Smell

"Now we will go this way."

Yesterday, we visited the middle path; today, we will take the left one. I hope to find something very good here.

"Boss, do you think we'll find more gold?"

"Maybe, but I hope to find more things."

"Like what?"

"Things like iron, copper, aluminum, and other metals."

"Alumi... what? What's that?"

"They're some important metals. You don't need to know about it yet."

"Alright, I never asked, but how do you know so much?"

"Some things I understand, like weapons or some tools, but you seem to know things we've never seen before. How do you know about these things?"

"Uhh."

At this moment, even if discreetly, everyone paid attention.

"I learned all this."

"Learned? From whom? Besides you, nobody has ever done anything like this."

"Not from whom, but from what. I learned from various people, but it was all in a dream."

"What's a dream?"

"When you sleep, do you remember anything happening before you wake up?"

"Uhh, when I sleep, after leaving the forest, sometimes I see it before waking up."

"That's it. It happened to me too."

"Uhh, today before waking up, I saw the same mountain I saw when I was a child."

"What you all saw are dreams. Martins saw a memory from the past, after seeing something similar to it, Aurélio and the others saw the forest because it's a very strong memory."

"Dreams are usually made up of memories of something we've seen before."

"So, did you see these things? Is that why you could create so much because of a dream?"

"No, my dream was full of things I had never seen before, places I had never seen before. But still, I managed to learn things from that dream, and now I can do everything I did."

"Wow, will I have a dream like that too?"

"That, I can't answer. I don't even know how I had my dream. Sometimes... it feels like I haven't even woken up."

"Now, we have to focus here."

"Alright, boss."

I already imagined that one day they would ask me about the things I do.

So I had saved this answer for a long time. I could honestly tell the truth, but I think they wouldn't understand the concept of reincarnation or time travel. I don't even fully understand it myself.

These are things only from fiction, so if someone told me a story like mine, I would simply think that person was crazy.

"Uhh, stop."

"Boss? Did something happen?"

"Wait."

I told them to stop because I smelled a strange odor.

"Did you feel that?"

"What should we feel?"

"A smell. Can't you smell anything?"

"Smell? Uhh, now that you mention it, it does seem like there's some smell."

"Uhh, let's go back."

"Back? But why? We haven't even walked half of what we did yesterday in the other tunnel."

"I don't know what this smell is, so until I find out, I won't risk anyone's life."

A strange smell in a cave could be various things, including things that could kill us without us even realizing.

It didn't take long for us to return; I decided to end the expeditions for today.

This gives me more time to figure out what that smell was.

Now, what could that smell be?

From the things I can consider, they are:

Natural gases, animals or plants, and fungi.

If it's gases, then it could be very dangerous. If it's one of the other three, it could still be risky, but not as much.

Ahhh, all that's left is to find out what it could be