I'm unable to penetrate the barrier with my clairvoyance, but I can see through it just fine with my eyes. Unlike everywhere else we've been in this pyramid, the room in front of us seems completely untouched by time. It's the smallest room I've seen thus far, but its contents seem to more than make up for that.

There are several pieces of furniture, including a few chairs and tables, as well as bookshelves and a desk. But more important than furniture, there are books and weapons; there's even a small wooden chest in the corner! Illuminating everything is something that looks like a glass ball floating in the middle of the room, which is releasing golden light.

"Whoa, look at all of that stuff! I wonder what's in that chest?!"

Mama laughs, "I rarely see you this excited."

"In my previous life, this was the kind of stuff we had. Well, most people didn't own those types of weapons, but almost everybody that I knew had books and furniture."

"What are 'books and furniture'?" asks Mama.

"Those are books," I say as I point at some books, "they are made out of something called 'paper', people use them to transfer information. And furniture is what those things that the books are on are called. Those are furniture as well." I point at the chairs and the chest.

Mama nods, "Did you live in places like this?" she gestures to the room in front of us.

"Close, but not exactly. It's kind of hard to explain..."

"Do not worry about it."

"Ok, I'm going to try and disable the barrier."

"Be careful, do not hurt yourself."

As I send my consciousness toward the symbols on the floor, I ready myself for what's coming next. I feel the impact from their defenses, and it's much stronger this time! After a few minutes of wrestling with the defenses, I start feeling fatigued and realize I'm going to need a rest. At the same time, I feel like the symbols' defenses have also gotten weaker. After a few more minutes, I sit down, panting.

"Are you okay? You did not hurt yourself, did you?" asks Mama.

"I'm alright, I just need to rest for a while. I weakened the barrier just now, so I should be able to break it eventually."

Mama seems relieved. Without warning, she sits down, picks me up, and places me on her lap. It seems I'm stuck here, so I curl up and close my eyes.

After an hour or so of rest, I feel good as new. Like that, I make another attempt to break the defenses every hour. Between each attempt, the defenses seem to repair themselves a bit. It's not enough to be worried about, but it is an interesting property. The symbols act a lot like math, as they seem to be able to add, subtract, multiply, etc. each other, but there also seems to be symbols that tell other symbols what to do, like little supervisors. I've never really gotten into coding before, but the symbols act similar to how I would imagine computer code would. The more I study these symbols, the more they intrigue me...

Whoosh!

"Haha, I got it!"

After several days of effort, I have finally broken the barrier!

As I'm about to enter the room, Mama steps in front of me and sternly states, "I walk in front, Lyna."

"Ah, sorry, I forgot."

After stepping around the room and nudging a few things, she finally seems satisfied and gestures me in. Walking in, I immediately jump on the desk, which has some books lying on it. I flip through the pages of one of the books as best I can with no hands.

"Of course..."

I mean, I already expected it, but the books are most certainly not written in English. I raise my head to look around the room again.

"Whoa!"

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Over beside the weapons, I see Mama with a huge halberd that's about a foot taller than she is!

"Mama, you look so awesome!"

"What is 'awesome'?"

"It means you look super cool!"

"Do I? Haha, I chose this weapon then! Do you know what it is called?"

"It's called a halberd."

"Halberd... I like this weapon!"

Given my current form, I can't really handle a weapon effectively, so I walk over to the chest in the corner instead. As I reach the chest, I thoroughly scan it with my clairvoyance. Confident that there are no traps, I finally try to open it. It doesn't have a lock on it, so I'm able to flip the lid open easily.

Peering inside, I see lots of miscellaneous objects. Most of it is either jewelry or other accessories, such as gloves or hats. I grab a simple looking wire necklace with a silver star on it, and try sending my consciousness into it. Nothing. I hand it to Mama.

"Mama, can you try sending some energy into this?" Mama accepts the necklace and tries channeling energy through it.

Mama shakes her head, "Nothing."

