Monroe

Bob knocked on the door frame to Kharvic's office, drawing the man's attention.

Kharvic stood up from behind his desk and motioned for Bob to take the seat across from him.

"Please, have a seat," Kharvic said, retaking his own.

Bob sat down and looked across the desk expectantly.

Kharvic tapped his desk, causing the surface, which was currently displaying documents or files, to clear and present as flat black. He looked at Bob for a moment before speaking.

"Is there any particular title or honorific you prefer?" Kharvic asked. "I've the list next to your name under the option to venerate you."

Bob winced. "Just Bob is fine," he replied. "I'm really not comfortable with that whole veneration thing, but it sort of got away from me, and it's not like I can actually stop it."

Kharvic shook his head. "The civilian government has finally agreed on a time when they would like to meet you," he began. "While I'm in command of the Hurstall'kalwin, the council has authority over the civilians who aren't part of the Hurry's crew. We don't have many areas of disagreement, but the fact remains that they are the ones responsible for the rest of the people aboard the ship."

Bob blinked. "What exactly do they want to talk to me about?"

"You appear to be the leader of your group," Kharvic continued, "and the council would like to draft an agreement between our people and your group regarding the actions that will need to be taken by both sides moving forward."

Bob pinched the bridge of his nose. "The System sent us," he grumbled, "isn't that good enough?"

Kharvic let out a bark of laughter. "No, no, it isn't. The majority of our people view the System almost adversarially. The fact that we're stuck here, with monsters appearing on our ship, is entirely due to the System, and to grow straight, they are right. This leads us directly towards something I know they'll want to discuss, namely the civilian population's inclusion in fighting against the monsters."

It was Bob's turn to frown. "That's not really optional," he warned, "our current estimate is that it will take around six hundred thousand people to keep the Dungeons occupied if they split the day into three shifts of eight hours each." He sighed. "Of course, that's assuming that conditions remain the same, which I absolutely cannot guarantee. We're still learning about this place, but one of the things we've discovered is that the mana density isn't static. Our best theory is that we'll need to move the ship in order to find a way out of here, which means that we're almost certain to experience significant fluctuations in the mana density, which will directly impact the Dungeons as they pull in that ambient mana that would otherwise permeate the ship."

"I'm aware," Kharvic replied, "but the fact of the matter is that the council members are all elders, while I'm barely considered an adult." He shook his head again. "Maintaining the Hurstall'kalwin was viewed as an honorable duty, but one best attended to by youths under the watch of young adults. The position of Captain was assigned based on test scores and assessment results."

"You do know that I'm younger than you are, right?" Bob asked. "I'm thirty-six years old."

"You should probably lean into your tier and level," Kharvic advised.

"I don't really understand the problem," Bob pressed. "We will only need about a quarter, maybe even a fifth of the civilians to volunteer, assuming you still intend to have your crew take shifts."

"The problem is that people don't want to fight monsters," Kharvic said. "How exactly did your people transition from living in peace to fighting bloody battles every day?"

"Well, we didn't really live in peace," Bob replied slowly. "I know that my country was pretty much involved in some sort of military conflict somewhere on the planet for the seventy years before the System arrived, which for us is like, three and a half generations. So we had a standing military that was, if not necessarily acclimatized to combat, at least trained for it."

"We did," Kharvic sighed. "I suspect our people are naturally less aggressive than your own. We hadn't had a major conflict in millennia before we left, and once we left the empire, we were united in our purpose to build a new society for ourselves."

"There is a quote from one of our books," Bob said. "Jim Butcher wrote 'There are violent bones in everyone's body, if you look deeply enough. Two hundred and six of them, to be exact.'" He paused for a moment. "How many bones do Lovar have?"

"Two hundred and twelve," Kharvic replied.

"Well, the principle is still the same. We all have the capacity for violence, we just have to look deeply enough to find out what we'd be willing to kill for. Ideally, it's something noble, like friends, family, and loved ones. Less ideally would be for ideals like religion or your nation. Hopefully, you don't find out that you'd be willing to kill because you enjoy it." Bob shook his head. "Of course, when it comes to monsters, the fact that they are just ambulatory chunks of mana that the System needs us to disperse invalidates pretty much all of the moral and ethical considerations that would normally accompany taking a life, so there's that."

