Bob walked quickly out of the Adventurers Guild towards the Dungeon.

He'd done a little napkin math in his head, and he'd realized that at one mana crystal per one hundred sheets of paper, he was going to need two thousand and ten mana crystals to print out sixty-seven thousand copies of his three-page leaflet.

The ritual had taken a full four hundred mana crystals, and after giving Amber a hundred and ten to get her started, he was sitting at six hundred and sixteen.

Bob frowned as he passed into the mausoleum.

He could have given her three hundred and ten, which would have covered her room and board for a month, and given her the crystals needed to take level five.

He shook his head. She probably wasn't going to take a level today, or even tomorrow.

In the meantime, he had boars to kill.

Pressing his token to the Gateway, he walked through the pool and onto the sixth floor of the Dungeon.

Bob took a deep breath and smiled.

Thanks to his enchanted armor, his endurance was currently at fifteen, which was enough to prevent the anxiety from the mana density.

Also, he had mostly fond memories of the sixth level of the Dungeon.

He followed his familiar path through the brush and arrived at his little clearing.

Bob pushed his mana into the familiar matrix of his summon UtahRaptor spell, and smiled as he felt how easily it flowed.

He was startled to receive a System prompt.

Magical School of Summoning Skill: Summon Mana-Infused Creature has reached a tier threshold. Please select one of the following skills for the Summoned creature by Verbally Stating or Mentally Projecting your choice from the following:

Natural Weaponry (Primary Skill)

Dodge (Primary Skill)

Fleetness (Primary Skill)

Natural Armor (Primary Skill)

Toughness (Primary Skill)

'Natural Weaponry,' Bob mentally projected.

Another System Prompt appeared.

Welcome to the Path of the Arcane Depths! You may select one of the following schools to which an increase of five levels to all sub skills will be applied, please Verbally State or Mentally Project your choice from the following:

Magical School of Summoning

Magical School of Dimension

'Magical School of Summoning,' Bob mentally projected firmly.

Welcome to the Path of the Arcane Depths! Please select one skill from the Magical School of Summoning or one Skill from the Magical School of Dimension.

Bob leaned back against a tree and thought for a moment.

He'd get his portal spell back at level six, and his other two dimension spells back at level eighteen and nineteen respectively.

So he didn't need anything from Dimension.

As for summoning, his UtahRaptor was just going to get better and better, so he needed to look at summoning something else.

At some point, he was going to want to build something. A shack, a house, something.

Having the ability to summon up prefabricated construction materials...

Bob mentally projected the image of a five-foot square panel, with tenons and mortises to allow them to dovetail together, further lined and crossed with a beam already punched out to be bolted together.

You have selected the skill: Summon Mana-infused Object

"That'll do," Bob said to himself as the next window appeared.

Welcome to the Path of the Arcane Depths!

System Error! User does not currently have access to a Divine School of Magic.

Attempting to Reconcile.

Please select a Divine School by Verbally Stating or Mentally Projecting the name of the School.

"Well," Bob muttered, "that's not good."

Bob thought for a moment. He knew that Thidwell had said he'd need Shadowmancy eventually.

'Divine School of Shadowmancy,' Bob projected.

You have selected the Divine School of Shadowmancy.

Bob smiled. No terrible, rending pain.

He could live with an error like that.

Jake appeared, and while he was smaller and his feathers duller, he was still quick and eager.

Bob laid a hand on his back and pulled up his status.

Summon: UtahRaptor(Jake) Tier: 5 Size: 5 Level: 5 Weapon Hardness: 23.1 Hide hardness: 15.4 Strength: 27 Mana: 15 Armor: 67 Coordination: 27 Stamina: 41 Claw Damage: 360 Endurance: 15 Health: 154 Bite Damage: 330 Intelligence: 10 Movement: 52 Wisdom: 10 Dodge 49 Beauty: 15 Summoning Mastery 1.54 Caster Value / 2 67 Arcane Familiar Bonus 0.04 Natural Attack 1.5

Bob considered that between his affinity crystal raising his UtahRaptor's level by ten, his path bonus raising it by five, and Monroe adding four, combined with his threshold bonus from of his School as a twenty-five percent bonus...

