"Hey Fire!" freeZe said, then added: "You are quite early today."

TehLulz commented: "But as always you are the last one of us."

"Guess what I found today?" Fire asked.

Everyone was looking at him as if they knew the answer even before he asked the question.

"I mean how many I found." He corrected himself.

Ambigious guessed: "Let's say fifty?"

Fire chuckled: "Fifty? Ambigious, not even I have that amount of luck, it was only one vein."

freeZe made the second guess: "One vein you say? Hmm, about fifteen?"

"That was close."

"Twenty?"

"Exactly!"

With these words Fire reached down his pocked and pulled the diamonds out and threw them into the campfire.

Unchosen stared into the fire and said: "They are not being destroyed, are they?"

TehLulz answered: "Nope, we do that to burn the sandbasalt fragments off the gems, they sell better if they are clean. By the way, does anyone have coal?"

Ambigious replied: "No, didn't find any. I swear coal is the rarest thing in this quarry."

Fire looked double checked his inventory. "None on me either."

freeZe handed her brother some coal and said: "Here you go."

Ambigious took the coal and threw it into the fire to raise its temperature.

"May I ask a question?" Unchosen asked.

TehLulz resisted the urge to say "You just did." He instead said: "Go ahead."

"How does the money work in the Quarry?"

TehLulz asked Fire: "Fire, could you explain that?"

Fire cleared his throat and begun: "For everything that you mine there is a base value. If your diamonds are clean you get more and if they are dirty and have to be processed before you can make them into tools you get far less. Sandbasalt has as good as no value, but you still get at least something by selling it. Lapis Lazuli is worth a lot, the blue is much stronger than the blue from lapis found outside. One redstone gem is worth significantly more than one unit of redstone dust. With that money you can buy pickaxes, food or supplies for lighting a fire. There is no physical currency, the hackers keep track of everyone's balance themselves. They usually track it on a per-firegroup basis."

Unchosen nodded and answered: "I understand."

Fire continued explaining: "Every week we change who is responsible for selling mined resources and buying food and tools. It is my turn in the next week, which starts tomorrow. The Shop Guy doesn't like me very much, he is jealous that the admins gave me those powers."

freeZe said with a little spark of anger in her voice: "It is just unfair that they give you the worst prices, Fire, and of course me the best. Because… well, you all know why!"

Awkward silence followed, only Ambigious was trying to resist grinning but failed, he made a sound that sounded like suppressed laughter, then he started laughing for real, which resulted in everybody in the firegroup looking at him.

He calmed down and asked: "Is he really giving you the pretty girl bonus?"

freeZe answered: "You know, it's taking all of my willpower not to punch you right now."

"Punch him, not me!" Ambigious said and defensively raised his hands.

freeZe replied: "I might if he makes another remark."

Ambigious replied: "Oh, if he does that we beat him up together. Though I wouldn't be of much help there, I think you have that front covered with your kung fu or whatever martial art it is you're doing."

TehLulz asked: "Are the diamonds done?"

"I think so." Fire replied.

Unchosen was still staring into the fire and asked half-loudly: "How are you getting them out of there?"

Instead of answering, Fire reached into the flames, formed a bowl with his hands around the diamonds and took most of them out of the fire, then reached in again to pick the rest of the gems out between the bits of glowing coal and ash.

Unchosen stared at Fire, clearly surprised. "Did you just reach into the campfire without being burned?"

Fire was cooling his hands with his breath and answered: "One of the perks of being me, resistance to heat and fire, I won't survive a bath in lava but I am fireproof."

"I can imagine that can come in handy. That's one hell of an advantage."

"Yes. But if you would have seen what the admins did in the early stages of development when they were testing you would be more impressed."

Ambigious had calmed down from his previous fit of laughter and wanted to know: "Should we smelt the ores now or should we wait?"

TehLulz threw his iron and gold ores to the floor, so did everyone else, this was the way of saying "Let's smelt them!" It was the first smelting round for Unchosen so he didn't know. He just threw them because everyone else did. Fire took one of his pickaxes and started digging straight down in one place, this was where they had their furnaces, hidden away from others.

His voice could be heard out of the hole he dug: "Throw them down."

TehLulz pushed the ores down into the furnace room. The furnace room was a small room with nine furnaces in it. Fire distributed the ores so that they could be smelted the fastest, if he had any coal to smelt them with...

"Coal please!" He said.

A few seconds later he saw freeZe's face appear at the top of the hole, only the eyes were shining out, her face and hair had almost the same color as the night sky, almost a bit darker.

She threw some coal down and asked: "Is that enough?"

"Maybe, let me look!"

He put some coal in the fuel space of the furnace and saw that it was enough.

"Yes, it's enough, lighter pl… wait, just found mine."

With those words Fire pulled a flint and steel out of an inside pocket and lit the coal on fire, the room started heating up instantly, Fire took some blocks and jump-pillared up the hole he made. Once he was at the top, he sat down on his block again. The others were meanwhile discussing something.

TehLulz said: "…and what if you ask your mining group if you could mine with your firegroup for one day? Mine said it is ok."

freeZe replied: "I don't see why not."

Fire joined the conversation: "Oh are we doing a firegroup mining day tomorrow? Where? Should we start a new row?"

TehLulz said: "Well… We thought of going to your area, is that okay with you?"

"Of course it is." He paused and then asked: "Unchosen, have you been at the crater already?"

He replied: "No."

"Okay, then we'll do some lava mining, freeZe, could you ask for permission to use a diamond pickaxe and water buckets?"

freeZe asked in an unwilling tone: "Why exactly me?"

Fire glanced at Ambigious, turned back to freeZe and said: "I'm afraid we'll need a pretty girl bonus to get that permission. I know he won't grant it to me."

Ambigious was about to laugh again but this time he could keep himself from exploding.

"Okay, I'll ask..."

TehLulz said: "Hey, hey, you know what just came to my mind?"

Everyone asked at the same time: "What?"

"Tomorrow Fire will have been here for exactly one year."

Fire scratched his head with slightly extended claws.

Fire said: "Yes, you are right…" then, quite unlike himself, he shouted "World Record!" so loudly that the whole quarry could hear it and everybody in the firegroup started laughing.