Harv and Elli had left the table in a cloud of gloom, clearly thinking about the people they'd lost.

Bob found himself sitting at the table, slowly petting Monroe who had sprawled out in front of him, with the enviable task of having nothing to do.

It was almost disconcerting. His mad rush to save Monroe had driven him forward, and now he found himself in a position to relax, and really think about the situation he had found himself in.

He was in an alternate universe, which was governed by a System that apparently spanned the stars themselves. He apparently had unprecedented access to information from said system.

Bob pulled out a piece of paper and started to write.

Assuming the information given to me by the System is true and accurate, what do I know about this place.

- This universe is fourteen billion years old. This tracks with the age of my universe.

- The system has apparently been here since the beginning, or close enough to make no difference.

- There were three inhabited planets in this solar system.

- The planet he was on was smaller and cooler than earth.

Bob paused.

'Trebor,' he mentally projected, 'can you give me a more detailed overview of this world?'

'Thayland is roughly eighty-six percent the size of Earth, although the gravity is nearly identical. Its climate is significantly colder due to the increased distance from the local star, with everything above the fiftieth parallel buried under glaciers," Trebor said quietly.

'Including the polar glaciers, just over seventy-one percent of the planet is covered in water. There are five continents, two of which are completely covered in ice. Two of the others are nearly equal in landmass and lay nearly juxtaposed along the equator. The continent upon which you stand is a quarter the landmass, and its southernmost tip fails ever so slightly to breach the thirtieth parallel.'

Bob ran his hands through Monroe's ruff as he considered that.

'How many people live on this planet?' he mentally projected.

'Two million,' Trebor responded.

Bob closed his eyes. While that sounded like a large number, he'd always been a fan of history, and those were population numbers akin to the end of the Paleolithic era, although the people of Thayland were clearly closer to the iron age than the stone age.

'Why so few?' Bob asked.

'The population of this world is quite close to the universal standard for its environment and mana density,' Trebor responded, 'it has remained steady for close to a million years.'

'Earth went from ten million to seven billion in only a few thousand years,' Bob thought slowly, 'why exactly is the population here static, and why haven't they moved beyond the iron age?'

'Your universe presented the people of earth with the challenges of weather and beast,' Trebor said, 'whereas this universe presents its inhabitants with challenges of weather, beast, and mana.'

Bob moved Monroe onto his shoulder as he walked back to his room. He needed to lay down for a bit.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thidwell stretched his shoulders and yawned as he refreshed the stone shield spell on Kelli. He'd planned to spend half a day shepherding Kelli to level ten, but he'd forgotten just how stones-damned slow the man was, in terms of killing monsters.

Kelli swung his hammer one more time, crushing the carapace of the giant scorpion, and driving it down onto the sand.

Thidwell lifted a canteen from his belt and offered it to the sweating academic as he retreated under the large stone awning.

Thidwell squinted his eyes as he looked out over the blistering dunes as they shifted under the harsh light.

He was proud of every level of his Dungeon, and he had worked obsessively to ensure they all met the exacting standards he demanded of himself. Level ten served its purpose as a gut check. The burrowing scorpions with their surprise attacks and their deadly venom served as a warning that things would become more difficult and more dangerous for any Adventurers that chose to delve more deeply.

"Thanks," Kelli gasped as he took a long drink from the canteen.

"So," Thidwell rumbled as Kelli wetted down a scarf, "Bob succeeded in his summoning ritual?"

Kelli nodded eagerly and said. "He did, although I had to pour potions down his throat to keep him alive," he expounded, "it was even worse than when he tried to take a path, but he pushed through."

"And Monroe?" Thidwell prompted as he took the canteen back.

"As expected, Monroe is a cat," Kelli responded as he wrapped the scarf around his head and neck, "apparently there is a familiar bond there, but aside from being rather large and quite fluffy, there doesn't appear to be anything unusual about it."

Thidwell grunted and asked, "Will he stand for the wave?"

