Weeks ago, when I’d first awoken as a God Core and begun Ascending in god tiers and expanding my SOI, I’d focused mainly on collecting blueprints for bugs and beasties I could combine to create into god-born defenders for my Grotto. Now that I was no longer being hounded by a megalomaniacal enemy Core and its army of stunted lizard-people, I was starting to pay attention to the subtler aspects of my environment, and it turned out nature could be pretty neat.
Being situated so close to the surface, the Grotto and its immediate surroundings were primarily adorned with sun-loving species of plant life, like ferns and photosynthetic mosses. Down here, though, not so much.
I let my gaze sweep over the rocky surfaces, taking in the subterranean flora that adorned the tunnel walls. Spiky hook-moss and gnarly nailwort clawed the air at ankle-height, while garlands of ghoul’s beard hung from the ceiling like – well, like ghoulish beards. (Fun fact: ghoul’s beard had psychedelic properties when ingested. Even funner fact: it could emit spores that caused paralysis in small mammals, and subsisted by feeding on bats foolish enough to roost near it.)
Lurking among the ghoul’s beard was a sprig of deadly black amaranth (also carnivorous), its heart-shaped leaves leaking dark fluid. To my left, a patch of messiah moss rearranged itself into a wonky eight-legged shape, exhibiting its bizarre tendency to take the form of whatever it thought its audience wanted most to see. I paused for a moment to examine it critically. This particular specimen’s composition skills were in dire need of refinement. Or maybe it was just going through a cubist phase.
I shook my head and moved on. Yes, fine, they were just mosses and liverworts. Not the most exciting things I’d encountered beneath the earth – not even in the top hundred – and even pre-noon Ket had to fight back a yawn whenever I tried to share my fun facts about them, but these nuances of the underground ecosystem were something I was finally beginning to appreciate.
Being the god of a society of (allegedly) intelligent beings was fine and all (though I’d still rather be able to set things on fire at will), but there was just something about being able to feel the flora’s soft dampness, smell its wholesomely earthy scent, and hear the whispering of air through the dangling fronds of ceiling plants as we passed beneath them.
The only reason we weren’t spending hours admiring it all was my avatar. Ris’kin was as indifferent to her surroundings as she was toward me and my new-found wonderment. She never lingered, simply assessing, cataloging, and moving on, her senses constantly alert for signs of danger. Though I was slightly miffed to have my sightseeing curtailed, it was probably for the best, considering we were meant to be scouting for signs of whatever creature was responsible for my missing gatherer.
A scuffling sound echoed from the darkness, sending our pointed ears twitching to locate the source. The fingers of our hand-like forepaws tightened around the haft of our weapon – a kobold spear, a jagged thing of flint and obsidian snatched up during the heat of battle and retained as a trophy of victory – then relaxed when we realized the noise had come from the small band of gnomes creeping along behind us.
“Creeping” was a generous word to use for a group that were about as stealthy as a herd of sheep wearing stone shoes. True, this particular handful of gnomes had grown more adept at their role over the past fortnight – so much so that they’d unlocked the ‘Scout’ vocation, which, once assigned, eliminated the mana cost of the active ability of the same name – but they still had a long way to go.
The circumstances that had necessitated their on-the-job training were actually pretty grim. A couple of days after the battle for the Grotto, I’d sent a pair of gnomes out beyond my SOI to gather materials as well as keep an eye out for lingering kobolds. The enemy Core might be destroyed – at the hands of its own denizens, no less – but who was to say some of its former minions wouldn’t seek revenge?
When only one of the two scouts had come back, I was a tiny bit concerned for the missing one, but not all that surprised. I’d once seen it try to eat a rock that was shaped like a fish, and I suggested the returning gnome had probably bumped off its companion in annoyance for the crime of being too stupid.
That did not go down well with Ket.
Nor did my decision to send out more scouts the following day, though this time I had chosen to send a whole group of fighters, including the only two surviving members of the Grotto’s militia. They didn’t find the missing gnome, but they did find something else.
I’d done a double-take at the sight of their leader, Longshanks, who’d returned wearing the bloody wrinkled skin of a creature I’d as yet failed to identify (Insight only worked on living things, and this thing was clearly as dead as they came). The ragged-edged ensemble even came complete with glassy-eyed head-hood, making the warrior-scout appear like some kind of snack-sized serial killer.
Once I’d gotten over my initial disgust at this new and unwelcome fashion statement, I looked more closely at the material of the scout’s outfit and realized it was entirely hairless. Why the little idiot had shaved this mysterious creature before donning its skin – or possibly after; who could fathom the inner workings of his dense gnomish
