There was something seriously fucked up about that tree. Ignoring the fact that Owlacoons poured off its branches as quickly as they were killed, the tree itself had a sort of silvery trace on its bark.

Jessica's group had found the tree a few hundred yards into the trees. It stood beside another hole that led deeper down, and it was the source of the Owlacoons.

"This would be a great way to gather crystals and grind up your skills with a group if we weren't over-leveled," Danny commented.

"Too right," Jake replied.

"I'm going to inch around to the far edge of the hole; keep your eyes peeled. I don't want to have one of those things attacking me," Jessica stated as she pulled out another coil of rope with a persistent effect. If they needed another, someone else would have to provide it, she didn't have the mana for it.

Dave and Amanda had explained how enchanting and enhancing worked, boosting attributes and mana, but while her group had just about gathered enough crystals for that, they were now looking at having to spend them on access to the Dungeon in Harbordeep and lodging there instead.

She carefully tied one end of the rope around a tree then looked down into the pitch-black darkness below. Jessica pulled a round leather ball out of her satchel, tying it off on the other end of her rope, and then fed it a mana crystal. The ball burst into light, and she slowly lowered the ball downward.

The rope she'd summoned had convenient one-meter increments marked on it, so she was easily able to determine the distance to the bottom when the ball finally hit the floor.

"Looks to be another twenty or so meters down," she called over to the group while still peering down into the cavern below. The leather ball provided clear illumination out to about fifteen meters, then dim illumination for another five, which allowed her to see that the cavern extended beyond that and that there was a flowing stream crossing the floor. She caught movement below out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn't quite make it out.

"Definitely something down there," she reported. "Everyone move around to me, and then as one, we'll disengage our summons."

The group backed up smoothly, gathering behind Jessica before dismissing their summoned monsters. The Owlacoons respawned in the tree but were far enough away that they didn't engage.

"Let's each of us summon our monster down there before go do down, yeah?" Jessica suggest. "I saw something down there, but I couldn't see what, so no sense taking chances."

The five monsters appeared at the bottom of the cavern, surrounding the leather ball. Jessica began to lower herself, keeping watch for whatever it was she'd caught a glimpse of.

She reached the bottom without incident, not having seen any movement, and she called up to the other. "Same order as before, keep your eyes open."

Shiela was coming down when all hell broke loose. A huge winged shape darted into the light, latching onto Shiela when she was halfway down. It appeared to have bat-like wings, but the body was wrong somehow. Sheila screamed and let go of the rope, falling to the ground, bringing the monster with her.

Jessica could now see that the bat had been somehow crossed with the body of a weasel of some sort. Their summoned monsters converged at once, tearing into the monster and killing it in only two seconds.

Brutus yanked the monster off of Sheila, revealing a battered wreck. Her left arm and left leg were gone, blood spurting from the wounds, and she had gaping wounds along her torso.

"Blue, heal her!" Jessica screamed frantically as she pulled out one of the potions she'd been given by Amanda, dumping down Shiela's throat as the woman's eyelids fluttered weakly.

A bright golden light began to pour out of her wounds as Blue knelt down beside her.

It only took a few seconds for the wounds to close and the stumps to seal, but the whisper of wings promised that their ordeal was only just beginning.

Bob had read a few fantasy novels over the years, and he was convinced that those books were all written by people who had somehow seen across the void and witnessed the System at work. If they had seen someone attempting to control energy with their minds alone, they would have written those poor souls off as madmen and looked elsewhere.

Bob was on his forty-eighth attempt to create a cottonwood plant. Controlling the mana that followed through his matrix wasn't difficult, it simply required concentration. It was once that mana left his matrix that maintaining control of it became difficult. The best analogy he could think of was to liken the experience with trying to build a model DNA helix with half-cooked spaghetti. If he concentrated, he could keep the extruded mana in place, but as soon as he turned his attention to another strand, the first one lost most of its structural integrity.

