Bob walked past Mike in a daze, hearing but not understanding the question he was being asked.

He walked up to the counter and numbly indicated the steak and potatoes option on the blackboard, then schlepping his food back to his table, where he began to eat mechanically.

While it was nice to know what was coming, and he now understood why Trebor was encouraging him to learn to cast the Arcane Depths ritual without the aid of the System, having this knowledge was a burden when he couldn't share it.

He knew that the people around him weren't stupid. They had to have realized that Bob had more access to the System than they did. He was equally confident that no one knew just how much information he had access to via Trebor. His largest concern was that someone would discover that secret and put him in a cage from which he wouldn't be able to escape. While the King seemed amiable enough, Bob knew that if the King wanted to, he would be able to lock Bob up and prevent him from escaping. If the King became aware of Bob's access to the System, he might do exactly that.

He shook his head rapidly and realized that Mike had sat down next to him and was waiting for Bob to say something.

"Sorry," Bob muttered, "I was out of it a bit."

"I could tell," Mike said with a chuckle, "you know we appreciate how hard you've been working to drive the Dungeon down, opening up new floors for us, but maybe you should think about slowing it down a little, maybe only working eight hours a day on it?"

"Maybe," Bob yawned, "those rituals really take it out of me."

"Well, the good news is that three days, we should have the first batch of Engineers at level ten, with the necessary skills to dig out a Dungeon," Mike smiled at him, "at which point, you can teach them as you're building out the floors."

"You said there were a thousand of them, right?" Bob asked as he started cutting up his Oxcipine steak.

"There are," Mike confirmed, "which sort of leads into another issue that needs to be addressed."

Bob chewed on a mouthful of steak.

Mike continued, "As you may or may not be aware, at the moment, we have enough equipment for the Old Guard to shuffle it around so that everyone has enough for their shift. That being said, especially in regards to the armor, the active-duty marines are making do with gear from Earth, and they have started asking about getting enchanted gear, which percolated up the chain of command until I was asked to ask you about it."

Bob shrugged. "You've got like four people working on weapons and armor in Holmstead," he said, "they can only work so quickly. I asked about bringing them some people to train, but I haven't had anyone volunteer."

"Oh, I know," Mike grumbled, "I talked to Gary about it, and he figures that he's about six months away from finishing his current orders."

"Grab a couple of hundred folks who aren't eager to be on the sharp edge of the spear, and carry them up to level fifteen or twenty, then have them get to work," Bob offered, "Gary did offer to teach them for a percentage."

"Gary mentioned the percentage," Mike acknowledged.

"Grab some more active-duty Marines and order them to start building stuff," Bob forked up more mashed potatoes, "hell, you could probably have some of those Engineers pick it up alongside the Curator skills once they pass level ten."

"Any way you look at it, they need some armor," Mike sighed, "we haven't had any casualties, but the injuries are starting to mount up, and it's disruptive."

"What do you want me to do?" Bob asked in exasperation. "I'm already down there like eighteen hours a day expanding the Dungeon, I don't have the time or the spare skill slots to pick up crafting."

Mike raised his hands in surrender. "I didn't mean you should do it, I was just hoping you could find us another supplier who wasn't completely backlogged."

Bob stopped his fork halfway to his mouth. "You want me to go to Harbordeep," he whispered.

"If that's where the armor is," Mike grinned.

"Shit," Bob mumbled as he stuffed the steak into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

"Wait," he said after he swallowed, "we have Nora, our little Noble representative from House Wallenstair. We can just ask her to arrange the purchase."

"Of course, that's going to cost a fair few mana crystals, especially in Harbordeep," Bob forked up more mashed potatoes.

Nine thousand marines, figure double the cost of Holmstead, so call it six thousand crystals for a set of fully enhanced and enchanted armor, which was just about fifty-four million mana crystals.

He chewed as he rechecked his math.

Nope, fifty-four million was right. At just over three hundred thousand crystals a day, he'd have enough mana crystals to fund that purchase in six months.

"The bad news is we just don't have that many mana crystals," Bob said, "I'm figuring at market value, nine thousand suits of level ten armor, fully enhanced, will run over fifty-million mana crystals."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Mike blinked.

"I'd recommend instead of fully enchanted and enhanced armor, we go with regular old armor, which would only run us three point six million, which we could do a couple of weeks," Bob suggested. "Also, from what I understand, crafting the armor itself takes far less time than enhancing and enchanting it, so we'd receive it more quickly. An important consideration when you take into account that we are talking about enough suits of armor equal to almost half the population of the capital city of Greenwold."

"So what you're saying is that you'll talk to Nora about this?" Mike asked hopefully.

"Yeah," Bob mumbled as he speared his last bite of steak. "That's exactly what I meant."

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

Jack watched as the last beam was fused into place. He couldn't help but marvel at how much easier it was to build things on Thayland.

Really, it was the lack of permits and inspections, he mused.

All he needed now was to bring over the crew to install the actual transmission equipment and drag Chris over to handle overseeing it all, and he'd be golden.

Assuming he ignored the team of men and women who were carefully boring a tunnel from his power plant to Holmstead. Thidwell had driven a hard bargain, demanding ten percent of the gross profits from any electrical services that were provided within the boundaries of Holmstead, as defined by the area in which the Dungeon siphoned mana.

