"Shiela, are you with us?" Jessica asked as her friend's eyes fluttered.

She'd been unconscious for almost twenty minutes while Jessica and the others had dealt with attacks from the Badgats, as she'd decided to name the Badger/Bat hybrid monsters. There were two different spawns in range of them, and the respawn timer seemed to be about ten seconds on one of them and twelve seconds on the other. Once they had the timing down, it was only a matter of seconds for their summoned monsters to pin the attacks to the ground and kill them. The problem was that getting up the rope would take twenty seconds or so, and they wouldn't be able to hide behind their summons.

Luckily they had Blue. Derrick had pulled out a fistful of mana crystals and started casting ritual after ritual. He currently had a five-meter-high chimney of stone around the rope. He had to climb up the chimney and tie himself off each time, but if he were able to continue unmolested, they'd be able to climb out of the cavern in another half hour or so. They needed Shiela conscious and active for that part. While she wouldn't be able to climb on her own, she should be able to help hold on to the person who carried her up.

Jessica felt the connection between her matrix and Brutus snap again. She waited a heartbeat, then another, then resummoned him. They'd nearly lost control of the situation when she'd lost Brutus and then suffered from summoning sickness when she tried to resummon him immediately. They'd been told about summoning sickness, but they'd become so used to their summons being vastly overpowered against the enemies they fought that they'd forgotten.

Sheila opened her eyes. "Jess?" she asked groggily.

"Too right," Jessica replied with a smile, "I'm glad to see you awake."

"I was coming down the rope," she mumbled, "and then something grabbed me and tore at me."

Shiela tried to sit up and then looked down when she only managed to roll herself to one side. "My arm!" She screamed. Then she looked further down. "My leg!"

"Ssshhh, calm down," Jessica said, pulling Shiela into a hug. "This Thaylan, Bob can grow this back for you in a sec, yeah? Just take it easy, we've got a plan to get out of here safely, but you're going to need to play the starring role of the backpack and hang onto Blue when we climb out," Jessica squeezed her.

"I thought I was dead," Shiela sobbed quietly.

"Blue was quick to make sure you were ok," Jessica replied, "he healed you right up, and we've been taking our revenge on those monsters while he builds us a safe way out of here."

Jessica left unspoken the fact that Blue had estimated that it would take about thirty-six rituals to get the chimney up to the top of the cavern. The thirty-six hundred crystals were a lot less important than their lives.

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

Bob knocked on the door of the Endless Tower. Although he'd spotted what he would have sworn was a cell phone tower on the top of the Adventurers Guild in Holmstead, the service wasn't available yet. Theo had clearly been asked about the tower quite a few times and had his answer ready. Out of everything they could have brought to Thayland, technology-wise, cellular communications was definitely a good choice. Being able to reach out to someone who was miles away was a convenience he'd never before had much use for, but he could see it now. He didn't know if Eddi would even be in the tower.

The door opened, and a teenage girl looked up at him. "Oh, wow," she breathed, "it's you, I mean, you're him."

"If by that you mean Bob, then yes, I'm Bob," he replied uncertainly, "I was hoping to see Eddi if he's here."

"Sure, come on in, I'll go get him," she replied, gesturing him into the entry hall before dashing towards a door in the back, leaving Bob to close the door behind him and contemplate the room.

Less the room and more the gigantic statue of Jake, Monroe, and himself. He walked around it, stunned at not only the degree of detail the artist had employed; Monroe's tail looked incredibly soft and pettable, but also the fact that there was a massive statue of him.

He completed his circle of the statue and found himself back at the front. Bob didn't think he'd ever shown an expression of noble determination. He caught sight of a small plaque at the bottom.

"HE WHO WALKS BEFORE"

This statue is dedicated to Robert Whitman, who freely shared the knowledge of using Summoning Affinity Crystals in conjunction with The Path of the Endless Swarm, asking for no thanks or reward, but merely the knowledge that his gift would save lives. Shown with his summoned creature, the UtahRaptor, Jake, and his familiar, Monroe.

"Ah, I was hoping you wouldn't see that," Eddi said sheepishly.

