Bob looked over the maps Thidwell had provided him.

It appeared the Dungeon was built like a cone, with the first floor being the tip and each consecutive layer being larger than the one above it.

It then followed that each floor was constructed with a slight slope from the center to the edge, where a channel gathered any excess mana and drained it down to the next floor.

Each floor took the mana from the floor above it and spread it out, dozens of channels leading to a series of pools deep enough to allow for a monster to from the mana. The pools had overflow channels leading to the edge of the floor.

On each floor, there was an auxiliary channel that brought mana up to the first floor. Thidwell had marked that they weren't active, save for the one on the thirty-fourth floor.

Bob felt fairly confident he understood the maps.

He planned to scout the thirty-fourth floor after running his freshers through their paces the next morning, and he was hopeful that actually seeing the mana flows in action would help him understand how the mana was regulated.

Bob fully intended to develop a plumbing system for his Dungeon, one that used pipes, pressure valves, cutoffs and overflows. Ideally, with a monitoring station on the first floor, complete with gauges and the ability to open, close, and regulate valves remotely.

He pulled himself from his thoughts as Monroe hopped up onto the kitchen counter and flopped bonelessly onto the maps.

"Hey buddy," Bob greeted Monroe, who started to idly groom one of his paws.

"Have I been ignoring you?" Bob asked as he scooped Monroe up in his arms and headed for the sunroom.

"Mereow," Monroe voiced, indicating that Bob might very well have been ignoring him.

Bob sat down in the far right chair, the one that gave the best view of the falls, and lowered Monroe into his lap and began to pet the big Maine-Coone.

Monroe voiced his approval of this improved situation by unleashing a low rumbling purr.

"I know," Bob commiserated, "always so busy," he shook his head.

"One day," Bob told Monroe as he carefully rubbed the big cat's ears, "once Thidwell has reincarnated and the I'm done with the pamphlets and affinity crystals, and the timer hopefully hasn't started counting down to Earth's terrible demise, we can go back to just delving for an hour in the morning, then hiking, and hanging out the rest of the day."

He dug his fingers into Monroe's ruff as he thought about that last issue.

Earth was so fucked.

As Bob saw it, the problem was that there was no way that anyone was going to take him seriously when he went back.

If he demonstrated his skills, he'd likely be taken very seriously, all the way to a government black site where they'd experiment on him.

Ideally, to save the largest number of people possible, he'd need the government to get behind the plan.

Barring that, people seemed to pay an inordinate amount of attention to and attach extraordinary weight to the opinions of celebrities.

But he wasn't sure that abducting celebrities was the right play either.

He was still basically stuck on getting volunteers.

Bob knew he could get hundreds of people from Dragoncon. But they probably wouldn't be the people he needed.

He'd given a bit of thought to recruiting retired military personnel. Growing back a leg and reincarnating them back down to twenty years old would be a hell of an incentive.

Maybe he could find someone with a decent enough rank to start the ball rolling, as it were.

Ultimately, he'd like to hand over the responsibilities to someone else. Bob didn't want to play God, deciding who could come to Thayland and who couldn't.

And he knew that if the plan actually worked, and a real volume of people were transplanted onto Thayland for a hundred days, someone, at some point, was going to have to make hard decisions about who was going.

No, the truth was that he didn't have the knowledge or the skills to put together a mass evacuation.

All Bob really had was a slight knack for mathematics and a willingness to put in the work.

He was going to have to recruit people and turn the task over to them.

Ellen directed her mountain lion to attack the rats that were snapping and biting at her front line.

Her fingers clenched as she instinctively tried to call forth a healing spell and failed.

She gritted her teeth and kept her focus on her summoned monster.

This was probably the most frustrating part of reincarnation - constantly reaching for skills that you didn't have any longer.

This was the second time that she'd been unable to assume the role she felt most comfortable in, that being a healer.

But part of the undercover assignment was not drawing the attention of any cultists, which meant no divine magic.

Not that the path was all bad; in fact, it promised to be quite powerful.

And the path didn't prohibit her from divine magic, so she could easily slide back into her role of a healer once the assignment was over.

She dropped her spell as she moved forward and brought her staff down on the top of a rat's head before stepping back and summoning her mountain lion back out, fully refreshed and healed.

