Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 90: Other Worlds

Two Weeks ago

“We need to talk about the ‘Realms’ section of the summoning system.” Isaac said, showing a slide that was just a photo of the relevant section. Right now, he was holding a presentation on the topic he’d ostensibly been looking into for the past couple of weeks, facing a conference room fuller than it had ever been. The team was there, sure, but so were Professors Chandler and Bishop, who were normally off doing their own thing.

Summoning List (Realm, Hunting Grounds Subtype)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Dark Forest

Tier 5 Circle, Lesser Space Elemental Core, 20 different Medicinal Herbs, 5 Tree Saplings, Glass of Water

2,000 (max. 10 people)

Floating Isles

Tier 5 Circle, Rock Shards, Grass, Soil, Embers, Raptor Feather

20,000 (max. 50 people)

Expanse of the Crimson Frost

Tier 5 Circle, Ice, Blood, Crystal, Antifreeze, Elemental Aspect, Fist sized Crystal

20,000 (max. 50 people)

Fragrant Fields

Tier 5 Circle, Ten different Nature aspected Monster bodies, 2 Bags of Fertile Soil, Volcanic Ash, 50 different Medicinal Herbs

20,000 (max. 50 people)

…

Bloodore Mountain

Tier 6, Stainless Steel, 1 Liter of Human Blood, 20 diferent Mineral samples, Bones, Obsidian Shards, Blood Related Aspect, Earth Related Aspect, …

50,000 (max. 100 people)

Plains of Ash

Tier 6, Obsidian, Pumice, Volcanic Soil, Ash, 10 different mundane Ore Samples, 10 different Rock Samples, …

50,000 (max. 100 people)

…

Eternal Wilderness

Tier 7 Circle, 10 different Aspects, Space Elemental Core, Elemental Source, Nature Elemental Corpse (minimum 200 mana summoning cost), 1-ton assorted monster materials (minimum 200 mana summoning cost each), 10 Crystals (at least as large as a ping pong ball)

100,000 (max. 120 people)

Graveyard of Endless Night

Tier 7 Circle, Gravesoil, Undead Aspect, Darkness Elemental Source, Bones of 20 different Species, Human Skull, Marble Slab

100,000 (max. 120 people)

…

Evergrowth Woods

Tier 8 Circle, Space Elemental Core, Four different Elemental Sources, Nature Elemental Corpse (minimum 500 mana summoning cost), 50 Crystals, …

250,000 (max. 200 people)

Ancient Lands*

Tier 8 Circle, rock and soil samples, petrified wood, Samples of 100 different Dinosaurs, 10 different Fossil Pieces

10,000 (max. 10 people)

…

A Road Paved in Good Intentions

Tier 9 Circle, Greater Space Elemental Core, 1 liter of Demon Blood (minimum Tier 8), Leaf-Gold coated Rocks, Coal, Obsidian, Brimstone, …

1,000,000 (max. 500 people)

…

(* rewards type summon)

“There are a few Realms there marked with an asterisk, which are a part of the reward-type summons, much like the Extradimensional Apartments some of us have. Most likely, they contain something akin to a nature preserve, but that is something we’ll be able to safely check at a later date.

“Those that aren’t rewards, the rest of these things, they almost certainly harbor some kind of danger. However, I believe I’ve figured out what they’re for.

“My hypothesis it that these so-called ‘Hunting Grounds’ create temporary, extradimensional, spaces containing a variety of monsters appropriate for the environment within, but mostly to guard the materials I believe can be found within.

“There are [Skills] belonging to crafting [Classes] that work with certain magical resources that clearly don’t come from monsters, even though they are currently our only source for preternatural materials. These ‘Hunting Grounds’ are the most likely place to find them.

“However, retrieving materials from these spaces will likely result in having to face some kind of threat, possibly even a wave of monsters that increases with the amount of materials retrieved, or a guardian that grows in strength based on factors such as time spent gathering or amount of materials taken.”

“What makes you assume that?” Chandler asked.

