An air duct with a 24" diameter was not someplace to be shooting through head first at 30 feet per second. Part of Milo's brain was calculating the risk, while another part calculated his chance at survival if any part of the duct had collapsed or changed. Mostly, Milo ignored those parts of his head and enjoyed the trip through the bowels of the habitat. He had thinking to do, and he couldn't think if he was sitting still. He had been racing through tunnels for most of the day, testing his new suit and fixing problems. Several topics kept swapping for the front of his mind: What to do about Section H and how it was infringing on his section? What to do in the game? What did he want to eat today? What did the problems with the excavators mean? And most importantly, what was his favorite Anime?

He had looked at the data from the excavators and was puzzled. The machines had all stopped working after constructing tunnels down to the exact same depth and then stopped after hitting something they couldn't tunnel through. The machines were equipped with sensors that would detect wires, pipelines, tunnels, rail systems, and any other man-made structure underneath the surface. This wasn't any of those and was a non-metallic substance. The excavators could grind through granite, basalt, and quartzite, but not whatever they had encountered. Milo would have to make the dangerous trip down to the excavators through the unstable tunnels to access the problem. It was low-priority but nagging at him. He didn't like mysteries of this sort.

He decided that dinner would be something called a 'melt.' There were all types of recipes using vat-grown chicken, fish, and vegetables. The recipes all called for toasted bread, something on top of the bread, and cheese. Milo didn't have any of the other ingredients, so he decided he would have a 'cheddar melt' with bread, slices of cheddar cheese, and melted Limburger on top of the cheddar. He was looking forward to it and thinking about other ways to make cheese sandwiches when he ran out of tunnel. Blame it on his stomach.

His memory said he had another 200 feet until the tunnel he was on turned. His eyes told him he was shooting out of the tunnel and into open space. Someone had constructed another Big Drop in Section H! He was surprised for just a fraction of a second as his mind struggled to get rid of thoughts of dinner, and dinner argued with him. That was when he slammed into the cable suspended in the middle of the drop. He twisted in mid-air to avoid hitting it head-on and wrapped his tail around the cable several times to keep him from falling off. His tail also argued with him, and he found another error in the design of his outfit. This one was causing his tail to only receive partial data from his nervous system. His tail wrapped around the greased cable but not tight enough to slow him. He hung in place for a second, took in the situation, and fell 30' to the elevator rising underneath him.

He'd had other solutions. He could have pushed off hard from the cable, but the chance of a lousy trajectory from the greased line gave him a high probability of not making it back to a wall. His claws could have dug into the cable to give him a secure grim, but that had the problem of cutting into the cable. A whipping strand of wire under high tension could tear off a limb, and if the line snapped, he would send the elevator to crash below. Simply falling on the roof of the elevator was the easiest solution. He managed to land on two feet and roll to absorb some of the impact, trying not to fall off the edge of the car. He didn't think he had broken any bones, but it took a full minute to regain his breath and regulate it. His wheelie board was lost somewhere below.

Milo heard voices beneath him in the elevator. His loud thump had caused some anxiety among the passengers, and it was time to leave. The distance from the elevator car's edge to the shaft's surface was only a few feet on one side. Milo spotted an air vent and leaped to it. It was a moment's work to undo the bottom screws, flip it up, and disappear into the tunnel. A moment later, the elevator stopped, and someone came out of the emergency hatch to look at the top of the car and see if there was damage. When the report was written, it stated that a piece of unknown debris had fallen in the shaft, bounced off the top of the car, and fell to the shaft's bottom. The end of the shaft already had such a huge accumulation of trash and similar debris that no one would bother going down to figure out what had fallen. When nothing else was found to be loose in the shaft, it became one more story told about by the engineers trying to repair section H.

Milo decided that was enough repairs for the day. He worked his way to a larger service tunnel and made his way home. He needed to fix the glitches in his equipment, start looking through the work in Section H and update his maps. That was going to be a continuous process from now on. He couldn't afford any more surprises. He was disappointed in himself for getting sidetracked in the first place. He had too many things on his mind. He needed to finish jobs and narrow his focus.

Before starting his dinner and getting side-tracked by which cheese to eat, he set up 12 monitors to each play a popular anime for five minutes. If he weren't interested by then, it would skip to the next. He had promised Yumi he would find things he wanted to watch. That seemed to be the easiest way to sort through things. He turned the sound off and found subtitled versions. Reading fast was easy, but he couldn't listen to a jumble of voices, songs, and sound effects.