"How did your civilian population adjust?" Kharvic asked.

"My country was based on capitalism, more or less, and with mana crystals becoming the default currency, the civilian population was forced to either kill monsters or face destitution. If there's one thing humans hate, it's being poor," Bob explained. "I wasn't really there for that, as I had other things to be going on with, but I'm pretty sure that a good chunk of the population killed monsters just long enough to level up and take the skills they needed to return to their chosen professions."

Kharvic frowned. "I don't think our situations are as similar as I had thought," he muttered.

"We're completely different species, for all that we share the same basic biology," Bob shrugged. "Frankly, I've been pleasantly surprised by how well we are working together. The last group of people we helped were scaled herbivores who were barely the dominant species on their planet, and that was only because they were intelligent tool users." He paused. "Of course, the same could be said for us," he mused, "although we certainly dominated our world."

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"I'm afraid that if we don't adapt to fighting monsters, we'll become overly dependent on the Dharlings," Kharvic said. "They don't have any reluctance when it comes to fighting monsters."

"I had noticed that," Bob smiled. "They're tiny but fierce!"

"You have Mike training mixed groups," Kharvic continued. "Which is important, but could we develop a training regimen for Lovar, to help us adjust to the violence that life under the System seems to require?"

"We could, although I'm probably not the right person for that," Bob said cautiously. "I've been told that my methods are a little too intense."

"Well, we have a day and a half until the council's requested meeting," Kharvic replied. "If we could put together a plan of some sort, it might help to alleviate some of their concerns."

"Best to bring the whole group into it," Bob sighed. "We're due for a brainstorming session anyway."

"You'll be outlined in chalk, because I love musket balls in my flintlock glock!" Dave sang tunelessly as he blasted another moo-monster.

"Really?" Amanda asked. "Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew?"

"I maintain that Pirate Rap is a perfectly valid genre of music," Dave replied.

"God save me from lunatic Yanks," Jessica sighed.

"I can't carry a tune in a bucket, but it's my turn to sing," Dave grinned.

"You could at least sing something that I know the words to, so I could sing along," Jessica complained.

"I'm fresh out of Journey and REO Speedwagon," Dave retorted.

Amanda shook her head. Jessica was a fan of seventies and eighties rock, although she would occasionally break out a few of the Australian folk classics from Slim Dusty.

"You should know the words to 'A pub with no beer,'" Jessica argued. "That's a great monster killing song."

"I don't like the bit where the dog's been kicked," Amanda countered.

"Yeah, that line has always sat wrong with me," Jessica agreed, "but it's still a classic. You could do 'Waltzing Matilda,' Mike could sing along with that one."

"Leave me out this," Mike grumbled. "Outside of drunken karaoke, I've never been much for singing."

"Shift's almost over anyway," Dave said. "Lily said they'll have everything organized so that we won't need to step in after this."

"Good, we could use some downtime, it's been a little crazy," Amanda agreed.

"I doubt it's going to get any better," Mike grunted. "There's no way these folks are going to be able to work rituals or arrays on their own anytime soon, which means it's on us to do it for them."

"Strewth, and it's a job and a half," Jessica sighed. "Bob reckons it'll be a hundred and eighty Dungeons to keep monsters from appearing anywhere on the ship, and I'm going to need to put up about eight hundred arrays."

"Once you show us the schematics, we can help," Amanda suggested supportively. "You won't be on your own with it."

"Yeah, but it's still going to take something like six months to get everything sorted," Jessica shook her head.

"We'll just have to PUT IN THE WORK," Dave bellowed an acceptable imitation of Bob.

"You mean we'll have to rely on Jessie to pull Bob into taking the occasional break," Amanda corrected.

"That man has an annoying habit of disappearing," Elania muttered.

