envisioned a way to train his people in a relatively safe, controlled environment. The Dungeon in front of him, while certainly a resource he could utilize, wouldn't serve as a training facility.

"I will," Bob agreed. "Assuming that it works as intended, which it should, as I did something similar on my ship, I'll build the rest of that way."

Kharvic nodded, watching as Bob magically extracted a dripping haunch of meat from a corpse brought to him by his summoned creature before dropping it into a container.

"Will the other Dungeons have creatures we can extract meat from?" Kharvic asked. "We had tried the Harvest skill on the creatures we fought, but we only received chitin."

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"Yeah, we'll ritually summon animals to form the base for the monsters," Bob said. "Unless, of course, you have some sort of livestock aboard that you'd like to use? I mean, we're summoning the livestock that we're familiar with, but if you have your own, we could take a look at it and summon that instead." He grinned. "Obviously, the Dungeon monster-fys whatever we chuck in there for a base, as our cows don't have the horns, or the venomous stinger."

"We don't," Kharvic shook his head sadly. "There are a few small pets, mostly carried aboard by our children, but we didn't have time to rescue all of our people, let alone our livestock."

Bob reached out and laid a hand on Kharvic's shoulder. "You did the best you could with what you had, and from everything I've learned, you pulled off a damn miracle to save as many as you did. I know all about blaming myself for events that were out of my control, so I'll tell you what keeps me going."

Kharvic looked into the man's glowing purple eyes, surprised at the turn the conversation had taken.

"Get stronger," Bob continued. "Keep fighting, keep pushing yourself. Pay the cost in your own blood and sweat so that the next time you're faced with a disaster, you're strong enough to stop it." He smiled again. "In short, become an Adventurer. Become the levy on which the waves break."

"Excuse me, may I join you?"

Bob looked up from his steak, which he had just sliced into perfect, bite-sized pieces, and found Lily standing behind him, holding a tray with not one but two steaks, steam rising from them.

"Sure," Bob replied, gesturing to the bench across from the one he was sharing with Jessica.

Lily stepped around the table gracefully and sat down, her ears perked forward and her tail swishing slightly.

"Thank you," she said, picking up her fork and knife from the tray and cutting into the steak.

Bob noticed that her whiskers were twitching.

"Not exactly out of our way," Jessica said with a grin.

"Yes, but I also meant for this," Lily held up a rather large piece of steak on her fork before stuffing it into her mouth.

Her eyes closed to near slits as she chewed, and Bob suppressed the urge to reach over and pat her head as she actually purred.

"Yeah, that wasn't out of our way either," Jessica laughed. "We're happy to put meat back on the menu for all of us," she continued. "While we aren't obligate carnivores, we're definitely designed to eat meat as a primary source of protein."

Lily swallowed and opened her eyes again, smiling. "This 'beef' is very good and reminds me a bit of the Rancel we hunted and that the Lovar raised."

"Steak is one of our favorite foods," Bob agreed, stepping back into the conversation as Jessica had just taken a bite of her own. "I'm looking forward to seeing what you folks do with it."

"I know that the Dungeon you made isn't working the way you wanted, but is it doing what it is supposed to?" Lily asked.

"It is," Bob replied with a smile. "I checked the density and volume of the mana around it, and it's definitely working. I need to keep running tests, but tentatively, I'd say it's preventing monsters from spawning for about half of a kilometer in all directions. Assuming the next one does the same, it'll probably take around a hundred and sixty Dungeons to cover each end of the ship and another twenty-five or so to handle the stem."

Lily's eyes widened. "That's a lot," she hissed.

"Eh," Bob made a see-saw motion with his hand. "Figure two hundred people to keep each one clear, three shifts, across three hundred and fifty Dungeons, and it'll only take two hundred and ten thousand people."

Jessica leaned into him with a playful elbow. "Yeah, except not everyone is you," she reprimanded him with a laugh before turning her smile to Lily. "Figure three times that," she advised. "But still, a bit more than six hundred thousand people are still only a quarter of the folks on the ship, so it's not that bad."

"Also, I suspect that once enough people cap out on the low-level monsters, we'll end up rebuilding them to let them keep going, which should further increase the draw on the mana, which will, over time, reduce the number of monsters spawning in any given Dungeon," Bob said enthusiastically.

"Will you be making a Dungeon for yourselves?" Lily asked curiously.

"Yeah, but we'll be doing that on our ship," Bob replied.

"Too right," Jessica agreed. "We don't want any sort of scenario where we have tier nine monsters spawning on the Hurry."

"Step out low!" Mike bellowed happily.

The mixed group of Lovar and Shallihs responded instantly, the taller Lovar stepping forward, raising their spears up to shoulder level as they pushed against the tricera-cows, driving their weapons deeper. At the same time, the smaller Shallihs moved under their raised spears, driving their own smaller but equally deadly spears into the monsters.

It had been decided that Mike would be the one to introduce the crew of the Hurry to Dungeon delving, not Bob.

The man had already traumatized one species, two if you counted humans.

When they'd started, Mike had a suspicion that the Shallihs, or Dharlings as the Lovar called them, would likely take to delving with enthusiasm.

He'd been proven correct, as the adorable little anthropomorphic cat people seemed to revel in hunting the monsters. One of them, a man who gave the shortened form of his name as Tarry, had taken a moment to thank him, explaining that part of their culture involved hunting herd animals in a similar fashion.

The Lovar, on the other hand, seemed less enthusiastic, although none of them shirked their responsibilities.

The systematic slaughter of the never-ending herd of monsters was going quite well, with groups of four dropping a monster every few seconds, then rotating back to allow the next team to take their place, taking the moment to harvest as they went, dropping off haunches of beef and racks of ribs into the tubs at the back of the line, then waiting their turn to move back up.

Sadly, crystals weren't appearing that quickly, at least not as far as he was concerned. They were harvesting one or two an hour, which was nothing in comparison to the rewards a true Dungeon offered but was apparently a veritable bonanza for the crew of the Hurstall'kalwin, who had been fighting incursions for years with little to show for it.

Mike expected that they'd do well once Bob found a planet for them to settle down on.

Which couldn't happen until they found a way out of there.

He hadn't pressed too hard, and he'd maintained his demeanor, but he'd be lying to himself if he didn't admit to a certain degree of trepidation.

They were stuck in some sort of energy universe without the ability to open a portal back home. What was worse was that the ship they'd been sent to save had been traveling for over two years without seeing anything besides the endless expanse of roiling energy.

The System had sent Bob to save these people, which meant that Bob had the skillset to do so, and Mike had faith that the man would figure it out eventually. It was the eventually part that bothered him.

He'd been working with the crew for half a day now, and one of the things he'd picked up was that the ship was falling apart. Not only was there a litany of damage from the monsters spawning and breaking things, but the ship's age was catching up with her, and the absolute worst part was that they were apparently running out of fuel.

Mike was pretty sure that at this point, Bob could summon almost anything. His Summon Mana-Infused Object spell was at a truly insane level, nearly two hundred.

The question was, could they actually refuel the ship?

He'd asked, but the people he'd asked didn't know. Hopefully, Kharvic did.

Because he was pretty damned sure that getting out of this place was going to require the ship to move.

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