Exodus of Gnomes (God Core #2) - A Dungeon Core LitRPG

by Demi Harper

  The heavy elderwood door creaked open slightly. Tiri withdrew her fist as though it had bitten her.

  It wasn't closed properly. Odd.

  Even after everything she'd done these past few weeks, she still hesitated. She was about to go from simple disturbance to outright trespassing—into a senior faculty member's private quarters, no less.

  I've come this far. I can't afford not to go further. Especially with so much still to learn.

  She pushed the door open and stepped inside the office.

  A foul aroma instantly enveloped her and she fought to keep from gagging. What is that?!

  One hand covering her mouth and nose, she reached into her bag with the other and pulled out a chemsphere.

  Bookcases lined the walls. Their shelves were jammed with tomes, binders, piles of parchment and stacks of scroll cases, many of which had spilled over onto the surfaces of several desks. The glass beakers and flasks of alchemy equipment glinted in one corner, while a door in the left-hand wall presumably led to the professor's bedchambers. It was all very predictable.

  Except for the corpse.

  It was sprawled over the desk as though sleeping, but its absolute stillness said otherwise, as did the trickle of dark blood from a corner of the open mouth.

  Breathing shallow, Tiri leaned over and placed two fingers gingerly on the man's neck. His skin was still warm, but the only pulse she felt was her own, throbbing within her fingertips and pounding in her ears.

  If the stillness of Knox’s heart wasn't proof enough, the odor certainly was. This close, the stench of bodily effluence was almost unbearable.

  But the contents of Professor Knox's recently evacuated bowels were not the only thing testing the strength of Tiri's gag reflex. No, there was something else.

  She stepped away from the desk, but something crunched beneath her foot.

  The shattered fragments of another cup lay on the rug beside the dead man's chair. Without really thinking about it, she bent to pick up one of the pieces while glancing around the office for the source of the other smell.

  One of the desks held no fewer than seven teapots, along with several trays and scattered cups and saucers in various states of staleness. To anyone else, that might have indicated the office had been abandoned for some time.

  Tiri, however, was more than familiar with the conventions of academia. She'd once had a lecturer who drank from the same cup every day, and which other students claimed had never been washed in all of thirteen years. Professor Rinpane had been a firm believer in the cleansing properties of tea leaves. To her, there was no need to ever wash her cup, because the combination of tea and boiling water were sterilization enough.

  Unlike Professor Rinpane—or Rimstain, as became her unfortunate nickname—Knox's stomach lining clearly wasn't made of steel. And his cup had contained something much deadlier than bacteria.

  Witchwort? Nightshade? Tiri sniffed the porcelain fragment she'd picked up, but she was no tracker, and the lingering scent could as well have been Pearl Gray as poison. She pocketed the fragment and wrinkled her nose.

  What is that other smell?

  The whole floor was covered with overlapping rugs. That wasn't in itself unusual; big drafty buildings like this, it was commonplace to insulate them as much as possible with floor coverings and tapestries. But as Tiri crossed the room to examine the contents of another table, she noticed that parts of the fabric squelched unpleasantly beneath her boots.

  A glance up at the ceiling confirmed there were no leaks. And the dropped cup could not have held so much liquid as to soak into the rugs this far from where it had fallen.

  With more than a little trepidation, she crouched and touched her fingertips to the woven fabric. It was sodden, soaked with a greasy substance that smelled of charcoal and burning hair.

  A tiny spark of recognition flared in her brain. She remembered reading a description of such a substance not too long ago. It was...

  That's it! It's sparktree oil.

  She'd researched it last year as part of a paper on the Forge Wars. The dwarves had paid in ancestral gold for the stuff, and its use over the last century had increased the life expectancy of their forgemasters by an average of fifty years. It was one of the most expensive substances in the entire realm, in part because it was the only smokeless fuel known to exist.

  "And it doesn't leave behind any residue," she whispered.

