Grenniana insisted on walking outside the dead magic with me to install the enchanted Cores. She displayed a mild discomfort but her HP pool was so small that even with the 99% reduction I had no trouble keeping her HP topped off. Her small pool was an advantage since the damage tick was a percentage of the maximum HP. The System even rounded it to 1 HP every N seconds though the discomfort remained. We walked under the sun while I kept an eye on her condition. I dulled her pain with {Anesthetics} and kept an ongoing healing spell that healed for 100 every time her HP dropped. I held her hand as we walked over the mountain.
I looked back and sighed. Was she the one? I focused on the Fate spell that bound Lorna and me and got my shocking answer. No, she wasn’t. The spell wouldn’t reveal Lorna’s incarnation to me but it would tell me if she was still alive and her broad location. When I returned after dying, it told me she was in the dead magic zone. Now it told me she was gone. She was one of the gnomes who died when the dead magic zone came undone. Was she one of the girls in the nursery who avoided me? One of the mothers? Only she could tell when she regained her memories.
“What’s wrong, Tina?” Grenniana asked as she noticed my mental state.
This was what Lorna wished for. That I took a chance and opened myself to allow people in my life. Forge true connections and commit to them.
“I’m sad because I lost someone very special down there in the tunnels.”
I couldn’t despair. We weren’t meant to meet every single life. And this time, this place, our meeting was tainted by the circumstances. It was a game that would be played over and over until I won eight more times. This round, I lost. That’s it. We had all the time in the world. And now, with this experience under our belt, nothing could be crappier than a literal shit desert. Heh. Famous last words.
She hugged my waist. “I understand. I’m sad too. But here, we’ll make a new place for everyone. Away from the soot, from the darkness, from the moldy tunnels. As the gnome [Princess], I want to do what you taught me. Lead our people. Follow the Matriarch’s guidance and give them a better life.”
“You’re correct. Make the Matriarch proud, Grenniana. Let’s go down now, it’s time you see the desert. This way.”
We pressed through the boundary as we returned to the dead magic zone.
The staircase that exited along the mountain about four hundred meters above the desert but it was no longer the only one. A series of carved tunnels led to our many projects along the outside of the mountain. In this year we spent developing the dead magic zone below us, we carved a shelf overlooking the desert the gnomes used to scout for threats. The kobolds never attacked us near our caves where we could mount an effective counter-offensive but some paranoid gnomes demanded a defensive position. I took Grenniana there to see the desert for the first time.
“Everything you see down there will be your domain. The gnomes will collect items from the sands and bring them up to trade with other nations. Some will try to take your treasure away for little or nothing in trade. You must learn a lot if you want to avoid that.”
“Is that why you want me to go to Windemere to study?”
“Yes. You have a lot to learn. You need to show the way to the other gnomes, especially the girls,” I said as we sat to admire the teleporting crap falling on the desert with the occasional splash of wet stuff or a dead body.
The females desperately needed occupations that didn’t involve reproduction and gossip even though they didn’t recognize it. Without the attrition deaths caused by kobold attacks, we could suffer a massive population boom and infighting for the scarce resources obtained from the three environments the scavenger gnomes had access to, desert, cave, and now mountain.
There I was, kingdom-building again. I couldn’t leave the gnomes alone. I felt that I owed them for the harm I caused. Some might argue I already gave them more than what they lost but I couldn’t weigh gifts against the damages.
“The desert is enormous,” Grenniana said as she looked at the vast brown landscape. From up here, she couldn’t distinguish shit-stained sand from actual shit.
I smiled back at her and nodded. This little gnome would need a lot of time to fully grasp the size of this world. One out of many out there. And Auvanini was the smallest continent between the three. I could fit a score of Windemere's inside the barbarian plains and still find room for more.
We talked about the desert and the resources. I explained to her about the poop and pee rain on the desert, the dangers, and what to do if you ever fell on the sand. Now that I knew the nature of the process, I also knew how the siphon absorbed materials. Once it identified an object above a certain threshold, the core transmitted harmonic vibrations up through the sand, causing it to behave like fluid around the object. Then the object would sink into the sand up to a depth where it would be converted into raw magic as the recycling Core disintegrated it. The size and weight threshold was the reason the turds insisted on remaining on the surface. After disintegration, that magic was absorbed and pumped into the world’s core. So long it wasn’t Wyxnos’ pockets, it was fine.
The materials obtained here were very valuable for the outside world. With Windemere on the other side of the mountain range, it was obvious I wanted to establish trade with them. But the gnome society and culture needed to be strong enough to keep the gnomes from being robbed blind by outside forces, Windemere included. Maybe I should make them trade exclusively with my church. They would protect the gnomes, make them learn the ways of society, and grant the church another source of revenue.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“What’s out there?” The girl asked. “You keep looking at the mountains.
“On the other side of the mountains, lies the home Kingdom of the Matriarch. It’s called Windemere. One day, when you are strong enough to move in the outside world without being wracked in pain, I’ll take you there. Now, come, it is time to install the Cores.”
I had to keep myself busy or the weight of crushing defeat I suffered in this stupid desert would overwhelm me. I needed to cling to the belief that this is what Lorna wanted from me. That I would risk hurting myself to love someone. I had to treat Grenniana as if she was Lorna. No, I had to love this daughter I chose no different than a biological daughter.
