Bob walked into the tavern, the gaming group following him like ducklings. It was still busier than he was used to, but it wasn't quite as crowded as it had been when the massive group from Harbordeep had arrived outside the town.
He spotted Bailli sitting at a pair of tables pulled together, with Kelli next to her.
Heading over, he caught Theo's eye and nodded to him, then back to the group of people following him. Theo returned the nod and started delivering the meals he had balanced on his tray.
Bob had brought almost everyone, leaving behind only Sarah, Talima, and the infants.
Bob sat down across from Kelli, gesturing for the group to take the remaining seats.
"Good morning Bob!" Kelli greeted him enthusiastically.
"Morning, Kelli," Bob replied with a smile, "did Bailli fill you in on the plan?"
"Sort of," Kelli grinned, "she said something about having me learn your language and then giving it to her, and then a few others?"
"Exactly, although I suppose I should ask; that is something you can do, right?" Bob cocked his head to the side. Something about Kelli seemed different.
"I can," Kelli confirmed, "and given the number of people you're planning to bring here, I think sharing the language around is a damned good idea."
Bob nodded and pulled a bag of mana crystals out of his inventory. "There are a thousand crystals," he said, "should do for you, Bailli, Austan, Gary, and Jakob."
"That'll do alright," Kelli agreed, "so I'm pulling the language from you?"
Bob hesitated, then turned to the group. "Is anyone here especially proficient in the English language, beyond the norm, I mean?"
Amanda raised her hand hesitantly. "I minored in English if that counts."
Bob looked around the group. No one else spoke up.
"Alright, as someone with an actual degree in the language, my friend Kelli here," he gestured to Kelli, "will be copying the language from your mind."
Amanda nodded hesitantly.
Bob smiled, "Don't worry, it doesn't hurt," he assured her, "although it'll give Kelli a headache to absorb it. Just say yes when the prompt appears."
"Go ahead and pull the language from her," Bob told Kelli, gesturing to Amanda.
Kelli nodded and smiled reassuringly at Amanda before placing his hand in the bag of crystals.
One hundred seconds later, Amanda drew in a sharp breath before whispering, "Yes."
Kelli laid his head down on the table, pressing his palms to his temples as he groaned. "Well, that hurt," he muttered in English.
"Holy shit," Tony muttered.
"Fucking magic," Jack responded gleefully.
"Do you need a minute or two?" Bob asked as Kelli raised his head, still rubbing his temples.
"Nah," Kelli mumbled, "copying it to Bailli won't hurt me."
He looked over at Bailli, squinting, and another hundred seconds passed before Bailli grimaced and cocked her head to the side.
"Well," she said, also speaking English, "that's done." She glanced around the table, "I'd say it's a pleasure to meet you all, but my head is pounding," she grumbled.
Theo and Austan arrived at the same time. "Big breakfasts all around," Theo announced and started sliding plates in front of the group while Austan carefully maneuvered around him to sit down next to Bailli.
Bob handed Theo ten mana crystals, then moved Monroe's bowl down to the floor as he slid the super chonker off his Makres and down beside it.
"Morning Bob," Austan greeted him cheerfully, "Bailli, Kelli," he acknowledged the other two, "a pleasure to meet the rest of you," he finished, flashing a welcoming grin to the rest of the table, who looked at him blankly, having only recognized the names.
"Austan," Bob nodded, "these folks are from my world, so they don't speak Thayland."
"Ah," Austan said understandingly, "so you're having Kelli teach them Thayland the quick and painful way I take it?"
Bob shook his head. "No, we're actually having Kelli teach people my language," he replied, "being as I'm going to end up bringing a lot of people here, it seems like it would be more efficient to teach the important people here English than it would to teach everyone I bring over Thayland."
"That does make sense," Austan admitted, "I'd just thought that they'd learn Thayland, but with so many of them, you're right, it would be a waste of crystals."
"Exactly," Bob nodded, "so I'll just see if I can't have the important people they're likely to interact with learn English."
"Am I somehow one of those important people?" Austan asked with a chuckle.
"Absolutely," Bob said, his tone serious.
