Bob had his eyes closed as he focused on the feeling of the mana rushing through his matrix before it ignited just outside. He was controlling the flows as well as delaying the ignition until the pattern was complete.

He ignored the sweat rolling down his face as he concentrated. Finally, he felt that the pattern was complete, and he released the mana he'd been suppressing, which filled the pattern, flashing into ignition.

Bob sat down with a heavy thud, taking in long, gasping breaths as the tension of the past few minutes slowly eased.

'Congratulations,' Trebor said, 'you've successfully created a spatial reinforcement and expansion as a persistent effect without the aid of the system.'

Bob looked at the box he'd been working on. He pushed mana into the pattern for an effect over time Mana Sight spell and inspected the persistent effect. He could feel the mana that had been reserved, but he wanted to check it out.

He smiled. He was nearly done piecing the puzzle of the Arcane Depths together.

The thirty-seventh floor of the Hidden Dungeon had been completed a few hours earlier, and he'd wanted to spend some time working on his systemless spell casting.

'You will likely want someone nearby with a regeneration ritual awaiting completion when you first attempt to cast these spells as rituals without the aid of the System,' Trebor advised.

"I'm sure I can find someone," Bob replied as he released his persistent effect. He was hopeful that he'd be able to recreate the ritual without the system and do so before the apocalypse arrived.

The Hidden Dungeon wouldn't be eating into his time any longer, so he'd be able to really focus on grinding out the Mana Crystals he would need to reincarnate, as well as checking up on the other projects that were moving forward, specifically the D&D crew's Dungeon, which they'd theoretically begun rebuilding after a disastrous first start, and the Australian Dungeon.

He ought to take a peek at Glacier Valley while he was at it. Maybe visit Holmstead and hunt down Harv, Elli, Baili, and Kelli for a meal.

Bob sighed. He hadn't ever really appreciated the fact that having friends was work sometimes.

He walked over to the Gateway, activated it, and wandered through the main floor for a minute, checking to make sure everything was still running as it should. There were technically six people living at the Hidden Dungeon, although Wayna spent enough time here that she ought to be considered the seventh.

The generator was running, but he fed twenty mana crystals into it anyway, just in case the kids forgot. Electricity was still a new thing for them.

It was tempting to settle down for the evening, but he still had a few hours of daylight left, so he dropped through a portal, intent on checking out the Australians first.

Jessica smiled as she spotted her prey. "Bob!" she called out, hurrying to catch up to him.

"Evening," Bob replied as he looked around at the area surrounding the Dungeon.

Half a dozen paddocks had been erected on the side of the Dungeon facing the valley, although the flocks hadn't been brought in for the evening yet. On the far side, several bunkhouses had been built using freshly felled logs, while a veritable sea of tents sprawled out alongside them.

"We built the longhouses for the folks who brought their kids," Jessica explained, "easier to lock the little buggers in at night; they get a little too feisty when they're in tents." She laughed, "although it seems nearly everyone is getting a bit feisty or frisky in the tents if the sounds at night are anything to go by."

"How is the Dungeon doing?" Bob asked quickly.

"Brilliantly," Jessica caught his arm in her own and started pulling him towards the Gateway, "Derrick built out the second and third floors, I'll show you around."

Bob didn't resist the pull too much, although she was well aware that at level thirty-six, he had the strength to do so. It was endearing to see how cautious he was when it came to showing off his attributes.

She put her hand against the Gateway and pushed a bit of mana into it, mentally selecting the second floor. She walked through the pool with Bob in tow, and they arrived on the second floor of the Dungeon.

Derrick had applied his own artistic vision to the floor, although he had kept Bob's 'Kill Monster Here' labels on the ground. This floor was set up as a dessert, with scraggly bushes surrounding the pillars that held up the ceiling. There were fifty people arranged across the floor, each one in the process of beating the ever-living shit out of a spider the size of a terrier.

"Not a big fan of the spiders myself," she said, "but it's another fifty slots being utilized, right?"

"You've got every slot filled?" Bob asked as he looked around at the plants curiously.

"Yep," Jessica agreed happily, "following the Bob model, we've got three shifts at eight hours each, so even though we've only got three floors, we've got four hundred and fifty people bashing monsters for mana crystals every day."

"The Bob model?" Bob muttered.

