Gauss's party arrived at the riverbank.
Outside the town, there was no human activity anymore.
Between the intel the crow squad had dug up about monsters attacking people, and the increasingly brutal cold forcing civilians to stay inside the settlement, the outskirts had gone quiet.
A thin layer of white frost coated the ground—leftover from last night's temperature drop.
"Come out, Hephaestus!"
Seeing this, Gauss decisively summoned the red drake.
Sure enough, the moment it appeared, the temperature around them rose by several degrees.
He'd unlocked a new feature in Hephaestus: a natural "little sun," model one.
Gauss patted its ever-bulking frame with satisfaction.
As for the dragon's resentful look, he simply ignored it.
You're a red dragon—how can you be scared of a little cold?
The more something is a weakness, the more you have to force yourself to overcome it.
"Much better," Alia murmured, and the others subtly edged a few steps closer to Hephaestus as well.
The weather was freezing, but the river still ran hard, so the surface hadn't iced over.
With his sharp eyes, Gauss immediately spotted a few bluish-purple heads bobbing in the water.
"Water Wraiths."
He didn't move—didn't want to startle them.
The ominous feeling he'd sensed wasn't coming from these common aquatic monsters.
It was coming from the river itself.
He drew the sword formed from holy water and lowered the blade toward the surface. A faint glow lit along the edge.
That reaction meant there was a foreign energy in the water—something naturally repelled by holy power.
He tested several different spots. The sword stayed lit every time.
The glow was faint, though, which meant the intensity was relatively weak.
So the monster surge and the water pollution were connected?
Gauss pulled the blade back.
"Alright. Time to work."
"Total Monster Kills: 10,677"
After the battle with the Dragon Cult, he'd already added several hundred more kills.
And because the river water was colder now, many amphibious monsters had moved onto land to nest.
That was why the townspeople had been getting hit so often lately.
He'd been resting for days; getting back to his "real job" actually made him a little excited.
They continued along the riverbank.
Before long, Gauss spotted a clear line of footprints.
Following the tracks, he found a water wraith nest.
Their skin was bluish-purple, limbs thin, but their bellies were slightly swollen—like sickly people with some strange illness.
In their camp, several frozen corpses hung in the air.
The arms and torsos had been chopped apart and hung from wooden frames like stored rations.
Gauss knew those were probably the townsfolk who'd been killed.
One hunter against a whole nest was never going to win.
This was perfect—he could use them to test his new professional specialty: [Turret Mage].
He motioned for everyone to stay out of it.
Then he drew in his presence and walked toward the camp alone.
At first, the wraiths were wary—but seeing only one person, they steadied themselves.
And since they'd recently hunted humans—gotten a taste for flesh—their greed outweighed their instincts. Even though Gauss radiated something "wrong," they didn't run right away.
He stepped into the camp.
The wraiths bared their teeth, raised weapons, and surrounded him.
Gauss's expression didn't change.
With his current defenses, even if he stood still and let them attack freely, it would probably take them half a day just to crack his protection.
"How pathetic…"
They couldn't even perceive the gap between them.
"Hrrk!"
The wraith leader growled. The surrounding wraiths tightened their grip on crude wooden spears, waddled forward on splayed legs, and thrust at Gauss with force.
…
The sharpened wooden tips hit what looked like soft, smooth fabric—his robe.
And stopped. They couldn't push even a fraction further.
"WAAAAAA!"
The water wraiths clenched their jaws and dug their big feet into the earth, trying with all their strength to drive the spearpoints into the human who'd walked into their camp.
But no matter how hard they strained, the tips wouldn't pierce the cloth.
That was what a purple-grade item meant—ordinary monsters simply couldn't break it.
Gauss didn't even feel the Moonlight Robe's protective layer take meaningful damage.
If anything, he realized he'd overestimated them.
He drew out his white staff and raised it overhead.
That was when the leader finally grasped the danger and roared up at the sky—an order to retreat against a superior foe.
But it was too late.
The staff held high began to bloom with lethal blue light.
"Magic Missile!"
Gauss willed it.
In the moment he cast, he felt an unprecedented sense of control.
This was his most-used, most comfortable Level 1 spell—and after reaching Level 6 and gaining Turret Mage, it had undergone a qualitative leap.
A beautiful blue missile shot from the tip of his staff.
Almost simultaneously, a second appeared.
Then a third, a fourth…
The missiles poured out like a storm. Each one could effortlessly take one or two wraiths' lives.
In the space of a breath, more than twenty missiles discharged at once.
Gauss looked at the nest—almost completely wiped out—and nodded with satisfaction.
Magic Missile had completely transformed. It had been like rain—but instead of harmless droplets, every "raindrop" was lethal.
Twenty-something missiles at once was his current limit, though if he really pushed himself, he could launch even more.
But there was no need. He could feel the extra cast load would waste more mana.
Compared to Fireball, rapid-fire Magic Missile had clear advantages: it locked on accurately, didn't risk friendly fire, fired faster, and gave enemies almost no time to react.
After that, Gauss's team continued marching along the river, heading north while clearing monsters along the banks for the surrounding residents.
"Moonlight Glow!"
In Alia's hands, this Level 2 attack spell hit with the force of a Level 3.
Wherever the moonlight touched, monsters clawed at their own skin in agony. Those that couldn't escape the beam's reach began to crumble—like ash-paper after burning—drifting up and dispersing, purified to nothing.
Gauss's mouth fell slightly open.
Seeing his surprised look, Alia—now finished casting—shyly brushed hair behind her ear.
Since she'd become a Lunar Aspect Walker, the spell's power had surged. And she suspected the reason the Moon Goddess had noticed her in the first place might have had something to do with this spell.
