"So, do you want the crystals?" Bob asked impatiently. "Because I'm actually kind of hungry at this point. We were planning on being out of here more than an hour ago, and I haven't eaten since this morning. More importantly, neither has Monroe."

Vasquez blinked. "You're still going to give them to me?" She asked.

"Sure," Bob shrugged. "You need help, I can help. What more is there? It's not like you kicked Monroe or something." He frowned. "I wouldn't give them to you if you'd done that," he warned. "Never trust someone who abuses a pet."

"I'll take them," she said, accepting the handful of bags as her cameraman, John, broke down his gear, and they exited the suite.

Bob let out a sigh of relief as the door closed.

"That went about as well as I expected," he grumbled.

"Let's not dwell," Amanda suggested. "Dave, you've got eyes on the restaurant, right?"

"I do," Dave confirmed.

"Great, open a portal before someone else finds us," Amanda ordered.

Dave chuckled, and a portal of sea-green energy appeared.

Jessica slipped her arm under his and tugged him forward.

Taking the hint, Bob walked through the portal.

On the other side, he found himself on a sidewalk, looking at a familiar building. It was obviously the Denny's they'd met at so long ago, but it no longer had any signage.

Stepping forward to allow Dave and Amanda room to exit the portal, he twisted to look at the parking lot. The back half of the parking lot now held an impressive vertical garden.

"This doesn't look like the Denny's," Bob said.

"Some of the staff are the same," Dave replied. "When the integration hit, the building ended up being damaged pretty badly. A dozen or so people got together and repaired it, then reopened, but they didn't bother with the signs."

"It's an independent restaurant now," Amanda added.

Bob wondered how exactly that worked. Some faceless corporation owned the property, he was sure. Were they leasing the building from them?

He was pulled from his thoughts as Jessica tugged him forward again.

"Mildred," Dave said happily as the door opened, and a smiling young woman held the door for them.

"Dave, Amanda, " she greeted them with a brilliant smile. "It's so good to see you. It's been too long! How have you been keeping?"

"Busy, busy," Amanda replied, returning her smile. "Off fighting monsters and all that."

"Some place far away, I would hope, if you haven't been by to see me for almost two years," Mildred replied with a shake of her head. "Come in, come in, I have a table overlooking the garden."

Bob and Jessica followed as Mildred led them through the restaurant, snaking their way past tables and booths. They went up a flight of stairs, and he was surprised to find furniture and ceilings that were able to comfortably accommodate their heights.

"Not a lot of call for this space yet," Mildred said over her shoulder. "We move the tables out and host a salsa event every Sunday evening, so it hasn't gone to waste, but there aren't very many people who have reached tier seven, let alone tier eight."

She guided them to a table that, as promised, overlooked the verticle garden that took up half the parking lot.

"I'll have Gemma up to see you in just a minute," Mildred promised. "Don't leave without saying goodbye!"

Bob awkwardly handed Jessica down into a chair, then took the one next to her. He looked at the table curiously.

It appeared to have a burnished copper circuit embedded in it, one that appeared at each place setting.

He poked it.

"Mana circuit," Dave supplied helpfully. "You put your hand on it," he demonstrated, "and start feeding your mana into it."

The circuit Dave had placed his hand on began to glow slightly, then stopped.

"They aren't really designed for people with our mana regeneration," Dave said. "From what I was told the last time we were here, they are fairly lossy as it is, running at about seventy-five percent, but that's at one mana per second. If you put five mana per second into them, they start to leak a bit, hence the glow, and they drop to about fifty."

"What is the mana being used for?" Bob asked.

"All of the circuits line up and connect to the floor, where they run down to the office," Amanda explained. "The mana is stored in a bank of mana crystals that are constantly being drained and then recharged to fuel the enchantments in the kitchen and the ones that keep the building heated and cooled."

"I wonder how well that works?" Bob mused.

"Pretty well," their server said as she approached their table. "Mana crystals can hold a thousand mana, and the conversion rate when charging them is a thousand to one, so it's not great, but we come out ahead on all but our slowest of days."

"I'm Gemma," she introduced herself with a smile. "I've heard all about Dave and Amanda, and any friend of theirs is a friend of ours," she continued as she distributed four menus.

