"Well, not necessarily, some dungeons we don't kill the first time and we get to harvest them again, though nobody has a profit motive to do this on purpose because they won't appear in range of the same corporation to exploit them again."

"...I get the impression failing to kill them the first time is bad."

"Yeah. They come back substantially meaner the second time."

"And when they get mean enough you probably can't get stuff out of it anymore, generally speaking."

"We still can, usually? The very nastiest dungeons were never resource-y, they're full of lava and psychic constructs and stuff and did not have a previous point where they were treasure chests of useful things. But if something starts out - and comes back for its second appearance still - full of nice things, it'll probably still have them, it'll just be a different proposition to retrieve them. More 'do that on the way through when you're rescuing people' than 'let in mundane people with industrial mining equipment after you clear the place'."

"Ah. I was figuring they'd be too dangerous for getting distracted from the rescues to be safe."

"You have to send in higher caliber espers, but sometimes that makes it more important to pick up loot, dungeon insurance doesn't usually pay out more if you're kidnapped by a difficult one. And some espers have powers that are particularly good for looting, too, my secondary's ex-partner Harvest Moon has one like that."

"Ooh, what's their power?"

"She's a telekinetic, but specifically good at drawing things to herself. It only works if they're not nailed down, but anything loose - she doesn't even have to be able to see it - she can pull out of a dungeon in a minute flat and make it all sail out the portal after her."

"Oh, that's sweet. I...think the soul garden would actively resist the effect."

"I was not proposing we enlist her to try it!"

"Sorry, I didn't think you were, just exploring my intuitions."

"It must be weird to be running so disproportionately on intuitions."

"I sure don't remember any previous mes doing it."

"What did previous yous run on?"

"Life experience, education, magic languages which are not really like intuition but are more like intuition than most things, friendship..."

"How do you run on friendship? Is it like the, the Care Bears."

Snort. "No. Running on friendship works like running on intuition, not running on mana--like, if I'm going to do X, and someone I trust says to do Y instead, so I do Y, that's running on friendship. Approximately."

"Gotcha."