I'm trying to stay cozy in my little blanket burrito for an extra hour of rest, what is all of that racket coming from outside? It sounds like someone's trying to punch their way into the house again. Hold on, today's the end of the week, that must mean that… I've got to wake dad now!

I just got up and was stumbling through the door to the main room when the wall finally gave out with a mighty burst of debris. I just so happened to be directly in the line of fire at that exact moment, which meant that no small amount of the loose rocks came flying my way. Thankfully my scales are a bit tougher than human skin ever was, but a bop to the nose is still uncomfortable. There's Juaki’s fist coming through the wall, and once it pulled back I could see her toothy grin peeking into the den.

“Bahruk, can you let us in now? We been knocking too long and I grow tired of this waiting.”

Real classy Mom, just blow a hole in the wall then be polite like nothing about that is crazy. Dad did his strange channeling dance while I scraped up as many loose chunks as I could from the floor for him to reform back into the wall. I wish I could do that same magic, it looked like a lot of fun to just play with solid rock like it was putty. Mom swept in and scooped dad from the floor and spun around on her toes, the two of them both laughing together in gleeful harmony. Cute, but I'm not in a very smiley mood given the last time mom and I had interacted ended with one of us flexing their superior resistances on the other..

Someone was dragging something through the door, and when I saw the tall red kobold with a sack over his shoulder pulling along a huge sack with the help of a shorter multicolored kobold I let out a squeak of joy. Tokols and Humey, you're okay! They weren't able to brace themselves as I put them both into accidental chokeholds. Humey chuckled and leaned into it with a small wave of magical heat while Tokols squirmed until he was no longer being strangled, yet still he reciprocated my hug. I know it was only five days, but I missed more than they knew.

Tokols wriggled until he was back to the floor before clearing his throat with a sneaky little grin on his lips.

“It's good to see you too Kay. As you can see we are back with all our bits intact, no lost blood, or any awful disfigurement or amputations. Actually there was one amputation, but it wasn't one of us so we'll skip that. Anyway, I promised souvenirs, didn't I? Humey, if you would do the honors.”

Those inky orbs of Humey's rolled in his head as he put a hand on his hip.

“Come on, you said you'd do it. I got the bag here, you gotta open it up.”

Tokols sputtered his words, clearly not appreciating the lack of showmanship he was getting from his larger brother.

“Y-you ass! I can't lift this and you know it, also I never said…you know what? Fine. I'll show Kayrux all the cool stuff we found.”

Humey scoffed and turned away, but I could tell that he was keeping an eye on me to see my reaction. What is so interesting that you brought back that you two are fighting like this? Tokols untied the neck of the sack and began sifting through the contents while placing certain things on the counter. Rocks, plants, bones, some kind of jiggly goop, and heaps of other miscellaneous things.

The entire countertop was covered by the time he got to the halfway point, but I'd already been dumbfounded. The sheer volume of things brought back was alarming, and I had no doubt that the interesting stuff was yet to come. Mibata had arrived while the sack was being unpacked, both of us just standing here watching as most of Tokols vanished into the sack for a minute before coming back with a dark gray chunk of metal and a jar of glowing red liquid. He seemed to run out of space to put things, this began his impromptu game show rundown of these marvelous prizes.

“Check all of this out! We got monster parts, ore samples, crystals, so many different plants…um, slime stuff, leftover potion jars, spices and things to try, and even a cool sword that Humey found stabbed in a creature. Lots of cool stuff, lots of neat things, and some tasty stuff too.”

Humey stepped closer and learned at him, a smug grin on that snake face.

“Tasty stuff, eh? Tell her about the moss.”

A shiver ran down Tokols’ spine as his eyes stared straight ahead.

“We found moss.”

The red scaled kobold leaned down to be eye level with his brother, his voice turning to one of mockery.

“What kind of moss Tok? Tasty~ moss?”

Something in the chameleon colored scout snapped, his eyes squeezing shut as he took in a deep breath before explaining what exactly was going on between them.

“I…yes. We found tasty mosses, and bad mosses. I'd rather not-”

Humey could no longer take it and began chortling.

“Tokols ate poop moss.”

Tokols let his head go limp and hang at his chest while Humey burst out laughing. I must have misheard, but did he just say poop moss? I looked at Mibata who was just as confused, so we just shrugged to each other and let this play out. Tokols snarled in vicious anger, but somehow managed to not tear at his brother's throat.