Mama hands it back to me and continues swinging her halberd around. As I'm examining the necklace, I remember something I've read in books before.

"Well, can't hurt to try."

I bite my paw.

'Ouch! What am I saying, of course it would hurt to try!'

Under Mama's slightly distressed gaze, I drip some blood on the necklace. Almost as soon as the blood makes contact with it, the necklace actually absorbs the blood! Soon after, I hear a voice in my head. It doesn't sound particularly human; more like a robot talking to me. But what shocks me is, it's speaking in English!

"A translator?!"

It says it's a device that can translate anything it hears to a language that the user can understand, and it will translate your words back as well.

'So basically a universal translator?'

My foolish grin must have worried Mama, as she asks me what is wrong.

I put the necklace on and say, "Mama, could you try talking to me in bloodcat language?"

"Like this?" she asks.

"Did you really speak bloodcat just now?"

Mama looks shocked, "You can speak bloodcat as well?"

Laughing, I show her the necklace, "It's this, it translates words!"

"What is 'translate'?"

"Translate is like, turn something you can't understand into something that you can."

Mama nods her head, "That sounds like it could be useful."

"Here Mama, drip a drop of blood on this." I hand her a star necklace as well.

Mama slashes her finger with the tip of her halberd and drips some blood on the necklace.

'Mama, should you really be doing that with a weapon you just found in an abandoned pyramid?'

I grab another item out of the chest. It's a simple silver ring this time. I drip some blood on it, and it narrates its use in the same robotic voice.

"WHAT?! Storage item? Like an inventory?!"

Startled, Mama looks at me, "Lyna, what are you shouting about so suddenly? You surprised me."

"Watch!" I grab a chair and, willing it with my mind, it disappears!

"Ahahaha! This is awesome!" I shout.

"Where did that furniture go?" asks Mama, confused.

"Ah, it's called a chair. The chair went inside of this ring!" I show her the ring.

"You can store items in that ring?"

I nod my head and give her a nearly identical silver ring. She drips some blood on it and then proceeds to excitedly gather up all of the weapons in the room. I can barely hold back my laughter. She then proceeds to drip blood onto her halberd.

"Lyna, I can channel energy through this weapon!"

Suddenly the head of the halberd start glowing bright red. I try to give her a thumbs up, but then I remember I don't have thumbs. I dejectedly give her a 'cool, Mama' and then we continue dripping blood on things.

Out of the rest of the items, Mama found a pair of gloves that make her grip stronger. She seemed pretty happy with those. She also found a couple silver necklaces with flat blue pendants hanging from them that allow you to use your energy to generate a shield around yourself. She tried to giving them both to me, but I asked her what I would do with two of them. Finally convincing her to keep one, we continued searching.

Though most of the rest of the items were trinkets with limited use such as fire starters, glowing orbs and some sort of obnoxious noise-making device, there was one other item that was more valuable. It was a wooden bracelet that actually converts your energy into water! Mama tried to make me take it, but I insisted she take it, since I don't even need water.

I look at my reflection in the creek. Around my neck are three necklaces; a golden chain, and two simple wire necklaces with pendants adorning them. The golden chain is, of course, the Eggshell, and the two wire necklaces are the translator necklace and the shield necklace.

We found eight storage rings total, so me and Mama each took four. But since I don't really have appropriate fingers for the rings, I asked Mama to put mine on the shield necklace, leaving the blue pendant with two silver rings on either side of it.

Mama similarly chose to hang her storage rings on her shield necklace, "Now we're matching." she said.

As for the storage rings, after taking all of the furniture from the room, I deduced that they could hold a normal sized house easily. Each of them!

"All of this jewelry, I feel so rich!"

"What is 'jewelry' and 'rich'?" asks Mama.

"Well, jewelry is things like these rings and necklaces that we have, and rich means we have lots of valuable things!"

Mama nods her head, "Then I was already rich." she says with a smile.