I was waiting for the expedition group in the early morning at the road crossing that headed towards George’s house. My mace and two-handed sword were in my tattoo storage with the rest of my regular items like my bow.

I was wearing standard leather gear that was already a bit short. For today’s weapon, I chose a spear that I could throw to hopefully end the battle before it even began. There shouldn't be any dangerous creatures I can’t kill but you never know. I have also found that spears seem to be better for exploration as you can use them as a walking stick and push branches away from yourself while walking in the forest.

I haven’t interacted with dwarves much but here came six of them with three humans. From the looks of it, they weren’t travelling any slower than humans, which was good news. I was already almost a head taller than the tallest human that approached so the dwarves were quite short compared to me.

“Greetings Rich we are glad that you have the time to escort us on this fine day. My name is Orik Stonesearcher.” Greeted a dwarf that I would call middle age, but it was hard to tell as they had a lot of facial hair.

“Greetings to you all as well,” I said and proceeded to shake everyone’s hands and learn their names. While the dwarves were short shaking their hands wasn't like shaking a children’s hand. Even compared to the humans here, their hands were quite big. I also felt a lot of mass in their bodies which probably meant that their bones and muscles were denser than humans. I can understand why they would feel so comfortable living inside mountains. They were quite well built for it.

I looked at the expedition leader and asked out of curiosity. “Stonesearcher, that’s kind of a on the nose name.” I was glad to see that the question didn’t insult him but instead made him straighten in pride.

“You might not know this Rich but for us dwarves to be named after the thing that we are the best in is quite an honour. More generations in my family than I can name have been quite good at searching out stones and minerals and eventually, my family came to have that last name that fits our particular skill set.” The dwarf said in a proud voice, and I could see the other dwarves being proud of their leader.

“Now one thing that you have to be careful about with the dwarves is that one Stonesearcher might not be related to another. It’s a complicated system but for us dwarves it works. You can never presume friendship with a dwarf based on his name. If you make that mistake it can be bad. It has even caused a few wars between kingdoms just because of a simple mistake of presuming friendship.” Orik Stonesearcher explained while we started to walk down the road.

The topic quickly changed from family names and war to the mountains ahead where hopefully there will be metals that we can use. When I expressed this to the others they just scuffed and waved their hands at me in dismissal.

“Rich you don't actually think that we're heading this way out of simple convenience as this is the closest road to a nearby mountain. All of us have abilities or traits that help us find metal and rock. We at least know that there is iron in these mountains and quite a lot of it. The question is what else can we find and at what rank.” The expedition leader explained.

That was good news and made me smile as we will need a lot of metal to get our town built and army equipped. The walk down the road was pleasant and filled with conversations about possible mining locations as we reached closer and closer towards the mountains.

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I had to suppress my grimace when they started to comment on the road. “We will have to do something about this road. Look at those holes. I can still see some stump roots sticking out. We will either have to deliver small loads of metal or do something about this road.” One of the dwarves eventually commented.

Like everyone else, I nodded along but I noticed Orik was quiet, probably knowing who made this road. But I was still a bit disappointed as it took a lot of work to make the road as good as it currently is. The criticism of my road continued for a long time but luckily when we reached the bridge, they found a new target to talk about.

“The bridge will also need to be rebuilt but it can handle a lot more than the road and isn't a priority.” commented another dwarf but he was soon interrupted by a human. “I can sense iron down the river in a weird concentration.”

I looked where he was pointing and quickly figured out, he was directly pointing towards the iron oak.” Oh yes, there’s a small iron vein there on my land that I have been using for my own needs. The river has cut straight through a small hill and exposed the vein which is probably why you are sensing that weird concentration.” I answered while trying to keep my face from betraying anything. They accepted my explanation quickly enough and went back to examining the bridge. After a short while, we continued to walk.

George was not at home, so we just continued forward now leaving the road. The walk to the mountain was uneventful except I was able to learn a lot of curse words in Dwarven. The forest got quite thick along the way before it started to thin out when they got close to the mountain and no one liked that, as it meant a lot of work to make a decent road. It seems that dwarves can be quite vocal while expressing displeasure and their low voices made curse words sound quite menacing which I liked.

When we reached the point that we had to climb I was able to surprise the expedition who were all excellent climbers and were worried that they needed to help me, but they didn’t as I was able to keep up with them easily.

It was interesting to watch their abilities work. I was more used to seeing abilities that worked in a small area, but these abilities spread out to cover huge distances. The first search didn't bring the expected results as only a few smaller veins were found that weren’t too interesting.

Instead of climbing higher, which I expected us to do instead we headed at the same elevation towards the north. “There’s no point in heading up just yet, the best chance to find metals is at the base of the mountain and bringing metals down from a mountain isn’t as easy as you think. Let's hope that we find a decent vein at this elevation.” Explained Orik Stonesearcher. We hadn’t reached the location that they wanted to before Orik stopped us.

He climbed a bit higher and started to knock on the stone wall there. Everyone indicated for me to just wait, and we did that for a few minutes before we heard a shout of happiness. “It's Alvrik and a lot of it,” He yelled towards us. Turns out that is a rank one stone that is quite famous for it its durability. Apparently, there is enough of it for a few castles. That made everyone smile, including me.

I marked this location on my map while others took out pencils and paper and a few other objects and started to work. It took them about 30 minutes to mark down this location accurately and leave a small beacon which they could find again. We then continued our original route and once again I was able to observe as they use their large area of effect abilities. Almost immediately three of them jumped up in joy and the others quickly followed.

There was a massive iron vein way bigger than they expected. It also apparently had some gemstones inside it and a few other metals, but they were sparse compared to the iron. This time it took them an hour and we had to travel quite a lot to find the exact extent of the iron vein. Deeper in the vein they detected first-rank iron, but they won’t know what kind of first-rank iron it was until they were able to get closer, but they will not be able to do that this time around.

We once again moved north and stopped near a river when they started to use their abilities again. They were less happy this time as the veins here were smaller, but they did find other metals like copper, tin, lead and a bit of silver but that was in too low concentration to be worth mining. I was more interested in the river itself. At first glance, it seemed normal but there were salt crystals on the vegetation near it. Tasting the water, it was incredibly salty.