[Young Mother Gem Fox]

Emerald woke up from her evolution without much change in her appearance.  She seemed just a little fluffier but it was so small of a change that it could have been attributed to just getting a good rest out of the elements and allowing her fur to settle a bit.  With her being awake once more, he decided that it was time to make the hard decision.

It was already early evening and it had been a few days since he had considered what he needed to do.  With the time he had while waiting for Emerald to wake up again, he had solidified the plan a little better.  He gathered the girls once they had all come in and started to try and explain what he wanted as best as he could.

<So, I'm thinking of sending some of you out on an expedition.  I want to try and see if we can get some good stone or other materials from the mountain.  There's also some creatures that look like we could use the bones from.  There might be other things out there, too.  So, I have a bit of a plan and you all can tell me if you think it needs reworking.

I want to first scout out some of those larger creatures and see if we can find some already dead ones or something.  If we can find a spot where they naturally go to die then we might be able to grab the bones we need without messing up the ecosystem or whatever.  I figure we just send someone out for about three days at time to try and watch and track them over the course of at most a month.

After that we can decide if we need to hunt them ourselves or not.  I don't really want to hunt them right now just because they're very large so it would be difficult to bring one back and I'm not sure we could eat enough of any of them before the meat went bad.  If we can find some good skeletons of the creatures before the month is over then we can just start getting what we need from those.

After that will be the larger expedition.  I want at least two of you to go and at least one needs to be an arachne for the webbing.  The other needs some solid senses.  I want whoever goes to avoid where the wet area is as best as they can and try to make it to the mountain area.  If there are any kind of intelligent beings, I want to try and avoid them as well.  No need for anyone to know we exist quite yet.

The goal will be to find materials we can't find around here and bring as much as possible back without getting discovered.  Stone, metal, or whatever else is found that we could use and kind of need.  If we can find a safe and stealthy way to start getting things then it will hopefully make a lot of things much easier.>

<Do we really need better stone, though?>

<Immediately?  No.  Soon?  What we have now is all somewhat susceptible to fire, the underground will be vastly more stable with it, and there are some things that it can be used for that help massively in the crafting department.  Even having enough solid stone of a good type and quality to make something of my size would be enough to improve a lot of things by a lot.>

<Do we really have to go all the way to the mountain for it?>

<Most likely.  If I knew of a more likely place that was closer or easier to get to then I'd suggest that instead but mountains have tendency to be made of stone.  If we had a faster and stealthier way to dig, I could even suggest that we check where the dungeon used to be and see if the stone the dungeon was made of still exists there.  We don't have the best digging capabilities amongst us, though.>

<So, if we can become better at digging or find someone else who is then we might not have to go all the way to the mountain?>

<Uh, sure?  That would be a better solution as long as that stuff from the dungeon still exists.  I don't know if it all got sucked into some extradimensional space or something or if it really is even there anymore, though.  Even if we find someone who can dig like we need, it won't help if there's nothing there.>

<Then I think I have an idea.  Mel told us about that pet idea.  I've been thinking about that with her and Zaer's minions.  I kind of want some of my own to help in the workshop and take care of some of the small work and stuff anyways.  I was planning to work on getting some broodlings of my own with a 'Mutator' evolution like Zaer to adjust them.  I could get 'Tunneller' as well and then we would have what we need.>

<Hmm...okay.  We'll let you try that first, Ell.  Don't ruin your evolutions doing it but try to get it done quickly, okay?  Jut watch out for how much you get caught up working and playing around.  I still want some of those creatures' bones, though.>

Everyone nodded and they started working out who was going to be gone and when for the big creatures.  Jelin was part of that part of the conversation at first but as it went on further into the details, he rapidly had less and less to say about it.  Instead, he found a blowsung and began practicing with it.  A few of the others who were being basically left out also joined him and the conversation soon had some light background music for the remainder of the evening.

The next morning, after breakfast, Kai and Sai went out, one to hunt and the other to watch the creatures for a while.  Jelin was pretty sure that Kai was the one going to watch instead of hunting since he didn't think she could bring back lunch by herself yet.  He had confidence enough in her winning any fight but she just didn't have a way to actually carry her kills that he knew of.

He waved to them as they left and decided to start working on his own stuff for the morning.  He might not be that close to evolving but he felt like his class was behind and thought that some solid work in that direction, especially with his skills not in his class, might help improve it more.  He started with practicing all of the normal things of a thief.

Once he felt like he was acting very thief-like, he started to try and work on practicing each individual skill in his class list, except [Disguise], while also seeing how far he could push them to do weird things.  He tried dodging the air, climbing the ground, and hiding from himself, for instance.  Once he felt like he had spent enough time working on his other skills, he finally went back to his [Disguise] skill.

For that, he shifted to his human form and started pushing his [Acting] skill to try to make even himself believe that he was a mage instead of a thief.  It wasn't too unbelievable since he could use magic with some amount of proficiency but it didn't quite bring him to the point of being able to change how his class was seen in his status.  He tried to make sure that he was still practicing other skills as well while focusing on that for the rest of the morning.

In the afternoon, when he went to help work on the tunnels, he found Ell also digging there.  He worked alongside her for a while, enjoying the peaceful quiet digging, until she looked around and realized that it was halfway through the afternoon and she needed to start coating the walls.  He watched her run out and decided that even if he was alone in the tunnel, he should still keep working like he expected the girls to.