"Yeah, keep the Dungeon packed to the brim, hold off on advancing until you got someone to take the empty slot you'll create," Jessica explained. "Your model matches what the efficiency experts came up with almost exactly."

"Derrick's working on the fourth floor now, and in another two days, we'll have the fifth floor complete, which means folks will be able to take paths," Jessica grinned before tugging on his arm again. "Come on; the third floor is a lot nicer than this one," she put her hand on the Gateway.

The third floor was very different, with the pillars disguised as old-growth trees. The ceiling was rather taller than normal, and it had been worked so that it appeared to be a canopy of leaves. People were still arranged in the same pattern, and they were killing wild boars with marked enthusiasm.

There were quite a few summons present, dogs, big cats, bears, what looked like a dingo, and even a kangaroo.

Others were blasting monsters with spells, with fire clearly winning as the element of choice, followed closely by lightning. Finally, there were several men and women who were still fighting monsters in melee combat.

Jessica noted that his gaze had landed on the melee combatants. "Curators," she offered, "obviously, we won't force anyone to take a path, but about a quarter of the folks offered to go either Curator or Druid, and we gave the Curators priority."

"A good plan, and one I wish I had implemented sooner," Bob agreed.

"You've done remarkably well by blazing a path for the rest of us," Jessica grinned and moved just a tiny bit closer, laying her hand on his forearm.

"Yes, well, I can see that you're doing well," Bob said quickly as he disengaged his arm and moved to the Gateway. "I need to check on the D&D folks before I call it a night."

Jessica shook her head and chuckled as Bob disappeared through the Gateway. "He's just too adorable," she sighed. She'd get him to loosen up eventually.

Bob arrived at the small valley where the D&D players had built out their Dungeon before they'd realized that they didn't have all the skills they'd need to complete it.

A large square building, constructed entirely of stone blocks, was situated over the entrance to the Dungeon. Bob walked around the entire thing before determining that there wasn't a door on any of the four sides. Which, he thought, made sense if you were building it to defend against a wave, and you were confident that the people who lived here were all able to get in without such plebian devices.

Pushing mana into the pattern for a persistent effect Flight spell, Bob shot up from the ground, free from the tyranny of gravity, and immediately realized that the door was on the roof, which sported a swimming pool, two hot tubs, what might have been a sauna, and a long covered structure that was likely a bar.

He landed at the edge of the swimming pool, which contained the only people he'd been able to spot.

"Dave, Amanda," Bob greeted his friends.

"Hey, Bob!" Amanda waved as she swam over to the edge of the pool and pulled herself up. "It's nice to see you, I thought after the Aussie thing, it would be weeks before you poked your head back up," she laughed as she grabbed a towel from a nearby chair and started drying her hair.

"It's only been a few days," Bob protested, looking away from Amanda and towards Dave.

"Progress," Dave agreed as he pushed himself out of the pool as well. "What brings you to our little speck of heaven? Not that you need a reason, you're always welcome," Dave hastened to add the last.

"I was just checking to see how the Dungeons were doing, I already checked in on the Australians, and they're down to the third floor," Bob replied.

"Did you see Jessi?" Amanda asked, and while Bob couldn't see her face, he detected the hint of a smile or a smirk.

"Yes, Jessica showed me the progress they'd made on the Dungeon," Bob admitted.

"Did she get fresh with ya?" Dave grinned.

"Dave!" Amanda admonished her boyfriend, "Jessica is a very physical person," she told Bob, "she's big on hugs and kisses, even between friends."

"It's weird," Bob muttered, pulling Monroe out of his inventory and sliding the surprised and sleepy floofer onto his Makres.

"She's just playing around," Amanda said as she wrapped another towel around herself, the first having been regulated to hair duty.

"Probably," Dave faux whispered.

"If you ask her to stop, she'll try," Amanda offered, "but you might want to consider it as a training regiment; if you can handle Jessica, you can handle anyone."

Bob shook his head. The conversation had gotten a bit off course.

"So," he began, "how is your Dungeon doing? Did Jason repair it?"

"Oh. My. God!" Amanda squealed, "You don't know yet!"

"Don't know what?" Bob asked hesitantly.

"Jason got home and found a constable waiting for him, and they took him to see The Queen!" Amanda bounced in her seat.

"The Queen of England?" Bob asked.