Everyone can process things in parallel, but the number of things being processed, as well as the quality of the process, were directly related. Not for the first time, he wished he was naturally gifted.

One of the people he'd attended classes with at UCLA had been a prodigy when it came to processing multiple information streams. He'd often seen her in the library with a dozen different sourcebooks surrounding her. She'd read from one, then another, both totally unrelated courses.

She'd finished in the middle of the pack in terms of class rankings, but she'd completed four degrees in the same time that everyone else had completed one.

Evelyn Atkisson wouldn't have had nearly as much trouble with this.

Bob sighed and let the form finish collapsing, leaning back in his summoned chair and stretching his arms above his head.

'You are doing quite well,' Trebor advised, 'although you are correct in that you do not possess any sort of natural gift for parallel processing. Perhaps that is a feature you might wish to consider adding when you advance to become a Pinnacle? Should choose that path, of course.'

"I don't know," Bob groaned, "While I liked the idea of the Yheldaar, the fact that the update is going to allow anyone dedicated enough to gain any set of Affinities they'd like is also attractive. Even more so because I could reincarnate, level back up, become a pinnacle, reincarnate back down, and likely level back up, all in less time than it would take me to make a lateral move to Yheldaar."

Dismissing his chair as he stood up, he started to walk around the nineteenth floor. He needed to get his daily run, and it helped him think.

Bob had never had a great deal of control over his life. Thayland had seemed to offer him that, but he'd somehow become entangled in events far beyond what he should have, and he'd been carried by the current.

He sped up to a light jog. If he had to pinpoint the event that had started everything, it was when he'd discovered what Affinity Crystals could do if you hadn't yet taken your path. Further, his decision to promulgate that knowledge. It had seemed like the right thing to do, but it was the catalyst.

As far as Earth was concerned, he'd managed to remain on the surface of events, but there were currents that threatened to suck him down into the maelstrom. That was why he hadn't protested when control of the Dungeon was usurped. Better to cede that power without protest than to become any further involved in the inevitable power struggles that were already beginning.

He could see the end of his involvement in Glacier Valley.

Bob knew he'd end up helping the Aussies somehow, but he had a blueprint for that now, and it involved getting the first batch of Australian military retirees started on the Curator path. If he'd done that initially with the Marines, he wouldn't be working himself this hard.

Switching to an easy run, he let his thoughts flow freely. He'd made a lot of mistakes, but things had worked out alright, at least for everyone else.

The old saying, 'if you want god to laugh, tell him your plans,' came to mind. Almost nothing had gone according to plan, but despite that, things had mostly worked out. He and Monroe were both healthy, Monroe was happy, and they had a great little house to live in once the whole Earth integration was finished.

Of course, he wasn't sure what Holmstead would like at that point. Hopefully, murmuring falls would be left alone, but even if it wasn't, he could always relocate somewhere more remote.

New paths. The guide had laid out how to build them, and Bob had come to a few conclusions. The first was that the System might not be malicious, but it was devious. The more restrictions you built into a path, the more bonuses you could have.

The second was that the System was directing users towards specialization, it allowed, but didn't encourage, extreme specialization. If you selected the correct skills and added enough restrictions, it was possible to have a tier bonus added to a spell twice. For a tier five user, that meant that with an affinity crystal and an Arcanist's familiar, it was possible to have a level seventy-three summoned monster before natural affinities were taken into account. Of course, you'd have to select non-complimentary skills to do so. The System seemed to define non-complimentary skills as being different schools of magic, without any spells, metamagic skills, without any spells, and melee schools, again without any weapon skills, and finally metamelee skills.

