Bob leaned forward as the ritual completed, his stomach spasming. He fought down the urge to vomit, forcing himself to take deep, calming breaths. The burning sensation was worse today, although he'd been able to push through the pain and complete the ritual.

"Trebor," Bob groaned, "Why the hell does it feel like my matrix is on fire?"

'You're performing a five-fold ritual, which is the maximum your channels are capable of, and you're doing so over a period of hours,' Trebor replied. 'In short, your matrix is over taxed, and unlike your physical muscles, your matrix isn't improved by repetitive straining.'

"Fuck," Bob muttered, "So this isn't going to go away then?"

'It would be alleviated somewhat if you were to reincarnate. However, your affinities are having an ameliorating effect, so it would largely be a wash,' Trebor stated.

"So what you're saying is that I should have become a Yheeldar," Bob tried to stand up and settled for a crouch as his legs reminded him that he'd been seated for hours.

'A dual affinity for Shadowmancy, especially with those two skills, would significantly ease the performance of large-scale, long-term rituals,' Trebor agreed.

'Given that you lacked the necessary time to reincarnate, the point is moot,' Trebor continued, 'You've gathered the crystals necessary to advance to level thirty-three, and once you've reached level thirty-six, you'll have other options, although,' Trebor warned, 'you'll have gone well past the point where reincarnating would accelerate your advancement.'

"I need to have a couple of curators digging Dungeons before I can reincarnate," Bob replied as he stood, wobbled, and threw out a hand to rest on a column for support. "I never really thought about it when I was leveling up; I was just taking whatever skills felt useful from the schools I had available."

'Reincarnation is an opportunity to correct the errors of the past,' Trebor said, 'although to be fair, your inability to path, and then the unprecedented result of being reduced to your fifth level, with skills preselected up through your nineteenth, conspired to ensure that your build would be quite the mess.'

"Don't I know it," Bob took a few steps and then slowly started to stretch. He never thought he'd have much use for yoga, but he'd also never expected to sit perfectly still for hours at a time.

"So, as I understand it, my Arcane Depths is set, linked to my matrix, so even if I lose the path, I'll still have access to it?" Bob asked.

'Partially,' Trebor replied, 'your matrix will shift and grow when you reincarnate, which will close the link, and obviously, as you'll no longer be on that path, you'll lose the ability to recast it. However, as you were the person to create it, you will be able to enter it with a ritually cast portal so that you won't be denied access completely.'

"That ties into another question," Bob started flowing mana out of his matrix, shaping it carefully before releasing it, sending a blast of eldritch energy across the room, dwindling in the distance before slamming into the wall. "I can use mana to create a magical effect without the system," Bob stated with a small amount of pride, "is it possible to cast a ritual without the system as well?"

'It is,' Trebor answered, 'you might have noticed that your portal ritual is simply guiding mana gathered from mana crystals into a pattern for a portal; little different from casting the spell normally. The manner in which you are casting the five-fold rituals is much closer to performing them without the aid of the system. If you were to master the ability to create the individual effects, control earth, water, air, fire, and mana shaping, you'd be able to cast those rituals without the aid of the system.'

"Would I be able to recreate the Arcane Depths, though?" Bob asked.

'It's possible, however,' Trebor's voice became stern, 'you will recall that the ritual for creating the Arcane Depths was a mere one hundred and one hundred mana crystals. The System was doing a great deal of the heavy lifting, as it were, behind the scenes to make that ritual possible. The ritual itself is a derivative of a full and complete ritual performed by the race who created the path, and thus you could deconstruct it into its component parts, and recreate it.'

"The length of your explanation leads me to believe that it won't be easy," Bob mused.

'A tier seven race, with a significant number of natural affinities, well informed with how to obtain others, created a path that granted the ritual as a capstone because it was too hard for most of their curators to accomplish,' Trebor's voice carried a clear warning.

'Should you succeed, you would find yourself at an advantage over nearly every other species,' Trebor finished.

He'd taken the Path of the Arcane Depths in order to have a way to gather crystals if he was on Earth. Events had progressed at a pace that ensured he'd needed to spend very little time on Earth thus far. However, the ability to delve at a moment's notice was indispensable, especially with the Endless having taken over the deepest floors of the Holmstead Dungeon the way they had.

Assuming he could do so quietly, perhaps with Huron's help, he could easily see himself heading to the Dungeon in Harbordeep and dropping down to the seventieth floor and recasting the ritual before reincarnating.

