If only that excess mana could somehow be converted into Faith instead. I'm so close to Tier 9!
I glanced yet again at the inverted triangle at the bottom of my vision. The bottom half of it—the smaller, pointy half—was close to being filled with shining green. A closer look at the triangle would reveal it was marked with horizontal lines. The lines divided it neatly into twenty sections, evenly spaced so that despite being the same width, the sections grew larger the further up the triangle they went—a somewhat depressing reminder that each god tier was much, much harder to attain than the ones before it.
The bottom eight segments of my triangle were full, with the ninth segment on the verge of becoming so. The number "8" was overlaid atop the entire triangle, a constant reminder of how close and yet how far I was from reaching god tier nine.
It felt like such a long time since I'd tiered up. I craved the addictive sensation of power flooding into me, the ecstasy of knowledge racing through the incorporeal veins of my consciousness...
"Corey."
I sighed. "What?"
"Can't you do something about that?"
Ket sounded as though she were physically pained by something. It took me a moment to work out that she was referring to the two praying acolytes. With Binky's fluffy form currently dwarfing my gem, it looked as though the gnomes were worshiping him rather than me.
I sniggered. "All hail the spider god!"
Ket shuddered. "Seeing gnomes praying to a spider... it's disturbing."
"Look at him, though. He loves it. Bless him."
"Don't you start too," she grumbled. "It just seems... wrong. Though I suppose to you it must feel just like home."
I knew that was meant as an insult. But the truth was, it did feel like home.
I had very few memories of my former life, and none that went beyond vague flashbacks of silent scenes and images, but some of those memories included me leaving offerings at an altar—an altar which was almost definitely dedicated to some kind of spider god, if the massive eight-legged statue carved of obsidian were anything to go by.
Even before I'd started having more flashbacks, though, I'd felt a connection to the spiders I found in my Sphere, and had always had a special bond with Binky, as well as with the late Septimus and Octavia, two brave god-born cave-wanderers who'd fallen in defense of the Heart.
Perhaps it was because of the fear and disdain with which Ket and the gnomes seemed to treat them. She'd treated me similarly when she first learned of my former life as a dark elf, as I'd somehow known she would, and there was solace in banding together with other outcast species. To me, Binky was a creature just like any other. But to Ket and many of my gnomes, he was an abomination whom they instinctively feared and hated—irrationally so, in my opinion—and who had to work hard to earn not only their trust but their permission to simply co-exist.
So no, I was not going to do anything about the current situation.
"They're not praying to Binky," I told Ket with a mental shrug. "They're praying to me. It's fine. I guess they are having to pray through Binky to get to me, but... oh well. It'll be good for them."
"You're enjoying this way too much. And so is Binky."
Apparently we'd enjoyed it for long enough. The scrabbling of claws alerted me to a new arrival at the shrine: Binky's black-and-white nemesis.
Uh-oh.
Eight
Cold Feet
Corey
Flea the badger crested the summit with his usual graceless waddle, his big round butt waggling from side to side, his wet nose snuffling curiously at the air.
All eight of Binky's legs tensed at the sight of him, and for good reason. The instant the badger laid eyes on him, it let out a sound somewhere between a bark and a snort, and charged forward triumphantly. I didn’t need to issue any commands; Binky was already zipping back up the thread connecting him to the ceiling. Smart spider, always making sure he had a quick escape.
Flea huffed and halted his charge, his whole body slumping in a crestfallen sort of way. Another couple of yards and he would have gone charging straight into my precarious altar, probably knocking the two oblivious acolytes aside and sending my gem rolling unceremoniously down the hill to get stuck in the wet clay on the banks of the stream. Or worse, into the water itself, to be carried away by the current and away from my denizens, and me powerless to stop it.
"Ket."
"Hmm?"
"Should we have the gnomes build a fence or something around my gem? I feel like it's a bit too... accessible."
Foiled by his target's quick reactions (though to be fair, Binky did have the advantage when it came to perception, what with having eight eyes and all), Flea trudged back down the hill and headed for the shroomtree farms instead, no doubt looking for some tasty crunchable whip-spiders to comfort-eat.
"Yes, I agree. As it is, anyone and anything can come charging in and knock you over as they please—or sit on you," she added pointedly. "Oh, look—Gneil's awake!"
Rather than being wholly diurnal or nocturnal, the gnomes instead took shifts depending on what best suited them. Though most of them did choose to work during the day and sleep at night, there were more than a few who preferred the opposite, and others still who tended to alternate depending on their mood. It meant there was always at least a handful of