“And whose fault is that? Maybe it was the guy who asked his scout brother to go on ahead and see what he could find after just asking him to keep on the lookout for new ingredients! I was trying to do both at the same time, and you’re mocking me for it!”

“Course I’m gonna mock you about it, we round the corner and find you lying sick to your stomach next to a patch of brown moss that clearly has a bite taken out of it. It was funny then, it’s still funny now.”

“Oh yeah, then how come it isn’t funny when you took a taste of it as well? I saw you sneak a little lick of it to see what was so awful about it, but nobody gave you any shit!”

“I’m an explorer, it’s my job to learn stuff. Also I didn’t take a whole bit out of some moss I found lying on the floor, I took samples and used a poison detector on it before taking a simple taste of the unknown plant.”

“Admit it, you’re just acting this way because you liked the taste and don’t want anybody to know!”

“Tok, half the crew said it didn’t taste that bad when I asked them to taste test it, and the other half just called it bitter. You’re the only one who keeps saying it tastes that bad.”

“Because it is, it tastes like-”

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A crack of a whip-like tail silenced them both, as it seemed that Mibata had heard enough. Their petty argument was amusing, but it felt like it was about to loop back to the beginning again if someone didn’t intervene. Mibata stalked close to both of them and tilted his head from one to the other, those narrow and inquisitive eyes asking them silent questions they couldn’t hear.

“Tokols, please do not continue this argument. You are right in your own way, but you cannot convince others to share your view. Humey, it is impolite to continue this harassment. I know you are only doing so due to your extended period of closeness on your expedition. Regardless of what this vegetation does or does not resemble to your palates, I am sincerely glad to see you both home alive and unharmed. I was…worried about you two.”

Humey and Tokols shared a half confused and half knowing look, then scooped him up in a two-front hug that pinned his arms and tail to his side. He didn’t resist it, though his face told that he both enjoyed this and wished to be free. You three are such goofballs. Humey leaned in close and whispered something to Mibata, who responded with a deep sigh.

“Yes Humey, I will taste test a sample you collected. I will not share my thoughts on the matter.”

Tokols backed away aghast at what he had heard, but a certain cockiness snapped in place as he realized how to spin this around.

“I knew it! You did bring some home so you could eat it, you lying sack of scales!”

Humey rolled his eyes as he produced a bag lined with little glass jars of different plant samples of every color. He plucked at a certain dirt colored jar and uncorked it, his lips moving on their own as he grumbled his reply.

“Duh, how else am I gonna grow these into a proper spice garden? Gotta get samples to make into growing beds, just like Tuleni said we could.”

The color drained from Tokols as understanding hit him over the head like a brick.

“No. No! You are not growing the poop moss in our dorm! You’re not growing it anywhere! That stuff is nasty and doesn’t need to-”

Mibata placed a hand over his mouth to silence him while he himself took an exploratory lick of the somewhat dry looking plant. He pondered the sensation for a moment, then looked to me with a curious glance.

“Kayrux, perhaps your expanded and otherworldly palate might be able to comprehend this flavor.”

He held out the scrap of moss for me to try as well, and without thinking I licked it immediately. I recognized the smell and the taste, but there was a certain wrongness to it that bothered me. Spicy and earthy, bitter and hot, but also smoky and rich with a depth that held onto my tongue in a stubborn way. Weird, it’s almost like a super-rich curry powder without any of the powder. I could see it being made into something good with chicken and rice if we had either of them, but on its own I wouldn’t bother with it. I turned my slate for them to see with a brief summary of how this reminded me of Earth food from another country, and also put in my opinion that if we could grow more it might have other uses for smoking meats.

Humey clapped his hands together and snatched the sample back from Mibata without damaging it.

“I knew you’d have the same idea! Hey dad, can we make a growing room for spices? Kay says we could grow this moss to make some kind of spicy dish.”

Okay, first off I never said that we could, only that it was like curry powder. Second, I didn’t know that this was just something you’d be doing with our house out of the blue. And third, it looked like Tokols was about to die inside from this sudden development. Poor guy will probably never trust another dish we make ever again.

Well now that Humey and dad are off digging out a new room already, and with Tokols and Mibata having a little sit down in the communal pit, that left me alone with the mountain and a half of deep tunnel loot while mom kept stocking things on the shelves behind me and in the treasure room hidden behind the wall. Let’s see just what goodies they found down in the deeper parts of this world. I guess since it’s the most abundant thing, I should look into the monster parts. We’ve got ribs, femurs, teeth and exoskeletons, as well as a collection of skulls and claws of many strange things I hoped to never meet in person. Macabre, and not my sort of things to play around with.