One of the things he had to consider was what path he would take. He'd spent a bit of time querying Trebor, and he'd found an upgrade to the Path of the Endless Swarm.

Path of the Ever Victorious Legion of the Light This path requires the user to have the following skills; Magical School of Summoning, Summon Mana-infused Creature, Summon Mana-Infused Object, Barrage, Effect Over Time, and Persistent Effect. The user must also have an Affinity for the Magical School of Summoning. The user must have Intelligence and Wisdom Attributes over thirty. The user must, at the time of accepting this path, have six mana-infused creatures summoned with mana-infused objects. The Path of the Ever Victorious Legion of the Light provides a one percent bonus to all skills from the Magical School of Summoning and a one percent reduction to the penalty of the skills Barrage and Effect Over Time. Upon reaching the first Threshold, the user may activate the skills Summon Mana-Infused Object and Summon Mana-Infused Creature in conjunction if the Mana-Infused Objects are either armor or weaponry equipped to the Mana-Infused Creature. Upon reaching the first threshold, and every threshold thereafter, the maximum level of all Magical School of Summoning skills is increased by one. Upon reaching the first threshold and every threshold thereafter, the user may select an additional skill. Upon reaching the final threshold, when the user utilizes the skills Summon Mana-Infused Creature, Summon Mana-Infused Object in conjunction, along with the skills Barrage, Effect Over Time, and Persistent Effect, the skills transform into The Ever Victorious Legion of the Light, which causes any Mana-Infused Creatures produced by this effect that have been destroyed to reappear after a number of seconds equal to the user's tier.

He wasn't sold on the name of the path, but if his math was correct, and he was fairly certain it was, taking into account a Summoning Affinity bonus to the maximum spell level, the path bonus to the spell level, an Arcanists Familiar bonus to the spell level, and finally the School Threshold bonuses, he came up to a level ninety-nine Summon Mana-Infused Creature. The level of the Legion would be thirty-six.

He'd still be able to use a Dimension Affinity Crystal, as well as the Elemental Affinity Crystals, although he'd lose his Conjuration, Abjuration, Plant, and Animal Affinities.

The question was, would he have the time to push thirty-six and gather enough crystals to make a lateral transfer to the Yheeldar species?

Bob still had some reservations about completely changing his race, but the truth was, he wasn't fond of humanity in general. There were exceptions, but by and large, Bob could do without the majority of the people he'd met over the years. It wasn't so much that he actively disliked them, so much as that he'd instead they left him alone.

He shook his head. If he could reincarnate and take the Path of the Ever Victorious Legion of the Light, he'd be able to spread things out a bit more evenly. As it stood, while he was both valuable and versatile, he had several skills that were effectively doubled up on the Arcane and Divine sides.

The truth of the matter was that he would have more skills than he knew what to do with. Although he had a few ideas.

Bob looked around the newly created ninth floor of the Dungeon. This would effectively empty the first four floors of the Dungeon, leaving the fifth floor half full. He hadn't met the group of future cooks, butchers, and gardeners that had come to Glacier Valley earlier that day, but he expected he'd meet them when he came out of the Dungeon.

He walked over to the wall and started assembling the Gateway. One more ritual, and he'd be done for the day.

Nora was operating in a sort of daze. The truck had turned onto a winding black ribbon of road and accelerated to what she would have imagined were unsafe speeds, had other, much smaller, vehicles not whipped around them frequently, going even faster. They'd then turned onto an even wider road, done in gray, where hundreds, maybe even thousands of 'cars' jostled with each other as they hurtled along the road.

She was well educated and knew her numbers, but it was one thing to imagine a thousand of something and another to see it.

Now she was being ushered out of the truck in front of a massive building, the likes of which she couldn't have ever imagined. While it didn't soar as high, the sheer volume of the building likely exceeded the King's Palace in Harbordeep by a factor of three.

Jackson guided her, and Carrie, through the glass doors, where a blast of cool air served as relief from the heat radiating from the stone walkway outside.

"Elaine!" Jackson called, causing a young woman to look up from her 'phone' and hurry over.

Nora hadn't had time to really see any of the people on Earth so far, as they'd been ensconced in their vehicles. But here, she could see how they were dressed.

Elaine was wearing a skirt that fell above her knees, and a white tank top stretched tightly over a purple brassiere, with a tiny jacket that barely reached the bottom of her ribcage, and couldn't, in Nora's estimation, serve any practical purpose.

"Daddy!" Elaine exclaimed as she reached up to hug her father, smiling. She looked down at his left leg. "Did you get a new prosthetic?" She asked excitedly, "It looks so much more natural with just you standing there; walk around, let me see!"