Kelli nodded as he took up his hammer again before replying, "Yes, he will. Bob seems to believe that he owes the Adventurers Guild, or rather Elli, Harv, and myself a debt, but he's gone so far as to tabulate the crystals you've expended to his benefit, and appears determined to repay you."

Thidwell nodded and waved Kelli off with a fresh stone shield spell.

According to Harv and Elli, Bob was tearing through packs of wolves with little difficulty on level seven of the Dungeon. That, he mused, boded well for his performance on the wall.

The wave was coming. And he was going to need all of his level ten or higher Adventurers in the Dungeon, stopping the monsters from spilling out. While he expected to have a bit better than two hundred Adventurers to man the walls, they would be low level, and either inexperienced or out of practice.

Thidwell grimaced. You couldn't predict when a Tide would come in, but it had been long enough that the worry was always there in the back of his mind. He had no confidence that Holmstead would weather the next Tide without significant losses and damage. Too many people stopped at level five.

He refreshed Kelli's stone shield as the man slowly whittled down another scorpion.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob lay on his bed, slowly petting Monroe, who had curled up next to him in order to sleep off breakfast.

He'd managed to save Monroe. He had only generally planned for anything beyond that. He'd taken the Portal spell with the thought that he could use that to get back home.

The problem was, he wasn't entirely certain how long it was going to take to raise his portal spell and dimension skill to a level that would let him do so.

And then there was the consideration that the damage to his matrix might just prevent him from succeeding at all.

He sighed as he ran his hand through Monroe's fur.

It wasn't that he disliked Holmstead. It was a nice enough area. The people were certainly better than those he'd left behind.

But...

Kelli had indicated that the library in the Guild was impressive. By Bob's count, there had been maybe one thousand books there.

Bob was a bibliophile. He loved to read. It had always been an escape from a shitty present and a path to a brighter future for him. He had an old kindle that while battered, and no longer able to hold a charge, still turned on and connected to wifi. It was his primary source of entertainment when he was home.

Bob was pretty sure there weren't a lot of science fiction writers around here. In fact, he doubted there were any authors in Holmstead at all.

He'd had idle thoughts about bringing the joy of typewriters and printing presses to the poor benighted heathens of Thayland before. Bob had assumed that they had some sort of magical equivalent he hadn't seen.

When faced with a week of nothing pressing to do, one of his first thoughts had been that he could curl up with a good book.

He closed his eyes and listened to the rumble of Monroe's purrs while he took a few slow, deep breaths.

The day of the explosion he had made the decision to walk away. He'd committed to finding a job that he didn't hate, and to focus on being happy.

That decision still stood. And he was technically away, although being blown into an alternate dimension hadn't factored into his plans.

And he was, for the moment, stuck here. Trebor had stated that if he summoned another person from Earth, the System would be able to integrate them, and in doing so have a blueprint of sorts to fix his matrix.

Fixing his matrix would not only help him survive and thrive here but once he'd leveled the skills up, allow him to go home.

Because while Magic was great, living in a pre-industrial era world, where you fought monsters every day, was not nearly as enthralling as some of the fantasy novels he'd read had led him to believe.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Monroe stretched, unsheathing and sheathing his claws. His human-servant had fallen asleep, and the long, slow petting that Monroe enjoyed had stopped.

He flowed off the bed and began a circuit of the room.

Monroe was not impressed. The single room was too small and had not a single window to let in the sunbeams he needed for his naps.

The other thing it lacked, which Monroe rather liked, was the smells his home had. Stinking garbage, feces of all kinds, stagnant water, and the stench of human misery had pervaded that place.

His human occasionally smelled of tiredness, but he never had that scent of festering despair that oozed through the walls.

This place at least smelled better. His whiskers twitched.

Having been treated to that magnificent bowl of meat, he wasn't going to suffer through any more dry-crunch. Somehow his human-servant had finally realized that if Monroe was going to watch over him, and allow him to bask in Monroe's magnificence, he needed to provide him with meat.