“Logic. It’s a concept commonly found in video games and the like, where abusing a certain mechanic to gather absurd amounts of materials results in having to face a great threat, and the [System] doesn’t give away free things either.” Isaac replied.

“But this isn’t a video game, isn’t it?” Chandler challenged.

“Nope.” Isaac said, popping the ‘p’ “But the underlying logic is similar in some cases. Like I said, the [System] doesn’t give away things for free, and neither do video games. Sure, in video games, these are often unintended exploits that then get hotpatched with a monster that manifests to kill those who use said exploit while the [System] seems to be a mature ‘program’, even if it is sometimes a little light in the instruction department, but it is still the same situation, in the end.

“There are magical materials there that will almost certainly not be free and unprotected, and I’d like to look into that.”

“Absolutely.” Bailey agreed “But this is definitely something that we’ll have to do with significantly greater precautions than normal, seeing as this is so very different from what we normally summon.”

“I agree.” Bishop said “With what Professor Bailey said about precautions, that is. I’m a little skeptical about your assumption that there is ‘loot’ in these Hunting Grounds.”

“Yeah, I can see that, but I do have strong circumstantial evidence that materials other than what we can gather from monsters exist, that we know of. During the general survey of [Skills] we’ve started doing, we haven’t found anything that would indicate that gathering [Classes] such as [Miners] or [Woodcutters] can create magical materials. It is theoretically possible that this might be a high-Level [Skill] no one has access to yet, but that is something we can only speculate on, this is something we can look at now.”

“Once we’ve summoned the Realm, where would you go from there?” Bailey asked, his tone making it very clear he knew Isaac had already made a plan for that, he was just providing him a prompt to present them.

“There are a few things I want to check for. First of is the search for the materials I’ve speculated are there, but that is only the start of it. After that, I’d like to ascertain where the threat that accompanies the opportunities lies, be it a horde of guardian monsters, a single powerful boss, the environment itself, or something I haven’t even considered yet.

“In addition, we need to know under what conditions these spaces disappear again. Do they vanish after a given span of time, after a set amount of material has been retrieved, or is there something that anchors it which needs to be destroyed or killed? The most important of questions though is how dangerous these things are, and if we can research them here.”

In reality, these spaces were pretty simple. You summoned them, walked in and could gather a lot of stuff, but the longer you took, the more monsters would come out of the woodwork until they broke out and swarmed the world beyond the portal, something that made keeping them open for any long extent of time incredibly dangerous.

To close the space, you needed to destroy the core of the Hunting Grounds, which was guarded by a monster that grew stronger over time, causing the space to slowly fade out of existence, starting out at the end furthest from the portal and progressing increasingly quickly until it was all gone, but it didn’t stop there, oh no, that would have been too easy.

The moment the portal snapped closed, it would spit out a massive horde of monsters, one which grew exponentially bigger the more stuff had been retrieved and what was worse, the size of the horde didn’t always grow at the same rate, making it functionally impossible to predict how strong of a force you’d face at the end of a gathering run, or determine how much stuff you could safely grab.

In other words, these things were nasty, nasty traps if you didn’t know what you were doing and even then, you needed to be careful as heck when dealing with them, but they were also sources of materials you quite literally could not find elsewhere. Now, they’d be ‘discovering’ them early, figure out how fucking dangerous they were, and proper precautions would be written into the law. Regular summoning could be done pretty safely at the lower Tiers, but these things were always really fucking dangerous and opening one would hopefully be locked behind a whole lot of paperwork.

There were a few more questions after that, but nothing too complex or important.

***

Now

Where yesterday had started out with them apprehensively standing in front of a summoning circle, their expressions a ranging from apprehension to excitement, today they looked like they were about to go on the world’s most murderous hike, decked out in proper outdoors attire, including wilderness survival gear and a whole bunch of Lesser Space Elemental cores.

But it wasn’t just Professor Bailey’s team that was going, they were also accompanied by Professor Bishop for his knowledge of the wilderness, in the assumption that at least some of it would be useful here, Professor Chandler, whose [Alchemist] [Skills] would hopefully help him identify useful herbs and the like, and a pair of Bundeswehr soldiers at Level 20 to bring their total number up to 10, which was the maximum number of people who could pool mana to summon the Dark Forest, as that seemed to be a reasonable number to go at this with.

