I was going to need a lot of metal relatively soon. As the Yuck grew more, it was obvious that everything inside the cave, at least probably, would be enveloped. I needed something that wasn't organic to hold organic things like the increasing number of farming supplies.

I figured that after dealing with the other drider, a reward might be some basic supplies, like bowls that I could use to pan. In my first life, I had panned for gold and found some small flakes, but nothing worth anything. I don't know if this world had fantasy materials like orichalcum, adamantium, tiberium, or krell steel, but hopefully I could find traces of them all if I looked hard enough.

Whatever it was that happened to half our loot from the jumi city's defense, I don't know. Better attention and care should have been paid to it, but other things were going on too. Birds wandering off, Malas wandering off, children that needed to be taught or guided on new crafts. But it was okay that some of it was gone; it had been learned from. In fact, Aneis even came back with some surprising information. We learned what the scalewolves were.

Apparently, someone had come to town on a wagon. Gypsies, I guess. They told stories and had small animals for the trade of goods. The jumi failed to be able to take care of them properly, and had done the 'bring doggy to a park and drive away' thing. The scalewolves were what happened. The furry and scaly dogs (which was a thing I guess) had intermixed, I figured, and become a single animal breed. Well, this world did have magic and monsters... but anyway they had gone feral as well and become wild. I wondered if they were ever tame to begin with.

But now they were gone. I figured more of them, in their natural states, existed somewhere else, but I'd have to find the gypsies or natural environment myself, and I didn't feel the need to.

Cletus still had his front-armor, but now also stone scalemail on his back and arms. His weapon was a stone-tipped spear.

Aneis' stonescale was more like a knight's sleeveless tunic, but attached to her torso. She envenomed a short wooden stake that acted like a knife.

Djraine had the actual knife, and wore stonescale on her legs and top part of her spider abdomen.

Shore had a long staff with some envenomed wooden spikes in it. Loose enough to come out if they stuck in something, but tight enough to stay in during normal swings. His stonescale covered his arms, head, and back.

Sting didn't want anything. He didn't need it anyway.

Lyre just wanted a club with black widow venom removable spikes, but I insisted on stonescale as well. She only let it be put on the underside of each of her forearms.

Dulcet went Napoleon, only armoring her human and spider front parts. I told her that her front legs would be heavier and harder to move if they were unbalanced, but she wouldn't stop arguing about it. Where'd this behavior come from? I let her win. It wasn't worth the hassle. She wanted a club like her favorite sister, which was easy enough.

Malas didn't want any armor, but with help, we were able to keep him from wandering off long enough to stick some on him anyway.

Sun wanted a fun pattern. She got angry if anyone even suggested that it make a valid pattern- she only wanted her own color patterns matched with the same color of stone. It was rather annoying, so we just did what we could with the stone that Bander prepared, and the rest was unexposed. She made a shield out of sticks and web. It was okay if she just wanted to be a shieldmaiden! She was excited that I was, so she made the shield even bigger and added a second grip on the inside.

Bander went super-heavy and plated himself as much as he could. I doubted he could walk very fast, so our entire family's movement speed would have to decrease to compensate. But I guess it was fine.

Laina wouldn't leave Cletus alone about his spear, so she got one too. She wanted her back and spider parts covered, but her front and arms exposed. Djraine was probably the one to encourage this since she was more of a healer than anything else, and would need to be armored in a way that she'd be protected when she was helping someone else and not paying attention.

Mels wanted to be as covered with stonescale as she could be! She looked rather ridiculous with it on her face, though, so I just put some mud on under her eyes like she was wearing sports paint, or whatever that was called.

I would have waited for the sun to come up to begin marching, but we were already awake, already knew what direction to go, and would have a long walk to get there. Luckily, I also saw various streams on the previous walk, so I knew what path to follow. For food, there would be things along the way coming to get water, and we could attack then.

Just in case though, I thought we might need to carry... well, let's not get depressing. I pulled the webbed wagon myself, but kept my own weapon within easy reach of the yoke. Handles? The part that surrounded the bird, horse, ox, or whatever else would pull the cart. It was a wooden sword replica with a few grooves cut out. One had wax and sap smooshed into it, and the other had mud. I wanted to grow my skills!