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

by Demi Harper

  It was less heartwarming to see my scouts attired in the results the following morning. In addition to their atrocious mole-rat chest-pieces and mantles, all four of them and Longshank were decked out in snakeskin from the waist down. The scaly material had been skilfully assembled into matching high boots and tight trousers, perfectly tailored to each scout’s size.

  Predictably, Benin burst out laughing, and there was really nothing I could say in their defense. But at least their legs and feet were now adequately protected from the dangerous ground-dwelling creatures.

  Yet another upside of their new garb was that all four scouts soon unlocked the hunter vocation, since they met its prerequisite—to bring death to a creature while wearing the skin of its species—many times over. Aside from increasing the cap from 10 to 20 for skills like Tracking, the main advantage of a hunter was that they were able to manage a team of scouts.

  Regrettably, I couldn’t really take advantage of this right now. Since I was currently unable to meet the criteria for assigning more scouts, I decided not to promote any of my current four to hunter just yet. If our journey had shown us anything so far it was that there was safety in numbers. The scouts were vital to the tribe’s continued survival; I didn’t really want them venturing off separately, especially in our current predicament.

  Most of the water was no more than ankle deep for the humans. Both men wore leather boots, so their feet were safe (though Coll observed that his were rather leaky, full as they were with bite marks from badger teeth). Benin’s heat aura constantly shimmered the air around him; it was denser and more concentrated than before, presumably a result of Bekkit’s lessons refining his focus. Anything that tried to drop down on the mage was in for a nasty surprise.

  While Coll’s shoulders were protected by his ever-present chainmail, his neck and head were vulnerable. Rather than donning the chain coif he carted around in his bag, he elected to simply pull up the hood of his oilcloak. However, this did nothing to deter the ever-present biting bugs that swarmed the warrior like the walking banquet he apparently was.

  Coll’s plight was made slightly less miserable by my new apothecary. Under Rattail’s supervision, he’d assessed the leaves and roots brought by the scouts and formulated an oily-looking lotion. Made from sarroway sap and cedar bark, when applied to skin and clothing the new repellant—apparently named ‘Fly Away!’—was as effective at keeping midges and mosquitoes at bay as Benin’s fire aura was at incinerating them. The mage was constantly accompanied by sizzling hisses as insects sought to feast on his flesh and instead met a fiery end. The sounds of immolated insects would have been maddening enough on their own without the oppressive orchestra of marsh sounds to accompany it.

  My denizens clearly felt the same way I did. The children weren’t even arguing, despite the close quarters. They just huddled in their wagons, quiet and fearful. The sounds that filled the air were alien, far removed from the familiar birdsong of the forest, and even more ominous than the cry of owls. Here, there was hissing, rustling, and creaking warblers, croaking insects, and the occasional plop or splash of something breaking the water’s surface just beyond sight.

  And the frogs. Gods, the frogs.

  My first experience with the wretched amphibians, and I instantly hated them.

  They were everywhere. Yelling and ribbiting, squelching and croaking, I despised their obnoxiously smug faces, their mucusy skin, their buggy eyes, their weird toes, and most of all, the freakish way their legs moved… I shuddered. Even when I couldn’t see them, they were always there, a constant chorus like a mockery of cicadas.

  To take my mind off the little hopping horrors, I watched Binky instead. The fluffy arachnid was the only one who seemed unaffected by our environment. Binky’s long legs kept his body out of the shallow murky water, and despite the young gnome Pan once again riding on his back, the spider seemed perfectly content. I was a little concerned at the child’s exposure to falling snakes, but reassured myself that she’d basically proved herself immortal by now.

  The new canopies—which the Augmentary had playfully dubbed ‘Snakeaways’—were doing their job and keeping my other denizens safe. They were simple enough, and hadn’t taken long to make; they were basically just hides stretched out on top of supports affixed to each corner of the wagon. The hides were scraped thin enough to be translucent; whenever a snake landed on top of it, the gnomes below could see it easily, waiting until it was near the edge and using sticks to fling it safely away into the swampy murk.

  Every wagon also had a flask of antidote at the ready, just in case. However, there was no antidote for bacteria. The murky water grew even more so in our wake as the cloying air made my denizens sick to their stomachs. Having already drunk their previous stores, the gnomes were also forced to consume water from the raincatcher, which was basically just marshwater.

  No wonder they’re ill.

  After I instructed them to Improve the raincatcher, the builders devised a series of filters that improved the water’s quality somewhat, though still did not entirely purify it. Thankfully, after a few days, the majority of my denizens returned to full health as one by one they developed full resistance to the dodgy water.

  “Hardy creatures, these gnomes,” said Bekkit admiringly. “So small, yet so persistent! Like the mighty cockroach.”

  “Need I remind you what became of the last individual to call us cockroaches?”

  “No offense was meant, young Core, I assure you.”

  “I know.” He was right. Cockroaches were small, hardy, and persistent. My denizens were all of those things. No matter what happened, the gnomes would always come together and carry on, even when the odds were stacked against them. Especially when the odds were stacked against them.

  Whether it was an army of kobolds or a deadly hostile marsh, we would take it on and emerge victorious on the other side—literally, in this case.