Isaac watched the pair, a man and a woman, amused. Other than Professor Chandler, who was looking alarmingly like a stereotypical mad scientist even without his lab coat, they were the weakest people here despite being trained soldiers. In the company of five students, a young professor in his thirties and two professors who were at least sixty, they should have been the most capable, as well as been in charge of this expedition.

In this company, however? Their guns might as well have been peashooters and even when they used their [Skills] to improve them, they had nothing on the Spells a [System Researcher] could throw around or Bishop’s crossbow.

Speaking of the Forestry Professor, he was wearing the wolfhide jacket he’d gotten from the Event, having soulbound it and even gained the [Ulfhednar] [Class] as his second [Evolution], becoming truly powerful, with an [Aura] of power and ferocity that reminded Isaac of a wild wolf. Appropriate, he supposed.

Isaac’s jacket was in his storage space, ready to be retrieved at a moment’s notice if he needed it, but safe. Until he knew for certain that Event would be a yearly occurrence, he operated under the assumption that it was completely and utterly irreplaceable, so he wouldn’t risk it for anything short of an absolute emergency.

“Alright, is everyone ready?” Bailey called out, though the question was, as usual, superfluous. They’d spent almost an hour getting ready in front of the pre-prepared circle, hours if one counted all the planning they’d done last night. But it was good to take precautions, always, making their application a matter of routine and instinct. That way, you didn’t forget to do so the one time they were actually the difference between life and death and got yourself killed.

As far as Isaac was concerned, this was all a superfluous, if rather amusing, waste of time. They were going to go into the Dark Forest, which could best be described as ‘baby’s first Hunting Ground’. Everyone was so damn overdressed that, to Isaac’s knowing gaze, this had gone from a serious expedition into unknown and dangerous lands to a tourist group loaded to the max with random crap peddlers and con artists had managed to convince them was ‘essential, life-saving equipment’.

This was still a Hunting Ground and therefore dangerous, but they could have gone in wearing what they’d had on yesterday and a few bags to collect stuff in, but Isaac could hardly have told them that.

“Well, I’m ready.” Isaac shrugged, taking point at the front of the group, Kriegsmesser in his right hand and Ka-bar in his left, ready to tear apart anything that looked at him funny. Behind him and slightly off to the side for a clear line of sight stood Professor Bishop, crossbow at the ready. His [Ulfhednar] [Class] had mostly given him [Skills] befitting his previous [Class] of [Hunter], but also several that would make him a powerhouse in close quarters combat. Bailey’s shapeshifting and flesh manipulating could make him even stronger than Bishop, but he wasn’t a fighter, so he stayed in the back to heal.

Further back and spread out on both the formation’s right and left sides were the soldiers, assault rifles at the ready, just in case something jumped out the instant the circle was triggered.

Everyone else was in the center, behind Isaac, which would give them the chance to prepare Spell. Once said Spells were ready, they could tell Isaac to move to the side with [Aura] and he’d do so, giving them a clear shot at the enemy.

And then, finally, Bailey activated the circle, which flashed brightly for a moment, then the light flowed out of it and formed into a glowing, circular disk of energy that hovered an inch above the ground, until it flashed once more and the monochrome, luminous surface was replaced with the view into what looked a hell of a lot like a normal, central European forest, albeit one very much untouched by man.

“Someone chuck something at the edge of the portal, if things can go in partially, that edge might be able to chop off limbs.” Patrick warned. If no one had spoken up, Isaac would have said something, but these were smart people, someone had been bound to figure out how dangerous that could be.

Wordlessly, Isaac worked his foot under a thick wad of grass and dirt that had been torn three during yesterday’s excitement and kicked it at the portal’s edge. Half flew into the magical forest, the other half staying outside.

“Yep, that’s sharp.” Bishop commented dryly “Watch your step.”