Taylor handed her another folder, picking up the one she'd just closed. "Moving the Dungeon to the island was a good idea regardless," she replied. "Even if Bob doesn't want to take responsibility for it, we'll have an easier time staffing it in the subtropics than we would have in the arctic."

"We'll keep it as a black site for now," Elania agreed. "We don't have enough civilians to keep everything delved at the moment anyway," she finished with a sigh.

New Earth, or Nerth as it had been unofficially named, was a tier seven world. That meant that immigration from Earth was restricted to people who were at least tier six, and those had to be at least moderately skilled.

Colonizing another planet had been an immediate and obvious necessity once she'd realized just how limited the United State's Dungeons had been. It had been a rude shock after they'd been able to monopolize a huge portion of Greenwold's Dungeons on Thayland, but the reality was that resource scarcity hadn't been eliminated but rather consolidated into a single commodity: Mana Crystals.

The potential was there, if only there were enough Dungeon slots to go around. She'd envisioned a future where every American was as wealthy as their ambitions permitted, which had necessitated another world's worth of Dungeons. Nerth had been an answered prayer, except for the inconvenient fact that it was a tier seven world.

Still, it was more than habitable, with climates that were milder than Earth's, which was to say less hot at the equator, and somewhat warmer at the poles.

Elania glanced at the new folder and sighed.

She'd expected it, of course. It was inevitable that the release of their campaign announcing the opportunity to colonize Nerth would rouse interest not only from their citizens but also from foreign governments. In this case, it was the Brits.

"We can't really say no," Taylor said.

Elania nodded. Technically, they could say no, but they wouldn't. The 'Special Relationship' between America and Great Britain might have been more strained than it had been when Churchill and Roosevelt faced the Axis together, but it was still a noted exception to the rule of international politics that countries had interests, not friends.

Great Britain's population density was much higher, which meant more people vying for fewer Dungeon slots, which in turn meant that they had fewer people at tier six or above, the number further depressed by the Queen's dedication to delving every Dungeon they had.

She skimmed the documents, something every politician learned to do, and jotted down a few notes in the margins.

"They're only after a hundred thousand slots, with a total population of a million, which includes all the necessary people to support them," Elania mused.

"Basically one Dungeon out of the eighty-four," Taylor agreed. "I'm sure you noticed the reciprocity suggestion."

Elania nodded. The Prime Minister's proposal had included a report on their efforts to locate another habitable world, and stated in no uncertain terms that they would continue to do so, and once they were successful, they would return the courtesy the United States of America had shown them.

Personally, she hoped that they'd find a tier five world. Hell, she hoped that NASA would find one as well. They certainly hadn't abandoned the search for new worlds just because they'd located Nerth. While nothing was certain, Elania strongly suspected that Nerth would eventually become a world where tier seven people were born, lived, and died.

The numbers didn't lie. Only a fraction of a percent of the population was actually interested in progressing past the tier cap. Level twenty-five represented a lot of delving, and the capstone skill that most paths offered was usually enough to satisfy. They'd already seen the trends. Young people started off strong, then tended to slow down around level fifteen or so. Elderly people were reluctant to delve at all, leveling enough to roll back the clock, then settling back down. With the advent and wise spread adoption of arrays, Mana Crystals weren't the only currency, with an individual's mana regeneration representing a valuable resource that they could sell.

None of which was helped by the limited number of slots available.

Elania knew that things might very well change as the current generation of children grew up with the System. A lot of people were still operating in old-world ways of thinking despite all evidence to the contrary.

She shook her head to clear it. "I don't expect we'll have any difficulty with support on the Hill," she said.

"Considering that members of the House put together that bill proposing that we treat Nerth as a colony world for the every nation, I doubt it," Taylor replied dryly.

That particular piece of legislation would never make it out of committee, but it spoke to a degree of international goodwill in Congress that was nearly unprecedented.

"What's next on the agenda?" Elania asked as she handed the folder back, reflecting on the odd realization that she'd much rather be killing monsters right now, as opposed to dealing with the endless bureaucracy of the nation.

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