Bob would need to grind his Summon UtahRaptor to level thirty to have it capped.

Bob shrugged off the knowledge that he'd need to earn a hundred and twenty-three thousand experience to raise the spell back to its previous level.

That was only sixty-one thousand five hundred boars after all.

Bob stepped forward, and as he heard the familiar squeal of anger coming from the brush, he smiled.

Time to put in the work.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amber listened to Kelli for a full five minutes before their breakfast arrived.

"So," Amber said, "to recap, you have some sort of mystical energy that settles in low spots and causes fully formed creatures to leap out and eat the nearest person they can find."

She continued, "To combat this quite frankly devastating issue, you dig deep holes in the ground that allow this energy to pool down in the hole, rather than in your basement."

Kelli nodded happily as he attacked his eggs.

"But sometimes the energy becomes a storm, and monsters spring up anyways, and then you have to defend the town from a wave, or much more rarely, in a much worse storm, a tide," she said.

Amber finished by saying, "And the people who guard the towns from these events are called Adventurers, and you practice by going down into the hole in the ground and killing the monsters that appear down there."

Kelli pointed his fork at her and swallowed before replying, "I'd have worded it differently, but that is accurate enough."

Amber picked at her salad. It wasn't bad, although she didn't recognize a couple of the greens.

"So how many people live in Holmstead," she tested the unfamiliar word, "and how many of them are Adventurers?"

"Two thousand or so," Kelli said as he speared a sausage, "and two hundred, although that number is going to hit two hundred and fifty before the next wave."

"Why is that?" Amber asked.

Kelli's face fell as he said somberly, "We lost people in the last wave," he shook his head, "whenever someone dies in a monster wave or tide, there is a better than average chance that their surviving spouse or adult children will become Adventurers, in an effort to prevent that tragedy from happening to anyone else."

Kelli took another bite of scrambled eggs, then brightened and said, "But some of them, the younger ones, are becoming Adventurers because of Bob."

"Bob?" Amber asked in disbelief, "Do you mean Robert Whitman, the quiet, mousy guy who wouldn't look you in the eyes, but never let you out of his sight, and kept his back to a wall whenever someone was in the room with him, that guy," she asked, "is an Adventurer?"

Kelli put down his fork and pointed a finger at her as he said, "I saw Bob's memories, I know what life was like for him in your world," his face reddened with anger, "your world might not have appreciated Bob, but here, he's a stones damned hero," Kelli spat.

"You want to see the truth about Robert Whitman?" Kelli growled, "Here, I'll show you a memory from one of the bystanders."

System User Kelli Armel has attempted to contact you via Telepathy. To consent either Mentally project or Verbally articulate, "I accept" or to resist, Mentally project or Verbally articulate "No"

"I accept," Amber said.

She blinked as her vision shifted.

She was standing on a stonewall with half a dozen other people, looking out over a series of fields with a stone watchtower a few hundred feet away, a small figure standing atop it.

Amber gasped as she saw thousands of insect-like creatures race down out of the woods, rushing towards the town.

She saw something moving towards town just ahead of the wave, and she squinted, then gasped.

It was a family. A man, a woman, a child, and a baby. The two adults were rushing towards the town, dragging the child along while the man clutched the baby to his chest.

After only a few seconds it was clear they weren't going to make it.

Just as the wave was about to wash over them, a familiar rectangle of black and blue light twisted and formed in front of them, a figure stepping out as the rectangle disappeared and another one formed, the man pushing the family through before following himself.

Amber could see the rectangles exit appear at the base of the tower, and she watched as Bob, it had to be Bob, opened another one, and shoved the family through.

Before he could enter, the portal twisted closed, and Bob fell to the ground.

Then the wave of insects washed over him. She watched as scythe-like blades punched down into Bob and came up coated in blood.