Inside the portal, something rustled in the underbrush, making everyone tense. Casually throwing something into the unexplored space might not have been the best idea, but on the other hand, they had to check how dangerous the act of walking through the ‘door’ was.

There was more rustling, ferns and shrubs shaking in locations increasingly close to them, until a furry, horned missile shot right at Isaac’s face. Well, ‘shot’ would only have been an accurate descriptor of the thing’s speed if it had gone after a normal person. For Isaac, it arced through the air like a lazily lobbed feather, giving him plenty of time to analyze the horned rabbit, getting a complete rundown on its Stats, which were normal for its kind. Just a regular Jackalope, just like you could summon directly.

He simply lashed out with the Kriegsmesser, cutting straight through it while ensuring that only part of its body were cut, destroying the brain and heart while leaving everything else intact, then caught it before it could flop against his shirt.

“Can someone tell me if this thing registers as being the same as the regular summoned Jackalopes?” he called out, getting an affirmative from Patrick.

“Ok, so we’ve got pretty basic monsters in there, just like we can summon normally, from the ‘Forest’ category at the very least. Also, the portal is very dangerous.” Isaac summarized what they’d learned so far “So, shall we go in?”

Bailey nodded “Yes. Be very, very careful with that portal.”

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes at the very obvious and somewhat superfluous statement, Isaac marched through the circle, sensory [Aura] extended to the max to catch anything and everything that might be a danger to them.

There was something profoundly unnatural about this place, Isaac reflected. Sure, everything you normally saw in a forest was present, rocks, plants, shrubbery and trees, but only the things mere ordinary human eyes would have been able to see. To him, it was quite clear what was missing, the lack of insects buzzing around, of birds and squirrels hiding in the trees and a ground devoid of worms and the like. All of this felt less like a real forest and more like some kind of bizarre, partially alive museum exhibit created by someone who didn’t entirely know what was supposed to be there.

The plants themselves also felt dull and lifeless, only a mere handful holding the ordinary vibrancy one might expect of living foliage. These were what they were here for, interesting medicinal herbs that Professor Chandler would love to get his hands on.

A nasty little blighter known as a Dire Squirrel, one and a half meters long, with teeth that, instead of having evolved to bite straight through nuts, were cruel and vicious implements of death that could chomp off a human leg with casual ease. But once again, the things in here were pretty weak compared to a second Evolution human.

Isaac didn’t even have to chop in it half, a crossbow bolt wreathed in a silver nimbus of power tore through its chest like it was nothing, leaving behind a neat little hole the size of a one cent coin and that was that. The Dire Squirrel dropped out of the trees, hitting the ground with a thump, dead.

“Look at that!” Professor Chandler exclaimed, running in and ending up just behind Isaac, pulling up plants by the armful.

“Professor, remember that there is almost certainly something guarding these things, and that there’ll likely be a price of some kind for everything we take. Please restrict yourself to gathering a couple of samples of each material you find interesting.” He reminded the man, getting an annoyed grumble in reply, but Isaac noticed that the man stopped avariciously grabbing everything in sight.

“How is everyone feeling?” Isaac called out, not turning to look at the others, instead keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings.

“This place is fucking weird.” Patrick grumbled “Like some kind of bizarre parody of a normal forest.”

“More like an artificial forest whose creator blew the budget on the magical herbs and had to get the discount versions of everything else.” Amy added.

“Are you alright here?” Isaac asked “Am I ok to go exploring?”

“Sure, be careful and come back here before you do anything dangerous.” Bailey waved him off, joining Chandler in checking out the local flora.

And with that, Isaac left, heading out into the forest as thoroughly cloaked as he could be with his available [Skills].

Behind him, the rest of the team spread out slowly, preparing magical barriers to catch any sneak attacks, [Scry] Spells sweeping through the air as they worked, collecting small samples of everything that could possibly be useful while Isaac went scouting.

This place was actually pretty tiny, a mere circle of exactly one square kilometer with a mid-sized hill in the center. Well, it certainly looked like a hill from out here, but Isaac knew there was actually a ravine that ran through the center, containing both the realm’s core and its guardian, a simple Nature Golem. He’d discover both right now, go back for the others, then remark that it had grown in the few minutes it had taken to fetch them.