"Well," Austan looked over at Kelli, "I suppose it won't hurt that badly."
Kelli grinned and looked over at Austan, who began to address the plate in front of him, which was loaded with scrambled eggs and sausage.
Just over a minute later, he paused and placed his silverware alongside his plate, closing his eyes and muttering, "Vi'Radia have mercy."
"Well, that's everyone at the table," Bob said, "only Gary and Joseph to abuse yet this morning."
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"You're getting them outfitted this morning?" Kelli asked.
"Yep," Bob confirmed, "going to take them down into the new Dungeon and get them started on adventuring, but I want them armored up with at least a simple staff for a weapon."
"You might be a little disappointed," Kelli warned, "Joseph has been making and selling staves at a discount for the past week or so, and his stock is a little low."
Bob grimaced. He'd forgotten about his arrangement with Jospeh to provide weapons at cost plus twenty-five percent for the people coming to Holmstead in search of a better life.
"But," Kelli said, "you'll probably be fine at Gary's; a lot of folks are delving without armor initially, donating their crystals to help reincarnate those who didn't have the crystals to have it done when they arrived."
"What do you mean when you say, 'reincarnate,'" Tony asked.
Bob, Kelli, and Bailli all looked at Austan. "You're the priest," Bailli grinned at him.
"Reincarnation," Austan began, "is a ritual that strips you of all of your levels and skills, resetting your body back to your age of majority, which for humans is roughly seventeen to twenty-one, depending on the individual."
"You mean you can take someone who is ninety years old and roll back the clock, so they're eighteen again?" Tony asked incredulously.
"It's not a common spell," Austan replied, "as it has the rare distinction of only being able to be cast as a ritual, which is unusual. But yes, that is exactly what it does. The people outside the town are waiting for the opportunity to use an Affinity Crystal to take one of the new Paths that were discovered, allowing them a chance at a better life than they'd had before."
"Your friend," Austan nodded to Bob, "incited a minor revolution when he wrote and published those pamphlets. You can blame any shortages of materials or services on him," Austan finished with a smile.
"He just can't help himself," Kelli grinned at Bob's discomfort, "The Reef!"
It was Bob's turn to groan as he shook his head and focused on his eggs, doing his best to ignore the calls from the rest of the tavern at Kelli's pronouncement.
"What was that last bit?" Jack asked.
"Bob is known around here as 'The Reef,'" Kelli replied happily, "Because that's where the waves break."
Dave shook his head and waved a sausage-laden fork towards Amanda. "I don't think we're getting it from context," he confessed, as Amanda nodded.
"Has Bob told you about monster waves?" Kelli asked.
Bob scowled across the table at Kelli, and Bailli, who was also taking entirely too much pleasure at the direction of this conversation.
"He did," Dave confirmed, "lots of monsters eating all the people they can get to," he shook his head again, "it sounds horrifying."
"Oh, it is," Kelli assured him, "did he tell you about his first wave?"
"No," Dave replied with a sidelong glance at Bob.
Bob focused on his eggs. He knew he should have stamped down on that nickname harder.
"Well," Kelli grinned, "why don't I show you?"
"Kelli," Bob grumbled, "we don't really have time for you to show each person that."
Kelli's grin widened. "I've been leveling up; I can barrage it now."
"Just go ahead and say yes," Kelli told the group.
Bob looked at his sausages and sighed.
----------------------------------------
"Shit on me," Dave breathed as he watched the accurately named wave of monsters charge towards the town. It was a clear night, and his perspective was from standing on the wall looking out towards the woods.
He watched the wave approach and then squinted. Or rather, the person who had watched the event squinted. He could see figures fleeing in front of the wave, two adults, one dragging a child, another carrying one.
"They're not going to make it," he heard a voice from beside him whisper.
Dave watched as the wave slowly caught up to the family. Then, just as it seemed like the monsters were about to wash over them, a familiar blue-black portal twisted into being just ahead of them, and a figure easily recognizable as Bob appeared. The portal disappeared, and another one opened, with Bob urging the family through it before entering it as well, the monsters scant feet behind him.