Still, she didn't think it was that shocking.
A lot of monsters could still sprint out of the moonlight before dying.
She figured Gauss was exaggerating on purpose to make her happy.
What she didn't realize was: Gauss was genuinely stunned by something else.
"Goblin Slain ×1"
"Goblin Slain ×1" …
Alia's kills were being shared with him now.
After her class change and bloodline awakening, Alia's combat power still couldn't compare to his—but against normal professionals, she was terrifyingly strong.
And no matter what, having another "killer" feeding into his tally was a big deal.
He'd never tried to forbid his teammates from killing monsters. He generally expected support—but he didn't micromanage their hands.
Now, besides Hephaestus and Shadow, Alia had become the third kill-sharing member.
And since Serrandur mostly served as healer/support and rarely took direct kills, that left only Albena outside the sharing group.
But Albena was a heavy warrior—she specialized in cracking hard single targets, not mass-clearing.
All things considered, the party had settled into an excellent rhythm.
Almost everyone capable of fast AoE killing could now share kills with him.
In theory, Gauss could even sit back and let his teammates "work" for him.
In practice, of course, he wouldn't go that far.
He still needed combat to build experience, refine skills—and more importantly, his own kill efficiency was still higher than theirs.
Two days passed in a blink.
Gauss's team wiped out the monster buildup along the river.
Underwater targets were annoying to finish, but with Hephaestus, they could fly above the water and blast breath downward—if they aimed well, one breath could erase a lot of them.
"Total Monster Kills: 11,698"
Gauss glanced at the panel.
Almost a thousand kills in two days—and they'd cleared out the water wraith concentration that had formed for unknown reasons.
And aside from the raw kill count, Gauss had gained something else:
a gift from the racial trait [Witching Hour].
One of its effects was: when the host kills evil creatures, there's a tiny chance to steal power from them and convert it into the host's own skills and proficiency.
After mass-killing water wraiths, two skills had "dropped":
[Bite] and [Swim].
At first, Gauss was confused.
In his mind, bite and swimming barely counted as "skills," at least not like the ones he'd had before.
And besides—he already knew how to bite and swim.
But after practicing, he realized that once they were formalized as skills, they were different from normal behavior.
Bite could consume stamina to boost jaw strength.
And Swim optimized his form in the water and drastically reduced water resistance while moving.
Not game-changing, but they were free—no reason to complain.
Gauss was sure that as his adventures continued, more skills would drop from monsters.
The only downside was the drop rate was low.
Bite Lv1 (8/10)
Swim Lv1 (2/10)
Bite leveled easily because it trained passively whenever he ate. Even without deliberate practice, it rose quickly.
"Alright. Next, we keep pushing toward the snow mountain."
They were getting close.
…
"Hah—"
Wind and fat snow pellets smacked into their faces.
"We're here!"
"The source of the Talna River—Mount Isthm."
A chain of snow peaks filled Gauss's vision.
They looked like pale swords stabbing into the sky, their tips swallowed by constant blizzards.
"Hrmm."
Hephaestus growled.
Gauss understood: it wanted to land.
The snow made it instinctively uneasy.
Every gust carried knife-like cold that carved through them.
"Land."
Even Gauss was starting to feel it. He gave Hephaestus permission to drop.
Up in the air, it was absurdly cold—frigid ambient mana saturated everything like poison, gnawing at the body.
Only after his boots sank shin-deep into the snow did Gauss feel that lethal chill ease.
But it was still brutally cold.
No wonder this place counted as uninhabited.
To become a settlement, a place had to be livable.
And as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but snow—no trace of life.
Ordinary humans couldn't survive here. The ever-present cold mana would keep eroding them until they froze into statues. No amount of clothing would help.
"Isthm…" Albena repeated softly.
"In the giant tongue, it means something like 'Tomb of the Frost-Breath Star.'"
"Legend says a meteor fell here and turned it into a graveyard of eternal winter."
Gauss looked up at the mountain range.
A snow system this extreme was definitely abnormal—but in a world full of myths and weirdness, even the strangest geography could exist.
"So cold…" Alia shivered.
Gauss pulled out cold-resistance potions and handed them out—one each.
These were gifts Playaos had prepared back in Longflute City. Knowing Gauss's route led to Mount Isthm, he'd stocked them with enough for about a week.
After they drank the pale red potion, warmth spread through their bodies. Each dose lasted eight hours.
"Into the mountains."
Gauss cast Flight on his teammates, then led them in low-altitude flight into the snowfields.
…
Boom!
"Watch out!"
"Avalanche—!"
"Gain altitude, now!"
At Gauss's warning, they surged upward. Below, an ocean of snow thundered down the slope like a river.
In the steep terrain, avalanches could happen at any moment.
It was "natural," but the scale was enormous. In Gauss's eyes, its destructive reach surpassed most Level 4 or 5 spells.
Thankfully, with Flight, as long as they watched the mountains and read the terrain, they could rise above the torrent before it arrived.
The avalanche roared for over ten minutes before finally stopping.
Gauss's team landed on an exposed slab of rock.
It must have been a small hill once, now almost buried under snow—with only a chunk sticking out.
"That was close…" Gauss exhaled hard.
This snowfield was more dangerous than they'd expected.
They'd come prepared for powerful enemies, but the most immediate threat was the environment itself.
Even if their party members were "big shots" in most people's eyes, they were still tiny before nature's violence.
Just as they were catching their breath, a loud roar echoed from above.
Everyone looked up.
In the gray, snow-choked sky, a pale shape flickered into view.
~~~
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