Bob had taught her that little trick, advising her that just because she couldn't summon her mountain lion back out for a second didn't mean she should wait.

Always Be Killing.

And now she understood why he was having them fight monsters more than one level above them. The pamphlet made it clear that they'd need to be fighting level twenty-six monsters at level twenty-three in order to find Affinity Crystals. Bob was preparing them to do exactly that, getting them used to the idea that fighting three, four, or even five levels above your own was normal.

She was certain that Bob wasn't a cultist. A revolutionary perhaps, but not a cultist.

She was nearly certain that there were no cultists in Holmstead. There were a few things about the town that didn't add up.

First, no one in Harbordeep seemed to realize that there was a flyspeck city with a thirty-foot wall and four miles of the surrounding countryside drained into the Dungeon.

Holmstead was, lack of population aside, only bested by Harbordeep as the most well-protected city in Greenwold.

Then there was the thirty-four floor deep Dungeon. This was her second concern.

Crescent Lake had a forty-one floor Dungeon, but it was a central shaft, and the curator who built it had sought to drive it as deep as possible, without ensuring the floors were well designed.

The Dungeon in Holmstead sported the celebrated Gateway design that was thought to only exist in Harbordeep.

The design was explained by the presence of Thidwell Orstang, who had to have been his father's apprentice. However, there were no records of him ever having assisted his father in curating the Dungeon in Harbordeep.

The question that lingered was, why? Why was the information about this town missing? People should have been flocking to this place in droves.

She'd listened in the tavern. The last wave had no casualties. Adventurers told stories about people being hurt in the Dungeon, not about them dying.

No, this was definitely a perfect breeding ground for cultists.

Ellen just couldn't find any. Everyone was fairly good-natured, and most of them sported a Vi'Radia blessing.

Austan was a walking advertisement for the faith, kind, wise beyond his years, and selfless.

She dropped her mountain lion again, stepped forward, swung her staff, then stepped back to bring it back out.

She'd keep investigating, but at this point, she was leaning towards having to wait for the next wave. If there was no cultist activity during a wave, then there weren't any cultists to be had.

Bob rubbed the ring on his right index finger with his thumb. It had been in the suitcase, with a scrawled label tied to it, which said "Master Token."

Austan had confirmed that the ring functioned as a Token for the Gateway, allowing him access to any and all floors.

Apparently, Austan had one, too, in case he had to rescue someone.

Bob pressed the ring to the Gateway and then stepped through the event horizon and onto the thirty-fourth floor.

It was another forest biome, but this one was set in twilight, shadows shifting as a breeze swayed limb and leaf.

Bob pushed mana into a persistent effect Mana Sight, and the world took on the familiar ethereal glow.

Bob took a deep breath and immediately wished he hadn't. There was a taint of foulness on the air, of carrion left to dry in a humid environment that rotted it instead.

It was warm, maybe a touch over eighty degrees, and he was already sweating.

He checked the map and started walking towards what should be clearing to his left, one of the smallest on the floor, with only three pools.

He quickly realized that the forest was crisscrossed with a multitude of spiderwebs. He'd gone twenty feet when he'd run into one.

Rather than sticking to him, it had instead snapped, causing a vibration that shook the nearby webs.

Having experienced spiders on other floors, Bob wasn't about to hang around waiting for the monster to come and check on what had rung its dinner bell.

Bob pushed his mana into a barraged summon mana-infused monster spell, and thirty UtahRaptors sprang into being, filling the nearby forest and destroying every web in the area.

For a few moments, the forest was nearly silent, with only the light breathing of the UtahRaptors disturbing the stillness. And then all hell broke loose.

A spider, the size of a deuce and a half, came crashing through the forest, letting out a bellowing roar so loud that it forced Bob to step back, blinking tears from his eyes as he worked his jaw, trying to equalize the pressure in his ears.

He watched as it barreled towards his raptor pack, spraying a stream of dark ichor ahead of its charge. Two raptors were caught in the stream, and they trilled their pain and anger as the thick liquid ate into their flesh.

Then the beast was among them, snapping, clicking, and snarling.

