"Hey, Vera, what's up?" Amanda answered her phone as Dave was pulling into the driveway.

"I don't know," she replied to Vera's unheard question, "he's probably in the house, hold on, and I'll ask him. We're just pulling in."

She stuffed her phone in her pocket as Dave parked the car, and got out, opening the door for her Mom, then going around to the trunk to grab their bags.

Dave and her Dad were already there, grabbing the lion's share.

She walked into the house and headed for the game room, where she paused in the process of dropping her mom's purse and overnight bag.

Bob was sitting at the table with an older man in a cheap suit.

"Hello," she offered a friendly smile, "I'm Amanda; it's nice to meet you."

"Detective Mike Hanson," the man replied, smiling sheepishly, "I apologize for my unexpected appearance in your home Ma'am, but the events surrounding Bob have drawn me in."

"He's in the know," Bob said quietly, "and I apologize as well. We planned to meet back up when we left, but I've since had to ditch my phone, so..." he trailed off with a shrug.

"That explains why Vera couldn't get ahold of you," Amanda pulled her phone out of pocket and slid it across the table to Bob, "she's got some questions for you."

"Oh my," Helen had entered the room behind her, "are you going on sabbatical with my daughter as well?"

Turning to Amanda, she continued, "Do they work with you?" She nudged Amanda and made a discreet gesture towards Bob, which was entirely ruined by her overly loud whisper, "He's a handsome one. Do I need to worry about you and Dave?"

"Mom!" Amanda groaned, "No, you don't have to worry about Dave and I."

Bob picked up the phone, "Hey Vera; it's Bob."

"How many people are going on this sabbatical anyway?" Helen persisted.

"I've been opening it indoors," Bob said into the phone, "technically it maxes out as a circle, with a diameter of thirty-two feet, so really anything that fits through that is fine, although keep in mind it's only open for a hundred seconds unless I pump more crystals into it."

"Quite a few, actually," Amanda managed, glaring daggers at Bob, who didn't seem to understand what he'd done wrong.

"Sure," Bob continued, "hell, you can drive right on through."

"Detective," Helen turned to Mike, "how is that you know my daughter? Hopefully not professionally?"

"We've only known each other a short time," Mike delivered the line with a straight face, "but all of us seem to have a lot in common."

"Yeah, I can do it in the garage, quick and easy," Bob said, "see you soon."

Bob hung up the phone and slid it back across the table to Amanda.

She picked it up and glared at him for another moment before giving up. It was like punishing a puppy for not understanding algebra. He didn't have the social capacity to understand what he'd dumped in her lap, and there was no point in trying to explain what he'd done wrong.

"Mom, let me grab Dad before he gets your luggage situated, Bob here is our ride, and we might as well head out," she picked up the purse and overnight bag as she started guiding her Mom out of the game room and towards the kitchen where she could hear Roger and Dave talking.

"Bob, would you mind?" She asked over her shoulder.

As she did her best to ignore her Mom's questions, she wondered just how it was that she was looking forward to hiding in a nice peaceful Dungeon tomorrow, with nothing to do but fight for her life against horrifying Doarrels.

----------------------------------------

Bob opened the portal as asked and watched as Dave and Amanda cajoled her parents into walking into the 'creepy pool of light.'

It appeared to have helped that Amanda had gone first, with her mother effectively chasing after her.

"Well, that was something," Mike muttered from the door between the kitchen and the gaming room.

"So, this portal of yours, besides going between worlds, how far can you go with it?"

Bob grimaced, "Due to the lack of a dimensional membrane separating Earth's universe from Thayland's universe, the range isn't much of an issue, as I can just portal from back to Thayland and then come back pretty much anywhere on Earth." He sighed, "Under normal circumstances, though? Not quite a mile and a half, a hundred and thirty miles if cast ritually."

"Jesus Christ," Mike muttered. "You can just open a portal, take a step and be a mile away?"

"Yep," Bob agreed, "it's pretty cool. I like to combine it with a Flight spell and just portal up into the sky."

"Of course you can fly," Mike shook his head, "I'm going to need a manual of some sort for this shit."