Eventually, when they had all their samples, they’d break the core and retreat, at which point he’d remark on how easy that had been, endure the accusations of having jinxed everyone and then they’d deal with the horde together.

Mind you, they were taking very little and were quite a bit stronger than was needed for this place, it would be a piece of cake, but it would still neatly demonstrate both how useful the Hunting Grounds could be, as well as how dangerous.

As he snuck around the place, Isaac pocketed samples from a few fibrous plants and rocks that contained tiny chunks of pure metal to give to the various crafters he’d sponsored. it wasn’t nearly enough to be turned into something, but it should still demonstrate how many useful materials could be found here.

During his travels, he spotted countless woodland monsters, ranging from what basically amounted to a preternaturally strong deer with sharpened antlers to a nasty as fuck wolverine with claws that dripped with acid and fur that would act like barbed wire if you came into contact with it. Still, neither was above Tier 3 and while their abilities were damn good on a conceptual level, there was simply not nearly enough power behind them to endanger anyone here except maybe Professor Chandler.

Isaac left these creatures alone for the most part, only killing a few when he found them isolated and taking a few biopsies to compare to samples from summoned monsters, but he wasn’t here to get into fights.

His path took him around to the far side of the realm, which was just more of the same. Plants ranging from basic ferns, grasses and trees to supernaturally powerful medicinal herbs and even ones that hadn’t existed before the [System], just the normal, basic crap you could find inside of a hunting ground.

In other words, it was very, very basic.

Once he’d checked that place, which was completely in line with his expectations, he ran up the hill and looked down into the ravine, which widened in the center to create a circular sort of arena, with a basketball sized crystal lying in the middle, half buried. The core.

Standing over it was a quadrupedal mass of bark and vines, with a slab of craggy wood for a face, and a little smaller than an Indian elephant. Big, sure, but this thing would keep growing until it hit Level 24, the cap for this place, and be around half again as large as an African elephant. At that point, it might be a contender for the title of ‘slight annoyance’, but a single ‘belly flop of doom’ would obliterate it instantly. Isaac had tried to fight the title, but was just the sort of silly name that would stick for the rest of eternity. Damnit, Amy!

Schooling his face into a rough approximation of ‘oh shit, big monster back there’, Isaac took off at a run, covering the four hundred-odd meters between the center of the realm and the team in a matter of seconds.

“Guys, there’s a big monster in the center of this place, guarding what looks to be the magical core of the realm.”

“Oh, he- … heck.” Bailey caught himself before saying ‘hell’. As it turned out, that word was considered to be too much profanity for the university’s current ‘face’ and he’d gotten a stern talking to about his language from the PR department, now he was trying to break the habit, badly.

“I think we should probably take care of that before it shows up when we last expect it.” Bishop said succinctly “Lerch, Shaw, Mina, you make sure everyone else is safe, Thoma, do you think you and I will be able to take care of it on our own?”

Isaac shrugged “I could take it on my own, but I know that in this situation, we need to communicate about what we do to avoid interfering with each other. But I don’t think this thing is too dangerous, it doesn’t have an [Aura] and Stats comparable to something a little under Level 20.”

“We’re all going, I’d rather not split up before what seems to be a boss fight.” Bailey said.

It took a minute to pry Professor Chandler away from a bed of herbs, time which Isaac used to hand off his samples, and then, they were off.

The return walk took quite a bit longer as they, well, walked, and every so often, someone spotted something interesting that they just had to grab or otherwise investigate. The vastly reduced speed suited Isaac just fine, the longer this took, the more obvious the size difference would be.

“It’s down there.” Isaac said, pointing over the lip of the ravine at the beast, then frowned, hard “It’s gotten bigger. And I think the Stats are quite a bit higher, too. A Level in the mid-twenties, perhaps? We should probably take care of it now.”

“Well, … heck.” Bailey said “But I think you can still get it easily? I think you’ll be highly unlikely to break that crystal by accident.”