Monroe sat down in the center of the small room and began to clean his fur. Maybe his human would brush him later.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob woke up to the insistent meows of a hungry Monroe. He picked the big cat up, then stood, and headed out of his room. He needed to find a harness for him.

He suddenly stopped in the hall.

Monroe was his familiar now.

'System Help Familiar,' he mentally projected.

System Help Familiar. A familiar is a creature that has been bound to another, higher tier being. The familiar will project emotions and needs into the mind of the master. The master will be able to read the emotions and needs of the familiar by focusing on it. The familiar will be uncomfortable if out of its master's physical reach for an extended period of time, and will always seek to return to its master's side.

Depending on its natural Intelligence, a familiar will respond to simple or even complex commands that are mentally projected or verbally articulated by its master.

A familiar shares the lifespan of its master, and will not die of age-related ailments or genetic defects.

If a familiar dies, it may be summoned again with the expectation that the familiar will not remember the actual experience of death, although it will recall the moments leading up to it.

Bob carefully set Monroe on the floor.

Monroe looked up at his human-servant, flicked his tail haughtily, and took several steps towards the delicious smells of the tavern, before stopping and looking to see if Bob had followed.

"Well, he isn't streaking off," Bob muttered as he followed his feline overlord into the tavern.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bailli delivered lunch for both Bob and Monroe and informed Bob that an additional crystal each day would pay for Monroe's carefully prepared meals.

She did pause both before and after the meal to deliver unto Monroe the petting that was his just due.

Bob couldn't help but feel restless. The two weeks of frantic activity to rescue Monroe had left him feeling jittery. Although Monroe was safe, and currently napping on the table, Bob was having a hard time coming down from that drive to act.

With a grunt of effort, he picked up Monroe and poured the big cat into the hood of his cloak, leaving his front paws and chin on Bob's shoulder.

Bob walked out of the Adventurer's Guild and started burning off some excess energy by walking around the town.

What he found was surprising. A bit over half the town was given over to small fields and gardens. Another quarter or so was taken up by what Bob loosely termed 'industry' - a tannery, a farrier, a slaughterhouse, the lumbermill, all loud, noisy, and odiferous occupations.

He'd seen the mill before and smelled the tannery beyond it, but he hadn't made the connection that Holmstead had devoted so much space inside the walls.

Bob mentally reduced his assumed population of Holmstead.

Bob had also found religion.

Several religions in fact.

There were small temples scattered throughout the city, normally near some aspect they venerated. A small temple nestled between a garden and a small field seemed to be dedicated to a nature-related diety. An even smaller temple near the slaughterhouse was likely dedicated to the god of the hunt, or something similar.

The largest temple looked less like a house of worship, and more like a military compound. It stood across the plaza from the Adventurer's Guild, and Bob and run by it regularly and never recognized that it looked a great deal like a monastery. At least not until today.

Bob was noticing quite a bit more today. There were more people on the streets, and the conversations he'd overheard all seemed to focus on the expected wave. It didn't seem like anyone was overly concerned about the monsters flooding the town and killing people, but instead, their worry was directed towards the damage the monsters would do to their homes, outbuildings, and fields.

It was an eye-opening experience to walk the streets of Holmstead. No one wore headphones, no one was looking down at a cellphone. People stopped and greeted each other, and even carried on conversations in the street. While people moved with purpose, it wasn't the harried bustle Bob had grown up with in Watts.

As he strolled back towards the Adventurer's Guild, he considered that the time he spent here, although dangerous and likely stressful, didn't necessarily have to be bad.

Harv, Elli, and Kelli had all proven to be decent people.

He'd been forced to trust them, as circumstances hadn't offered any other option. And Bob was used to those he trusted disappointing him.

Perhaps he'd finally found people worthy of his trust? He idly mused, before shaking his head slightly. Time would tell. But he couldn't help but think of a phrase he'd picked up as a child.

'Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.'