"What can I start you off with to drink?" Gemma asked.

"I'd like a beer," Dave said while Amanda and Jessica nodded their agreement.

Bob looked over the menu for a moment. "Lemonade for me, please."

"I'll have them right out," Gemma turned and hurried back down the stairs.

Bob flipped open the menu, the drinks having been listed on the front.

The breakfast menu was there, as well as the traditional statement that it was available anytime. What was missing was the meat. There were eggs, but he had to skim down the page to find the options for bacon and sausage.

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The meals were priced at eight hundred to twelve hundred 'e', while the sausage and bacon was priced at one 'c.'

He found the explanation at the bottom of the page in small print.

"All meals are priced in mana transfer, labeled 'e' unless they are meat. All meat is priced in mana crystals, 'c.'"

"That's odd," Bob muttered.

"What?" Jessica asked.

"They're charging mana crystals for meat," Bob replied. "It just feels sort of weird. We're always on the other end of that spectrum, too much meat and not enough vegetables unless we spend the time to cast a plant growth ritual in the Garden."

"Well, we kill a lot of monsters," Amanda said. "These folks have a huge garden, but don't kill so many monsters."

"We also have a really big chicken coop," Gemma added as she arrived with their drinks. "All the excess greens goes there, and we quite literally have more eggs than we know what to do with, which is why they're priced so low. We donate hundreds of them every couple of days to the hospital. Getting pork and beef is hard, as it all has to be shipped in or portaled in, both of which cost crystals." She looked around furtively and whispered. "You'll notice we don't have chicken on the menu. We tried, but it was too hard to kill them after you've named them and you look after them every day."

"So, what would you like?" Gemma asked.

"I'll have eight of the sixteen-ounce sirloins, medium rare, mashed, and steamed asparagus with each," Bob replied.

"I'll have the same, but rare on the steaks and half fries, half mashed, steamed asparagus as well," Jessica said.

"We'll each have the eight sirloins as well," Dave began, "all fries, with green beans, creamed corn, cole slaw, and steamed broccoli."

Gemma shook her head as she collected the menus. "It can't be easy staying fed when you're that tall," she sympathized.

"Most of the time, we don't really notice," Bob said. "We have correspondingly larger kitchens and cookware, so proportionally, it feels the same. It helps that the monsters we harvest our meat from are also huge. The only time it comes up is when we're with regular people, and then it can be a little jarring."

"As more people tier up, it might be worth having a menu for each tier," Jessica suggested.

"That's a good idea; I'll pass it along," Gemma smiled. "Figure half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes? They're going to need a whole section of the grill to get everything going at once."

"Thanks," Dave said as Gemma turned to head back down the stairs.

"So, we're paying in crystals, do we still push mana into the circuits?" Bob asked.

"Sure," Amanda shrugged. "It doesn't cost us anything to do it, and it helps the restaurant. I'm pretty sure everyone does it. I know they have a meter for each table in the office, and if you haven't put enough energy into the table, they'll ask you to stay until you do."

Bob looked at the table again as he placed his hands on the circuits and started pushing mana out of his matrix and into the table.

For some reason, he hadn't connected the dots. It might have been a holdover from what he'd learned on Thayland, but he'd become stuck in the paradigm that enchantments were powered by mana crystals. It hadn't occurred to him that recharging mana crystals was an option, mostly because he'd thought of it from an individual perspective. Yes, he could produce quite a bit of mana, but it would take him almost twelve hours to charge a crystal from nearly empty to full.

Harvesting the mana regeneration of a hundred people at once changed things. It made him wonder where and how else this technique was being used. Were hospitals using it? Keeping their lights on, keeping the machines running by having their patients channel their mana into circuits built into their beds?

Bob was well aware that he spent the vast majority of his time with his matrix at its maximum capacity for mana.

How hard would it be to retrofit the Freedom to have parallel processes in terms of powering the ship's enchantments? The bank of mana crystals would need to be massive unless he broke it up into separate banks for each enchantment. Some of the ship's systems required very few crystals, while others, specifically shielding and thrust, required massive amounts.

"I know that look," Jessica teased. "You're thinking about mana or something."