The third was that the hierarchy of tiers was about to become a lot taller. At the cost of eighteen skill points out of twenty-five, you could become a master of two different schools and skills. But you'd have precious little left for utility unless you took or created a path that provided a few extra skill points. At tier six, that number would become thirty skill points out of thirty-six to have mastered two different schools and skills. Once you reached tier seven, it was forty-four points to have mastered four schools and skills. The truth was that mastering one was all that was necessary to be effective when delving the Dungeon or defending against tide or wave. The remaining skill points could be spread around. Four points would give you Animancy up to the first threshold, and Anima Blast and Regenerate. That would serve for out of combat healing where time was not of the essence. Dimension was the same, four points for the school up to the first threshold, and then one point each for Flight and Teleport. Sure, you wouldn't fly that quickly, but it was still flight, and while you wouldn't be teleporting that far, it was still a great way to get out of a bad situation. Higher tiers would be able to have not only more utility, but their utility would be more powerful.

Fourth was that the System really didn't want to give away those skill points. You needed four separate restrictions to receive a skill point at each threshold or at least one that could be allocated for anything. Restricting the allocation decreased the restrictions necessary or increased the skill points granted, depending on how far you went with it. Restricting the bonus skill point to only being useful for bumping a threshold of one of the non-complimentary skills required for the path was the most efficient use he'd found, and he'd taken the idea from the new Curator path layout.

Finally, the System allowed for incredibly powerful capstones, but it made you pay for them. The Path of the Endless Swarm was a perfect example of that. No real bonuses beyond a pair of penalty reductions, and an increase in the number of incredibly weak summons, until you reached the cap. There, the capstone paid for all the suffering the user would have had to endure to reach that point. Frankly, the path had been considered worthless, and rightfully so, before the use of Summoning Affinity Crystals made it viable.

Bob was already putting together his path. He would continue to utilize the Arcane School of Summoning, that almost went without saying. Summon Mana-Infused Object, just with the school hitting both thresholds, was sufficient to handle clothing, bedding, cookware, etc. It was likely one of the most useful spells in the entire System. He would need Dimension to be able to enter his Inventory, so that led to the question of how much Dimension did he need?

Trebor had answered that for him. A lot. It turned out that while he could get away with lower level Elemental, Plant, Animal, and even Shadowmancy by just using more rituals, the Dimension School and the Spatial Reinforcement and Expansion spells, were what allowed him to create the Arcane Depths. Casting a ritual without the systems assistance was doable, but the strength of the ritual still depended on your spell casting score, as modified by the System. That meant seventeen skill points had to be dedicated to Dimension, which made him a bit more of a Dimensionalist than it did a Summoner. It also meant that he'd be dedicating one of his Affinity Crystal slots to a Dimension Affinity Crystal. The other Arcane schools, Transmutation and Abjuration, would just have to languish.

Adding up the Arcane schools, spells, and threshold unlocks, he was already at thirty-one skill points used. Twelve more for the Elemental Schools and Spells, as well as Plant and Animal, and he was already overspent. That was without including Shadowmancy, mana sight, and mana shaping.

Of course, he could likely recoup some of those skill points. If he took only the two arcane schools, along with barrage, effect over time, persistent effect, and ritual magic, he'd be able to pick up a free threshold advancement for each school, at each threshold, which would save him twelve points. That would leave him with two skill points, but he'd need to allocate another three points for Armor, Armor specialization, and either Dodge or Parry. That him at a deficit. And he'd have seven Divine schools and nine spells, all capped at level five.

Of course, he'd be able to cheese that a little bit, using the four Elemental Affinity Crystals before he took his path to get the schools for free. That would free up four points and make those spells a little more potent, leaving him with three free skill points.

Alternatively, he could skip the metaskills entirely and simply stack schools, but that wouldn't allow him any sort of real capstone bonus, so he'd discarded that idea. If he had the Arcane Depths, he could make do with just Dimension and Summoning being at cap, and Bob didn't want to build Dungeons for the rest of his life. That was part of why he wanted to recreate the Arcane Depths so that he didn't get stuck in that role.

If he kept the four metaskills and didn't select any other bonuses except for the bonus threshold unlocks and required the use of six separate Affinity Crystals, he could build one hell of a capstone.

The question was, what did he want?

Bob continued to run, letting his mind spin away freely on the possibilities of the new paths he could build.