"That's an intimidating task," Bob replied, "But I could probably write a primer on it."

"You should," Mike paused as his phone rang, "hold on."

Mike answered his phone, "Freeman, you got my message?"

Bob opened the refrigerator and pulled a pan of lasagna out. Amanda and Dave had told him to help himself, and Thayland, or at least Holmstead, didn't have lasagna.

"You've got the address, and fuck all else to do asshole, get over here asap," Mike growled into the phone.

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Bob forked a healthy slice of lasagna onto a plate, then paused.

"You to brother, see you soon," Mike hung up.

He added another slice of lasagna to the plate and placed it in the microwave.

"That other slice for me?" Mike asked.

"Uhm, No?" Bob replied, "I'd planned to give that one to Monroe, but I can fix you a plate if you'd like."

"I'd appreciate it," Mike nodded towards the clock on the wall, "it's been a while since breakfast, and it might be longer until dinner."

Bob plated up another slice, then put the leftover lasagna back in the fridge.

"So one of your friends is on his way?" Bob asked as he watched the timer on the microwave count down.

"Two of them actually," Mike's mood seemed to have lightened, "Freeman and Alvarez have a place together. They're both stuck in chairs, so they pooled their money to get a place fixed up and accessible."

"So," Mike began, "to make sure I have this right in my head, you go down into a man-made structure that you call a Dungeon, where you kill the monsters that appear there so that they don't show up on the surface?"

"Yes, but no," Bob replied, "but mostly yes."

"Well, that's nice and clear," Mike said.

"Humans on Earth are only aware of about fifteen percent of the matter in the universe because it's all we've been able to observe," Bob explained, "we call the rest of it dark matter, which has a bit of a negative connotation that it doesn't deserve. That being said, there are energetic particles of dark matter that the natives of the other universe refer to as 'mana,' which are not energized here."

"As I understand it, an alien species somehow created an Artificial Intelligence to interact with and control these particles in an effort to prevent the eventual heat death of the universe," Bob continued, ignoring the incredulous look on Mike's face, "the AI energized those energy particles which permeate all matter in the universe. These particles seem to operate not entirely unlike a fluid, and when a sufficient quantity pools together, it condenses. Once it reaches a certain density, it creates a mana-infused creature, which then seeks out the nearest natural source of mana and attempts to destroy it, releasing the mana to recirculate."

He paused for breath and determining that Mike hadn't checked out yet, went on. "So the monster forms and tries to kill people. If you dig a hole, the mana pools there. So you dig a big deep hole and arrange for the mana to spread out into nice neat pools, and you send people down to kill the monsters that appear, which causes the mana to circulate, which appears to be the entire purpose of the System. Keeping the mana moving, so it doesn't wind up layering onto the planets."

"Now the upside is that the System allows sapient beings to utilize the mana present in their bodies to interact with the ambient mana, creating a variety of effects," Bob finished.

"Like magical healing and portals," Mike nodded.

"And so very much more," Bob confirmed.

"Back to my original point, though," Mike said, "you're going to want us to go down into the hole and kill monsters."

"Yep," Bob agreed.

"Are you particular as to how we do that?" Mike asked.

"I usually have people use staves, as those are the spell casting tools available to us," Bob shrugged, "although once you're level two, you won't need to hit things with the staff that often."

Mike shook his head, "Is there any particular prohibition that would prevent us from, oh I don't know, shooting them?"

"Not so much a prohibition," Bob grimaced, "although Thayland is very much in the bronze age, it's more a matter of logistics?"

"How so?" Mike asked.

"So, Dave, Amanda, and the rest of the gaming group I took over already spent twelve hours in the Dungeon, which is a long shift, but they each killed around forty-two hundred monsters, about one every ten seconds," Bob responded, "assuming you are all excellent shots, that would be forty-two hundred rounds of ammunition each."

"I'm not a soldier, and I've never even fired a rifle," Bob raised his hands helplessly, "but unless I'm wrong, and maybe I am, but isn't that a lot more ammunition than you'd even be able to carry? And you're doing it every day, so figure eight hours a day would be twenty-eight hundred rounds a day, assuming you never miss, or almost twenty-thousand rounds a week. Each."