“Belly flop of doom, again?” Amy asked, making Isaac roll his eyes, but he still jumped down.

The beast turned, took two steps towards him … and collapsed, a massive, gaping hole right down the center.

Nature Golem (Lv. 22) has been slain. 375 XP gained

“All clear!” he called back up, and the others began to make their way down the slope using a variety of methods, ranging from levitation to mad scrambling. Bailey was especially interesting to watch, as he’d taken off his shoes and transformed his feet into a mountain goat’s hooves and clambered down with casual ease.

He took this time to check up on his notifications, seeing that both [Sneak] and [Stealth] had finally gone over Level 20. They were [Skills] he rarely used, so it had taken a while to improve them, but now that he’d had a reason to use them, they’d gotten pretty damn useful. His [Gralloch] [Skill] had also improved, though he wasn’t sure just why it had taken so long.

Stealth (common, Level XX)

Use magic to shield the user’s form from visual inspection, as well as muffling noise created by the user. Quality of shielding will increase at higher levels.

However, user’s expertise has increased the power of this Skill, allowing it to suppress the user’s smell and prevent the user from leaving physical traces while it is activated.

After countless battles where this Skill was used to stalk and eventually take down prey, be it animal, monster or human, it has evolved to reflect this, the process of the hunt. While in stealth, the user may instill a sense of dread and foreboding in his intended victims, ensuring they know there is something hunting them, and even create sounds and flashes of something in the dark at a distance to serve as a distraction.

Cost: 1 mana/sec, doubled while secondary power is in effect

Oh yeah, that was going to come in real handy if he ever went after another gang of nihilistic, idiotic cultists. He also resolved to not mention this new effect to any member of the team, there’d already been enough jokes about how similar his [Skill]set was to a slasher movie villain.

Sneak (common, Level XX)

Grants user basic knowledge of how to move stealthily, from avoiding making noise to reducing visibility. Higher levels of this Skill will allow the user to have an overall lessened impact on the world at large, to the point of near complete invisibility.

This Skill also has an active mode in which the User actively spends mana to reduce their impact on the world.

After countless situations where it was used to hide in plain sight to avoid public attention, this [Skill] has evolved to create a permanent (toggleable) effect that makes supernatural or attention-grabbing displays by the user less obvious. (This effect is powered by ambient mana, a lack of such will require the user to power it themselves)

Cost: 10 mana per minute

Another solid upgrade, and exactly what he’d needed. It wouldn’t stop people from noticing if he flew right over their heads, surfing on a massive Zweihänder, but it should prevent him from being noticed when he dropped down into the street from a nearby rooftop and the like.

Gralloch (common)

This Skill is quintessential for a hunter after the hunt is done. It teaches the User how to properly skin and clean a kill, separate out the important and valuable parts and reduces the risk of accidentally damaging any organs.

It also points out some basic uses for the harvested parts.

Eh, it was useable, but not the greatest. Still, an upgrade was an upgrade, wasn’t it?

“So, this thing was guarding that rock?” Bailey asked, then turned to Patrick “Can you tell what that thing is?”

“It seems to be connected to everything here, keeping up the dimensional barrier.” He replied after a few seconds.

“Once we’re done here, we should break it, since no one will thank us for leaving behind this mess for others to deal with.” Isaac suggested.

“You want to break the core of the realm we’re standing in, are you nuts?” Amy exclaimed.

“… we’d be doing so from outside.” Isaac deadpanned.

“But only once I’m done collecting everything.” Chandler said, looking up from the body of the Nature Golem for only long enough to meet their eyes as they turned to him, then went back to extracting random gunk from the corpse.

Isaac rolled his eyes but stayed put, guarding the man, while the others checked out the rest of the area.

Eventually though, finally, it was time to get out of here and break the damn place.

This left Isaac and Patrick standing in front of the portal, with the [Mage] lobbing bolts of plasma at the core and trying to direct them into the ravine from the top while Isaac played spotter. Patrick, unfortunately, couldn’t extend his [Aura] to the core as he needed it to keep track of the plasma bolt while Isaac had his locked solidly on the destination, even as Patrick was busy charging the next attack.