  Icy realization slid along her veins. Sparktree oil. An unlocked door. She hadn't just stumbled upon a murder; she'd stumbled upon a murder in progress.

  She straightened, wiping her oily fingers on her shirt. Her eyes darted around the office. She was torn between looking for further evidence, running away, or sounding the alarm.

  Given that she might soon find herself at the mercy of a cold-blooded criminal, running away definitely seemed like the smartest option right now. But she hadn't taken three strides toward the door when she heard quick footsteps beyond.

  The killer, come back to complete the job.

  She stood there, frozen, poised between fight and flight. Adrenaline surged through her limbs and her heart thumped painfully against her ribcage as though it were trying to burst free.

  Then common sense kicked in again and sent her bolting for the nearest desk. Unfortunately, it was the one currently propping up the dead professor's husk. She held her breath and ducked behind it, extinguishing her light just as a dark-clad figure entered the room.

  The figure was small and lithe, and though his face was covered by a cowl, Tiri guessed him to be male. She thanked her past self for pushing the door closed behind her after she entered, so the stranger had no reason to suspect anyone had arrived during his absence.

  He didn't so much as glance over at the corpse, padding straight toward the door in the far wall. He opened it and disappeared inside. Tiri glanced between that doorway and the door to the hallway, now ajar. Could she reach it before he emerged again and spotted her?

  Her agony of indecision went on for too long; the killer appeared once more in the main room. He examined the alchemy equipment in the corner to his left, and after some deliberation, began dragging the entire rig toward the center of the room.

  Tiri wiped her sweaty palms on her breeches and squinted into the shadows around her, looking for options. A darker shadow between two bookcases beckoned, and after making sure the killer's back was still turned, she crouch-walked toward it, emerging into a previously concealed reading nook.

  Safe for the moment, she collapsed against the shelves. The smells of death and oil mingled with her own fear and tension to send a wave of nausea over her.

  Then she felt it. A slight breeze, cool against the sweat-soaked shirt that was sticking to her back. As quietly as she could, she pulled books off the shelves one at a time until the stone wall behind them was laid bare. The mortar around one of the enormous blocks was crumbling conspicuously.

  A secret passageway? What, am I in some cliched fantasy novel now?

  The clink of glass beakers in the main room reminded her that she didn't really have another option. Peering through a gap in the shelves, she could just about see the man in black take two stoppered tubes from an inside pocket. Chemicals? But why?

  Taking Lila's arrow from her satchel once more, Tiri began to scrape at the remaining mortar around the block, careful to make as little noise as possible. It didn't take long.

  Musty air whistled gently through the gap. There's no way I can move this stone myself. It must weigh more than Coll. Feeling foolish, she nonetheless spread her fingers around the edges of the block and pulled.

  To her absolute shock, the stone moved as easily as if it had been hollow. Which, judging from the timbre of the scraping sound it made against the ground, it probably was.

  "Is someone there?"

  Oh no.

  The killer had heard it too, and now his shadowed face was staring directly toward Tiri's hiding place.

  "Someone there?" he said again. "S
how yourself, or I'll—shit!"

  The beaker in his hands had bubbled over, slopping what was presumably scalding-hot liquid over his fingers. He cursed again and set it down on the ground, then backed hurriedly through the door into the hallway, slamming it closed behind him. A key turned in the lock with a heavy metallic snick.

  The beaker on the floor began to spit, blue sparks flying from the reaction of the volatile substances within.

  The intellectual part of Tiri’s mind was curious to see how sparktree oil burned. The more practical part knew it would likely be the last thing she ever saw, and urged her to make her escape now while there was still time. She eyed up the crawlspace. She'd fit, but it would be tight.

  Another sound drew her attention back to the door. A small shiny object slid through the gap underneath and disappeared from sight beneath one of the many rugs.

  The key?!

  She was only baffled for a moment though. Everything the killer had done was deliberately orchestrated to make this murder look like an accident, or perhaps a suicide. Sliding the key back inside the room would only add to this illusion, making it look as though the door had been locked from the inside.