Bob tore his eyes away from the horror and looked at Eddi, then meaningfully back to the statue, then back at Eddi again.

"It wasn't my idea!" Eddi protested, "they just got it into their heads to put up a statue of you."

"He who walks before?" Bob asked.

Eddi winced. "That's Anni's thing, her parents were pushing her to become a priestess of Gaia, even though she didn't feel the call, and then you sort of saved her from that with the Affinity Crystals and the Path of the Endless Swarm."

Bob looked at the statue again. He shook his head. "I can't believe I'd have ever thought I'd prefer to be called 'The Reef,'" he muttered. "Is there someplace we can go to sit down and have a private chat?"

"Sure," Eddi replied, sounding relieved to escape the entryway and the looming statue, "come on up to my office."

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Eddi led him through the doorway at the back of the hall and up a set of stairs, passing by several floors, before taking a left at a landing. Walking down the hallway, Bob began to get an idea of how the tower was laid out. The spiral staircase in the center had opened up at each floor, where four hallways led off, quartering the pie as it were. As Eddi led him down the hallway, he could see that it was intersected every six feet or so by another. Each of those hallways was lined with doors, barely any room between them.

"Spatially reinforced and expanded spaces behind the doors," Eddi volunteered. "Everyone can have as much or as little room as they need, assuming they can afford it, and we haven't had any problems in that area."

Bob nodded. He'd thought about doing something similar before deciding the stacking people up like cordwood was the better choice.

Eddi reached the end of the hallway where it split, going left and right, and opened a door, gesturing for Bob to go in.

Bob walked into Eddi's office. It was nicely appointed, the walls done in wood paneling, the ceiling bare stone, with carpets littering the floor. A huge desk sat up against the back wall, with two chairs in front of it.

Eddi breezed in behind him and sat down behind the desk, motioning for Bob to take a seat.

"So, I have a few things to talk to you about," Bob began as he sat down, "things that I'd appreciate you keeping to yourself."

"Alright," Eddi said agreeably.

"Mana is going to change after it integrates my universe," Bob explained, "some of those changes will be big, some small, but the one that I think you'll find the most important for the Endless is that gathering Affinity Crystals is going to change."

Eddi paled. Bob continued, "The good news is that any monster you kill that is above your tier, and half your tier above your level, will have a chance to provide an Affinity Crystal; the bad news, from your perspective, is that the Affinity Crystal will be random."

"Now that does mean that previously unavailable Affinity Crystals will be available because Austan deserves an Animancy Affinity," Bob smiled, "but it also means that you're not going to have a steady supply of Summoning Affinity Crystals anymore, so you'll need to gather as many as you can while you can still do reliably."

"That's a problem," Eddi said slowly. "How much longer do we have?"

"Twenty months," Bob replied, "it isn't something that's going to happen immediately, but it is something I thought you should be aware of."

Eddi shook his head. "We could gather enough Summoning Affinity Crystals for every person in Greenwold, assuming we retained access to that floor of the Dungeon in Holmstead," Eddi grumbled, "which is not a guarantee; Thidwell has started pushing some of us out to make room for the other people who've come to be reincarnated."

"Which I guess delves nicely with something I wanted to talk to you about," Eddi's expression brightened. "The Endless Council is going to start reincarnating as Curators so that we can build Endless Towers close to every town and build a Dungeon beneath them like you did in Glacier Valley."

"That's a good idea," Bob nodded his approval.

"Thank you," Eddi smiled, "But, the thing is, with everyone stuffed into Holmstead the way they are, we don't have a Dungeon we can use to level back up after we reincarnate, and we don't want to go to Harbordeep then either, because we'll look weak."

"So you want me to build you a Dungeon," Bob mused.

"Please?" Eddi asked hopefully, "we don't need a big one, something for like five to ten people would be perfect. We just need to have it built somewhere out of the way where the council can go reincarnate without being vulnerable."