One second passed. Then two. The wave had completely engulfed Bob and was washing around the tower the family had appeared on top of.

Then with a roar, Bob was back on his feet, swinging his staff while a tiny spot dashed around him.

'His cat,' she thought.

All around her the people on the wall started to cheer as Bob stood against seemingly impossible odds.

Two seconds later, Bob seemed to drop through the ground, and that twisting rectangle formed above the tower, dropping him on top of it.

Amber blinked and she saw Kelli looking sternly across the table at her, then her vision shifted again.

She was back on the wall, and this time she was watching as a rat the size of dumptruck was running towards the tower where Bob still stood.

She heard the yells around her and understood that the people on the wall were worried about what would happen when the rat got to them.

Amber watched as Bob appeared to create a fucking dinosaur out of thin air, and then dropped it down into the crowd of monsters at the base of the tower.

She saw the huge rat headed straight towards him, and she gasped as Bob created another dinosaur, right on top of the rat's back.

She heard the collective intake of breath as the rat reared up, and ripped a massive chunk of flesh from Bob's torso.

Amber saw Bob disappear, then reappear in the sky, using those twisted doorways to position himself high above the battlefield as he fell, creating dinosaur after dinosaur to tear into the giant rat, before finally ending it, and appearing on the battlement ten feet from her, his body torn, a giant rent in his side giving her a view of organs that weren't supposed to see the light of day.

She blinked and gagged slightly as her vision returned fully, and she was left to face a very serious looking Kelli.

"I'm sure you had a reason for doing what you did, stealing from him, claiming his work as your own," Kelli said coldly, "and I'm not in a position to judge you for it."

"But make no mistake," he said, "Robert Whitman stood tall against a wave and saved lives. He hadn't been here a month yet, and he was broken," Kelli said with a shake of his head, "crippling mana issues due to matrix damage, unable to take a path, and three out of his six skills devoted to saving his cat from starvation."

"The only things he could do was summon his UtahRaptor, and portal, and even then with his mana issues, he couldn't portal often, which he damn well knew when he went after that family."

"He doesn't like the attention, and he hates being called a hero," Kelli said quietly, "but here in Holmstead people call him "The Reef," because that's where the waves break."

"So the next time you want to disparage that man, you think about what you saw," Kelli said, "I personally think you treated Bob pretty badly in his old world. But that's between you and him. I'll tell you this though," he leaned forward, "you talk about him the way used to, or you treat him badly, and there's a couple of hundred people in this town who will backhand you for it."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob was smiling as he walked into the tavern.

He loved the sixth level of the Dungeon.

He loved boars.

Nice simple boars.

No poison.

No swarms.

No vicious damage.

No scalding breath.

No ambushes.

He headed into the kitchen and down to the cellar where he dumped a dozen boars onto the floor.

He felt like having ham steaks tomorrow morning.

He also knew that Monroe liked boar chunks as well and he, of course, lived to serve his feline overlord.

He scratched Monroe's ears as he walked back into the tavern and spotted Harv and Elli sitting at a table.

Walking over, he tallied his results. With his Summoning School at level five, Jake had made quick work of the boars.

He'd ended up repositioning himself so that he could have Jake attract more of them, as they didn't reappear quickly enough.

The battles between UtahRaptor and boar lasted all of three seconds.

In eight hours, Bob and Jake and slaughtered nine thousand, five hundred and eight boars, for a total of two hundred and ninety-four crystals.

This was lovely, but the biggest gain was definitely his Summon UtahRaptor spell hitting level twelve.

He'd seen the lovely System screen once Jake had reached level ten.

Magical School of Summoning Skill: Summon Mana-Infused Creature has reached a tier threshold. Please select one of the following skills for the Summoned creature by Verbally Stating or Mentally Projecting your choice from the following:

Dodge (Primary Skill)

Fleetness (Primary Skill)

Natural Armor (Primary Skill)

Toughness (Primary Skill)

Bob had chosen Natural Armor, hoping that when faced with the cockroaches again, his UtahRaptor would be able to stand up to the damage.

