As James grew closer to what had been the dead end of the mine, he found a sizeable crack, almost a gash in the far end of the tunnel where he had done most of his excavating. The bottom of it had been expanded and widened into a hole large enough to crawl through, probably by the monster he had killed moments ago. It was through this hole that light shone into the sealed mine. Cautiously, he crouched down and looked through, prepared to spring back at a moment’s notice.

  There was nothing there. Just a small hole through about six feet of tunnel wall, then more open space. James picked up a small pebble and tossed it through, to see if anything would react. After a minute, with nothing heard, James crawled through the hole. Poking his head out and seeing no more of those mole monsters, he crawled all the way out and stood up, gawking at the sight before him.

  It was a cavern. A large cavern. Roughly oval shaped, with his current position at one of the narrow ends and the other narrow end roughly a hundred yards distant, barely visible in the gloom. The ceiling, though… was distant enough to be invisible in the dim light. A faint breeze flowed through the cavern, James knew not how, and scattered throughout the cavern were light sources ranging from the size of a pebble to the size of his fist glowing in various levels of dimness.

  James approached one of these light sources on the wall, and as he did-

  [Ore Identification: Brown Iron Ore]

  His [Ore Identification] skill revealed that the cavern wall contained the biggest seam of colored iron ore he had ever seen in his life. The tiny seams in the iron mine before paled in comparison. And on top of that brown iron ore seam was a glowing mushroom with a fat round stalk and a bulbous head, glowingly evenly across its entire surface.

  James reached out to pluck the mushroom, curious to see if it would keep glowing when plucked, but his fingers froze an inch away. Weren’t some mushrooms poisonous? He thought this to himself and brought up his hammer to poke at it instead, and again he froze before touching the mushroom: did he want poison mushroom gunk on his [Forging] hammer?

  Setting the glowing mushroom aside, James once again scanned the cavern. No changes, no monsters, at least for the moment. He took off the backpack and set it down, opening the mouth of the magic bag. For starters, he wanted all his tools back out of the finicky bag. He reached in and, as before, the bag seemed empty.

  I want my tools. James thought, and like magic, his fingers brushed against a medley of tools. In moments he pulled out his tongs, his other two, smaller hammers, and surprisingly, a pick-axe and a shovel. With that, the bag was once again “empty”. The Smith carefully laid out his tools, making sure that his tongs were in good condition, before contemplating the pick-axe and shovel. Why had they appeared in the bag, and why not all the pick-axes and shovels? Certainly, some of them would have been distributed to the rest of the slaves for the day’s mining, but James was fairly sure that Coin kept spares in his bag, especially after James had started working to repair and reforge broken tools.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  James stuck his hand back into the “empty” bag, and whispered “Pick-axe.”

  And there was a pick-axe in his hand.

  Repeating the process, James withdrew a total of sixteen pick-axes in various states of repair, ranging from freshly reforged (James recognized his own work) to so worn down they were likely to break against stone rather than fulfill their function. On the seventeenth try, despite whispering “pick-axe” as before, nothing appeared in the bag. Apparently it contained no more pick-axes.

  James might have thought it strange that the bag’s mouth, which was only a foot or so across, could pass a shape as awkward and wide as an entire pick-axe, but by this point he was accustomed to the nature of magic bags and simply did not think about it.

  What he did find strange was that when he whispered “All the shovels”, only a single shovel handle could be felt within the bag. Yet, after pulling it out and reaching back in, another shovel handle was present and ready to be withdrawn. Perhaps there was some limit to how many items could be withdrawn at once. In the end, he managed to withdraw five fully assembled shovels, another five reforged shovel heads, and six shovel heads worth of cracked and broken pieces. James supposed that Coin would have had him work to fix them eventually, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

  James spent several minutes after that guessing anything else that might be in the bag. Surprisingly, the merchant-slaver did not seem to have kept most of the camp equipment in his magic bag. There was no supply of firewood, no tents, no cots, no blankets, and most disconcertingly, no weapons. James had hoped that maybe the spearhead he had forged would be in there, or an entire spear or even just a knife, but no.

  “Ore.” James whispered. Nothing.

  “Iron.” he whispered. This time, his hand brushed against a multitude of smooth objects. After twenty ingots James considered stopping, just leaving the rest of the iron in the bag, but he decided that he might as well take them all out and get a good count. In the end, he withdrew three hundred and fifty-six ingots of iron. James was stunned at first staring at how much iron he and his fellow slaves had mined out and he personally had smelted in just the time since Coin had last left camp to deliver the iron to whoever was ordering it. The stack of iron was sizeable, and this time James tried waving his hand over the pile, willing it all into the bag.

  And so it was. All the iron was gone, now inside the magic bag.

  James felt like he would never get used to magic in general and the magic bag in particular. His sense of wonder and mystery, for the record, lasted less than two hours by his own recollection.

  Gurgle gurgle

  Instantly on alert, James tossed the bag aside and picked up his largest hammer, crouching and looking around for whatever had made the noise. For a tense moment he scanned around, not seeing it, when-

  Gurgle gurgle

  His stomach rumbled again. James could not tell how long it had been since the disaster of the morning, but he had not eaten since the meager dinner the night before. The cavern was barren, save for the still-to-be-investigated glowing mushrooms. Trepidatiously, he glanced back at the hole he had crawled through to enter the tunnel. The place where the dead mole monster’s corpse was lying.