Jackson took a few steps to the left, spun, and took a few more back to his right.

"That's amazing; I'm so happy for you, daddy!" Elaine gave him another hug.

"Thanks, Ellie-bear," Jackson replied fondly, causing Elaine to deliver a glare, which Nora suspected was caused by the nickname.

"This is Nora and Carrie; some of the people I'm working with sent them over; they've never been to a mall before, so I figured I'd send them in with you," He moved to ruffle her hair, which was very short, and somehow sticking up sharply.

"Dad," Elaine groaned as she dodged, putting a protective hand over her hair. She looked at Nora and Carrie, seemed taken aback, and looked them over more closely.

"Well, you two definitely need some new clothes," She smiled, "South Cali isn't the sort of climate where you want to rock the dominatrix look outside of air conditioning."

Nora mouthed the word Dominatrix and then blushed. Most normal vocabulary was easy and instinctive, but sometimes the English words sort of stuck, and if she concentrated on them, she'd get a brief flash of context from what Kelli had learned from whomever he had pulled the language from.

Jackson handed a pair of slim, flexible cards to Nora and Carrie. "They're loaded with a grand on each, so have fun," he advised, "Nora, you're pin code is one two three four, Carrie yours is five six seven eight."

With that, Jackson caught Elaine in a hug again before turning to head back out the doors, tossing a goodbye over his shoulder. "I'll be back in two hours, don't make us wait!"

Nora watched him go and then turned to look at Elaine and the mall in general.

She definitely didn't fit in. Elaine smiled at them both and slipped between them, looping her arms through theirs.

"First things first, let's get you into something more comfortable," Elaine's smile was devilish, "we might as well start from the ground up."

A few short minutes later, Nora's head was spinning. They'd walked past dozens of shops, some selling clothing, others jewelry, and one that seemed dedicated to only candles, which was odd, given that she didn't see any candles in use.

Now they were in front of a store where the mannequins were displaying underwear.

She couldn't help but imagine what she'd look like in the lacy, delicate underthings, and she blushed.

Elaine dragged on their arms unsuccessfully. At level sixteen and twenty-five, Nora and Carrie were effectively immovable for a level zero.

Nora glanced up at the sign above the entrance to the shop. "Frederick's of Hollywood."

She looked over at Carrie uncertainly. Jackson had said not to let Elaine take them to a place called Victoria's Secret.

She looked at the mannequins again. Was this what people from Earth usually wore?

"Come on," Elaine complained, "I don't know what you're wearing under those outfits, but the clothes you'll be wearing by the time we're done need proper underwear!"

Nora considered that statement. Her brassiere and underwear wouldn't work very well with the outfit Elaine was wearing. Her underwear came down longer than her skirt!

They did look nice, she thought as she glanced at a light purple set.

Reluctantly, she allowed herself to be pulled into the shop, Carrie following her lead.

Eddi was leaning back in the 'love seat' that one of the Marines had brought back for him. He felt it was aptly named, as it was just big enough for two people to curl up on. It was also the most comfortable piece of furniture he'd have ever had the pleasure of occupying.

Wayna was curled up with him as they took stock of the week, which had become something of a tradition for them.

"Bob doesn't need any more crystals?" Wayna asked in surprise.

"Nope," Eddie replied, "those marines are delving in eight-hour shifts, each of them assigned to monster spawn in the Dungeon, killing the monsters as soon as they appear." Eddi shook his head in admiration, "You've got to hand it to him; Bob has the whole operation running with perfect timing, no time wasted, every monster killed the moment it spawns."

Wayna squeezed his hands, which were wrapped around her waist. "So, now that I've reached level twenty-five, we should probably have that talk about tiering up," she said quietly.

"Whatever you want to do," Eddi leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, "I haven't asked Bob for a tier six Endless Swarm Path yet, just to avoid the temptation," he grinned.

"Good boy," Wayna praised him, "I've thought about it, and with the new paths and the Affinity Crystals, I'm inclined to go paragon."

She squeezed his hands again. "In Harbordeep, a lot of people were stuck, and I was destined to be one of them until Bob came along," she shook her head, "it might be tempting to choose a race that has natural affinities, but I think it's important to be able to level back up more rapidly."

"I know," Eddie agreed, "a Tide is coming, and we don't want to face it at a low level."

"So we'll ask Bob for the tier six paths and go paragon after the wave?" Wayna asked.

"After the wave," Eddie confirmed.