  And hopefully soon.

  Time remaining for Exodus: 12 days, 3 hours, 26 minutes

  Forty-Four

  Frogs

  Corey

  Vocation unlocked: Wetland Ranger

  I blinked away the notification. This was the fifth time I’d seen it, which meant all of my scouts and Longshank had maxed out their passive Marsh Terrain skill. Though progression in any skill was usually cause for celebration, I withheld from assigning this particular vocation to anyone, since I was fervently hoping we’d have no need to set foot in a swamp ever again.

  The maxed-out skill proved its worth, though. My scouts could now go for several hours before needing to return to the convoy, pale and sweating (which the Augmentary assured me was from exhaustion and not some kind of swamp fever). The bramblecramps attached to their shoes also helped some, as did their atrocious new snakeskin armor, but even so it was all they could do to find us a safe path through the marshy ground.

  What I wouldn’t give for a couple of boulderskins right now…

  The amphibious armored lizards were perfectly suited to this sort of environment. They would have been invaluable—assuming the gnomes ever overcame their innate fear of my god-born creatures.

  That said, I’d noticed they were much more relaxed around Binky. I supposed the journey had forced them to grow accustomed to his presence, not to mention all the times he’d saved their skins. A glance at Binky’s Augmentary details showed another reason.

  All my Creation slots were empty except one. It seemed Binky had passed another threshold in his journey to become terrestrial.

  I gulped. For some reason it made me both proud and sad, not to mention a little bit worried that he’d run off as soon as he was able.

  They grow up so fast.

  The steady diet of predatory marsh creatures meant the spider was physically growing as well, as were the badgers. Snakes aplenty meant a constant supply of both meat and skins for everyone, which—regretfully—meant that my entire complement of warriors were soon equipped similarly to the scouts. They tugged uncomfortabl
y at the tight snakeskin trousers, while those on the wagons—spread out a little better now thanks to the warriors’ ability to safely walk again—ogled them shamelessly.

  “Is it just me, or are the snakes getting bigger?”

  “I think that’s just the trousers,” said Benin. “They are very tight.”

  I snorted. “I meant the actual snakes.”

  In addition to the tree vipers and slender, brown marsh snakes, we’d started to encounter mud adders and brook asps. Though initially not much larger than the acid-green tree vipers—which were still far too large for comfort, by approximately their entire length—they did appear to be getting longer and thicker the deeper we traveled.

  Luckily, my snakeskin-clad warriors were able to take care of them. Now that I had a general and two captains, I could command them directly to attack a specific target without using mana. To help us spot threats more quickly and direct the warriors appropriately, Bekkit suggested color-coding things on the Augmentary map—as I’d suspected earlier, it turned out I could manually designate certain species as ‘hostile’.

  The results were pretty terrifying. Once I’d assigned the ‘hostile’ label to every venomous species I’d identified, the map was overwhelmingly flooded with clusters of bright red dots. This place really is out to get us.

  “That’s… a lot of red,” Bekkit agreed.

  “What are all these turquoise dots?” asked Ket, frowning at the map. “There are almost as many of those as there are red.”

  “Those are frogs,” I told her.

  Most of them were poisonous rather than venomous; they were technically only a threat to my denizens if they decided to pick one up and lick it—which, let’s face it, was not outside the realm of possibility. The Augmentary hadn’t marked the frogs as hostile, so I’d taken matters into my own hands.

  “Okaaay…” said Ket. “But… why?”

  “We need to keep an eye on them. Insidious little bastards. I don’t trust them near the gnomes.”

  It was much harder to protect my denizens from themselves. I found myself needing to watch them more carefully than the frogs. Several times an hour, I’d catch child and adult alike playing with frogs they’d “rescued” from the overhanging branches. I’d have to send Ris’kin along to take them away, though she always insisted on placing the nasty creatures back in the marsh rather than giving them the merciful, quick end I suggested.

  I’d long ago evolved my avatar with the same toxin resistance as the badgers. However, she shunned the marsh’s murky waters, preferring to keep her feet dry by leaping between wagons and dancing along their edges. It wasn’t easy, given the lack of space on the vehicles, not to mention her impaired balance since the loss of her right eye. But she was adapting amazingly, in spite of the chittering squirrel that remained constantly affixed to her shoulder.

  Gneil and the other acolytes had their work cut out for them making sure the hoot-hoots did not try to eat the poisonous frogs. I had to send Coll in on more than one occasion to forcibly remove a frog from an owlet’s beak after the acolytes lost their own tug-of-war with the belligerent bird.

  The badgers, of course, had no issues consuming the brightly colored amphibians. They had little trouble eating anything. The world was their buffet.

  At least someone’s enjoying themselves.

  The armorer finished the first set of badger armor, but I refrained from equipping it for now. In this terrain, the last thing they needed was to be even more encumbered; they weren’t currently at risk from large wounds but rather tiny bites in places that armor wouldn’t protect from, and to which they were immune. The ravages of the marsh threatened the animals in other ways though, and at the end of each day’s travel, Gneil went from badger to badger, carefully washing their clawed feet to make sure they were free of injury and rot. Now that I thought about it, it was amazing they hadn’t developed bog foot or some such.