"That's the one," Dave agreed, "so she's a bit old, and she's been read into Thayland, so she asks Jason if he can reincarnate her."

"Which, of course, he can't," Amanda added.

"Right," Dave agreed, "So he comes back and gets Huron, then goes back to Earth. Huron reincarnates her, and she grabs a set of full plate and a fuckin' claymore from the wall, and heads to Harbordeep, dragging Jason and half a dozen SAS guards with her."

Amanda was grinning wildly. "She's got him providing overwatch while she grinds out the levels with her SAS squad. Eight hours a day of grinding, and then he's out looking for books for her another two or three, then she's grilling him about what he knows for another hour."

"She's a fucking machine," Dave nodded, "apparently she was determined to take some sort of tank path, but Jason convinced her that when it came to sheer monster-killing power, the Endless Swarm was the fastest and best path to take if you had an Affinity Crystal, which he happened to have."

"We talked to him this afternoon, and she's already level seven," Amanda added.

"She's leveling the summon mana-infused creature spell by keeping it up as a persistent effect while she beats the monsters down with her fuck-off sword," Dave finished.

"I..." Bob tried to mentally picture the Queen of England in full plate, wielding a claymore against a monster. Having only ever seen pictures of Queen as a tiny old woman, he was having a bit of trouble.

"That's what Jason said," Amanda chuckled. "He swings between being horrified and being super proud."

"Apparently, when she was talking to Huron, she said something about being the shield between her people and the monsters arrayed against them, and it ignited Jason's sense of patriotism," Dave explained.

"I didn't see that coming," Bob muttered.

"I don't think anyone did," Amanda agreed.

"The Presidents and Prime Ministers at the summit didn't seem all that interested in killing monsters," Bob sighed. "So, no work on the Dungeon then?"

"Oh, we've got Kathy leveled up," Dave shook his head, "she just hit eleven, but she's got everything she needs, and she's already fixed the first five floors."

"We've got another dozen Curators coming up too," Amanda added. "We're looking to go deep here, build it out to forty or fifty floors, make it a sort of mecca for the D&D geeks who don't want to fight to get into their countries Dungeons."

Bob nodded. "That's a solid plan," he agreed, "in retrospect, I should have focused more heavily on curators rather than trying to do it all by myself."

"Although, I don't know that I would have ever have had the foresight to build a spa on top of the Adventurers Guild," he finished, looking around.

"Work hard, play hard," Dave replied with a grin as he slung his towel over his shoulders. "Come on inside, we'll show you around."

"We're pretty close to capacity," Amanda admitted as she followed them to the stairwell. "We're probably just going to build more of these as needed."

"I noticed it was made of stone blocks," Bob replied, "summoned, I assumed."

"Yeah, we can't do the huge ones yet, but three-foot-square blocks work just fine, especially if you summon them out with dovetailed edges," Dave grinned. "We did double walls, so they're pretty damn strong."

"It wasn't cheap, but as it turns out, once you've got a Dungeon fully staffed, the crystals just coming pouring in," Amanda added, "especially when you get to keep them," she finished with a sidelong glance.

"Mistakes were made," Bob admitted, "but it looks like everyone learned from them."

"We've basically got a bit over five months until the next wave here on Thayland," Dave said as they descended the stairs, entering a lounge area where a dozen young men and women were relaxing, eating a meal, or at one table, playing Dungeons and Dragons.

"Hey, everyone!" Amanda called out, drawing the attention of the room. "We've got a guest," she gestured to Bob. "The man who found Thayland, who figured out the paths and Affinity Crystals, and then had the good sense to come back to Earth and recruit the best, smartest, most dedicated men and women to help save it! Robert Whitman!"

The room erupted into a combination of clapping and cheers as Bob froze, a horrified expression on his face.

"You fucking earned this," Amanda whispered, "you take a ration of shit from too many people, you need to not just see, but know how much what you've done means to us."

"No autographs," Dave shouted good-naturedly, "he's just stopping by to make sure everything is going fine, and he doesn't have all day, that whole saving the world thing is a full-time gig," he finished to more cheers and laughter.

"Forget Bob, I want a paw print from Monroe!" A young man with a truly spectacular afro called out.

"I, for one, welcome our feline overlords!" another voice called out and was joined by a swell of agreement.

Bob took a deep breath and kept his eyes open, letting a smile creep across his face.