The farther north they went, the drier the air became.
A layer of soft dry reeds was piled in the bottom of the wagon, covered with two layers of cloth, turning it into a very comfortable transport.
When Gauss and the others got tired, they'd occasionally hop into the cart to rest, even take an afternoon nap.
That was the benefit of having a bigger party: on long journeys they didn't need everyone on edge at all times—there were always teammates who could take turns staying alert.
"Ha—"
Gauss let his gaze sweep across the horizon.
They'd already entered a vast plain.
Yellowing wild grass stretched in rolling fields like a sea of grain; when the autumn wind blew, the rustling sound rose and fell, and the waves of grass rolled like an ocean—magnificent and wild.
"Let's set up here for now."
Gauss could tell this great plain was hiding plenty of monsters.
The key was: once he took to the air and looked down, nothing would block his view. He'd be able to take in the distribution of monsters over a huge radius at a glance.
"Okay."
No one had any objections.
After two days on the road, Abby and York had mostly recovered physically.
When York finally woke and learned what had happened, he wept and thanked the party over and over.
Just like Abby, there was no way he could have no resentment toward his old village—especially the village head—after everything that had happened.
But they'd already left that place of bitter memories behind. He planned to start a new life with Abby in the next city.
"Looking at the map… the nearest city is Flutehold…"
Gauss glanced at the girl practicing cantrips a short distance away. Abby had already mastered the Light cantrip.
He had no idea yet whether there would be side effects, but one thing was clear: the witch's tampering had indeed jump-started her ability to learn magic.
Normally, most people's bodies and brains didn't hit the "suitable for magic" stage until around fifteen or sixteen.
The earlier you started, the thicker that invisible barrier tended to be.
But even with unknown side effects on the table, Gauss felt the changes were, on balance, in Abby's favor.
You never know when danger will strike first. Cashing in your talent earlier is almost always better.
"Teacher, my body feels much more comfortable now."
After finishing a spell, Abby walked over and spoke softly.
Her calling him "Teacher" had actually been York's idea, but Gauss hadn't bothered to correct it.
"Probably because you've started learning magic," Gauss explained. "The mana in your body finally has a way out instead of just pent up inside you."
"You need to keep practicing every day."
"Your body hasn't finished growing yet. Too much mana piling up inside you is nothing but a burden."
"I understand, Teacher Gauss."
After giving Abby another round of pointers, Gauss turned to Shadow.
"Shadow, we're running low on food. I'll leave hunting to you. I'm going to sweep the area."
Then he reminded Alia, Albena, and Serandur to keep watch around the camp. With that, Gauss cast Fly and, under Abby's shining, admiring stare, drifted up from the ground and disappeared into the invisible heights.
She'd never seen any other spellcasters. In her eyes, Gauss was the strongest mage—walking the sky and diving into the earth, omnipotent.
Once he'd left the group, Gauss summoned the red Drake Hephaestus.
"Rrroar~"
After several days cooped up, Hephaestus beat its wings with wild excitement.
Before, this many days of sleep would've been perfectly normal. But ever since joining Gauss's party and adjusting to a different routine, it actually felt… a little suffocated.
"Easy. You'll get plenty of time to stretch."
Gauss put on the Eagle-Eye Monocle.
Back on the ground he'd already caught faint whiffs of a stink on the wind.
With the monocle pressed over his eye, the world below snapped into razor-sharp clarity.
"Oh? There you are."
He quickly locked onto a suspicious patch in the distance.
He estimated Shadow's hunting time and how long Alia and the others would take to set up camp and cook. If he moved fast, he should be able to wipe them out before dinner was ready.
He patted Hephaestus's neck. The restless drake immediately surged forward, wings pounding the air.
…
Hsshhh—
The tall grass swayed as a deep gray, furred hand pushed aside the stalks, and a rough claw stomped down, crushing bent stems underfoot.
Behind this tall gnoll, a dozen of its kin strained together, dragging a huge wild ox—far bigger than any of them—across the plain.
Up ahead, a crude camp came into view.
"Camp" was generous. There were no real structures, just a patch of flattened ground leaning against several naturally-round black boulders.
A layer of dried grass spread out over the ground made for perfectly adequate bedding.
Gnolls, by nature, rarely built anything. They were born raiders. They'd show up in the wild, strip a region bare of prey, then migrate on, like a cloud of locusts sweeping the land.
Other monster camps, human villages… all were fair game.
And goblins and kobolds, those fellow vagrants of the wild, fared poorly against these more savage neighbors when their numbers were similar.
As the gnoll "hunting party" returned, the pack around the black stones poured out to meet them.
Just as they were celebrating their haul, a massive shadow slowly swallowed them from above.
"Boom!!!"
Grass blew flat, dust billowed in all directions.
The gnolls lifted their muzzles and froze. At some point, a presence that made their very souls quail had appeared in the sky above them.
A dragon.
Hephaestus lowered its head.
A torrent of searing dragonfire spilled from its jaws.
Ever since it'd learned basic dragon-tongue and how to summon natural flame, its innate breath had grown stronger as well.
Both heat and duration had improved significantly.
Several gnolls died instantly in the flood of fire.
To their credit, a few "warriors" among them managed to rally a response.
No matter how deep their blood-borne fear and awe of dragons ran, when faced with annihilation, the will to survive clawed to the surface. That primal instinct always fights to keep breathing.
On Hephaestus's back, Gauss glanced at the gnoll leader.
Its body was burly, stitched with trophies—scales, metal plates—threaded into its hide.
On its mane-covered back, someone had painted a blood-red demonic sigil.