Next I dug around through the plant, of which were many I had never seen before. As I picked each one up I set my scanners loose on them as well to garner their mana content to compare to the veggies we had in the kitchen. As I’d hoped, these deep plants had many similarities with their surface cousins, but their mana content was a whole league above them in most cases. I’ll call these magic plants deep roots, and I’m going to have them set aside on a high shelf away from the scuttling menace that is Tim.

Okay, so how about these ore samples? The first few were actually quite easy to identify: very poor raw iron, thin lines of silver, malachite which is just copper minerals, and more nickel and aluminum. These next ones were just a guess, but were these some tin and lead nuggets? Weird but useful. These last two were the real oddballs. One was a hefty two-hand filling chunk of metal that was dark gray and weighed quite a bit, and the other was a lustrous cube-ish silver-red metal. Actually, these metals seem to be a little enriched right now, so I’ll just go ahead and drain their power.

This weight, this color…was this tungsten and titanium? Holy shit, what are both of these metals doing here and in such dense chunks? If there’s more stuff like this down in the depths, then I’m going to need to join up on the next expedition with a cart for hauling as much of this as I can! These chunks were hefty, almost as big as my arm, and were already quite pure as far as I could tell, but this much would only get me so far. Oh my gosh, now that I had these I could go ahead and make that weapon I’d designed for Humey!

Hold your horses me, you need to look at the rest of their haul as well to see what other things they brought back. There was mention of crystals and a sword, so there might be something new to learn there as well. Finding the crystals was easy, but it looked like the sword was still tucked in the bag. It can wait, I want to see what gems they got their mitts on.

Yellows, oranges, pinks and reds, and even a shard of what was clearly obsidian glass as big around as my hand. I don’t remember the names for half of these gems, but I knew a diamond when I saw it. Look at you, you gorgeous little stone. I can’t wait to learn what magical things you can do, or what sort of shapes you can be made into. Whoah, was that me thinking there, or was the lizard brain trying to activate the hoarding instincts? No alarms from Charles, so I guess it’s just me doing that this time.

I set all of the gems aside and locked onto the sword shaped bulge in the sack lying on the ground, and even from here I could smell and see the mana dancing around the shape of the blade. Okay sword thing, you better just be magic and not cursed or I’m going to have Humey melt you into a puddle. I carefully wrapped my hand around it, but since neither my mana nor the sword’s mana seemed to react I could probably assume that meant we were in the clear. Huh, this thing feels weird in my hand. Scanners, what metal is this?

Metal unknown, scan failed.

Maybe you’re not a scanner rune but a state-the-obvious rune. A practice swing was in order, but before I could try that I was forced to let go of the handle as the blade took off the moment I tried to raise it and bounced off of the ceiling, then sort of spun in place before falling to the ground. That’s not normal, not in any way I could think of. I picked it back up and tried to do the same action again, and it felt as though any effort I made to move it was met with a feeling that the blade was trying to use every bit of movement to keep going forwards, so stopping it was more difficult as a result.

I managed to get the blade level and performed a few practice thrusts and slashes, and my understanding of what it was doing grew slowly. Every ounce of kinetic energy I gave it was going to be used, and opposing that energy was made more difficult by some sort of effect the mana had on it. On the topic of mana, it felt as though there were two different sources of mana in this blade: one that was the metal itself, and another that was in some kind of pattern along the length of one of the flat sides. Those were words, but not in any language I knew. Wait a second, this is an enchanted blade! No wonder it feels so weird, someone’s enchantment is playing around with the way it handles whenever I try to use it.

Hmm…a blade that focuses on driving forwards and using all of the energy supplied, and seems to be honed to a fine point as opposed to a slashing edge. Some kind of power thrust weapon, one that is made to crack through armor and hit all the squishy organs inside with the little barbs at the base. I’ll just call you the stabber for now and tuck you away in the armory at work. Oh crap, how much time do I have before work? Oh crap, I’ve got to go!

I quickly moved to Mibata and informed him of our lateness, to which he replied by leaving the bowl with a forward somersault. Damn son, that’s impressive. Alright, I’ve got my metals and sword in one hand and my Tim in the other. I waved goodbye to everyone else as Bahruk came running as well so he wouldn’t be late either. Mom looks disappointed, and I’m sure she wants to say something to me, but it can wait just one more day. I flashed her an apologetic smile as I turned to leave, hoping that she wouldn’t be sad all day while I was gone.