What Wrath said made Kelvin remember what Aganju had said about enslaving entities like Wrath, but he didn't dwell on that topic.
Instead, he asked about the matter that concerned him the most, "Can we find the entrance to the core of the world with how large Lignum is? How long does it normally take for the entrance to be found?"
Wrath shrugged and said, "It can take a year or ten years. I can't really guess when it will happen. But I can say with certainty that it will happen because the Yggdrasil civilization has honed their methods into a craft."
"The tool they use for searching for the entrance to the core of the world is the mark that every soldier carries. This mark turns every soldier into an expert scout. As long as a soldier passes by an entrance, we will find it."
"It is just that we might need to inspect every inch of the whole world, including underground structures. Even the ocean floor has to be scanned. That takes time."
Kelvin groaned as he considered the immensity of the work that had to be done to find the entrance.
Wrath waved his worries aside and said, "Have a little faith in the army. This method is tried and tested. Yggdrasil has used it to overcome and subdue a world with just a small force of ten million many times before. It is highly efficient."
"Things will become easier once Command releases the map of the scanned area of Lignum. At that time the army will be able to coordinate and concentrate their manpower."
"There might be delays due to sudden uprisings and enemy attacks, but it will surely happen. So relax."
Kelvin didn't think he could relax. He said, "Easy for you to say. Do you remember that we are running short on time to make a god?"
That sobered her up too. She said, "Right. We were given an ultimatum of 15 years."
He nodded. "It has been almost two years since then. We have just a little more than 13 years now. We are running out of time. Is there anything we can do to cut my time short on Lignum?"
She shook her head. "Short of dying, there is no way you can leave this battlefield. I would have asked that you be exempted from the rest of the invasion, but the third phase and fourth phase need every man on deck."
"Especially the fourth phase. Things will be truly intense then, as the whole world will make one final move of defiance."
He sighed and shook his head. "I guess the only thing I can do is my best. At least, I've grown faster than I could have if I had stayed at home."
He thought about what his situation would have been had he remained on Earth-11 and participated in games.
What he thought of made him chuckle and say, "I would have to perform for the audience so that they will become my fans. But that wasn't working so well for me back then. People generally don't root for villains to win. They cheer for the heroes, so I would probably still be in D-rank. Or C-rank at most."
Wrath gave him a thumbs up. "That's the spirit. Think of the bright side, and things won't be so bad."
He still wasn't appeased with his lot as he made clear with his grumbling. "Things aren't bad. I just want more."
He picked a direction to move in while chatting with Wrath. If not for the urgency of the situation, it would seem as if he was on a vacation. But it was far from being a vacation.
The fact that the elves were not riling up the whole world against the humans didn't mean Lignum world had become safe. There was still the natural order of things, which was that predators ate prey.
He was small and looked like prey. He was also trespassing in the territory of many predators. These two things did a lot of work in attracting trouble to him.
He was able to escape some of his pursuers thanks to the speed of the hoverbike, but oftentimes, he had to get rid of them with his blade hands.
Things became more dangerous when Command released the map of Lignum with real-time updates of areas that had been scouted.
He couldn't get any benefit by scouting an area that had already been scouted, so he had to go to areas that hadn't been visited by any human. These areas were more dangerous. for many reasons.
Some of those areas were not scouted because of their inherent danger. Either the area was too dangerous to scout, so soldiers avoided it, such as an active volcano, or the area wasn't dangerous at first glance, but anyone that tries to scout it gets devoured.
Either way, the danger spiked. But so did the benefits. Kelvin actually found an energy stone.
He found the energy stone in a cave. It was in an area that hadn't been scouted before.
It looked suspicious at first glance because it was a dark hole in the ground. But the true danger was a nest of giant spiders in the cave.
He didn't know that at first. All he knew was that Extraordinary Perception was picking up sources of light in the cave that were not living things.
Usually, in his vision, it was living things that glowed with various lights that signified their levels of danger. Non-living things producing light was odd.
It wasn't the first time he had seen something like that, though. He had seen that kind of light when looking at energy stones, so he was curious to see if they were the same thing.
He didn't know that the spiders had taken fancy to the energy stones in the cave and had decided to make it their home. So he would be intruding on their home by entering the cave.
Fortunately, he wasn't blind despite the darkness. He had infrared vision from Life Core, life force sense from Life Core, and danger sense from Extraordinary Perception, so he managed to sense the spiders before they surrounded him.