He wouldn't be able to test that for a while, as Jake was killing the boars in a single bite.

Bob slumped into the chair next between Harv and Elli, slid Monroe off the Makres and then poured the big Maine-coon onto the table.

"Good evening," Bob said cheerfully.

"You seem happier," Harv said with a smile of his own.

"I love the sixth level of the Dungeon," Bob confided happily.

Elli shot him a smile as he reached over to scratch Monroe's ears, which appeared to be the necessary impetus to start the purr motor.

"No ambushes or poison or swarms or any of that nonsense," Bob said with a smile, "Just endless, straight forward boars."

Harv shook his head although his smile remained as he said, "Still, eight hours after what Kelli described as... well," he lowered his voice, "he said you sort of exploded, from the inside."

Bob nodded and waved to Theo.

"So I gather, I think I'd lost consciousness at that point," Bob confessed.

"But that's all behind me now, and I can focus on the important things, like leveling up and squaring myself with Thidwell," he finished.

"True enough," Harv said, then asked, "When are you going to want those wooden plates done?"

"I'll need a few more days," Bob said, "I know where to source the paper, and I know the cost, but I need to check on the ink."

"You plan to pull an all-day Delve tomorrow?" Elli asked as he carefully played with Monroe's toe tufts.

"I am," Bob admitted.

"Maybe give it a late start," Elli suggested, "Eddi has been looking for you for the past couple of days, although he's out at his parent's farm tonight."

Bob shrugged and replied, "I can do that."

He leaned back in his chair and smiled as Harv and Elli started arguing over which element they should each specialize in.

Bob couldn't help but think that despite all the pain, and the blood, and the setbacks, it was still a great day.

~ ~ ~ ~

Amber lay in bed, her thoughts racing.

There was no way she was dreaming or hallucinating. The details were too much, and several of the things she'd seen she just didn't have any reference for.

'Occam's Razor,' she muttered.

She was in another world, or an alternate dimension.

One where the man whose work she'd stolen, and had thought she'd accidentally killed, was not only alive but also a local hero.

'Think, Amber,' she mentally reprimanded herself.

She wasn't in jail anymore.

She was in a room that was slightly larger than her cell, with a much more comfortable bed, and shower that wasn't public.

Perhaps the most important part was that she was free.

She could open the door to this room, and walk out.

Of course, this world was also incredibly backward.

They didn't even have a map of the area. She'd asked.

Oh, and she was stuck here.

She'd asked about that too.

It seemed that you had to have been someplace in order to magic yourself there.

Which meant that the only two people who could send her home were Bob and herself.

And Amber didn't have any magic to do that, although Kelli had seemed to think that it wouldn't be too terribly difficult for her to obtain it.

If she went back home, she'd have to answer some fairly pointed questions about just how she'd left her cell.

The truth might help her with an insanity plea, but she wanted to be locked away in a mental ward even less than she wanted to be locked away in prison.

No, she couldn't go home.

She sniffled as a few tears rolled down her cheeks.

Everything since the accelerator explosion had just been an unending nightmare.

Once she'd accepted that Bob was still alive somehow, she'd been surprised that he wasn't angrier with her.

He'd even given her enough money to rent a room and eat three meals a day, although she had a feeling that she'd be eating a lot of salads. Hopefully, they had beans of some sort for protein...

She shook her head. Dietary issues aside, she was at least free.

According to Kelli, who was really her only source of information at this point, Bob was not only a hero, but he was also some sort of Guru when it came to figuring out the best way for people to use their magic spells, despite only having been here for like, two months.

Kelli had gone so far as to show her a rough piece of paper, on which Bob had written out a guideline for utilizing some kind of crystals to be better at blowing things up, and had mathematically shown how it would more than double their output.

So, with that in mind, she was going to see if she could sit down and apologize to Bob for what she'd done, and see if he'd be willing to answer a few questions.