Jack knew that anyone who came here and took Thidwell for a country bumpkin was in for a surprise. The man would have made a truly vicious corporate counsel.

The tunnel that would support the power conduits was due to be completed in two more days, at ruinous expense. He hoped that the Firefly/Serenity marathon he'd arranged was as popular as he'd hoped. Charging them the same price for an episode of the show as he did for a full-length movie was a little on the nose, but he thought that after an episode or two, he'd have them hooked.

Still, his plans were moving along nicely. He'd stopped to talk to Kelli, who had complained that he barely had enough time to attend to his administrative duties with the number of people looking to have the ritual to learn English cast on them. He'd dedicated an hour each morning to cast thirty rituals, and he was booked up for the next several days. That had brought a smile to Jack's face, as he'd assumed that most of those people had heard about the theater and were eager to visit it.

He looked around the plaza, noting the many curious faces that peered up at the new cellphone tower. As soon as he had it working, he'd be providing the cell phones to Thidwell and the rest of the Adventures Guild officials, who would mandate their use, ensuring a healthy user base right out of the gate.

Jack could practically taste the mana crystals that would roll in. He'd even started looking into the costs for a communications satellite. Three hundred million. He was contemplating picking up the reincarnation ritual and visiting a few aging but vastly wealthy celebrities and CEOs.

"Jack!" an excited voice called out, and he turned to find Eddi rushing towards him with a smile on his face and a tyrannosaur at his side. Rexxy had grown up quite a bit, from an ankle-biter to a throat tearer if Jack was any judge of such things.

"Eddi, how goes it?" Jack asked, giving the kid a high five.

"Shiny," Eddi replied happily, "I'm over halfway through Firefly!"

"That's impressive," Jack noted as he walked towards the Adventurers Guild with Eddi in tow.

"Wayna said her friends already watched the whole thing," Eddi said, "they're going to watch Serenity tomorrow."

"Well, I hoped they enjoyed it," Jack said as he caught Theo's eyes and nodded towards an empty table. That particular young man had finally started to warm up to him.

"They were singing the song from the start, she said," Eddi reported, "so I think they did."

"I like Mal and Wash," Eddi confided as he sat down, "and Jayne a little bit."

Jack shot the kid a smile and prepared to listen as Eddi started to explain why he liked those characters with the fervor of the newly converted.

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

Nora bounced into the tavern happily with Orson, Charn, and Sarah at her heels. She loved Firefly! They'd watched the whole thing, except for Serenity, and they were going to watch that tomorrow.

"You can't take the sky from me," she sang before spotting Bob, who was looking at his plate suspiciously.

"Bob, have you ever watched Firefly?" She asked as she took a seat at his table.

"I haven't," Bob replied as he poked at a reddish cube that sat atop a pile at the edge of his plate.

"It's amazing," Nora gushed, "none of us had seen it except Sarah, and she didn't mind watching it again with us."

Bob nodded to Sarah, who had just sat down.

"I'm more of a book person than a television person," Bob said, turning his attention from the cubes to the skewers on his plate.

Nora looked at the skewers, blinked, and then looked again. "Are those bugs?" She asked, wrinkling her nose.

"I think so," Bob replied with a sigh.

"Who eats bugs?" Nora asked.

"Quite a few cultures back on Earth," Bob replied idly as he peered at the salad that occupied the rest of his plate. "From what I understand, they're almost pure protein, and the people who grew up eating them love them."

"We used to dare each other to eat a bug when we were kids," Orson muttered, his eyes fixed on Bob's skewers.

"I'm trying to be more adventurous in my food choices," Bob grumbled as he took a bite of salad, chewing it carefully, almost as if he expected to find something wrong with it.

"Me too," Nora said, "the burritos they served the other night were fantastic and almost as spicy as that curry they served last week."

Bob swallowed. "I liked both of those, although these blood cubes and fried grasshoppers are just a bit too much for me," he sighed as he looked down at the salad. "Salad is pretty good, though," he admitted.

"So," Bob looked up at her and smiled, "Lady Wallenstair, could you facilitate the purchase of nine thousand sets of unenchanted and unenhanced armor from the vendors in Harbordeep?"

Nora's jaw dropped. She stared at Bob for a second before closing it with a click. "Nine thousand," she whispered. That was insane; that was half the population of the city!

She paused. That was the number of marines who had just come over. Glacier Valley, with the new marines and the ones that had already been here, was more than half as large as Harbordeep. Five times as large as Holmstead had been before Thidwell had announced the new paths and Affinity Crystals.

It hadn't occurred to her what was happening here. Not really. She shook her head, curls bouncing.

"I can start the process," she said slowly, "although I doubt there are that many sets of armor in the whole city. If you count the custom armorers used by the nobility and the wealthier merchants, there are maybe a thousand sets, but that's just a guess on my part. And the ones coming from the higher-end armorers will be a lot more expensive."

Bob produced a burrito from his satchel and started munching on it with one hand, while he retrieved a pouch with the other hand and pushed it over to her.

He swallowed and nodded at the pouch. "There are two hundred thousand mana crystals in there, just make sure you get receipts for everything, and once you've bought out the lot, get the folks who don't specialize in supplying the merchants and nobles to work on the rest."

She strove to quell the fierce pride that swelled in her chest. Bob trusted her. He really trusted her.

"I'll catch a portal back to Harbordeep tomorrow," she promised.