“Little to the left, and a meter closer to us.”

“That hit the far wall.”

“Fuck! … half a meter to the right.”

Five minutes later, Isaac’s [Aura] clearly showed the crystal shattering into pieces and the ‘clear sky’ outer barrier flashed red, then began to contract, starting from the far side.

“That was easy.” Isaac shrugged “Let’s wait until that space is completely gone, but it looks like I was wrong about there being a danger.”

“See, now you’ve jinxed us, there’s going to end up being a large ass kaiju, you just wait.” Amy elbowed him in the side “Come on, valiant knight, you have to stand in front of us, this is your mess to fix.”

“Sure.” Isaac shrugged, summoned the Zweihänder and got into position in front of the portal. He thought about striking a pose, but then decided that would look wildly unprofessional to the soldiers watching in the distance.

The far wall kept coming ever closer, the realm shrinking more and more, until only a few square meters of space remained on the other side.

“Looks like there’s nothing going to go wrong.” Bishop said, putting down his crossbow “I guess it takes a while to close so everyone has the time to get out.”

That’s when the first Dire Squirrel appeared in place of the portal, which had just snapped shut. It fell apart in two halves a split second later, but by then, over a dozen more various woodland creatures were there, and they were pissed.

The strongest of these beasts was a stag with a gleaming white coat, sparks of power glimmering among its antlers, ready to be hurled at its foes, at least if it was given the time to use its abilities.

A few seconds afterwards, there was nothing left but a pile of shredded and burned bodies.

“The important question now is if the number of monsters increases if we retrieve more.” Bishop said “I must say, Mr. Thoma, that was some very nice deductive reasoning.”

“Thank you, but that was just my finely tuned sense of paranoia talking.” Isaac waved it off.

“Hey, does it look like there’s less stuff out here, like some grass and dirt vanished?” Raul frowned at the ground, pointing to several spots “It’s almost like someone dragged stuff out of there and …”

He looked right at the bags of stuff they’d grabbed from the realm “Does it look like that’s just about the same mass as what we removed from the Hunting Grounds?”

A careful review of the cameras watching the portal revealed that he was, in fact, right about that.

“So what, stuff around the summoning circle gets drawn in to form the extra mass?” Bishop asked “Wouldn’t we have noticed if stuff all over the place vanished in your building as you kept summoning?”

“Well, the matter needed to come from somewhere.” Bailey said “We always knew that, it was just that we assumed that the mana invested created the matter that made up the monster. This is something we’ll have to investigate, thoroughly.”

“After Korea, right?” Isaac asked. Sure, this stuff was kinda interesting, but also boring, given how the [System] never tore matter out of anything that could be considered ‘a finished product’ or where it would cause something to crumble, be it a building lacking foundations or a mountain with new Faultline and it even actively avoided draining material deposits such as mines.

In fact, outside of Hunting Grounds that would often need to retrieve vast amounts of varying materials which they normally drew from an area as close to the entrance as was possible, it was almost impossible to notice the effect. Hell, they’d been summoning on campus for what seemed like forever and no one had noticed, it was that subtle.

“Still, there’s a whole lot of stuff we need to figure out with these hunting grounds, so how about we get to it?” Isaac suggested.

“First, we’ll retrieve different amounts of material, count the number of monsters that come out at the end, then see if there’s a correlation.” Bailey nodded “Then, we’ll see if we have more time to check out one of the other hunting grounds.”

Sadly, by the time they’d figured out everything about how the numbers scaled and the scaling could vary, it was already dark and the military ended up calling it off. Them missing a monster in the middle of the night would be a serious issue.

They did catch one of the jackalopes and locked it in a cage to be stored in a spare summoning room so they could see if these things could summon autonomously. Spoiler alert, they could, and even did so on a shortened, halved, in fact, timer, and the sooner they figured that out, the better.

Still, today and the occasional mad scramble to catch a monster that had decided discretion was the better part of valor and tried to run off into the wild had solidly convinced everyone of something: the Tier didn’t matter, hunting grounds were fucking dangerous.