  The marshes really were a sort of no-man’s land. It felt as though we’d traveled back in time to the world’s primal beginnings—especially when we passed a half-submerged skeleton. It was thoroughly mummified; its skin stretched across its bones, brown and tight and tough like leather. And it was gigantic. At least twice the size of Coll, even in its current shriveled form.

  The gnomes stared at it in awe as we trundled past. Even Benin fell silent in its presence.

  The world really is a big place. Thankfully not as big as it used to be, though.

  Time remaining for Exodus: 7 days, 18 hours, 2 minutes

  I hadn’t imagined it. The ground snakes were getting bigger. Our new shortbows and stonebows proved their worth tenfold, allowing the warriors to take down most of the serpents without risking close combat while also gaining skills in ranged combat. Thankfully, the tree vipers remained the same size. I wasn’t sure the new canopies would withstand the weight of heavier ones.

  Stonebows had also been distributed to some of the non-combatants on the wagons—mostly those who’d previously held the warrior vocation—and so, along with the snakeaway canopies, my denizens were as well protected as they could be.

  Even so, the tribe’s morale continued to suffer. It seemed the constant threat of danger was sapping the gnomes’ spirits, as was the dark dampness of the marsh. Odd, for a species that lives underground, I mused.

  It was lucky we’d gained four more badgers to pull the wagons; all non-combatant gnomes now fit inside the carts. They were clearly not happy with the cramped arrangements, but it was necessary. Though there was more room now that the warriors and scouts were suitably equipped for walking, it was still crowded.

  The badgers weren’t the only animals that had been growing larger. The hoot-hoots were big enough that there was no longer room for all five of them on the chariot, so the responsibility for their care had been spread around the other wagons as well. Though initially delighted to have the company, the novelty soon wore off, and the gnomes’ excitable cries of “hoot-hoot” soon became grumpy mutters. The owlets were getting bigger and my denizens clearly did not appreciate sharing such limited space with the feathery nuisances.

  Apparently the owls felt the same way. One by one, they elected to leave the wagons, choosing instead to ride on the backs of the badgers. As soon as the first one hopped aboard, two more followed suit, the trio forming a crowded bundle swaying atop Bruce’s back. The remaining two owls hooted indignantly and tried to fling themselves on to Bruce as well, despite there clearly not being enough room. Both splashed gracelessly into the swamp.

  Finally accepting that Bruce’s back was all booked up, they each floundered toward different badgers and climbed aboard, shaking mud and algae from their feathers and muttering to themselves in a way that sounded remarkably similar to the gnomes’ earlier grumbling.

  Benin still complained with every squelching step. The misty air plastered his hair to his head whenever his fire aura was deactivated. Pyra spent her days huddled on top of his satchel, claws digging into the canvas as she stared down mistrustfully at the marshy ground, growling and snapping at every insect that dared fly by. Even Coll was grumbling; apparently this environment was a haven for rust, and he was running low on oil for his weapons and armor.

  Though I’d tried to remain positive, I found myself becoming dragged down by the pervading negativity and the oppressive atmosphere of the marsh. On top of that, the constantly counting timer—now in single digits—prompted even more worrying thoughts.

  What if the timer ran out while we were still stuck trudging through these godsforsaken marshes?

  The hostile environment would be its own defense against external enemies, true, but that didn’t really matter if we couldn’t survive it ourselves. How long until I’d be able to use exodus again if that happened?

  I thought to ask Bekkit, but decided I didn’t want to know the answer. Besides, giving voice to the possibility of failure would only make it feel more imminent. It was better to just push it down and hope for the best.

 
Ket tried to bolster my morale by reassuring me that this was simply the darkness before the dawn. I didn’t really understand this phrase; since the darkness had always been my home, to me this felt more ominous than reassuring—similarly to another phrase she’d taught me, “the calm before the storm.” But hopefully it meant this was the last leg of the forest before we’d emerge among the mountains. The trees were growing even sparser, which I hoped was a sign that we were finally nearing the forest’s edge.

  I couldn’t wait for us to find a suitable new home and rest in safety once more. It felt like forever since we’d been able to truly relax. Here in particular, my denizens rested fitfully if at all.

  Even the children had picked up on the growing tension. They constantly glanced over their shoulders and out into the darkness. It was as though my denizens shared my suspicion, which was rapidly becoming a conviction.

  We were being watched.

  Forty-Five

  Out of the Woods

  Corey

  “The good news is, we’re almost out of the woods.”

  We’d stopped for our third rest of the day. Coll had taken out the crumpled map yet again and was pointing at where he guessed us to be.

  “And what’s the bad news?” Benin asked him.

  “What bad news?”

  “Well, when you start by saying ‘The good news is…’ it implies there’s also bad news.”

  “Oh. Well, there isn’t.”

  Benin rolled his eyes. He seemed even more on edge than usual. Like me, he was clearly expecting something bad to happen before we got out; for the marsh to make one last effort to keep us from escaping its cold, damp embrace. For the storm that followed the calm,, or however the phrase went.