"I was," Bob admitted. "I got stuck in my paradigm and hadn't considered that there was a better, or at least a more efficient, way to power the Freedom. Now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it."

"I thought about recharging crystals when we weren't using our mana, but honestly, it's pretty rare for us not to be using our mana," Dave squinted at Bob. "We have this taskmaster who drives us into the Dungeons for sixteen hours a day," he finished with a grin.

"I need to find someone who knows how all this works," Bob said. "My first thought was that we could use some sort of persistent effect to charge crystals, but I'm sure someone else has already done the work already."

"That's a project for tomorrow," Amanda said, drinking from her glass. "Tonight is all about good friends and good food."

"That we didn't have to kill, grow, or cook ourselves," Jessica added.

"Also, dancing," Amanda added happily.

"Dancing?" Bob asked.

"Yep," Dave agreed. "There is a dance studio that teaches salsa a few blocks from here. I called them earlier today and booked a lesson for us."

"I don't know how to dance," Bob objected.

"That's why it's called a lesson," Amanda said. "It'll be new for us, too," she assured him.

"We've driven by it and made the idle comment, but we've never actually gone," Dave said.

"I haven't either," Jessica beamed. "But I'm super keen to try, yeah?"

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

"That went well, at least as far as his endorsement of our initiative to train up more dimensionalists," Taylor said.

"I could have done without his political observations," Elania grumbled. "Although I doubt anyone will fault his dislike for the paparazzi. Most people hate them, while they hypocritically salivate over the stories and salacious photos they provide."

"I don't recall him being quite so anti-authoritarian," Taylor mused.

"As I understand it, it's part of the process of tiering up," Elania explained.

She'd only recently reached tier seven, but Taylor was still tier six. Rank had its privileges, and priority for delving Dungeons was weighted rather more heavily for the President than it was for her chief of staff.

"It wasn't that bad at tier six, but at tier seven, I have to make a conscious effort to remind myself that just because I'm more powerful, I'm not actually better than the people who are lower tier than I am," Elania continued. "I imagine that at tier eight, allowing someone who is a full three tiers below you to have any power over you feels a bit like taking orders from a parrot."

"I'm a little surprised that they are still tier eight," Taylor said. "Given that they claim to have been delving non-stop for almost two years, you would think they would have reached tier nine."

"I'm not so sure," Elania disagreed. "Bob has always advocated that you should keep your skills at their maximum possible level before advancing. Given what we know, would you bet against any of them not having a triple affinity? Just how high is the maximum level of their primary skill? I did a little math, and it should be close to two hundred. How long will it take to grind that up?"

"Apparently, more than two years," Taylor replied.

"Exactly," Elania nodded. "He might lose out on customizing the next evolutionary option," she smiled. "The Queen has to be getting close."

Queen Elizabeth the Second had been monopolizing the Dungeons in her nation for years now. She rotated so as not to put too many people out for too long, and her citizens truly loved her. They lined the streets when she came to visit the town where the Dungeon was located, and in return, she showered them with the crystals she earned from the Dungeon.

She kept careful track, and when she finished for the day, she would hand over the mana crystals and, more importantly, the affinity crystals that she had gathered.

Her willingness to part with Attribute Affinity Crystals, combined with her insistence that they be given away via lottery to teenagers who would then use them as part of a ceremony that she oversaw each time she came through a town, was one of the many acts that had endeared her to her citizens.

Elania shook her head.

"Regardless," she refocused the conversation, "he delivered our message. That's one more channel, one more lever."

"We do still have a year, maybe a year and a half," Taylor said. "Ultimately, does it even matter if it takes two, or even three or four years?"

"It does," Elania replied grimly. "We need that tier seven planet. I drop a Dungeon by eight percent of its total capacity when I finish a delve," she shook her head. "Our advancement has slowed to a crawl because it's more efficient to have four people leveling up to their tier five cap than it is for a tier seven to grind out a fraction of skill level. We've sent almost all of our tier sevens to that planet to pacify it, so matters aren't as dire as they were, but the situation isn't good."

"The announcement tomorrow should help," Taylor offered a smile. "It's been years since there were Affinity Crystals on the table."

"Let's hope so," Elania said. "We need those dimensionalists, and we need them badly."