Honestly, I probably should have taken the time to take them around the ship first. I don't want them getting too scared while this young, it could make them timid. Other than being shocked, so far they seem to be doing alright in Lin's arms.

As long as either Lin or I am nearby to reassure them, they should feel safe enough. Nala and Albion on the other hand are already outside of the cave looking around. Nala probably remembers this island, so as long as they don't go far they should be fine.

"We will set up the camp here. I don't want to shock the babies too much."

Lin says "Alright, sounds good."

The first thing I do is move to the side of the cave furthest from the spring. Then I use my claws to dig into the stone and dig out a good sized fire pit. Once the pit is ready I build a nice big fire to take the chill out of the air for the babies.

While I am making the fire pit, Lin lets Mulan and Mushu down to start exploring. She stays close to them as they explore the cave and keeps a close eye on them. Once the fire is going they both make their way over and climb into the fire.

After they get into the fire they seem a lot more happy, they obviously don't like the cold. It is probably because they are still so young, once they grow up some it won't be as bad. Under normal circumstances they wouldn't have even left the nest yet.

Then again, I am not sure how things normally work with the phoenix since it is a rebirth. If the legends are true, then she wouldn't have any parents to help her normally. It makes me really curious as to how her egg ended up in the hands of the humans.

Considering she is a legendary beast, I doubt the humans defeated her and forced her into rebirth. She probably chose rebirth and then had the bad luck to have her egg discovered. Whatever the truth may be, she is here with us now and I will treat her as my kid.

Once the babies have settled down I feed them again so that they will take a nap. That way Lin only needs to keep an eye on them while I go and do some mining. Once they fall asleep I leave the cave and check on the other two who are exploring.

They are just fine and look to be enjoying themselves, so I leave them to it. I fly to the center of the island and drop down into the volcano to look for gems. The hardest part is remembering which lava tubes I already cleared out.

However, the first thing I want to do is satisfy my curiosity a little so I go all the way down. Being able to fly properly makes it so much easier to get down to the island. There is no sign of the ice anywhere, but there are a lot more ruins visible.

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From the position of the ruins I can tell that they were below the ice previously. It looks like at one point in time there was a small city here, but all that is left is foundations. I land and explore for a while, but I can't find anything to tell me the history of this place.

That is really disappointing, I was really hoping to learn something about the maker. I can't even tell if this was a city of humans or vampires, there is just not enough left. It definitely wasn't a very large city and based on the location, I am leaning towards a vampire city.

Unfortunately, unless I get into a conversation with the maker, I doubt I will ever know for sure. Since this is just a waste of time, I fly back up and enter the first lava tube I see. I may not remember which tubes I have been in, but they were all towards the top.

So, as long as I start from the bottom I should be in untouched lava tubes. However, as soon as I try to enter the first one I find, I learn that I am a little large. I can fit into the tube, but it is a tight fit and not very comfortable inside.

I shapeshift into my elven form, it is the one I have been using the most lately. As soon as I shift the tube feels a lot less cramped and I begin looking for gems. I scan around me with my mana as I follow the tube so that I don't miss anything.

When I find the first gem I stop and use my strength to rip it out of the wall. When I scan one deeper in the wall I stop and look through my pouch. I remember having mining tools but I don't remember if I kept them or not.

It turns out that I do still have a mining pick in my pouch, which saves me some work. Using the pick I dig into the wall of the tube to get the gem out and then move on. Soon I come across a lot more gems and start gathering them as I find them.

I am not sure how many gems I am going to need, so I plan to gather as many as I can find. I would prefer to gather enough so that I never have to come back to this island. In fact, if I have enough time I would like to gather every gem in this volcano.

At most, I have a time limit of five days, but I have no idea how many tubes there are. As I am thinking about how to get the most in the shortest time I suddenly come to a dead end. That doesn't make any sense, a lava tube should reach the surface, or so I thought.

If the lava isn't vented it should cool and harden, meaning no tube would be created. Come to think of it, a volcano normally only has a couple of lava tubes if I remember correctly. It is also odd for a volcano to be sunken like this, but I can't be sure since I didn't really study volcanoes.

What little I know comes from what I remember from school and what I saw in movies. So I can't even be sure if what I think I know is accurate or just made up for a movie. I don't waste any more time thinking about it and run back to the main shaft.

I only drop shapeshift long enough to fly to the next lava tube before going back into elven form. However, when I start to scan with my mana I almost end up blinded mentally. When I look again, more carefully, I find a vein of metal the glows brightly.

When I dig out a chunk from the wall to look at it physically I find that it is silver. However, it isn't normal silver, it contains way too much mana to be normal. When I use my Dragon Eyes to identify the ore it shows as Astral Silver.

From the glow when I scanned, it looks like there is a decent amount in this lava tube. The downside is that the silver glows so brightly that I can't look for gems. However, from how rich the silver is, I can definitely make use of it on the ship.