  If I can grab the key before the oil catches...

  But no. Even if she managed to unlock the door and escape the room before the conflagration enveloped it, there was a good chance the killer would still be waiting somewhere outside. Out of the fire and into a knife-point. She shook her head. That would be unacceptable.

  No, her best option was the mysterious passageway, aka the only way out that didn't have a murderer on the other side of it. Probably.

  But some unexplainable instinct had her dashing back into the room—against every modicum of her better judgment, of which Tiri usually had plenty—to snatch up the key from the folds of a black rug and tuck it into her pocket.

  The beaker hissed and spat behind her like an angry cat as she sprinted back to the nook and wriggled through the gap in the wall. When she was through to the other side, she reached back in and wedged her fingers into the groove that had been dug into the back of the loose stone, presumably for this very purpose. She pulled the block back into its place in the wall.

  Not a second too soon. The stone had barely ground to a halt when the first flames ignited with a whoomph. Within seconds, the room beyond was an inferno. A blast of heat through the gaps in the stone sent Tiri stumbling away, twisting her ankle on stairs she couldn't see until she finally regained enough presence of mind to pull out a chemsphere.

  Down the steps and along an empty corridor, then down more steps—there was only one way she could go, and she followed the featureless passage until she could no longer hear or feel the flames above. There she rested for a while, until the shocked numbness that had enveloped her after her narrow escape finally faded. She stared at the narrow passageway, lit by the pink glow of her alchemical globe.

  Then she took out Lila's list from her pocket and scratched out the name "Harald Knox."

  Lila had clearly been on to something. Whatever Varnell was up to—and Tiri was certain the Guildmaster had had a hand in these deaths—Tiri had to continue Lila's work and bring him to justice.

  If the suspicion that the Guildmaster was covertly murdering his own mages hadn’t motivated her to keep her going, there was something else that would have.

  The final name on Lila's list.

  "Benin Fitz."

  Twenty

  Just One

  Corey

  The ark was starting to take shape. Unsurprisingly, it didn't look nearly as grand as the one in Bekkit's blueprint.

  When I complained that it looked more like an old traveling chest than a holy reliquary, Ket regurgitated her speech about letting the gnomes express themselves. "Every people has its own style," she told me.

  And gnomes have less style than kobolds. What’s the world coming to?

  I'd thought Bekkit's estimate of a few hours was overly generous. After all, my builders could construct an entire gnomehome in a matter of days. How long could a measly box take?

  But it seemed that the smaller the item, the trickier the process. Each component seemed to require a lot of carving, sanding, tweaking and polishing, followed by close examination to determine whether it was of appropriate quality to be included in the final product.

  It was undeniably superior to anything they’d built before. Their craftsmanship was definitely improving. Still, I couldn’t help but grumble when I thought wistfully of the magnificent receptacle from the blueprint, though not loudly enough so that Ket could hear.

  My sprite had done a fair bit of grumbling herself. It seemed she hadn't previously been aware of her ability to share construction blueprints with me. Since she hadn't advanced beyond the lower tiers during her time as a God Core, she no longer possessed any blueprints I didn't already have myself, and I deduced that this was making her feel inadequate.

  My suspicions were confirmed later that day, when I was mooning over the emberfox’s blueprint again.

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  “It really is a stunning specimen,” Ket agreed.

  “I don’t understand, though. It’s a god-born hybrid. How can it exist outside of the Sphere of the one who created it? Are all mage’s familiars like it? How do they get hold of them?”

  “Something to ask Benin later, perhaps. Or Bekkit.” There it was again; that hint of testiness that she didn’t have the answers.

  “Maybe they come from the former Spheres of Cores that are destroyed,” I mused. “If they survive their Core’s destruction—”

  “They can’t,” said Ket. “When a Core is destroyed, so are its god-born. Including its avatar.”