Mike appeared to be doing his own math, so Bob left him to it as he pulled the Lasagna out of the microwave, it having gone off earlier in the conversation, replacing it with Mike's plate, before turning it back on.

He slid one slice off his plate and into a bowl before pulling a drowsy Monroe out of his inventory, placing him in the middle of the table next to the bowl.

"The fuck?" Mike yelped as the huge Maine-Coone appeared of thin air.

"Oh, sorry," Bob apologized, "that's Monroe."

"That's a fucking bobcat or a mountain lion or something," Mike had slid his chair away from the table.

"No," Bob disagreed, "he just got massive when I leveled him up."

Mike kept his distance as he walked around the table, inspecting Monroe, who had woken up and was ignoring the humans in favor of devouring the delicious concoction placed in front of him.

"He does look like the picture from your apartment," Mike muttered. "Wait," he said, "I remember Crestwell's statement saying she had gone to your apartment to get your cat because you were dead, and there was no one to feed or water the cat."

"Yeah, I know," Bob grumbled, "I spent my first few weeks on Thayland frantically killing monsters so that I could level up and summon Monroe, so he didn't starve to death."

He reached out and ran his hands through Monroe's ruff, kick-starting the big cat's purr motor. "I was so worried about you, buddy," Bob murmured softly, "but we found our way back together, didn't we?"

"Hey," Mike said suddenly as if realizing something, "you wouldn't happen to know where the fuck Crestwell went, would you?"

"I do," Bob admitted, "I ended up summoning her to Thayland so that the System would have a functioning human matrix to scan, mine having been damaged as the explosion left only about half of me when I landed there."

"So she's on that other world?" Mike asked. "Wait, why would you summon her of all people?"

"I became aware of the fact that she had both stolen my work and then fucked it up, just before, and then just as the explosion happened, respectively," Bob replied. "So I figured being as she'd fucked up my life, turn about was fair play."

"You saved her from a rather lengthy prison sentence," Mike grinned, "so you could say that you made her life better."

"Given the advantages of living under the System, I rather tend to agree," Bob shrugged, "But I've tried to let go of that anger. It isn't helpful, and once I saved my buddy here, I can honestly say I've never been so happy."

Monroe had finished his bowl and was sprawled out on the table, purring softly as he gazed at Bob's lasagna with covetous eyes.

"So, can you magic up ammunition?" Mike asked as Bob started eating his lasagna.

"Maybe?" Bob replied, "the thing about summoning is that you have to know what you're summoning, and I mean really know. Every detail. I don't know anything about bullets besides the basics; they have gunpowder, a lead slug, and a copper cylinder holding it all together until the gun powder explodes, which happens when some sort of percussion cap at the base of the cylinder is struck."

"Ok, no, you don't know much about ammunition," Mike agreed, "but if you did, or more accurately if I had the right magic, could I summon ammunition?"

Bob considered that for a moment. Lead, copper, and gun powder weren't too high up on the hardness scale. "I think so," Bob said cautiously, "although in my experience, when you summon an object, it's a singular object, even if it's complicated or has parts that fit together, so I think you'd be summoning a single bullet, unless..." Bob trailed off.

"Doesn't ammunition come on belts? You could probably summon a really long belt given the constraints of the spell," Bob suggested.

"I wasn't really thinking about belt-fed weapons," Mike mused, "but maybe, I mean, I'll pull the rounds off the belt and load them into clips if I need to."

Bob finished his lasagna as he considered that proposition. Mike pulled his own lasagna out of the microwave and was starting to dig in when they heard a car pull into the driveway.

Seconds later, the door opened, and Vera trotted into the kitchen.

"Hey Bob, can you open the port-" she paused.

"Hi, person I don't know," Vera said warily.

"Vera, this is Mike, Mike, Vera," Bob introduced them, "he knows."

"Oh, good," Vera responded, nonplussed, "so Bob, Dave, and Amanda are both closet packrats, and they hide their shame in the garage, but you can probably just put the portal where the door would be, right?"

"Sure," Bob replied, standing and carrying dishes over to the sink, "lead the way."