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  Milo sat and rested while digesting the new information. Many of the things he had accomplished had given him contribution points. He assumed this worked for all the people in Limburger Hollow. Contribution points could be spent on many things to improve life, like food, or to gain training and favors from others. It was like quests that you didn't know about but could guess at. If it was good for the Hollow, you would be rewarded for your work and could take the rewards as needed. Many things about the Hollow clicked into place. While individuals were free to do as they liked, there was a benefit to helping others and contributing to the big picture.

  Blackwhisker and the other players treated the Hollow like a place to do some quests and gain some skills, but it was so much more. An idea was forming, one he wanted to explore. He tucked it away in a part of his head where it wouldn't get lost. He needed to do some thinking and to think he had to be doing something. Not doing anything made Milo uneasy. Luckily, he had some jobs that required little to no thinking. One of those was mining. He wandered through the Hollow and back to the mines. The cathedral was mostly empty now, the refugees had returned to their homes, and Gendifur cared for the wounded. A group of miners were clustered around the dwarves, discussing mining, of course.

  Milo pulled up a seat and sat down to listen. He noted that every miner from the Hollow now had a Dark Steel pick in their hands or back, and they all showed use. Milo remembered the old pick he'd found and how much faster and easier it had cut through rock. He shared a love of good tools with his fellow engineers, and it seemed that love was also shared by miners everywhere. He listened to the talk of opening up new shafts and bringing in the parts to assemble a subrogator to process Deep Copper and a Blast Furnace to make Dark Iron ore into Dark Steel. Limburger Hollow would get an upgrade in technology in the next few months. Master Clawhammer and Sledgemonkey seemed to have become instant friends and were discussing a multitude of new projects that the Engineers and the Hollow could work on together.

  After a bit, Milo excused himself and wandered off into the mines. Finding a large vein of Deep Copper, he started to chip away at it, slowly breaking up the ore and creating a large pile. Back in the cathedral cavern, the dwarves just nodded to each other and chuckled. Two Screws filled in Clawhammer on the joke. "He can't quit. After we let him join up, you should have seen him running around repairing old machinery. He didn't stop, and he got all of us running behind him and working just as hard. Sometimes we built things, and sometimes we blew things up." He snorted and took a deep pull on his stein of beer. "Remind me to tell you about how we blew up the entire base trying to kill a snake. Good times. That was what endeared him to us the most. All engineers like to keep working. But for him, it's like a compulsion. He feels better working and fixing things."

  Sledgemonkey chuckled. "Or breaking things. We started with a dozen old subrogators, most of which needed to be repaired. He blew two of them up trying to fix them, then used the parts we scavenged from the wreckage to fix most of the others. You have to keep an eye on him at all times."

  There was a rumble from the mines and the crash of rock. The engineer, known to some as Milo and others as Tallsqueak, came sprinting back into the cavern, pursued by a large beetle with a golden shell and sharp mandibles. Clawhammer got to his feet and yelled. "That's a Gold Borer Beetle; try not to damage the shell; lots of good metal plating on those." Milo nodded and dodged the beetle, then got his pick under the edge of the carapace and flipped it over. Three blows to the underside killed the four-foot-long beetle.

  Sledgemonkey walked over and examined the beetle. "Nice. That shell is 90% Auric and 10% tin. Good for a lot of magitech components." Then he looked at Milo and scowled. "Weren't you supposed to be taking it easy? At least you only picked a fight with a little one."

  Milo pointed back the way he came. "I broke into another cavern. Dozens of little ones and, uh...some bigger ones. Much bigger ones. I think they may be following me."

  Sledgemonkey snapped down his armor's visor and pulled out his heavy spanner as the other dwarves and miners came over and waited for the beetles to show up. Milo noticed a lot of laughing but didn't know what was so funny.