  “Actually, that’s not strictly true.”

  I could almost hear Ket grinding her teeth as Bekkit inserted himself into our conversation.

  “Of course all god-born creatures are subject to their creator’s limitations—for a time. At first they are purely mana-based constructs, fragments of life essence given form and purpose. If they fall during this time, they will simply dissipate and return to the aether.”

  I thought back to the many, many creatures who’d fallen to the kobolds during the first weeks of my godhood. Though they’d bled—or ichored, in the case of the non-vertebrates—like any other creature when injured, upon death they’d sunk into the stone to rejoin the ambient mana that permeated my SOI.

  “What do you mean, ‘for a time’?” I asked. Ket huffed, but I could tell she was listening carefully.

  “Well, as I’m sure you know already, the more time a creature spends in existence, the more solidly its mana coalesces. This happens in stages, until eventually it becomes a creature fully of the physical plane, like your fiery friend the emberfox.”

  Bekkit pulled up the Augmentary for us all to see. He swiped to my creature blueprints.

  “Of course, it’s rare that they complete the process, given how hazardous their role usually is. How many of your creations have begun it?”

  I didn’t answer. I was too busy frowning at my Creation slots.

  After the battle, I’d used all 30 available slots to replenish the creatures I’d lost. Now, though, the Augmentary was displaying 29. One of them was empty.

  How is that possible?

  My comprehension of mathematics was poor, but it wasn’t that poor. And I’d definitely have noticed if one of my forrels or a couple of my skelemanders had been bumped off by some unseen enemy.

  “One? Just… one?”

  For the first time, Bekkit sounded troubled. I was about to accuse him of reading my thoughts when I realized he wasn’t looking at my Creation slots. He was looking at Binky’s blueprint.

  “Binky”

  Cave wanderer - Arachnid

  A magical hybrid of cave spider and wandering spider. In addition to being extremely hardy against the elements, this specimen has evolved to shoot webs to catch prey at a distance of up to 10 yards.

  Skills: Web Shoot, Extreme
Elemental Resistance (passive), Spit.

  Status: semi-celestial (39 days to next stage)

  “It’s measured on a scale of ‘celestial’ to ‘earthly,’” the sprite explained. “Sort of an inverted form of ascension.”

  Scrolling through the blueprints of my other creatures, I saw now that Binky was the only one carrying a status that was not ‘celestial.’

  “When they reach ‘earthly’, they are fully of this world. Though they retain their magical properties, they are no longer of mana. As such they are able to withstand the destruction of their creator—and even disregard his orders, though most of them tend to remain loyal even in freedom.”

  My god-born, having the freedom to leave my Sphere? To abandon me? Cold dread enveloped me at the very thought.

  I looked at Binky. You’d never abandon me. Would you?

  Eight eyes gleamed back at me from the far corner. Never, they seemed to say.

  “I’m surprised I’m having to tell you all of this.” Ket began to object but Bekkit cut her off. “No, that wasn’t a dig at you, old friend. Corey, my boy, everything you need to know is right here in the Augmentary. Don’t you ever look at it?”

  I wanted to protest that I’d been too pressed to have time for reading while fighting for my very existence. But something was bothering me, so instead I asked, “Why is it an issue that only Binky has progressed beyond celestial status?”

  He sighed. “When we leave, you will be unable to access your mana until the moment your new base is sanctified. As such, you will be cut off from all mana-based abilities and creations—including purely celestial god-born.”

  “You don’t think you could have mentioned this earlier?” My temper flared, though its heat was not enough to dispel the icy dread that was once more beginning to envelop me. “What will happen to the others?”

  “The same thing that happens to all mana-based life forms when the source of their mana is taken away.”

  I thought of Octavia II, my forrels, my boulderskins and whipfish, even my tiny skelemanders—all dissipating into nothing. All because I hadn’t kept their predecessors alive for long enough to properly become part of the world I’d flung them into.