An hour later, he turned it all off and cleared his mind for a quarter-hour, pushing some images into his mental trashcan. It was time to reset his parameters. Anything with horror bothered him. Not the creatures themselves (mostly). It was the rest of the people in the anime. Why were people walking around unarmed with monsters around? Why did people freeze and let themselves be captured? They should be hiding! Why did so few people know how to fight? And what was up with tentacle creatures??!! He enjoyed the giant robots fighting tentacle creatures and monsters more. At least someone had some common sense to build a giant robot to fight monsters. He finally narrowed his picks to three stories to take and watch with Yumi and downloaded them to a drive.

After eating a tasty sandwich of melted cheese and cheese, He started his last task: Deciding how to spend his points in the game.

He made a list of what he wanted and the costs, not worrying about a budget.

Smugglers Stash four and Smuggler's Summoning seemed essential in the long run. The more he could carry with him, the more self-sufficient he could be. Being able to summon an item without opening the entire chest made the hidden storage even better. That was 30 points. It was a unique skill, and no one knew he had it. It went on his 'Must Have' list.

Increasing his claw and tail damage would be 30 points. Was that something to work on now? He could wait and earn more points next tier. Or buy only the Claw upgrade and save 20 points?

Shadow Skulking for three levels was 9 points. This seemed too good to pass up. It made both his stealth and his disguise abilities better. Brutus and Justin had shown him that as he progressed, more and more people like the two guards would have skills to catch people like him hiding in the shadows. And Normal Human looked very powerful. But how much would he be in the upper world and needing that disguise? Still, for 10 points, it seemed very good.

He had three new skills he could buy. BoomBoom would never speak to him again if he didn't take Demolitions. But did he want Poisoner or Diplomacy? Each was 5 points. Maybe if he had extra points. Diplomacy meant talking to people and not fighting; he was pretty sure. He was better with logical arguments when both people knew the rules. But Diplomacy was a skill using CHA or INT. So he could take the skill and rely on his INT to convince people or take it as a CHA skill to raise that stat. And CHA gave him more mana. He thought of what Cremona could do with her class and spells. A poison aspect for mana wasn't on his list. Did she have one? He needed to bring her a nice cup of tea one night and ask for some answers.

If he were going to explore more, then 8 points for the language skills would be well spent. Both Under Linguist and Grunt and Throw Hands looked useful. Thinking about going back to exploring made him curious about so many things. The mysterious holes covered by illusion, the vast cavern below the Engineering outpost, and the strange locked door leading to a stairway down from the hidden tunnels he had found. The Hollow had taught him a lot, and he'd always come back to it, just like the outpost. But he missed being on his own. He missed making small camps with just him and his lizard. Georgie hadn't been out to play in ages. He should buy the pet skills to make him larger. A good watch lizard was invaluable when he was on his own.

Toughness was a must. Three points would cost 12 points, a bargain. Being able to shrug off damage the way the dwarves did had kept him alive more than once. His constant fighting with Larry had let him gain some levels in TOU, but he would take all he could get. It took a high level of punishment to gain experience in the stat. He understood the dwarves' fixation on machines like the Hurl and Puke. Sparring with Gilad hadn't done it. But Larry's insane strength and damage had given him some each night, and Cremona had helped his Strong Poison Resistance. Strong Disease Resistance was also an option, but he had encountered so few times where he needed it that he took it off the list. He had barely leveled Weak Disease Resistance.

That was 12 points, and the pet skills Guardian Pet 1 and 2 were seven points.

He was up to 96 points already. He could afford to pick up 13 points of stats with what was left. The stats he used most were DEX and INT. But both AGI and CON would keep him alive longer if he got into trouble. CHA and WIS were more mana, but he could also take the skills that increased his mana. Was 57 CSP worth it for 1000 mana? That was a 40% increase in mana. And another 57 would buy him 1000 health. That was cutting into his skills.

He wanted everything, but he wasn't going to get it. He needed the stats to make the same Milestone requirements as last time: one point in INT and three in DEX. PER was next for three points. He'd skip CHA but take Diplomacy. More health was good, and so was mana. Would he get better spells? Those would cost more mana; he was already running dry in many fights. He took the other two points of INT. He could buy the first three levels of extra mana for 22 points and gain 300 mana. Each level increased in cost and benefit, so starting now seemed wise. But that meant he had to drop something; he was four points over. He felt terrible dropping Guardian Pet. He could work on mana later. He bought Extra Mana 1 and 2 for seven points. He then used the remaining 8 to buy two points of CHA. That would also give him extra mana and double his poor CHA skill. He had his list; now, he'd let things sit for a day or two while his subconscious mulled things over. Things were quiet in the Hollow, and there was no hurry to spend the points.

His last task for the day was done, and Milo decided to get a little sleep. He'd check on his fabricators in the morning, meet up with Yumi, and then head back to the Hollow. He could use a quiet day for a change.