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We set the [Ambient Mana Regulator] to the widest area possible just to test it, something I should’ve expected to happen. All the monsters in the five-kilometer radius around the Core fled their habitats. To them, it was the same as removing the oxygen from the air. As Snowdrop. I slung Grenniana on my back. Centaur pride, what’s that? Just a social construct I chose to ignore. Using {Absolute Clinging}, I could make sure my rider wouldn’t fall off.
We hunted the weakened monsters running away to power level the girl. Using {Equal Exp Split} made it possible to give her half the base Exp award without her moving a single finger. Soon she reached the level limit before the first rank and I kept killing. I wanted her to get the five Paths ready to fuse if she wanted to. To normal people, it was a trade-off. They would lose versatility and sometimes lose Attribute points to the cap if they didn’t have many Attributes unlocked. Most lived with only the basic six. Since non-5-fused Class Attribute values were added after the cap, they only had Species points to try and reach the cap. It didn’t happen.
Grenniana picked the five paths but invested six picks on a Perk chain that allowed her to change Classes in combat with just ten seconds of delay. It was mind-boggling what she could do if she had her Classes covering different situations. It was an interesting proposition but although I felt tempted, fusing five Classes was still better for me. I didn’t lack versatility and I needed to carry over the Attribute points.
The next step was to set the Dungeon Core. It wasn’t multi-purpose like the one in the Dungeon City underneath Windemere where I could set up multiple mini-Dungeons. This Core was limited because it was linked to the regulator and could only handle four “floors” or levels. I set the one with the lowest difficulty handing out Exp rewards for navigating obstacles and solving puzzles, for the recently-activated kids to get their first levels in. The next one was meant to train people in the base species, then one for the first rank and another for the second rank. To cheat in favor of the scavenger gnomes, the monsters spawning in these mini-Dungeons were mostly casters. Mostly because they shouldn’t go on the outside world thinking they were stronger than they really were. They had a huge disadvantage compared to other species, healing magic was only 1% effective on them.
We let the gnomes with arcane resistance explore the weak mana area. I could whip the buildings into being but doing so by fiat would weaken the emotional attachment to their new home. We had [Masons] and [Tinkers] who were good at planning and figuring out stuff. I let them make their own choices and develop their own architecture. I just taught them enough to make sure their buildings wouldn’t crash down on them.
I sat on the sidelines, working with the gnomes on crafting the parts they needed to build a new world. I watched as she tried her best, gave counsel when she asked, pointed mistakes after she realized she’d committed them. Grenniana wasn’t afraid of experimenting and she would often look to me seeking confirmation. I just told her she should do what she felt right, and ask for help if anything went wrong. She soon earned the gnomes’ respect and admiration.
Right outside of the Regulator area of effect, I laid a Wellspring Core and planted a giant sequoia to host a gate to the Sky Island. This one was a bitch to power as the energy required increased with the square of the distance. On its own, it could only be used once every week but it could be charged independently by the user.
Like that, I watched the slowest timelapse construction of a town. The gnomes erected their houses out of the stone they mined carving their basements. Like an inverse building, most of the places were one gnome-story high but several gnome stories deep as they tunneled the chambers underneath. This way, the building materials were sourced locally, inadvertently recreating the zero-mile sustainable construction concept some people cherished back on Earth.
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3 years later
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Birth rates tanked as the gnome women now conceived only one or no child for months. The belly-free time allowed the women to find new things to keep themselves busy other than sex, nursing, and gossiping. True to Tuisto’s promise, the new babies didn’t carry the mutant gene that once almost ruined their species. A few of the younger girls, probably jealous of Grenniana second-rank three-digit level even started to run the Dungeons to get some levels.
With the tree gate, people from Windemere came to visit. The first two guests who teleported in were Mirina and Salia. The [Queen] and [Pope] revealed one of the biggest flaws of the gnomes’ urban planning. They were designed for gnomes, not for people whose knees towered at the eye level of the wee folk. To the vast majority of gnomes, it was the first time seeing one of the giants as told in legend. Only real veterans like Crossbow Hand or Midhusband have seen people and lived to tell the tale. And those usually didn’t live longer braving the desert for useful materials.
The gnomes recognized Salia immediately. The [Pope] had a few Class Perks that gave her social bonuses with the faithful. They fell on a knee around her and forced her to recite the gospel of the Matriarch to the crowd of ankle-biters. Even as she tried to stop me, I knelt before the flustered woman like any gnome. Tina was not the Matriarch, to the gnomes Salia was above me in the church hierarchy. Mirina broke decorum let a chuckle escape as she stared at me and then spared an empathetic glance for Salia. The two women had aged well in these decades and they looked younger than their actual years.
Wearing a gown and doing a good job of hiding how uncomfortable the tight clothing made her feel, Grenniana came to greet them after the hymns were finished. “[Queen] Mirina of Windemere, [Pope] Salia of the Matriarch, welcome to Glimmervale, the kingdom of the Scavenger Gnomes. I’m [Princess] Grenniana, the ruler of this place. As followers of the Matriarch, we welcome you as part of our family.”
I lowered my face to hide my watering eyes.