The portal brought them closer to the base of a solid plug of rock, and they ran towards it. Bob opened another portal, which deposited the family atop the tower of stone, but before he could go through himself, the portal winked out of existence, and he fell to the ground, twitching.
The people on the wall had begun to cheer as the family appeared safely atop the tower, but they fell silent when Bob dropped to the ground. A groan swept over the wall as the wave reached the tower, washing around it and covering Bob completely.
"Damn," a voice next to him muttered.
Suddenly a faint roar refocused the observer's vision, and Dave could see Bob staggering to his feet, lashing out with his staff as a small gray form darted out to strike the monsters before dodging back. The monsters could be seen more clearly now, and they looked like some horribly twisted version of a praying mantis if insects could be three feet long and two feet tall. Their scythe-like limbs certainly looked deadly, and it appeared that three of them had driven those limbs into Bob.
Bob swung his staff around himself in a circle, knocking the monsters out of the way, before a portal opened beneath his feet, corresponding with a portal opening above the tower. Bob fell through, landing with a thud.
"I can't believe he's alive," the voice next to him said, with a clear note of awe.
Seconds later, Dave watched as Bob staggered to his feet, looked over the edge, and...
"Did he just summon a fucking dinosaur?" Dave said to no one in particular. "
Sure enough, Bob was summoning dinosaurs at the base of his tower, some sort of raptor it looked like.
The monsters had begun piling up at the base of the tower, but the dinosaurs were hard at work reducing their numbers.
A hawk dove towards the tower, twisting at the last instant to become the figure of a woman, who conversed with the family, then Bob, before taking flight again.
The child approached Bob, and the two were clearly having a conversation when a woman appeared on top of the tower out of thin air, clearly using a different spell than Bob's portal.
She took the woman with the infant by the hand and disappeared again.
Bob shook the child's hand, and the man and the child left with the woman when she reappeared again a few seconds later.
"Stars and stones, would you look at that!" A voice shouted from further down the line. Dave looked out past the tower and froze. A rat-like monster, the size of a garbage truck, was rushing past the smaller monsters, seemingly intent on the wall.
A dinosaur dropped out of the sky, scrabbling at the huge rat's back, causing it to squeal in rage, then turning its attention unerringly towards the stone tower.
Bob dropped dinosaurs on the enormous monster until it reached the tower, and reared up with agility that was surprising for a creature so large, and lunged forward, snapping at Bob and clearly getting a piece of him.
Bob fell through a portal, reappearing high in the air above the beast. As he fell, he continued to summon dinosaur after dinosaur. Before he reached the biting range of the monster, he fell through another portal, once again regaining his elevation.
Seconds passed, and after another two dinosaurs, the rat fell to the ground, no longer moving.
Bob fell through another portal, bringing him closer to the wall, and then another, which placed him just over the wall, where he fell only ten feet away from the observer.
Someone helped Bob to his feet, and Dave fought back the bile rising in his throat. A huge chunk of Bob's side was gone, and things that were never meant to see the outside of the human body were clearly exposed, oozing and dripping.
"Get him to a healer!" the voice next to Dave roared, and the vision faded.
"And that," Kelli said proudly as he looked at Bob, whose attention was focused with great intensity on his sausages, "is why we call him 'The Reef,' because that's where the waves break."
Bob chewed stoically, his cheeks flushed as he did his best to ignore the rest of the table.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Tony breathed, looking at Bob with respect, "that was some true blue hero shit right there."
"Not something I needed to see while I'm eating, though," Amanda pushed her plate away.
"He'll deny it," Kelli grinned at Bob, "but here in Holmstead, he's a stones damned hero."
Bailli laughed, a pure, lovely sound that drew the ear. "He even has little minions, just waiting to grow up so they can summon those 'Dinosaurs' as well, and be just like 'The Reef,'"
Austan nudged Bob gently with an elbow, which Bob steadfastly ignored.
"We grow our own heroes here," Austan added, smiling at Bob, "and Bob is definitely one of them, even if he doesn't like to admit it."
Dave shook his head. He was beginning to understand how Bob had garnered help from hundreds of people to aid him in trying to save the population of Earth.