Exodus of Gnomes (God Core #2) - A Dungeon Core LitRPG by Demi Harper & Portal Books

Author:Demi Harper & Portal Books [Harper, Demi & Books, Portal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Portal Books
Published: 2021-03-10T06:00:00+00:00

The timer blinked obnoxiously in the corner of my vision, a constant reminder of what we were up against.

It won’t happen, I told it. I’ll make sure of it.

Thirty-Six

Risk and Reward

Corey

As Bekkit had pointed out, Exodus might prohibit me from leveling, but there was nothing to stop my denizens from continuing to grow. And grow they did. Day by day, the craftsmen became more skilled, the workers more efficient, and overall morale was visibly increasing.

Despite this, I found myself growing anxious. The gnomes were advancing steadily, yes, but progress on our journey was less obvious. The environment was changing, but very subtly. Where before the ground had been relatively flat (aside from pesky tree roots that tripped feet and snapped axles), now we were on a definite downward incline. The trees were changing, too. The bright green-orange leaves and molting canopy of the furynut forest were gradually giving way to coniferous spruce and gray-barked cedar. The trees were packed together much more closely here, making the ground damper and the path darker. I found it comforting, though the gnomes seemed somewhat less enthusiastic.

Despite my hopes and the scouts’ efforts, we’d yet to find any sign of entrances to potential new homes. Benin and Bekkit both assured me we were still on target to reach the mountain area as planned, but still. It would be nice to have found a backup along the way. Especially considering we were almost a quarter of the way through our allotted time.

Has it really been nine days already?

Though we were making good time, I still felt anxious. The further we traveled, the further behind we left the certainty of our previous home. Before us lay only the great unknown. What if we couldn’t find a new base in time?

We should try to increase our pace even further just to make sure.

As though the universe responded to my thoughts, a potential solution soon presented itself. We were only a couple of hours into the tenth day’s march when Bekkit spotted something interesting.

“Tracks,” he said helpfully when I arrived at his side to investigate.

They were, indeed, tracks.

What had made them was no mystery. Even I recognized the five-clawed imprints as badger tracks, albeit from a larger individual than the creatures we were familiar with.

Usually, this was something I’d ignore. A lone badger probably wasn’t worth expending our energy on. But our own badgers had proved invaluable to the exodus’s success. Having them pull the largest wagons was the only reason we’d come so far, so fast. Without them we’d be unable to carry half the supplies we had, and the increased burden on the gnomes—most of whom were already encumbered—would have slowed our progress considerably.

Think how much quicker we’d be able to move if we had five badgers to share the load instead of four…

“I’m not sure this is really necessary, Corey,” said Ket when I told her my idea. “We’re doing just fine with Bruce and the others.”

“No, the young Core is correct,” Bekkit said. “We should pursue anything that can increase our efficiency.

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