Under Gauss's gaze, that fanged mark flared a vivid, sinister crimson.
The gnoll leader's already hulking frame swelled thicker still.
It snatched a spear from the ground and, as it drew back to throw, a veil of black-red energy coiled around the tip.
With a furious howl, it hurled the spear up at Hephaestus.
Unfortunately, Gauss had already spotted it and warned Hephaestus to dodge.
"Demonic power, huh…"
Gauss thought of the gnolls' origin.
Legend claimed their lineage traced back to the Demon Lord Yeenoghu, who once tried to wage war upon the Material Plane. Wherever Yeenoghu went, packs of monstrous hunting beasts followed, tearing apart whatever his armies left standing. Over time, those beasts were altered by the Material Plane and became the first gnolls.
When Yeenoghu was forced back into the Abyss, the gnolls scattered across the world, killing and devouring in madness.
Eventually, the evil chromatic dragons took interest in these living weapons and, with overwhelming power, bent them into their service. Thus the gnolls found themselves with a new master.
Apparently, this gnoll tribe had inherited a sliver of that demonic taint.
Gauss's eyes flicked to a flat stone altar in the center of the camp.
He tugged Hephaestus higher.
Though the remaining gnolls were no real threat, the involvement of a demon lord's power warranted caution.
Like in that old monkey-king story: many monsters weren't scary in themselves, but their patrons very much were.
"Fireball!"
Gauss locked eyes with the gnoll leader.
In moments, the fireball's spell pattern anchored in his mind, power coiling in his chest.
As Hephaestus dropped back to bombing height, Gauss opened his mouth and unleashed the spell.
This was his first time combining dragon-tongue, breath-casting, and Fireball.
A tiny white-hot spark shot from his lips like a bullet.
In flight, it swelled at incredible speed, growing from fingertip-sized to a monstrous orb.
Its surface burned bright orange-red; deeper within, the core glowed a near-liquid white, hard to even look at.
"Rrroar!!"
The gnoll leader's survival instincts screamed.
It bellowed, blood sigil blazing as it tried to draw on more power from its fiendish patron.
Too late.
The crimson sun slammed down into the camp, detonating with apocalyptic force.
A sphere of white-hot shockwave erupted, expanding madly in a perfect dome.
Crack.
The black boulders at the camp's heart—once their strongest shelter—spiderwebbed under the onslaught, then were swallowed by the tide of fire, glowing cherry-red.
Flesh and bone stood even less chance.
The few gnolls who'd escaped Hephaestus's earlier breath hadn't even had time to catch their breath. In the face of that heat and impact, they were vaporized in an instant.
Hephaestus clawed for altitude, skimming above the blast.
When Hephaestus steadied, Gauss looked down.
What had been a bustling gnoll encampment was now a blackened sea of flame.
There wasn't a single upright silhouette.
His monster-kill counter surged upward.
"Total Monster Kills: 9,815."
The leader had indeed been an elite gnoll.
But under a fully-amped Level 3 Fireball, it hadn't fared much better than the rest.
Whatever trace of Yeenoghu's power lingered in its blood simply couldn't bridge that gap.
Even the altar was gone—reduced to molten rubble under the blast.
After making sure no gnoll had survived, Gauss spoke a brief phrase in dragon-tongue, conjured clear water, and doused the remaining flames.
Then he turned Hephaestus away from the ruins and left.
…
"Gauss, you're back!" Alia waved as he glided down. "Perfect timing, dinner's ready."
"It's perfect because I timed it," Gauss said with a grin.
"We'll probably stay in this area for a while."
"Found something?" Serandur asked.
"Yeah. I found several more gnoll camps around here. Doesn't feel normal. I want to take a closer look."
That was one reason.
The bigger one: his kill count had reached 9,815. He was fewer than two hundred away from the ten-thousand milestone.
He'd already scouted plenty of monster activity on the plain. It would be a shame not to seize such a prime grinding spot.
"Got it."
The others readily agreed.
Unlike typical adventuring parties, Gauss's crew treated "killing monsters" as the reward in itself. With a monster-count-driven system backing their leader, killing anything that moved was profit.
With the magic pot, their meals had leveled up, too.
Shadow had caught a strange wild turkey—this world's version of a turkey, a magical beast that actually breathed fire.
The pot worked overtime on magical flesh, teasing out its mana, making the meat absurdly tender and flavorful.
"Ahhh…"
"I swear I feel stronger after eating…"
"That's the pot's doing, right? Didn't Gauss say the food it cooks has special effects?"
After eating, they rested awhile, then headed out for the afternoon hunt.
Gauss had already flown a circuit at noon, and had a rough picture of how things were laid out.
This stretch of plain was gnoll territory. There were a few other monsters, but in small, scattered groups.
The gnoll tribes, though, were well-formed. Every camp had dozens of adults—almost no pups in sight.
That was what struck Gauss as wrong.
The density of gnolls here was too high. It was like some kind of "spawn point" or breeding ground.
Combined with the altars he'd seen…
He had a hard time believing there wasn't some infernal influence behind it.
Still, he put that aside for the moment.
The most pressing matter was to reach ten thousand kills.
He fixed his gaze on an open stretch in the distance.
About fifty gnolls and a dozen dire-wolves were prowling the area.
And there were several camps like this in a radius of a dozen or so kilometers.
Three more clear-outs, and his goal would be reached.
"Listen up. We'll herd them inward from the outside. Don't get too close to the altar side."
"Any marked gnolls, leave to me."
"If they clump up enough, I'll use Fireball to finish the lot."
Gauss laid out the plan.
~~~
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