"I was actually going to ask about you helping me do exactly that," Bob admitted with a smile. "I'll need to reincarnate soon, and while I trust Mike and the Old Guard, I don't really trust all the new people that came over. Some of them might take advantage of me after I reincarnate, so I need a place to level up as well."

Eddi's face was filled with relief. "By the stars and stones, I was afraid you might say no," Eddi smiled. "Pick out a spot, and we'll front you the mana crystals. Shouldn't cost more than five million, right?"

Bob started to answer and then paused. "I honestly don't know," he replied slowly, "I haven't done the math on it. If I'm just doing a ten-person Dungeon all the way down to twenty-six, I think it would be more like half a million. We're talking about very small floors, so a single five-fold ritual will do on each of them for the mana flows and environment, and excavating the area won't take nearly as many rituals as a larger floor."

"Well, we decided to dedicate five million crystals over the next four months to the project," Eddi replied with a shrug, "although we're going to have to start spending them like water in Harbordeep."

"And that leads me to the next thing I'd like you to keep private," Bob began, "which also includes the secret Dungeon, something that should go without saying, but I'm saying it anyway."

Eddi nodded eagerly.

"I have my own Dungeon," Bob announced.

"Yeah, in Glacier Valley," Eddi agreed.

"No," Bob shook his head, "I have my own Dungeon in the way that people have inventories."

Eddi cocked his head to the side and squinted at Bob. "What?"

"The path I'm on allowed me to ritually create a Dungeon that I can access with a portal," Bob explained, "the place I cast the ritual determines the maximum mana density, so I used the Dungeon in Harbordeep to cast the ritual on the sixtieth floor. That means that my Dungeon has floors thirty through sixty, although I've only built out to floor thirty-seven."

"That's..." Eddi trailed off.

"A tier seven advanced curator path that I was only able to use because of my broken matrix and the fact I couldn't take a path until I was level nineteen," Bob replied.

"Ah, yeah," Eddi nodded.

"So, the thing of it is, I can seed those floors with Affinity Crystals, at least for the next twenty months," Bob continued, "and I thought that putting an Affinity Crystal on the thirty-ninth floor would be perfect for letting the Endless Swarm keep farming, even though Holmstead is over capacity."

"That's incredible," Eddi smiled, "although if we're going to keep this a secret, we can only let a few people in."

Bob nodded, appreciating that Eddi understood the concept of secrecy. "Still, a few people, like you, blitzing for Affinity Crystals will help."

Eddi nodded, and then his face fell. "Look, in light of this, I don't know if we can keep giving the people from Earth Summoning Affinity Crystals," he said sadly.

"I know," Bob agreed, "honestly, you've given up over two thousand Summoning Affinity Crystals," he shook his head in wonder, "which is incredibly generous of you. The Marines are taking over digging the Dungeons in Glacier Valley in a few weeks, and I'll make sure they know how to seed the twenty-sixth floor with Affinity Crystals, so in theory, they'll be fine."

"I was worried that you'd be upset," Eddi admitted.

"Not at all," Bob reassured him, "honestly, the Endless have done more for Earth than anyone else, and I'm grateful. At some point, though, they're all going to be headed back to Earth, so you need to make sure that Greenwold is taken care of first."

It was at that moment that the door behind Eddi's desk flew open, banging against the wall as a four-foot-tall t-rex burst into the room, holding what looked suspiciously like a slab of bacon in its mouth.

"Stones curse you, Reximus!"

An enraged Wayna ran through the door, hot on Reximus's heels. "Give me back that bacon!" Wayna yelled, waving a spatula menacingly at the t-rex, who dodged around behind Eddi's chair.

Bob watched as Reximus very deliberately placed the bacon on the floor, then quickly pinned it with one foot and dipped his head down to rip off a chunk.

"Bad Reximus!" Eddi scolded his familiar half-heartedly, "You have to listen to Wayna; she's the food boss."

Someone, Bob wasn't sure who caused the floor to open up and the bacon to sink down into a protective layer of stone.

Reximus made a very sad sort of chirping noise, and Bob took that moment, as Eddi scolded Reximus, and Wayna scolded Eddi, to consider that overall, Monroe was very well behaved.