It had the face of a bear, but with chitin pincers growing out of its thorax and eight mad eyes in a ring around its skull.

It killed one of the wounded raptors with a single snap of its pincers, tearing the raptor's head completely off its body.

It turned to finish another one and was buried under a wave of UtahRaptors as each one darted forward to slash or bite.

As mighty as it was, it couldn't sustain that degree of damage.

Bob moved forward to investigate the body and shuddered.

The bear's incisors were clearly fangs, a greenish fluid dripping down from them, a much different shade than the necrotic venom it had sprayed out first.

Its body was mostly bear-like, although it featured a slightly bulbous abdomen and the traditional eight legs he'd expected.

It also had a little puffball tail.

"Because that's not going to feature heavily on the nightmare reel," he muttered.

Bob made it to the clearing a few minutes later, although he'd been attacked by the Veno-bears twice.

He walked into the center of the clearing, surrounded by his raptor pack, and took stock.

He could feel the weight of the mana pushing down on his matrix. He was nine levels below, and the difference was palpable.

He could see the mana flow on the ground that ran into the clearing and then branched out to fill the three pools.

It was rough, ragged even, and a bit of mana seeped out of it, running down towards the edge of the floor.

Bob dropped his raptor pack, which needed to be resummoned anyway, and cast a persistent effect mana shaping spell.

He resummoned his raptors just in time as three fresh Veno-bears roared out of the pools towards him.

Bob prodded at the mana flow. The problem was, his mana shaping spell was effectively a hammer. He could direct it at a fractured edge of the flow, but he was effectively just trying to beat the flow back into place.

"How do you even get the mana to flow into channels, and then the channels to flow like this?" Bob wondered aloud.

'Ritual magic,' Trebor replied.

"Ritual Mana Shaping?" Bob asked.

'Yes,' Trebor responded.

"If you're casting a ritual, shouldn't the flows be perfect?" Bob asked.

'When you cast a ritual, you project the pattern and then bring it into being. If you do not take into account all the inclusions, imperfections, and natural artifacts, the pattern you project won't include them, and it will be flawed.' Trebor replied.

"And Thidwell isn't capable of finding all the things that can impact his ritual?" Bob asked.

'While I can't comment on Thidwell's capabilities, I can assure you that at the moment, you aren't capable of that task,' Trebor said flatly.

'There are many factors that change, moment to moment in regards to mana density and flow in any given area. Most of them are small and would only cause a slight disruption to the channel, or a very minor bit of mana would leak off. The changes from hour to hour are more significant and can result in the splintering of the channels. In contrast, the changes from day to day are enough to cause a fracture, with the projected pattern failing to channel the majority of the mana into the flows,' Trebor finished.

Bob nodded slowly as he considered that.

"You've mentioned before that you couldn't tell me something specific about Thidwell," Bob said curiously.

'If have a query that involves an individual, I can only relay information that you have received previously, or historical data, with the historical data having an exclusion for specific skills and values,' Trebor replied, 'To wit, I can tell you Thidwell's age, I can tell you his tier, and his path, as you've been informed of all of these things. I can tell you the skills you know he possesses because of your knowledge of his path, although I can't divulge the level or value of those skills.'

"I didn't realize that," Bob said thoughtfully.

'Your thoughts are rarely on other people, and when you do think about them, it isn't about their skills.' Trebor responded.

Bob shrugged.

'As you have asked to me relay relevant information on this topic, I am warning you that your tendency towards paranoia regarding your interpersonal relationships will be exacerbated by the mana density on this floor of the Dungeon,' Trebor cautioned him.

Bob shrugged again, this time uncomfortably.

He did worry, on occasion, that Bailli, Harv, Elli, Kelli weren't really his friends. They were just pretending, maybe even conspiring together to keep up the charade, until they'd gotten what they wanted out of him. Then they'd turn on him, just like everyone else.

He watched his UtahRaptors carefully as his pack, now reduced by half, tore apart another wave of Veno-bears.

He dropped the summons, pushed all his mana into a maximum duration effect over time Eldritch Shield, and then resummoned his pack. Gathering the mana crystals the Veno-bears had dropped, he pulled out his map while his fresh pack dealt with the respawn and plotted his course to the next set of pools.